[Patents] Article in 'The Times'

[tim@timj.co.uk (Tim Jackson)]

PriorArt.org has already been discussed on this list, but I thought some
might be interested to read the following brief article featured in 'The
Times' (UK newspaper) Law supplement today, under the title "Patent
nonsense":

"Other people may thing we live in a rich man's world, or just a man's
world - but the truth, according to Professor Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford
Law School, is that we "live in a lawyer's world".

Lessig's statement came at the launch of a new service, PriorArt.org,
designed to halt the number of bogus patents on software which,
apparently, "threaten to hinder the Web's development".  But part of the
reason for this is the high price of fighting bogus patent claims
(typically, each one costs a million dollars).  In a lawyer's world surely
the "greatest threat to the Web's development" comes from the lawyer?"

(The Times Law Supplement, Tuesday 22 May 2001)


Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the article, it is surely a good
thing that the issue of software patenting receives national press
coverage, if only to raise wider awareness that there may be (depending on
your views) a problem which needs to be addressed.