Are Software Patents Evil?

Patent trolls are companies consisting mainly of lawyers whose whole business is to accumulate patents and threaten to sue companies who actually make things. Patent trolls, it seems safe to say, are evil. I feel a bit stupid saying that, because when you're saying something that Richard Stallman and Bill Gates would both agree with, you must be perilously close to tautologies.

Are Software Patents Evil? is (another) well-written essay by Paul Graham. (It even uses hockey as a metaphor!)

Patenting Thoughts

For example, the human genome exists in every one of us, and is therefore our shared heritage and an undoubted fact of nature. Nevertheless 20 percent of the genome is now privately owned. The gene for diabetes is owned, and its owner has something to say about any research you do, and what it will cost you. The entire genome of the hepatitis C virus is owned by a biotech company. Royalty costs now influence the direction of research in basic diseases, and often even the testing for diseases. Such barriers to medical testing and research are not in the public interest. Do you want to be told by your doctor, "Oh, nobody studies your disease any more because the owner of the gene/enzyme/correlation has made it too expensive to do research?"

Michael Crichton has an editorial, This Essay Breaks the Law in the New York Times (via Slashdot). It addresses a patent case before the US Supreme Court that will decide whether thoughts and relationships are patentable.

Assorted Math & Technology News

When I started studying at the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics, Comptuer Science was a (very large) department. About halfway through my studies, it became the School of Computer Science. I read a couple days ago that David Cheriton, an alumnus and professor at Stanford donated $25 million to the School so the University renamed it to become the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. (How does a university professor become a multimillioniare you ask? They finance Google in 1998 with $200 thousand in seed money, which is, of course, the definition of ROI).

I heard from my Mom that the Ontario Government is planning on dropping Calculus from it's high school curriculum. That's not very wise.

Lastly, The New Yorker has an interesting article, Blackberry Picking, about patents. In particular, it addressed the RIM v. NTP proceedings. It's concise and very well written. It's worth reading.