Transcript: Andrew Tridgell on Patent Defence

“The following is a transcript of a talk given in New Zealand,
2010. Andrew Tridgell discusses why reading patents is usually a
good idea, how to read a patent, and how to work through it with a
lawyer to build a solid defence. For the free software community,
Tridgell also suggests how cooperation could help scare off patent
holders.

“… Andrew Tridgell: Okay. So, I’m going to be talking today
about patent defence for free software developers, and, as it says
on the slide there, I am not a lawyer, but, the point of this talk
is not to have a talk by a lawyer. The point is to learn about how
an engineer interacts with patent attorneys, to teach you the
basics of language and the day-to-day you do when you try to
communicate with patent attorneys in building patent defence. So
that’s the first part of this talk. The first part is a bit like a
tutorial how an engineer interacts with patent attorneys to do
analysis of patents.

“The second part of it is a discussion on how the free software
community can lower its exposure to patent attacks. This is
something I’m quite passionate about, I am concerned that patent
attacks on the free software community are going to become more
common in the future, and I believe there are things that we can do
as a community, as developers within the community, to lower our
exposure to those attacks. That’s the aim of the second part of the
talk/”

Complete
Story