---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 11:29:32 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Inferno: USPTO p0wn3d It seems that the veritable US Patent and Trademark Office, promulgator of such wonderful ideas as sweeping patents on basic software algorithms, seems to have revealed more of its true colors in recent statements. In defending U.S. opposition to a recent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) meeting on "open collaborative models to develop public goods" and after significant Microsoft lobbying, Lois Boland, director of international relations for the USPTO is quoted as saying: "open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO which is to promote intellectual-property rights...To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO." Lessig is furious: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001436.shtml "The Quiet War Over Open-Source" http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A23422-2003Aug20¬Found=true linked from http://www.effaustin.org/ The meeting has been quashed. But the idear seems quite rooted.