US patents again

[Peter P.]

A good article in the Globe & Mail:

  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061128.wpatentt29/
   BNStory/Technology/home

(paste on one line if it does not work). The US seems to know that things are
wrong, but ...

  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/29/supremes_make_sense_of_patents/

... quoted therefrom:

'' But Justice Scalia asked, "does it make sense to assume that patents are 
valid under a test that's been erroneous for 20 years"?

Justice Souter observed that "if the error is common enough and long enough, 
the error becomes the law". ''

Right. So at least we know there is a small problem. That's a good start. Now
let's institutionalize it ... The list of big companies at the end and who they
sided with in this case is worth reading a couple of times imho. M$ was not
there, or at least nothing is said about it. IBM was.

This is directly tangent with Ballmer asserting 'rights to Linux IP' and so on 
imho.

Peter

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists