Creations starts there, you, me for that matter, IP is the center of the Big Bang, i guess.

I recommend you read the Mossingoff study on first to file and advantages for SMEs. Then take a look at the study from National Academy of Science, and take a look at the USPTO 21st Century report – hell, look at the news for the past 4 years! What you will see is that the people getting sued the most are the big companies. Who is suing them? Smaller companies! Eolas (UC Berkley) sued Microsoft – they didn’t sue ‘bob’s software shack’ down the street.

When you actually go out and meet small businesses, even in the software field, they look at IP, and possibly patents, as a way to gain leverage on the big guy.

The problem doesn’t lie with the misguided notion of big vs. small, it lies with the fact that right now, software patents tend to be of such questionable quality that no matter who filed them the value is suspect. This, combined with some problems with the way the patent system deals with “willfulness”, has led to ‘patent spam’ whereby an infringement letter is brought on some crap patent where the license cost is less than the cost of fighting it. It has NOTHING to do with patents as a concept.

Poor quality gets the lawyers involved and that advantages the deep pockets. The patent itself is actually the ONE thing that equalizes players.

We at ACT just reached out to more than 750 of our small company members to ask them about the problems with big company licensing. NONE of them felt that patents were a disadvantage – sure they all had problems with the big companies, but this quote sums up the responses on Patents:

“We will succeed yet because we have a well-written patent and good technology.”

So before you go talking out of school about big vs. small, get your facts straight: IP helps the little guy get rewarded for a great idea. Poor quality software patents that should never have been granted destroy opportunity for everyone.

I recommend you read the Mossingoff study on first to file and advantages for SMEs. Then take a look at the study from National Academy of Science, and take a look at the USPTO 21st Century report – hell, look at the news for the past 4 years! What you will see is that the people getting sued the most are the big companies. Who is suing them? Smaller companies! Eolas (UC Berkley) sued Microsoft – they didn’t sue ‘bob’s software shack’ down the street.

When you actually go out and meet small businesses, even in the software field, they look at IP, and possibly patents, as a way to gain leverage on the big guy.

The problem doesn’t lie with the misguided notion of big vs. small, it lies with the fact that right now, software patents tend to be of such questionable quality that no matter who filed them the value is suspect. This, combined with some problems with the way the patent system deals with “willfulness”, has led to ‘patent spam’ whereby an infringement letter is brought on some crap patent where the license cost is less than the cost of fighting it. It has NOTHING to do with patents as a concept.

Poor quality gets the lawyers involved and that advantages the deep pockets. The patent itself is actually the ONE thing that equalizes players.

We at ACT just reached out to more than 750 of our small company members to ask them about the problems with big company licensing. NONE of them felt that patents were a disadvantage – sure they all had problems with the big companies, but this quote sums up the responses on Patents:

“We will succeed yet because we have a well-written patent and good technology.”

I don’t see how a 16 year old statement is any more pertinent to Microsoft’s patent policy views than a misunderstanding of the digital economy they held as recently as 8 years ago.

Besides Billg, there is another prominent fellow who once opposed software patents, but is now one of their biggest supporters: Robert Merges.

No, there is no consensus that FOSS is more innovative. There is a consensus that its at least viable in some form, and in my opinion, that form is with heavy corporate subsidy. FOSS will remain limited by its more extreme licensing models though.

He’s not ‘arguing’ that any more because it’s become the consensus opinion.

“That hopeless argument has been dropped for the claim that FOSS gives some vague notion of freedom, that is unless you consider every half finished project on SourceForce an innovation.”

Hmm how about LAMP? How about XFS fille system? How about KDE, blackbox, GRASS, blender, xplanet, celestia, Openoffice……?

I love it when Tim sees me write-up an article or speech on IPcentral, then hops over to TLF to write on the same thing. Its pretty evidently those are hurried posts…