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Story: Wine development stifled by software patent

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Borland/IBM are not the enemies as such - they are (understandably) building up their list of patents to avoid being locked out of their own business by other companies that horde patents. The trick is to have a large enough list of patents then sign some sort of cross-licensing agreement at no cost to either party. Sure it sucks, and in Europe the software patents should never be allowed. However, if you're playing in the USA you have to play this silly game. Well, according to one article I read online the World Trade Organization is coercing countries like India to allow software patents. I haven't looked into the claim myself, but looking at the US-Australia 'free trade' agreement, Australia essentially has to support software patents and guess who's got a big say in what the WTO says? The best way to fight this nonsense (where software patents exist) is to a) flood the patent office with hordes of software patents and b) get the OSDL and other such groups to start cranking out software patents. If I'm not mistaken, Ingo Molnar has filed a few patents himself - not that he has any evil plans to suddenly ask people using certain features of the Linux kernel to hand him money, but to make sure that no one else steals his ideas, claims them as their own (via a patent) and then make claims such as those made by SCO... Don't think that you needn't bother because 'prior art' will win - sure it is likely to win, but that means mounting a patent challenge - and that's big $$$ - way more than merely filing a patent.

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