Introducing EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month
In my startup we are knowingly violating two other companies patents and it scares me. The patents are stupid (tagging a photo--ie. circle part of a photo to highlight where something is, and the second is adding GPS data to a record, so that you can find it later).<p>One of the companies is even litigious having field two patent suits this year. The only thing saving us at this point is we are a Canadian company and haven't entered the US market yet.<p>So, here is a concrete case of patents discouraging innovation and competition. We want to enter the US market because the competitors are selling backward solutions. We have an alternative that is 10x better, yet our company could be killed in an instant through one of these patents.