Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Patent Protection Racket

Joel Spolsky:

Civilized people don’t pay up. They band together, and fight, and eliminate the problem. The EFF is launching a major initiative to reform the patent system. At Stack Exchange, we’re trying to help with Ask Patents, which will hopefully block a few bad patents before they get issued.

Julie Samuels:

Lodsys is back at it, and this time, again, it’s doing more than merely threatening. It’s actually filing lawsuits. These lawsuits against app developers are just part of a dangerous recent trend of patent trolls going after end-users. For example, a shadowy collection of shell companies has been blanketing the nation with letters demanding that companies pay them $1000 per employee for the privilege of using standard office technology like scanners and email. And another patent troll is targeting the podcasting community.

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