Blogging Ottinger (tim)Senate Seeks Protection for Invalid Patents
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to stop a particularly nasty move in the senate. The Patent Reform Act of 2007 includes among its odious bits some legislation that prevents third parties from examining and busting invalid patents. Like the one on clicking a link, or the one on writing loops in code, or any of the millions that have prior art and are obvious. If mad patents cannot be attacked by third-parties, then we as programmers will become increasingly afraid to code as all obvious mechanisms become covered by patents and we will have to pay for defense from mad lawsuits.
As with all legislation, this act has good parts and bad parts. I’m not totally against all that it does, but the harmful bits are ugly.
We need to get some money into the EFF right now.
