Dan Ravicher on software patents
Daniel Ravicher is a patent lawyer who supports abolition of software patents. He is the Executive Director of Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) and Legal Director of Software Freedom Law Center.
Ravicher was also involved in Open Source Risk Management.
2007 presentation in South Africa
"Pre July 23rd 1998, there were no pure software patents in the United States. Basically the state of affairs that you [in South Africa] have today. The patent office was routinely rejecting applications for pure software because they believed that, under the law and under current jurisprudence, that software patents were not eligible for patent protection. Then in 1998, the Federal Circuit ruled in the State Street case that software per se could be patentable, and in fact anything could be patentable. This is a case that also dealt with business method patents. So, you can see a dramatic increase - although there was a steady slope of increase in the 80s and early 90s - you can see that there was a gigantic jump, relatively speaking, when the decision was made..."[1]
External links
- Dan Ravicher’s Bilski Rundown (transcript), 28 June 2010, from this audio interview
- http://www.pubpat.org/ftisaswptpresentation.htm - a 2007 presentation - audio and slides
- http://www.ip.qut.edu.au/2006-08-innovation-ravicher - audio and slides about GPLv3
- http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/17459/ a 2007 interview
- Patents and Free Software, slides, 2005
- Interview, discussing PubPat, 2003
- Patents - Why Free/Open Source Software Might Have Less to Fear than Non-Free Software, September 2004
- Interview "Ask Slashdot", June 2001
- How to Find Prior Art Tutorial, audio and slides
- Interview audio, 2006
- Two short audio presentations: What are claims? and How to determine invention date?
- FSF lawyer recommends express patent license for GPL, BSD, 5 Nov 2004, ZDNet
