Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Tue 6th Oct 2009 21:43 UTC, submitted by Moulinneuf
The patent wars rage on. Eolas, a company that before won US$585 million from Microsoft in 2003 in a suit that challenged the use of ActiveX and AJAX, is now after twenty-three separate companies allegedly because their precious patent was spoiled by all of them.
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Member since:
2006-09-22
IANAL, but how do patents actually work? I mean, who reviews these things? Software patents are specially tricky things because of the very important distinction between the algorithm and the actual implementation.
But my question is: Who decides if a patent is valid or not? A group of specialists on the matter, a bunch of random people...? I'm asking this because, reading through a few patents I can't help but imagine that it would be actually possible to patent "Process of doing stuff with a computer" and then start lawsuits again pretty much everyone near something that computes stuff.
And I just don't get people saying "Hey, the laws don't penalize this, so it's allright". So, the fact that such... douchebaggery isn't illegal makes it automatically legal and ethical? Laws are always right and the end-all-be-all of reason and common sense?
Do you people from the USA really think this is the way things should be?
I'm sorry but I just don't get it.