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Comment: Re:Meetings, hey? (Score 1) 120

by dlane (#41176227) Attached to: New Zealand Draft Patent Law Rewritten After Microsoft Meeting

Just as important, it's the privileged access to politicians for foreign multinational corporations who are not part of the government's constituency, and supposedly "representative" organisations who actually don't represent *all* of their members - they just represent the few multinational members, who in turn benefit from the government officials *believing* that the organisation represents a broader set of views (e.g. voters and taxpayers). It's the plausible deniability that makes this scenario attractive to the multinationals.

Actually, I'd be very interested to know how much tax those multinationals contribute to the economy compared to the many small locally owned software companies...

Comment: Re:it's nokia that should sue samsung (Score 1) 1184

I don't think ST:TNG prior art is nearly as compelling as this 1994 *working prototype* from Knight Ridder: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knight-Ridder-tablet-looks-just-like-iPad-17-YEARS-OLD.html This should really make Apple STFU. I certainly hope it does. Even more, though, I hope we get over this stupid idea of software and process patents. They're a total waste - like $500 billion since 1994: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272

Comment: Another angle (Score 1) 1

by dlane (#36470692) Attached to: Microsoft caught with hand in cookie jar

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/xml-patent-saga-ends-with-microsoft-withdrawing-application#31CD015739D5B672CC2578B2000DCF8C

This, amusingly, includes a spin-laden quote from MS NZ's departing corporate affairs manager about the Open Specification Promise, which we all know is no stronger than a fart in a whirlwind.

Government

+ - Obama's CIO Quits->

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike (1292728) writes "The first person ever appointed as the CIO of the federal government, Vivek Kundra, is resigning after two and a half years on the job, the White House said Thursday. There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT. Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard. Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately outlined an agenda that emphasized cloud adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of big IT contracts that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing."
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Microsoft

+ - Microsoft caught with hand in cookie jar-> 1

Submitted by
dlane
dlane writes "Representatives of the NZ Open Source Society have successfully opposed a Microsoft software patent application related to XML use in representing productivity data. This was a very broad patent, found subject to prior art: i.e. a very low quality patent that shouldn't have been submitted much less granted. As it was, it took the NZOSS members and their legal team 8 years to get MS to abandon the application.

This isn't the first time they've tried this: another bad application (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/F68C4D35A4AE5DD5CC257038000F4A24) was submitted to NZ's patent office although it had been disallowed in other jurisdictions (including US) due to prior art. NZOSS representatives challenged the application and were able to force MS to change the wording to the point where it was no longer seen as a threat to developers.

Whenever Microsoft claims support for "improved quality patents" realise that what they mean is "other people's patents". Feel free to highlight their hypocrisy."
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Software

+ - Software Patents in New Zealand Dead. Again.->

Submitted by Hairy1
Hairy1 (180056) writes "Wellington, New Zealand. Minister of Commerce Simon Power confirms that software will be included as an exception to the Patent Bill currently before Parliament. After the initial announcement made earlier this year that software patents would be excluded from patentability significant pressure was applied by "NZICT", an organisation representing the major multinational IT vendors. After a meeting with NZICT on June 9 the Minister initially appeared to change course, saying that a modification may be made and raising fears that behind the scenes lobbying had derailed the transparent Select Committee process. Those fears are now quiet after the Minister confirmed that the Bill would be adopted by Parliament as recommended by the Select Committee."
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