In a talk earlier this week, Richard Stallman described software patents as a sort of lottery, bringing benefits to people only rarely. Stallman is well known among free software fans as the writer of ...

Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D ...

Martin LaMonica is a senior writer covering green tech and cutting-edge technologies. He joined CNET in 2002 to cover enterprise IT and Web development and was previously executive editor of IT ...

Software patents are still in the news. The European patent directive continues to lumber forward, despite overwhelming opposition from groups on all corners -- excepting the big software companies ...

If there’s any lesson to be learned from Google’s news-making activities these past few days, it’s that software patents are a problem. The most recent illustration, of course, is Google’s $12.5 ...

Many members of the Open Source community oppose software patents. Software patents, they say, hinder the advancement of software art, and as such, counter the beneficial effects of open and published ...

Collecting the information necessary to prepare a patent application covering a computer related invention can be quite challenging. Typically, most computer related inventions today relate at least ...

New paper from legal researcher suggests a fix for the software patent mess has been lurking in the statute all this time Software patents have been an agent of change in open source over the last ...

The benefits and problems associated with software patents were debated Wednesday evening during a Silicon Valley panel session sponsored by the Churchill Club business and technology forum. Arguing ...

This is the second half of my interview with John Ferrell, longtime Silicon Valley patent attorney and angel investor, about intellectual property protection for software. Read the first half here.