One of the enduring soap operas this year has involved the ongoing patent infringement threats by Microsoft against “Linux, OpenOffice, email, and other open source software.” According to Microsoft, 235 of its (unnamed) patents are being infringed, and it should be entitled to be paid for this use of its intellectual property.

[Steve] Gibson, who early in the conversation makes it clear he believes in trademarks and copyrights and intellectual property -- although he sees software patents have become a problem -- and has even applied for patents when he's done consulting work, explains how patents get written and then stretched like taffy to be broader and stupider, and then he talks about his reaction to Microsoft's cl

(Article from The Economist) AMERICA is still in denial... Innovation and invention is the key to continuing gains in prosperity. ... (Yet) This recent episode of Planet Money, "When Patents Attack", is an informative and entertaining primer on the way America's patent system squelches competition, slows innovation, and enables egregious predation through the legal system.

On any given day you can find thousands of words of reporting, advocacy and debate over the role of patents in technology. One side promotes the availability of patent protection as the source of much innovation, while the other contends that patents have exactly the opposite effect, and many other vices besides.

On the White House's official website for petitioning the government, there is a petition to return sanity to the US software industry by overturning software patents.

Patent Failure examines the current state of the American patent system based on the way it has traditionally been treated–as a type of property system. Using the yardstick of property rights and the economics they influence, Bessen and Meurer analyze the costs and benefits of patents to innovators.

If truth be told, few inventions are really worth patenting. Time and again, surveys show that in both America and Europe companies rate superior sales and service, lead time and secrecy as far more important than patents when it comes to profiting from innovation. And, although applying for patents is relatively cheap, the cost of maintaining them can be horrendous.

Without a Fair Troll, it (Defensive Patent License supporters) is just a "Coalition of the Harmless". What's needed is at least one (ideally more than one) entity that will assert patents from the DPL pool very aggressively and systematically against entities who don't support the DPL.

Everybody's suing everybody! ... None of the major companies really seem to take patents seriously. ... And why should they take patents serious? The United States Patent and Trademark Office grants patents for vague ideas, obvious processes and usage models and even the most mundane software user interface conventions.