Patent Absurdity

Image credits: Image credits: opensource.com

The timely documentary Patent Absurdity: How Software Patents Broke the System has now been released. I was fortunate to have been given early access to view this film, and I recommend it highly. Directed by Luca Lucarini and sponsored by the Free Software Foundation, the film consists mainly of a series of interviews conducted around the time that the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in Bilski v. Kappos. According to the film's website, Patent Absurdity "explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy". The Supreme Court has not, to date, published a decision in Bilski. Among the individuals interviewed are Richard M. Stallman, Eben Moglen, Dan Ravicher, Karen Sandler, Rob Tiller, James Bessen, Dan Bricklin, Peter Brown, Ben Klemens, Joe Mullin, Jesse Vincent, and Mark Webbink.

The film is available in Ogg Theora (with Vorbis audio) format and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States license. I am particularly pleased to see that Patent Absurdity was created entirely with free software tools on free software systems, as I often hear video artists claim that high quality video can only be made with proprietary commercial software on locked-down platforms.