patent

The other night in Charlottesville there was a gathering at the Pavilion on the Downtown Mall. However, this night it was not motivated by entertainment – at least not of the cool, beer-swilling, groovy tune type. Its inspiration was the movement that has been growing around the country in the last few weeks. This group was congregating as an extension of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Are the OWS protests targeting companies who are not employing people, investors who are encouraging exaggerated returns, both, neither?

Why? That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves. Maybe its obvious to most of the capital markets and pundits alike, but… standing upon the proverbial rock from which we survey the “weather” on the financial horizon… we have to wonder why Oracle would sue Google for distributing a free product that is based, in part, on another free product? Why would Oracle put the lifespan of Android (and likely the Java ecosystem as a whole) at risk of near-term death?

WiLAN has launched a C$480 million hostile takeover bid for MOSAID Technologies. While WiLAN’s management has described the potential transaction as creating a “very valuable” company, their combined patent portfolios warrant close scrutiny. Over half of MOSAID’s portfolio and nearly sixty percent of WiLAN’s portfolio appear to be impaired, a combination of which runs the risk of creating a whole that has less value than its individual parts.

Mismanagement of innovation lies at the heart of food scarcity. Instead of a new Green Revolution based on proprietary restrictions, the use of abundant open source technology can transform a broken “agriopolic” system that is spreading into Africa.