“Last week, the scourge of bad patents was finally brought
to public attention, thanks to a high-profile debate between Time
magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ and the hordes of colleagues and
consumers he managed to offend.”
“That ‘Man of the Year’ is, of course, Jeff Bezos, founder and
CEO of e-tail giant Amazon.com (AMZN: news, msgs). And the mobs he
angered include industry icons such as open-source guru and
technical-book publisher Tim O’Reilly — as well as tens of
thousands of former customers who are now boycotting the online
store.”
“What they are angry about is the legitimacy of Amazon.com’s
recently issued software patents.”