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Defending Against Frivolous Software Patent Infringement Claims - Nice Talk

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mouser:
This is video and transcript of a talk by Andrew Tridgell on how to defend yourself against Patent Infringement claims.

I'm one of those people who believes software patents are a horrible idea, and that the patent system in general is a travesty.  If you are serious about selling your own software, you owe it to yourself to investigate this issue a little bit.  If you start to make real money, *someone* will try to sue you for patent infringement, if only to try to pressure you into buying them off.

Andrew Tridgell: Okay. So, I’m going to be talking today about patent defence for free software developers, and, as it says on the slide there, I am not a lawyer, but, the point of this talk is not to have a talk by a lawyer. The point is to learn about how an engineer interacts with patent attorneys, to teach you the basics of language and the day-to-day you do when you try to communicate with patent attorneys in building patent defence. So that’s the first part of this talk. The first part is a bit like a tutorial how an engineer interacts with patent attorneys to do analysis of patents.

The second part of it is a discussion on how the free software community can lower its exposure to patent attacks. This is something I’m quite passionate about, I am concerned that patent attacks on the free software community are going to become more common in the future, and I believe there are things that we can do as a community, as developers within the community, to lower our exposure to those attacks. That’s the aim of the second part of the talk..

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http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents/





from http://www.osnews.com/

housetier:
What bugs me is we have to play on 'their' field even if we don't want to: we must hire a lawyer, we must dive into the mess that is software patents.

It's all so very expensive.

I blame the lawyers though, for creating a world where they always are needed...

I wonder how much of Mr Tridgell's instruction are applicable in Germany.

Renegade:
I blame the lawyers though, for creating a world where they always are needed...
-housetier (February 14, 2011, 08:01 AM)
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+1 - The lawyers always seem to win no matter what. The system is broken, but it's broken by design. If it worked properly, lawyers would be in soup-kitchen lineups.

40hz:
It's not so much a problem that there are lawyers.

The problem comes from our tendency to elect lawyers to public office.

If it's mostly lawyers we let write our laws, is it any big surprise they end up being incomprehensible to anyone other than another lawyer?

 :)

Renegade:
It's not so much a problem that there are lawyers.

The problem comes from our tendency to elect lawyers to public office.

If it's mostly lawyers we let write our laws, is it any big surprise they end up being incomprehensible to anyone other than another lawyer?

 :)

-40hz (February 22, 2011, 06:22 AM)
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Good point.

I'm thinking of some silly argument about how you're really only addressing the symptom, and that if we killed all the lawyers, we'd be attacking the root of the problem, allowing humans to serve in public office. 

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