Greg Aharorian on IBM/amazon patents

Greg Aharorian, publisher of the Internet Patent News Service, a vocal and witty critic of the way software patents get handed out, has this to say about IBM's lawsuit this week against amazon for patent violations - and about  other  software IP  matters. Thanks to my lawyer friend Hank "Memphis" Jones for bringing it to my notice during my travels this week.

"Before I review the relative crappiness of the five patents below (two stink, two are smelly, and one will cause Amazon headaches), let me indulge in a bit of bashing everyone involved with this, and even some not involved - a case I can enjoy having sympathy for no one.  May the lawyers involved make tons of money!!!"

"Amazon - I have never forgiven Amazon for its fake interest in patent quality, which it pretended to care about as long as its 1-click patent was in the news.  Once everyone forgot about the 1-click patent, Amazon quickly forgot about patent quality. Amazon's support for the idiotic BountyQuack just compounded their fake interest in patent quality.  So I hope Amazon loses.

IBM - Concurrently with this lawsuit, IBM is foisting another idiotic software prior art "solution" on the PTO, once again finding chucklehead academics to use as frontpieces for their latest scam.  There is only one solution for prior art handling for patent examination - supply the examiners with the time, resources and management to do it internally. IBM knows this, which is why it keeps on suggesting any other (failed) solution - anything to distract PTO management from seriously addressing this problem.  So I hope IBM loses (but what ever happens, buy IBM stock - they are no fools with what matters).

PTO - How can you trust IBM for prior art help when they are a) asserting patents with dubious amounts of prior art cited, and they are still jamming your pipelines with patent applications that cite dubious amounts of prior art?  Didn't you learn anything after they scammed you with the Software Patent Institute in the 1990s. Forget about letting the fox guard the chickens - you guys are killing the chickens first.

Open Source: Never forget, if any of you actually make money, IBM is going to come after you with its patents.  IBM doesn't care about the philosophy of open source, the quality of IP laws, etc., - they only care about their bottom line (increased by winning all of the support and maintenance work created by open source software) and stock price (once again, buy IBM stock on these announcements - they are no fools with what matters).

Stallman/Moglen/GPL - You say, "We are fixing GPL3 to make these patent lawsuits impossible".  HaHaHaHa - GPL3 is too authoritarian (Stallman) and/or anarchist (Moglen) to ever catch on, let alone scare the legal ogres (ogres are massive trolls) at IBM.  IBM has long known that as long as GPL is based on copyright, it will never hold up in court - they can crush it when it suits IBM needs.  Moglen is an incompetent copyright lawyer (not that an anarchist cares about getting the law right), and any random left toe of any IBM litigator is all that it will take to crush Moglen's legal rantings in court.

In short, may you all lose...."