Finally we have a massive legal suit which is based around software patents. If you need some details of that specific case, consult that blog, but be aware that its of course quite technical.
Some "Pro Software Patents" activists claim that patents are important because engineering quality needs to be protected. This is of course a valid argument but to me, most of the patents would fail at the "prior art" test. There is no state funded organisation who could really check if a patent is eligible for getting into the books. So most of the times, patents will be filed and its up to the company who get sued over a patent to show that the pure existence of this patent is wrong. Of course Google has all the power to get the right people to fight against the patents but do you think that every action against a company regarding patents show up in the press? If Oracle would send us a letter about patent violations, we would have big problems funding the research and the trial for that case.
So Software Patents shifts even more power to big companies with inhouse laywers and tons of engineering power. And by paying bonus for employees who want to patent something, things getting worse every day.
Coming back to the Oracle/Google suit, its obvious that Oracle is only after license money. J2ME failed big time. They had some marketshare, yes, but everyone ever programmed for the CLDC, knew that its lifetime was foreseeable. And J2ME doesnt fail because of Android, it failed because every other company invovated in the mobile space in the last years(RIM, M$, Apple, Palm and Google) but Oracle/Sun. They want to make revenue without inovation (and i am quite sure that the mentioned patents, if valid at all, are not the key of the success for Android) and this is the bad thing about patents.
Do you remember SCO? This was also a company who thought that they could make tons of money just by sitting in the court and paying laywers. Of course it was more about copyright than about patents but the company instinct was the same. To me, software patents kill inovation because its only about how many laywers you have. Do you know how many money you need to spent, just to show that a patent is invalid because of "prior art" - or do you know how many money you need to fill patents at all? Impossible for small companies and annoying for companies like Google. Android is successfull because of many things but definitely not because of those lousy patents they mention.
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