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Patents and Tacit Knowledge
,----[ Quote ]
| I think the source of the problem in the patent system may be linked to a
| point Friedrich Hayek made long ago about our tendency to overrate the
| economic importance of theoretical knowledge and vastly underestimate the
| importance of tacit or practical knowledge. The non-obviousness requirement,
| tied to the standard of an observer skilled in the appropriate art, is
| supposed to make the patent system sensitive to this kind of knowledge. But
| if examiners have to defend their judgments of obviousness, theyâre
| essentially being required to translate their tacit knowledge into explicit
| knowledgeâto turn an inarticulate knack into a formal set of rules or steps.
| And Hayekâs point was that this is often going to be difficult, if not
| impossible. Just as a loose analogy, consider that in the Principia
| Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whiteheadâs attempt to provide a
| rigorous, formalized basis for ordinary arithmetic, it takes several hundred
| pages to strictly establish the proposition â1+1=2.â It takes a fairly
| advanced mathematical education to understand the explicit elaboration of a
| practice (counting, adding) that we expect most children to master.
`----
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/08/12/patents-and-tacit-knowledge/
Oh My Word â How Patently Stupid
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| As you can see, this is essentially a patent on those core ideas of XML+XSL
| that impressed me all those years ago â indeed, on the even older ones of
| SGML+DSSSL. How the US PTO could possibly grant it for something whose core
| idea has been around for years is just beyond comprehension, and indicates
| the parlous state of the US patent system.
|
| But what makes this case even more perturbing is that the patent has been
| granted to Microsoft. Which means that it has another pseudo-patent in its
| armoury that allows it to indulge in the usual FUD of free
| software âinfringingâ on its intellectual monopolies.
|
| [...]
|
| Unfortunately, the EU alone won't be able to sort things out here, because it
| seems that Microsoft is not the only company making absurd claims about
| owning intellectual monopolies on fundamental and obvious document
technology.
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http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2441&blogid=14
How Not to Read a Patent
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| In the past few days we have had a bumper crop of pontification on the
| significance of two XML-related patents, one nelwy issued to Microsoft
| (7,571,169), and another older one (5,787,449) owned by i4i, whose
| infringement has resulted in a large judgment and injunction against
| Microsoft. I've found the web coverage of both patents to be an unmitigated
| muddle.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/08/how-not-to-read-patent.html
CFA: Microsoft Lawsuit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eINsoAc93cE
Recent:
Court Bans Microsoft From Selling Word
,----[ Quote ]
| In the latest apparent case of the U.S. patent system run amok, Judge Leonard
| Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued a
| permanent injunction on Tuesday preventing Microsoft from selling versions of
| Word that handle custom XML in the form of the .DOCX, .DOCM, and .XML file
| formats. Which would mean that Microsoft is now forbidden from selling Word
| 2003 or Word 2007. And since it also forbids Microsoft from testing such
| versions of Word, there would seem to be implications for Office 2010 as
| well.
`----
http://technologizer.com/2009/08/12/court-bans-microsoft-from-selling-word/
Softpatent trolls OOXML and Word
,----[ Quote ]
| We may add that while Microsoft always pays lip service to patent reform and
| patent quality, it effectively obstructed even moderate steps of pragmatic
| reform in the field of software patenting with massive lobbying investment
| and an ideological agenda. An ideological motivation you don't find among all
| the other players which have a real business. The massive lobbying also
| applies to colonial attitudes towards patent regimes of third nations in
| which the American company operates, or the European Union, our main area of
| operations as the FFII e.V. Ironically Microsoft itself is a favourite target
| of troll challenges and no one knows how much profits Marshall Phelps
| actually generates by selling their Microsoft FAT patents. In the spectacular
| case of TomTom we were told it was a very small amount. Some American critics
| as Brian Kahin speak of a patent bubble of low value patents but how is it
| going to burst? When you have a licensing business a good patent is one that
| hurts. Maybe the Encyclopedia Brittannica is an example, it failed
| commercially and now became an (unsuccesful) patent enforcement agency
| against actual market players.
|
| In the recent referral G03/08 about software patentability an European Patent
| Office case named T 424/03 (Microsoft) was center to the debate. Find the
| Amicus letters here. Currently you also have a pending referral on Bilski in
| the US Supreme Court which is more far reaching than software. In the US many
| examination tests were dismantled such as the machine or transformation box
| test which opened the flood gates and unbalanced the system. It was
| reintroduced under the Bilski ruling but appealed at the supreme court. The
| Bilski test does not rule out software or business method patents but
| provides means to reduce the pressure within the examination system in later
| stages.
|
| First you wreck the law, then the trolls wreck you.
|
| [...]
|
| Right now ISO/IEC 29500 ("OOXML") is patent encumbered and cannot be called
| an "open standard" according to conventional definitions and looks unusable
| for the public sector.
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http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-175409/softpatent-trolls-ooxml-and-word
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