The popular Q&A site Stack Exchange has teamed up with the U.S. Patent Office to crowd source the patent process. They are doing this with the launch of a new sub portal at patents.stackexchange.com. The channel dedicated to patents will allow the public to scrutinize pending patent applications and will allow them to submit information, and possible prior art for the Patent Office to review.

If you want to know what it might be like to work for the dark side, then this job doing charity work for Intellectual Ventures as its "VP of Global Good" might be right up your alley. The company that is best known as a super powered patent troll is seeking someone to be in charge of doing charity work for the company from its dark citadel in Seattle.

Patent litigation can make or break a start-up and lawmakers know the entire patent litigation system is fundamentally broken - even if they won't publicly admit it. But at least one member of Congress is trying to do something about the practice of patent trolling. Peter DeFazio (D-ORE.) has introduced a bill called the "Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act," designed to put a stop to patent abuse.

Nintendo issued a press release this morning announcing that it has prevailed in a lawsuit filed by Copper Innovations Group, LLC. The lawsuit alleged that the Wii console and its controllers infringed on one of the company's patents (U.S. Patent No. 5,640,152). Judge David Cercone of the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh granted a summary judgment to Nintendo and further ruled that there was no need for a jury trial. Basically Nintendo proved that Copper Innovations Group's lawsuit couldn't pass the smell test.

Jury selection for the trial between Samsung and Apple over patents will begin on July 30 in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The case will be presided over by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. Jurors will have to wade through the particulars of the case and decide which company has a valid claim that the other infringed on its patents related to their respective smartphone devices.

In this week’s episode of Super Podcast Action Committee, EZK and I discussed software patents and whether they’re beneficial to the games industry, detrimental or somewhere in between.

Now it’s your turn to chime in.

In Episode 12 of Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss Fez developer Phil Fish's decision not to fix the patch for the game before re-releasing it to Xbox Live (because it costs too much money), Uniloc's patent infringement claims against Minecraft maker Mojang, last week's results from the GamePolitics poll, and the media trying to blame Batman comics, movies and games for the horrific Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.

Over the weekend it was revealed that Minecraft maker Mojang is being sued by a Luxembourg, Germany-based company called Uniloc for patent infringement. The company claims that Mojang violated a patent it holds related to a "system and method for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data".

In an interview with Reuters, the US Court of Appeals (Chicago) judge who recently tossed the patent litigation case between Apple and Motorola described patent litigants as "animals" and said that many companies should not have patent protections.

According to a research paper from Boston University, patent trolls costs U.S. companies and other organizations a staggering $29 billion last year. The study analyzed the effect of intellectual property rights claims made by organizations that own and license patents without producing related goods of their own. Some would say that this is the very definition of a patent troll: a company that buys or licenses patents with the express purpose of litigating its way to financial success.

Motorola has proposed royalty fees to Microsoft in an attempt to put an end to its long running and global patent disputes, but the Xbox 360 and Windows OS maker has rejected its offer claiming that the royalty payments are too high. Motorola's offer would squeeze a 2.25 percent royalty on every Xbox 360 sold and a 50 cent royalty fee on every copy of Windows sold. The royalty fees relate to patented Motorola technology that both products use.

Cisco Systems, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Activision Blizzard, Intel, and IBM, are the latest entities to send letters to the International Trade Commission asking them not to institute a ban on the Xbox 360 or various Apple products. Florian Mueller of Foss Patents has the breakdown of why Cisco and the ESA have sided with Microsoft in this particular dispute between the company behind Xbox 360 and Windows and Google-owned Motorola Mobility.

Last week the Supreme Court told the Federal Appeals Court that it needs to reconsider its ruling in WildTangent, Inc. v. Ultra- mercial, a patent infringement battle that relates to seeing paid advertisements before viewing or using copyrighted material online. Business leaders like Google and Verizon have sided with WildTangent on this one, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The tech industry is also watching this case very carefully because it could signal an end to patents with weak definitions or general software ideas or techniques being awarded easily.

Microsoft and Motorola have been at each other’s throats for a while now.

Motorola claims that the Xbox 360 uses “Motorola-developed technology that allows set-top boxes to decode transmissions between its Droid2 and DroidX mobile devices” while Microsoft argues that Motorola refused “to abide by requirements set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association to set reasonable license fees of essential technology.”

Judge James Robart of the U.S. District Court of Western Washington today extended a temporary restraining order that he issued last month that prevents Motorola from enforcing any injunction from any other court against Microsoft until he reaches a decision in the Seattle case. Judge Robart extended the temporary restraining order because he needed more time to sort out the case, but that didn't stop him from delivering some harsh criticisms to both sides of the legal battle over patents and licensing.

An International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled that Microsoft violated several patents held by Motorola Mobility when it made its Xbox 360 console. ITC Judge David Shaw said that Microsoft infringed on four of five patents that Motorola filed on its complaint - International Trade Commission, No. 337-752. The patents in the complaint include technology like wireless connections to the Internet and video compression to speed up transmission of data, amongst others.

A federal judge has finally granted Apple's motion to intervene on behalf of iOS developers who have found themselves in a legal battle against Lodsys. It took the court nearly a year to come to this decision. This ruling allows the iOS platform holder to argue in court on behalf of developers who have been sued over alleged patent infringement for using the iOS system's in-app purchasing APIs. Apple has licensed the technology from Lodsys so it will argue in court that developers who use the platform do not infringe on the patent because Apple already obtained a license.

A company called Worlds Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for infringing a patent the company holds related to virtual worlds. Let the trolling begin anew. Worlds Inc. claims that the company is violating a patent it holds related to "systems and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." The company alleges in its claim that Activision's World of Warcraft and Call of Duty games violate its patents and that it is due compensation for it.

Two ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have said this week that they are concerned that some patents and actions related to enforcing them, are stifling competition. Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wi.) said in a letter to the Justice Department on Thursday expressing their fears about how patent fights are being played out in courts and other legal bodies in the U.S. and around the world.

The other day we showed you an Infographic the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made concerning the harm that the current patent system in the United States. Today we'll tell you what the advocacy group is doing about it on the legal front.