[OT] Open Source, EULA - the Big Bad Bogeyman

[Richard Gaskin]

Lynn Fredricks wrote:
> It also sadly supports what I see as a policy of the USPO to just
> rubber-stamp anything that comes in and let the courts (with plantiffs and
> defendants) sort out and pay for their bad judgement. Of course, maybe
> someone some time ago came up with a great and truly efficient method of
> managing patent reviews - and patented it ;-)

Reminds me of the Compton Multimedia Patent case, in which they claimed 
ownership rights to the ability of any CD-ROM to contain more than one 
type of media (text, audio, video, raster graphics, vector graphics, etc.).

The USPTO rubber-stamped that one and it took a bit of a battle to pull 
together the thousands of examples of prior art to nullify that patent. 
  It was eventually reversed, but sadly our system does not compensate 
for the loss of time in fighting stupidly-awarded patents.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com