America Invents Act (AIA)

See the following -

America Invents Act & Patent Trolls

Don Mart | ReadWrite Hack | March 19, 2013

Key parts of the America Invents Act (AIA), which passed in 2011, came into effect on March 16, 2013. These changes in U.S. patent law can help all companies that use software to protect themselves from patent trolls — those annoying boiler-room operations that shake down software developers and users for software patent licenses without actually producing anything with the patents they own. Read More »

FOSS And Patents - Peer Collaboration As A Key To Countering Patent Risk, Guest Blog By Clark Asay

Clark Asay | Outercurve Foundation | February 26, 2013

In an earlier post I suggested that third-party patents pose the most significant risk of using free and open source software (FOSS). The risk boils down to this: with limited exceptions, someone with a patent that reads on FOSS can prevent anyone else from using that FOSS, even if you or somebody else independently created the software... Read More »

Join EFF’s Efforts To Keep 3D Printing Open

Julie Samuels | Electronic Frontier Foundation | October 24, 2012

Thanks to the open hardware community, you can now have a 3D printer in your home for just a few hundred dollars [...]. This incredible innovation is possible because the core patents covering 3D printing technologies started expiring several years ago, allowing projects such as RepRap to prove what we already knew—that openness often outperforms the patent system at spurring innovation. Read More »

New Patent Reform Law Could Reduce Lawsuits By Non-Practicing Entities

Erick Robinson | opensource.com | September 16, 2012

So it has finally happened: a patent reform bill has actually become law. Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate voted 89-9 to send H.R. 1249 to the White House, where it was signed into law today.  While I have pointed out in the past that this bill misses out on several aspects of reform that previous bills attempted, it does include some useful aspects. Read More »

Numbers Don't Lie: Patent Trolls Are A Plague

Simon Phipps | InfoWorld | October 19, 2012

Recent research supports view that patent troll activity is rising -- costing America a fortune in wasted legal fees and lost jobs Read More »