Carlo Piana is a lawyer by training and a Free Software advocate. A qualified attorney in Italy, Piana has been practicing IT law since 1995, focusing his practice on software, technology, standardization, data protection and digital liberties in general, and serves as external General Counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe ("FSFE"). Piana has been involved in some of the cornerstone legal cases in Europe, such as the long-running antitrust battle between the EU Commission and Microsoft where he represented both the FSFE and the Samba Team. Piana is a member of the Editorial Committee of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review ("IFOSS L. rev.") and is president of the board of directors of the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation. In 2008 he has established a free lance consulting practice on IT law, from where he leads a small group of IT lawyers named Array [http://arraylaw.eu].
Authored Comments
You are right: if A patents a solution in a lame way, and B perfects the same idea with a better implementation, B must ask permission to A (and since claims are very broad, there is likely no way around). This is a simple example showing how patent law prefers priority over quality. There is a famous example on how before and after the patents by James Watt expired, the installed horsepower of steam machines had an inflection point, arguably because more powerful and efficient machines could be made, meaning that actually Watt's patent prevented innovation, rather than promoting it.
Hi, I don't understand if you realize that the entire article is in favor of abolishing software patents, and the quote is a figure of speech in the mouth of those against it.