[Patents] Greg upset about "peace, love, linux"

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

>How has been IBM been abusing the software patent system?

If you spent less time insulting me, and more time doing serious
research, you would have come across an article that answers that
very question.  It was published in the March 17, 1997 issue of
Business Week magazine, and talks about the many companies that
IBM has asserted its large, mostly invalid (and therefore hard to
fight off) patent portfolio to earn hundreds of millions of dollars
a year in royalties.

So when you argue it is permissible for IBM to get lots of patents because
everyone else is (some violent analogy about guns you made), that makes
sense as a defensive strategy - they have lots of bad patents to scare
off anyone who approaches them with their bad patents.  But once IBM
starts uses their patent portfolio offensively, asserting patents many
of dubious validity, that is abusive.

But this is an issue of reality - sorry to waste the time of the people
on this list who are interested in other matters that don't involve
research the issues.

And whatever butthead is forwarding my copyrighted PATNEWS to Hartmut,
which to put people on notice, I consider a violation of my copyright
(not that copyright is respected anymore on this list than patent),
track down a copy of the Business Week article and send it to Hartmut.

Greg Aharonian