Author Archive

Europe’s Court of First Instance is about to render its decision in the case of The European Commission v. Microsoft. It’s gonna be a nail-biter.

From contracts to code, an intellectual property attorney is essential.

Can the Linux desktop succeed? Perhaps, but first it
must hurdle a number of lofty legal obstacles.

For more than four years, Microsoft has claimed that
Linux infringes its patents. True or false? Here’s a clue:
Have you ever seen the Boogeyman?

The great minds of Europe are pondering new
intellectual property legilsation. Be afraid! Be very afraid!

A patent case pending before the United States Supreme Court could return (some) sanity back to the patent system.

You have to fight for your right to content.

How many lawyers does it take to write this month’s column? Just one very smart one. Here’s a summary of legislation, litigation, and intellectual agitation from around the globe.

The Open Invention Network (OIN) is not just another patent consortia looking to make money or to cover a specified field of technology. OIN is a dynamic part of that growing concept — an open source patent commons.

Some of the thorniest concepts in the GNU General Public License (GPL) revolve around the engineering concept of linking. Here’s how and when the GPL applies to combinations of code.

Some forethought, a clear statement of intent and practice, and a modicum of documentation can make contributors and benefactors more comfortable with donating and using open source code.

Some forethought, a clear statement of intent and practice, and a modicum of documentation can make contributors and benefactors more comfortable with donating and using open source code.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s decision to mandate OpenDocument has incurred the wrath of Microsoft’s hydra, the three-headed beast known as Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Won’t Redmond ever learn that hubris is not a sales strategy?

The defeat of the Computer-Implemented Inventions directive — the so-called “software patent” directive — by the European Parliament seems positive. But it doesn’t address the larger issues — and that could yet spell trouble for software makers.