Ugh, lots to dislike in this article. For instance: 1. "a backlog of patent applications internationally was needed to tackle the 3.5 million pending patent ap

Ugh, lots to dislike in this article. For instance: 1. "a backlog of patent applications internationally was needed to tackle the 3.5 million pending patent applications around the world": er, no, obviously that isn't what he said. 2. Look how they pair the FSF up with the Pirate Party. Is that because c|net thinks the UK Pirate Party is a vital force to be reckoned with in international politics? Or is it because they hope to make anti-software-patent positions look silly by associating them with marginal-sounding groups? Hmmm, tough one. 3. Wanting a globally unified and more efficient patent system is not, in fact, at all the same thing as wanting patents to cover more things. No one benefits from having patents take years between application and grant, for instance. No one benefits -- at least, not in ways any reasonable person could approve of -- from having lots of crappy patents pass examination. (Note: this latter is one of the things Gutierrez complained of. Being from Microsoft does not imply never getting anything right.) I've no idea whether the particular changes Gutierrez wants make any sense, either for Microsoft or for the rest of the world. His blog posting (linked from the c|net article) is a bit too much oh-and-everyone-should-get-a-pony for my liking. But the c|net article seems to me to consist mostly of digressions.