jan

Today we face an unprecedented patent bubble of poisonous software and business methods patents. Most patents are stockpiled for strategic purposes. These poisonous assets generate no measurable benefits or insignificant licensing revenue for their holders. Large industry is aware of a patent inflation crisis but it seems too hard to march to the beat of a different drum.

Soft patents are still land mines for software development and stifle innovators. Under the EU Lisbon treaty a new instrument is set into force, the European Citizens’ Initiative. The EU-Commission is now obliged to present a legislative proposal when a critical mass of citizens demands it.

Currently, a new platform is built to get a new directive which bans software patenting once and for all. I would like to ask you to sign this new petition on:
http://petition.stopsoftwarepatents.eu

A few days ago, I had a twitter conversation with @molier about why the iPhone wouldn’t be my choice. I promised to get back to him about this in a blog:

So here are my reasons:

1. Developers are unhappy: Apple’s App Store is a mess for small and independent developers. Very few developers are making even a livable wage, and the approval process is a black box. Facebook developer Joe Hewitt, the man behind the immensely popular Facebook application for iPhone, said that he quit the project entirely on Apple’s tyrannical App Store approval policies.
2. Anti-competitive policies on the iPhone: Apple is disallowing applications because they “duplicate existing functionality”. This means that applications from competitors that offer similar functionaliy are automatically banned. What Apple does is 100x worse than what Microsoft does, although Microsoft also bundles a set of their own applications, at least Microsoft still allows other application to be installed. Recently, Apple lifted its ban for internet browsers.
3. Apple prohibits Voice-over-ip: Apple prohibited the Google Voice or other Voice over IP applications from being distributed on its iTunes application store with no public explanation of why, a refusal to offer any suggestions that could permit the application to be distributed, and no process for appealing the decision. Apple also removed third-party Google Voice-compatible applications by explaining that they violate a policy against applications that duplicate native iPhone functionality, despite this rule being wildly inconsistent in its enforcement. Again, Apple refused to offer any suggestions for how developers could comply with the guidelines, and offered no process for appealing the decision. Only very recently Apple has started to allow VOIP applications, provided that they use wifi only.
4. Telecommunications choice is gone: If you want to buy an iPhone and through the official channels, it is compulsory to do business with T-Mobile too (Or O2 in the UK, AT&T in the US).
5. Apple sues bloggers: Once Apple found out that there was a leak in their development organisation, they went to the extend of sueing the bloggers that were reporting the novelties. In their opinion online journalists have less rights than offline journalists. Fortunately EFF jumped in and Apple lost.
6. Exploiting trivial patents: Apple has filed and has been rewarded trivial patents, and isn’t scared of using a bunch of them to squeeze their competitors (yes a bunch, so that it will become very difficult for their opponent to invalidate all of them). They have 2,000 patents and if they want to start a battle, it’s quite likely that they can find a patent that applies. This also says a lot about the patent office that doesn’t care whether a patent existed before or whether there is prior act, but that’s a completely different story.
7. Apple violates statutory warranty: Apple ignores the legal warranty rules in The Netherlands, as it refuses free repairs or replacements of their products after a one year warranty term. It is said to reverse the burden of proof and tries to sell expensive extended warranty packages to give consumers what they are already entitled to by law.
8. Denying liability and trying to silence owners of exploding iPhones: Numerous press reports are claiming that iPhones are exploding or catching fire in the US, UK, France, Holland, and Sweden. If this wasn’t bad enough Apple managed to write one letter that both denies liability and offers an owner money to keep quiet. Even the European Commission has turned its attention to Apple and their mysteriously exploding iPhones.
9. Will all Apple products going to display compulsory ads?: Apple is seeking a patent for technology that displays advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.
10. Apple is over-priced: It is a public secret that Apple devices are over-priced. Currently (19-12-2009) the iPhone is exclusively available at T-Mobile. If you want the one that connects to the 3G network, prepare to fork out €99.95 for 24 months. The 32MB version will set you back €4800 in the 24 months that you’re under contract. That’s the price of a small car!

Out of sympathy it seems she made 117 transfers between 2003 and 2005, moving more than €7.6m (£6.9m) from richer accounts at a rural German branch to people who were suffering financially. Already, she has been dubbed “Die Robin Hood Bankerin”. Click here for full article.

• “The accused hasn’t put one cent in her own pocket. She did it purely out of sympathy with people who were suffering financially,” the woman’s lawyer, Thomas Ohm, said. She was a “good samaritan” with a ”Mother Courage” nature, referencing the Brecht character who believes she can do good in a bad world. The employee was accused of allowing overdrafts for customers who would not normally qualify for them. She then used the money from richer customers to temporarily disguise the loans during the bank’s monthly audit of overdrafts
• The woman knew most of the clients of her small rural branch and had access to their accounts, German TV station WDR reported – “They couldn’t get credit in a conventional way,” the woman told the court
• The judge said: “It’s difficult to find an appropriate punishment here. On the one hand we have big losses. But on the other hand we have here this altruistic behaviour, which makes the case very different from the norm.”