Red Hat again shows how a responsible company based on Open Source should act, filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court detailing the severe problems of the current software patent system.
Some references: The Press Release. The Amicus Brief. Groklaw’s coverage.
You have got to love the fact that Red Hat pulls no punches in its brief, as evidenced by two large sections entitled “Software Innovation Long Predated Software Patents” and “The Proliferation of Software Patents Has Resulted In New Risks that Discourage Innovation”!
Oh and one section in all caps “AN ABSTRACT IDEA DOES NOT BECOME PATENTABLE MERELY BY IMPLEMENTING IT IN COMPUTER SOFTWARE”.
A further note of interest is the references Red Hat draws upon, including thinkers such as Donald Knuth and Richard M. Stallman.
For a laugh, one might like to contrast the vital effort Red Hat is making here attempting to correct what is almost universally recognized as a broken patent system hindering software innovation and personal freedom with Novell’s press release today, “Got Mono?” where Novell takes another opportunity to hawk Mono and .NET.
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