January 2011 Meetup - Patents, Copyright, Android And The Kitchen Sink

Submitted by Michael on Wed, 2011-02-02 16:45

Monday’s session saw a freewheeling discussion about copyright, patents, GPL vs Apache licensing and the Oracle vs Google saga. An attorney, Paul Jacobson of Jacobson Attorneys, was on hand to give expert comment.

One of the items that struck me as interesting was the absolute lack of incentive anyone involved in patent law has to fix the mess software patents are in. No sane lawyer would advise their client not to take out as many patents as possible, and no CEO is going to discourage patent filing by the company. Will it take developers refusing to allow patents on their work to change the status quo?

If you have any general questions, head over to Paul’s Facebook page, and time permitting, he will address them. He certainly doesn’t conform to the staid legal shark stereotype the profession has:

“Jacobson Attorneys is a niche commercial and social media law firm which is at the intersection of the social Web and the law where traditional legal paradigms begin to fail and innovative solutions are required to deal with new challenges the social Web brings” – webtechlaw.com

A big thanks to Paul and all the participants at the event, it was a very interesting evening!