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Story: Software patent protest to block Web sites

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I have my doubts about patents, especially in software. A patent is essentially a monopoly granted by the government for a certain amount of time ( I believe it's 17 years or something in Europe ).

This means you have the power to forbid somebody to do something, or at least let him pay for it.

For instance,
- Microsoft has a pantent on Cascading Stylesheets (CCS).
- Amazon has a patent on one-click shopping
- Also Amazon: giving a gift to somebody on the internet
- IBM used to had a patent on showing thick lines on a computer screen
- Adobe has one on a progress bar
- Apple has one on the garbage bin
- Some guy: has a patent on browser plug-ins

These are perfect examples of patents that should not have been. Big companies that have patents do "cross licensing", which means they can use each others patents free of charge.

Small companies, well, they can forget it, as can FOSS developers. Imagine you have a company that makes firewalls. Then your product would need to be able to understand the network protocols. Well you can forbid the implementation of such a system, if it is patented.

Granted, patents can be usefull, if big effort went into doing something with them. But in IT, they are used as weapons in the competion, and they mostly do nothing for progress.

So sign the petition !!
take care

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