Google Leads a Group of Industry Elite Petitioning the Courts to Stop Vague Patents

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Google and a group of companies, including some industry heavyweights just filed a legal petition in the courts to get them to stop upholding vague patents. Google lead several others, like Dell, Facebook, RedHat and Zynga in filing an amicus brief in a case that they were not even directly involved in. They filed as a "friend of the court" in a case that is very similar to what has been going on throughout the industry, with overly broad patents leading to legal disputes. They basically want to weigh in on the case because the outcome could set far-reaching precedents. Here's a quote with the details on the case,

Here's a snippet from the amicus brief files by the "friends of the court":

It's great to see tech companies are starting to team-up to fix things. The system currently encourages patent trolling, and only if enough companies cry loud enough will the government do something to repair things. It's perhaps conspicuous yet unsurprising that Apple and Microsoft did not include themselves in this brief.

Source: AllThingsD

 

USPTO might be waking up to their poor performance. Hopefully they get things straightened out before the issue becomes even larger and more public. Many of their problems could be resolved with a little common sense in the first place.