Group Attacks Bad Software Patents Before They're Approved 82
Curupira writes "Ars Technica discusses how the Linux Defenders group are exercising the rights granted by the America Invents Act to identify and fight the patents that potentially threaten Linux and open source software. From the article: 'In a session at LinuxCon today, Linux Defenders director Andrea Casillas explained how the group is using rights granted by the new law to fight patent applications. A project of the Open Invention Network, Software Freedom Law Center, and Linux Foundation, Linux Defenders examines the 6,000 new patent applications published each week, attempting to identify those that are potentially threatening to Linux and open source. Then, the group looks for prior art that would invalidate at least some of the claims in the patents.'"
Can I patent (Score:1, Funny)
contesting bad patents?
A trolls got to make a living you seen the price of bridges these days!
Sounds like the job of the patent office (Score:3, Funny)
I really don't get it, isn't looking for prior art the main job of the patent office before granting a patent?
Why don't we get a cut off the fee? (Score:4, Funny)
Given that patents cost $1,000-$10,000 each just in fees to the USPTO and their multi-year backlog, why don't they just offer up bounties? They could assign them semi-randomly so that by the time a patent reaches an actual examiner, they would have plenty of independent reviews of the material. Given that it took Joel Joel Spolsky [joelonsoftware.com] 10 minutes to kill a Microsoft patent, I would spend an hour or two for a cut on the fees.
Re:Very interesting... (Score:0, Funny)
Yes, Apple is that too.