[Esp-action-alert] ESP Australia recording & upcoming talk; New paper on trolls

[esp-action-alert]

>From the announcement-only list of End Software Patents. 
>http://endsoftwarepatents.org

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In this mail:
 1. ESP Australia recording & upcoming talk (Jan 19)
 2. New paper calculates cost of trolls and what gets funded
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 1. ESP Australia recording & upcoming talk (Jan 19)

Ben Sturmfels of ESP Australia recently gave a talk clearly outlining the
problems caused by software patents. A recording is online at:

    http://www.sturm.com.au/2011/talks/swpat-monash/

Ben will be giving another presentation on January 19th with more of a focus
on the current campaign in Australia:
    2:20pm, Thursday January 19th at the University of Ballarat.
    http://linux.conf.au/schedule/120/view_talk?day=thursday

The recording above is also a good example for anyone who will give a
presentation on this topic.  There's also a wiki page where you can get some
ideas or add your own tips:

    http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Giving_good_presentations_about_software_patents

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 2. New paper calculates cost of trolls and what gets funded

Bessen, Ford, and Meurer calculate that over the past 20 years, patent
trolls have cost publicly listed US product developers 500 billion US$, and
they show that less than 2% of that went to small inventors.

A summary from ESP is available at:
    http://news.swpat.org/2011/11/trolls/

And the paper itself, with the numbers broken down in tables:
    
http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/documents/Bessen-Ford-Meurer-no-11-45rev.pdf

But it has to be remembered that trolls form just one problem caused by
software patents.  And it's not even the biggest problem.  For information
about the harms caused by large software companies trying to dominate
software development, see:
    http://en.swpat.org/wiki/More_than_trolls

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Ciarán O'Riordan
Executive Director, End Software Patents
+32 485 118 029

Donate to sustain ESP: http://endsoftwarepatents.org/donate