A good article from Ars Technica about the potentially weakening case for software patents and why it isn't the end of the world. Countering the fear- mongering piece by Duffy on the issue. For more of my thoughts on this, I posted an patent-related article on Cartographica earlier this month …

The US patent system is under fire again this week (this time by an article in Wired) for putting the rights of patent holders above the research and security implications thereof. In this particular case, the issue is HID Global (ironically self-tagged as "The Trusted Brand") going after a security …

Carol and I just returned from a great trip to London to celebrate our second anniversary and whilst digging through the mail upon our return, I found no fewer than three notices from companies that make patent plaques that my RFID Patent has been issued. The issuance of the patent …

Well, I like NetFlix, but I have to say that their lawsuit announced this morning against BlockBuster is beyond ridiculous. They are going after the classic business idea patent--I say classic sarcastically, if you can't tell. There seems to also be a method patent for the queue management system that …

In 2003, I applied for a patent for a relatively interesting use of RFID in vehicle parts management. Said patent application has been making its way through the process and is now a published application. At this point, the patent is available for review and comment before it finally gets …

In another interesting approach to fighting recent software (and hardware, for that matter) patents, one CNet reader has written in to extoll the virtues of the Star Trek Defense. Although less likely to win you the case than to gain some laughter (and perhaps sympathy) from the jury, the approach …

An article from Gizmodo brings us word of an invention from an Israeli company, Glucon, that would allow the constant monitoring of glucose levels without breaking the skin. Looking like a watch, the device will eventually monitor levels using ultrasound and a laser. Patent is #6,846,288.

An article from GROKLAW details a recent win by Kodak against Sun in a lawsuit related to... ah, heck, who can figure this out these days. The lawsuit involved some patents that Kodak bought a few years ago and now they think they should have $1.06B for their troubles …

An article on Apple-X.Net adds a lot of detail to the conjecture over the recently published "Chameleon patent" that a number of recent Mac sites have been talking about. The patent is probably best described (in layman's terms) in Apple Files for Chameleon Patent and Morph Trademark, an article …

It's not the whole case, but CNet reports that Microsoft has lost an important ruling in the case brought against it by small software and technology company InterTrust Technologies. The case involves the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology and patents currently held by InterTrust. The company has a …

A press release from Mirror Image announced that they have been awarded patent number 6,581,090 describing their Internet communication system. It is unclear what effect this will have on the web caching industry, but I'm sure a lot of people are reading the patent today.

Argonne and Brookhaven National Labs have received a patent (No 6,528,948) for a valve to close off a vacuum used in photon experiments using plasma. SlashDot referred to this as a "force field", which is arguably correct as the particles that block the flow are constrained by electromagnetic …

Thanks to Amanda, here is a really nice page describing the basis of patents and the real meaning of "ordinary skill in the art." The article goes over a patent on a solution to triangular matrices and one of the compression-related patents (leading to the Stacker case). In the end …

According to an article on CNET, file sharing company Altnet may begin suing competitors for "violating" it's recently-licensed patent for finding identical files based on a hash of their contents. This may eventually win the prize for stupidest patent when such a prize is given, considering the whole purpose of …

A jury has found eBay guilty on two of three counts of patent infringement (the third count was thrown out by the judge by invalidating the patent in question). The patents' owner MercExchange of Great Falls, VA stand to bring in about $35M for the patents that cover the "Buy …

The SBC frames patents have been discussed here before (January 28 and February 3), but here is a more recent and more in-depth discussion of the tactics from King and Spalding. It's not surprising that the folks at SBC (a member of the former Bell monopoly) have chosen to assail …

An article on CNet this morning indicates that the outstanding lawsuits between Intel and VIA are now gone. However, the news isn't all good. The US manufacturer of CPUs and motherboard chipsets has agreed with the Taiwanese chip manufacturer to settle all outstanding lawsuits and to license the ability to …

An article in Linux Business Week's online edition is claiming to have seen an SCO press release about requiring a royalty payment of $96/CPU for all servers running non-SCO brands of Linux. They apparently claim that the license is required due to UNIX patents acquired by the company from …