Patent ruling good or bad for tech?

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:16 am

Check out this article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10079859-38.html

volca · Post by **volca** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 8:55 am

It was scary - each time software patents were discussed in EU. One could strongly feel the lobby behind that. I'm glad this stuff does not exist in EU yet, and hopefully it won't in the future.

Things, such as Linked List Patent exist, where this would end I'm scared to predict, I'm glad people are starting to show a bit of sanity.

gamedboy · Post by **gamedboy** » Mon Nov 03, 2008 6:02 pm

someone should patent pointer, it is a stroke of genius to figure what a * after class is.

Post by **sinbad** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 4:57 pm

It's a positive step, but one that's still vulnerable to being overruled by vested interests. Let's hope not though.

Evak · Post by **Evak** » Tue Nov 04, 2008 6:25 pm

they are having similar problems everywhere. Honda and toyota were throwing out 200 - 500 patents for their hybrid tech a month making it almost impossible for other manufacturers to effectively develop their own. All the US auto makers ended up licencing one of their technologies instead.

Kind of a shame as this kind of thing stifles competing research and technology, what with all the lawyers sitting around paid too look for anything that they can use to make big $.

Completely the opposite of US manufacturers in the last millenium who had anti competitive contracts and shared everything, Which pretty much stiffled inovation for the opposite reason and gave other countries the opportunity to overtake them despite the US head start.

Anyway, kind of wandered off somewhere else, so I'll shut up now. But it's cool that some common sense is at least being considered on the software front.