Re: US Goverment and Patents - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

FYI, I've included an excerpt of a thread of a government mail list that I
belong to. It talks about patents too.

Today's Topics:

   1. Stallman talks about Nokia's Patent announcement (michael)
   2. 10,000 M$ Millionares (michael)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 09:42:34 -0600
From: michael <michael@canopener.ca>
Subject: [discuss] Stallman talks about Nokia's Patent announcement
To: discuss@canopener.ca
Message-ID: <200505300942.34293.michael@canopener.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"

good overview of recent Corp Patent situation

http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/30/1155209&from=rss



"The danger of software patents is not limited to free software. Developers
 of proprietary software (and its users) can also be sued for patent
infringement. But the majority of software is private-use software, developed
for and used by one client. Its developers (and its users) also face software
patent lawsuits. This is why most businesses in Europe are against software
patents--a recent German government study found 85% opposition. But the
megacorporations are spending lots of money to lull the European Parliament
into ignoring all opinion except theirs. They frequently offer false and
irrational arguments, hoping that the legislators won't recognize the error
and that no one else will point it out to them. "

--
Michael Francis
michael@canopener.ca


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 30 May 2005 11:50:41 -0600
From: michael <michael@canopener.ca>
Subject: [discuss] 10,000 M$ Millionares
To: discuss@canopener.ca
Message-ID: <200505301150.42132.michael@canopener.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"

I remember reading Douglas Coupland" Microserfs in now whats seems another
lifetime.....

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060987049/102-1011184-3056135?
v=glance

whoda thunk it would have come to this

"While the exact number is not known, it is reasonable to assume that there
were approximately 10,000 Microsoft millionaires created by the year 2000,"
said Richard S. Conway Jr., a Seattle economist whom Microsoft hired to study
its impact on Washington State. "The wealth that has come to this area is
staggering."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/business/yourmoney/29millionaire.html?ex=11
18030400&en=3c791eafd88178a1&ei=5070

So the man who some reports say alone has as much wealth as the bottom 40% of
all U.S. households.

Is also I guess responsble for the creation of what  I am guessing  around
 14% of Americas millionaires

Other reports estimate  there now are 7.5 million millionaire households in
the United States, breaking the record set in 1999 of 7.1 million.

Another report  concludes The number of US households with a net worth of one
million dollars or more rose 21 percent in 2004.

So beteween the various "wars" 2004 must have been a damm fine year for a
few...

So with 1% of the US population now controlling approx 37% of its wealth
and just a BTW you need to have at least 3 million to make it into the top
 10%

I can only think as to what Vizzini would say "simply inconceivable"


--
Michael Francis
michael@canopener.ca


------------------------------

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End of discuss Digest, Vol 17, Issue 12
***************************************


On May 30, 2005 12:47 pm, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> FYI, two weeks ago I attended the Computer & Communications Industry
> Association (http://www.ccianet.org/) 2005 Summit in Washington.  I was
> invited as a member of an open source project.
>
> It was a great opportunity for our project to get visibility in
> Washington among industry lobbyist and government officials.  The caucus
> covered a few major areas:  computer security, identity theft, patent
> reform, and homeland security.
>
> One good piece of news is that the US patent problems are clearly
> recognized by the government and new legislation is being worked on to
> try to fix some of the existing software patent problems.  That
> legislation might be passed this year.  The goal is to try to prevent
> trivial patents and to make patent challenges easier/cheaper.  One issue
> I expressed there is how vulnerable open source is to patent attacks
> because we don't have money to defend even trivial challenges.
>
> Here are a few PDF's written by the CCIA that I think addresses many of
> the patent issues very clearly:
>
>     Open Source and Software Patents:
>     http://candle.pha.pa.us/ccia/Patent_Abstract.pdf
>
>     Software Patents:
>     http://candle.pha.pa.us/ccia/CCIA_Patent_Policy_2-pager.pdf
>
>     Detailed Patent Analysis:
>     http://candle.pha.pa.us/ccia/innovationrpt.pdf
>
>     Fairly Considering Open Source for Government Contracts:
>     http://candle.pha.pa.us/ccia/procurement2.pdf
>
> I know some people were looking for a patent statement to put on our web
> site.  The first PDF would be an excellent choice.