Ban Software Patents
Remember in 2006 when patent troll Firestar sued Red Hat for patent 6,101,502?
These patents are bullshit.
On one side, you have an object model. On the other, you have a relational database. When programmers must bridge two different data models, we eventually write little code generators to help us automate the conversion and avoid mundane boilerplate code. In this case, the conversion is called ORM, or Object-Relational-Mapping. The concept is obvious, and is the kind of things programmers do all the time.
Unfortunately, people can patent these obvious ideas and sue each other, punishing companies and individuals who have the audacity to create successful products.
Now, another troll is suing Red Hat for patent 6,163,776. Guess what this patent is for? Yep, just like the last one, this is another ORM patent.
As far as I can tell, both of these patents cover the exact same technology. If the concept of ORM was unique — and it is not — there still shouldn’t be two patents for the exact same thing.
Completely agree, I’d hate to think how many billions of dollars are wasted on litigation over software patents each year. It really is crazy. Hopefully the rest of the world won’t adopt the US style software patent system.
Completely disagree with this ignorant rant. I think we need to ban “ban software patents” trolls.
@Ban Ban troll!