The US Patent Office has rejected 17 out of 21 patent claims from Oracle as a result of the reexamination of U.S. patent 6192476. Recently Oracle released information indicating it had asked the court for SIX BILLION DOLLARS. While the claims of Oracle are astronomically absurd their claims are being eliminated as the Patent Office continues to reexamine the patents in question.
James Bessen of the Boston University School of Law has published a paper demonstrating that software patents are not beneficial to the software industry. He finds that a overwhelming majority of software firms do not employ patents, that an overwhelming majority of patents are obtained by a few large corporations, and that both the number of patents and the risk of patent litigation are increasing dramatically.
The NZOSS is pleased to announce that its opposition to New Zealand patent application 536149, filed by Microsoft in relation to XML word processing documents has been successful. Yesterday we were informed by IPONZ that Microsoft has withdrawn their application.
