Bijan Sabet

In Sun’s early history, we didn’t think much of patents. While there’s a kernel of good sense in the reasoning for patents, the system itself has gotten goofy. Sun didn’t file many patents initially. But then we got sued by IBM for violating the “RISC patent” - a patent that essentially said “if you make something simpler, it’ll go faster”. Seemed like a blindingly obvious notion that shouldn’t have been patentable, but we got sued, and lost. The penalty was huge. Nearly put us out of business. We survived, but to help protect us from future suits we went on a patenting binge. Even though we had a basic distaste for patents, the game is what it is, and patents are essential in modern corporations, if only as a defensive measure. There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system.

via James Gosling - Quite the firestorm : On a New Road

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James Gosling is known as the father of java. patents started out to protect the inventor but they are now all about big company interests and who can fund more expensive legal activities.

I still like the idea of patents. To protect the creative ones. But when I hear about huge corporations going on a “patenting binge”, well, then we need reform.