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The flood of software patents has created an environment where companies are afraid that innovation leads to being hit by patent lawsuits. Every dollar spent fighting patent trolls and or waging patent wars is a dollar not spent researching, developing, and creating jobs. The situation is so bad that, in 2011, Apple and Google spent more on patent litigation and buying patents than they did on research. So it’s no surprise that some companies are looking for new ways to navigate the patent system while promoting openness and innovation.

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The year 2012 had many important FOSS legal developments which reflects the continued increase in FOSS use. FOSS projects have increased from 600,000 in 2010 to 900,000 by December 2012. In addition, a Dr. Dobbs' survey in the third quarter of 2012 stated that more than 90% of developers are using FOSS in two of the most rapidly growing areas, cloud computing and mobile computing.

Continuing the tradition of looking back over the top ten legal developments in FOSS, my selection of the top ten issues for 2012 are as follows.

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A focus on young people in the open source world is just starting to become a priority, and we're also starting to see more larger corporations demonstrating their commitment to open source. Open source is indeed spreading as more and more people understand the value of the open source way. » Read more

This morning the New York Times published a front-page story on software patents. My wife got to the paper before I did, and as I got coffee she told me the story would make me happy. She also said it was too long for a normal busy person to read in its entirety. It is long, but I am happy to see that the closest thing we have to a national newspaper of record is getting the word out about the dysfunction of the patent system. » Read more

As has been widely reported, the district court in the Oracle v. Google case has issued an order holding that the "structure, sequence and organization" (SSO) of 37 J2SE 5.0 API packages is not copyrightable. Oracle is expected to appeal.

The API packages at issue, comprising over 600 classes and over 6,000 methods, form part of the 166-package class library bundled with Sun's J2SE 5.0 JDK and JRE products. The accused 37 of the 168 packages in the Android Froyo platform's Dalvik class library substantially » Read more

On May 23rd the jury in the closely-watched Oracle v. Google case returned a verdict for the patent phase of the trial in Google's favor. The jury unanimously found that Oracle failed to meet its burden of proving direct patent infringement by Google through Android and the Android SDK.

By the time of the trial, the set of patent claims asserted by Oracle had been reduced to » Read more

Oracle v. Google has all the ingredients of an epic, high-stakes courtroom battle: a damages claim of up to $1 billion over the use of Java in the popular Android operating system, testimony by both Larrys (CEOs Page and Ellison) in the first week alone, and, of course, the disposition of some interesting legal issues, not the least of them whether APIs can be copyrighted.

But, more than all of that, the case serves as an important teaching moment, illustrating much of what doesn’t work in our patent system. » Read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently announced one of the most progressive open source policies in the US government. They reiterated the current OMB and DOD guidance by making open source commercial software, but they also went one step further: code they write is open by default. I am totally impressed. » Read more

This post originally appeared in Tim O'Reilly's Google+ feed and on O'Reilly Radar.

This tweet by Steve Case (@stevecase) struck home for me, because in the aftermath of Steve Jobs' death I've been thinking a lot about O'Reilly, wanting to make sure that we streamline and focus on the stuff that matters most. » Read more