[Random-bits] Patent Office director: My hands are tied

[James Love]

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/04/2035225

Patent Office director: My hands are tied

   Wednesday October 04, 05:10 PM EDT    [ Patents and Trademarks ] 
   By Grant Gross
   Managing Editor

An often raucous debate on the effect of patents on the Internet ended
Tuesday night with a leading cyberlaw expert calling for a moratorium on
most business-related software patents and the director of the U.S.
Patent Office saying Congress has tied his hands.

Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor specializing in the Internet
and advisor to the judge in the Microsoft anti-trust trial, argued that
most developers of internet-related software have worked in a culture
where they built on each other's work and patents weren't considered.
Those companies seeking hundreds of patents on software each year should
have to prove those patents won't hinder the further development of the
Internet, he said during a debate sponsored by D.C. Area Chapter of The
Internet Society.

   [snip]

-- 
James Love  mailto:love@cptech.org http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
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