Software Companies Want Patent Reform by Congress
,----[ Quote ]
| The Patent Reform Actwould overhaul the U.S. patent system. Among other
| things, it would create a new way to challenge patents after they've been
| granted, and it would allow courts to change the way they assess damages in
| patent-infringement cases.
`----
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/09/AR2008030901283.html
This is bad. They only address what's bad for them and keep what's good for
them. The UK is still quite sane (requiring a device to accompany software for
patentability):
Research In Motion Wins U.K. Suit Over Visto Patent (Update3)
,----[ Quote ]
| Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device, won a
| U.K. patent lawsuit against Visto Corp. over e-mail technology.
|
| Justice Christopher Floyd in London ruled that a Visto patent for a system
| for synchronizing e-mail was invalid. Research in Motion had filed the
| lawsuit seeking to overturn the patent.
`----
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=a5LE3mJLl6RM&refer=canada
Technology’s Hottest Product? Patent Litigation
,----[ Quote ]
| The Wall Street Journal’s Sara Silver takes a look today at Visto Corp., the
| company that last Friday sued Research in Motion for patent infringement. RIM
| returned the favor on Monday, suing Visto on the same grounds.
`----
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2006/05/04/technologys-hottest-product-patent-litigation/
More patent money wasted on fighting over where to sue
,----[ Quote ]
| The same problem exists for trade marks and designs, but the frequency with
| which jurisdictional tussles and applications for stays occur seems to the
| IPKat to be very much lower. Does anyone know why? Merpel is disappointed
| that the English courts won't have a chance, at least this time, to rule on
| whether there had been an abuse of process in bringing the action in Italy.
| That would have been fun.
`----
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-patent-money-wasted-on-fighting.html
Recent:
Software Group Lobbied on Patents
,----[ Quote ]
| The Business Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft Corp. and
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| Adobe Systems Inc., paid Emery Simon $260,000 in 2007 to lobby the federal
| government.
`----
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080228/business_software_alliance_lobbying.html?.v=1
Related:
Glaswegian piracy drive yields just 41 'possible' offenders
,----[ Quote ]
| The Business Software Alliance (BSA) wrote to 8,000 firms in November last
| year in which it urged bosses in the Scottish city to ensure that the
| software they used was legal and fully licensed.
`----
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/02/07/bsa_claims_glasgow_piracy_success/
Software pirates put sizeable dent in UK economy
,----[ Quote ]
| The Business Software Alliance (BSA) claimed today in its annual "Global
| Software Piracy Study" – which was carried out by analyst firm IDC – that a
| reduction in counterfeit software by ten per cent over four years could add
| an extra £4.46bn to Blighty's economy.
`----
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/01/22/bsa_software_piracy/
Why open source has always deserved a census
,----[ Quote ]
| Ever since we learned that the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft
| doesn’t take into account open source software when it comes up with its
| annual piracy statistics, we stopped reporting their numbers. When you only
| look at proprietary shipments, you miss a great piece of the puzzle. We just
| don’t know how big a piece it is.
`----
http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/shane/2007/12/12/why-open-source-has-always-deserved-a-census/
Get free software and save a fortune
,----[ Quote ]
| Though the most popular open- source package is ubuntu, funded by local
| entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, South African business is generally paying
| dearly for its ignorance of free software, says a study by international
| market research firm Frost and Sullivan.
|
| The report, South African Open Source Market, said allegations by large
| developers, led by Microsoft, and the Business Software Alliance, of piracy
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| and copyright violations have cast a shadow over the legitimacy of free
| software.
`----
http://www.thetimes.co.za/Business/Article.aspx?id=602887
Legality of Fedora in production environment
,----[ Quote ]
| Recently the appropriate laws in my country (Russia) have beens
| ignificantly toughened. Now the police can check for illegal software
| usage by their own initiative (without request from the owner). The
| tax inspection demands that software should be registered at
| accounts departments.
|
| During such a checking, the user is obliged now to show all hardcopy
| license documents (with original signatures and stamps).
`----
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-May/msg00697.html
Hypocrisy off the port bow!
,----[ Quote ]
| Admiral Holleyman of the Bull Shit Association dares claim that our craft
| makes his skainsmates lose (that's the opposite o' win, for all ye
| spelling-retarded coppocias) $11 billion US dollars every year. Hoy-day! A
| flight of fancy I've ne'er seen before such bardleture came before me! Such
| presumptuous posy overflows my yellow bile. As if every man of the
| brotherhood would actually buy the programs he pirates! Bah! Next, I wager
| he'll be so bloody daft to presume that blokes should actually read a license
| agreement, the likes o' which have never been, and may yet never be enforced
| in full.
`----
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/364
U.S.-China joint probe nets fake software
,----[ Quote ]
| The figure represents 10 percent of software piracy losses in China in 2006,
| according to the Business Software Alliance.
`----
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/tc_nm/piracy_china_software_dc
Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses
,----[ Quote ]
| A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims
| that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking
| almost any participation by the small business community.
|
| Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for
| competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by
| large corporations and the patent industry.
|
| [...]
|
| The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and
| Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report.
| But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the
| report in any way
|
| [...]
|
| Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community,
| said that he found the report useless: participants were told that
| all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only
| those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.
`---- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/99155/big-businesses-boast-of-patent-benefits-for-small-businesses.html
Updates of Sorts and Things to Watch Out For.
,----[ Quote ]
| While there may have been the Enrons, Haliburtons, and other companies that
| members of We Are Change have to deal with, there are two main
| companies/groups that we have to deal with:
|
| * Microsoft
| * The Business Software Alliance
|
| It’s a symbiotic relationship of sorts between the two. One is supposed to
| make sure that users have shelled out an arm and a leg for their copies of
| software, yet it is used by the other to blackmail these same users. For now
| though, let us focus on the Redmond, Washington software company. In Michael
| Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, there was a brief clip that allegedly showed a
| meeting of many companies who were talking about Iraq (second invasion of… at
| least it was implied to me anyway), and one of the names dropped: Microsoft.
`----
http://nixedblog.thenixedreport.com/?p=57
What about selling free software
,----[ Quote ]
| Gervase Markham, the Mozilla Foundation's licensing officer, in an
| article in the Times Online, talks about being questioned by a
| northern UK Trading License Officer about giving away software.
|
| The trading officer was concerned by a group that was burning the
| free Mozilla Browser on CDs and selling it.
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/what_about_selling_free_software
Report: The Business of Free Software
,----[ Quote ]
| In his Nov. 21 column, Conrado Banal said I did not really author the
| bill "Free/Open Source Act of 2006" now pending in Congress. And
| quoting the Business Software Alliance (BSA), he also derided the
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| bill as a "prime model of confusion."
|
| Let me assure him that I authored the bill. My office worked on it for
| four months. It started with a suggestion from FOSS (free/open
| source software) advocates in the Computer Professionals Union
| (CPU). Modeled after the Brazil and Peru FOSS policies, it is the
| result of inputs from various geeks, techies and FOSS
| practitioners--from my two staff who happen to be competent IT
| professionals, IT lawyers in the UP College of Law, members of
| the Philippine Linux Users Group (PLUG), GNU/Linux guru and
| prime advocate Richard Stallman of the MIT-based Free Software
| Foundation, who personally e-mailed his very valuable comments.
| It also contains inputs from the government?s Commission on
| Information and Communications Technology and the International
| Open Source Network of the UNDP.
`----
http://business.inq7.net/money/topstories/view_article.php?article_id=36605
|
|
