[ Thanks to E5Rebel
for this link. ]
“It will not have escaped your notice that the patent
system has been the subject of several posts on this blog, or that
the general tenor is pretty simple: it’s broken, and nowhere more
evidently so than for software. Anyone can see that, but what is
much harder is seeing how to fix it given the huge vested interests
at work here.“Although I’d prefer the entire system to be swept away at a
stroke, I think that is somewhat unlikely, so I may have to settle
for progressive improvements. And given the general inability of
politicians to free themselves from the well-paid lobbyists in this
area, the most promising avenue for change is probably that the
companies most affected by software patents should do something
about it through the courts.“Here’s what many now regard as one of the most hopeful moves in
this area. What may surprise is that it’s from Microsoft, a company
that is not often regarded as a victim of the patent system.”