jlaine.net

Save Us From All This

Cory Doctorow points to a Slashdot post:

The Tokyo District Court has ordered the destruction of Ichitaro, a software product that is the only serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word, and has been on sale since 1985. The ruling is based on the claim of a competitor, Matsushita, that the use of a help icon to invoke a help function infinges on one of their patents. ‘We are a global enterprise and we are just following international practice to enforce our IP rights,’ Kitadeya (Matsushita) said."

Please, God EU parliament, don’t let us sink to this level of absurdity.