I've been doing a lot of research into technology patents today, and I came across this very recent news item about Microsoft and a competing educational programming tool called BlueJ.



BlueJ is a free educational IDE for teaching object-oriented programming and Java. It competes directly with Microsoft Visual Studio, although VS costs hundreds of dollars. The problem with VS is that it locks users into a Windows developing platform. C# and Visual Basic Microsoft's way of making sure the bright minds of today are making products for Microsoft tomorrow. BlueJ doesn't care what programming platform developers use, because they don't have any financial interest in that decision.



BlueJ's developers have complained of late that Microsoft has been taking features that have been in BlueJ for a long time, putting them in Visual Studio, and claiming them as new features without giving any credit to BlueJ. What's worse, Microsoft has begun patenting the features that it blatantly ripped off BlueJ. Since BlueJ gives away their product and does not have billions of dollars to spend, they would have a tough time defending themselves in a patent fight with Microsoft, which has shown its ability to spend hundreds of millons of dollars on top-notch teams of lawyers.



BlueJ clearly has a prior art claim on Microsoft's latest patents, but they will have a hard time presenting this to the U.S. Patent Office with Microsoft's lawyers trying to stop them every step of the way. What recourse do the BlueJ developers have?





Technorati Tags: microsoft, bluej, patent, law

Blackboard, the educational software company, could be losing its patent in "internet-based educational support system and methods" (U.S. 6988138) after another company filed a claim for a re-examination. Desire2Learn, a competing software maker, claims they have a patent that covers the same type of software. Prior art might also be a factor in this re-examination challenge.



I've always wondered why the patent office gave out so many patents to companies that did nothing more than take an existing product/service and add the words "internet-based" to it. That really doesn't make it any different than the original. My guess is that people in the patent office work too many hours to use the internet, so they have no idea what it really is.

Justice is blind, except in the south. A teen in Georgia was sentenced to 10 years - without parole, for receiving a "Lewinsky" from a younger teen. The boy, who was 17 years old at the time of the crime, is now 20. The girl was 15 when SHE initiated the act.

Because this happened in the south, you can almost figure out that the boy is black and the girl, referred to as the victim, even though she has admitted all along that it was consensual and she initiated, is white. The sentencing drew national criticism, leading to a legislative measure to fix the crime definitions that made sex between a 17-year-old and 15-year-old a misdemeanor, but oral between two teens of those respective ages a felony. The law was changed, but for reasons that are just baffling it was not applied retroactively, which means Genarlow Wilson still rots away in prison to this day. Wilson had been a top football prospect looking at schools like Brown or the Citadel before the bizarre arrest and prosecution.

I encourage all you lawyers and law students to write about this incident, and do as much as possible to embarrass similar prosecution in other parts of the country, including those DNA reversals in Dallas County, Texas. It's the least you can do.

Technorati Tags: law, georgia, idiocy, ignorance