Software Patents: Who's Behind the Curtain?

How do the court cases and legislative votes from the past year impact the landscape of seemingly endless software patent suits? Where are all these patents coming from? Ms. Nicholson will give a top-level view of recent and relevant scholarly papers in the field, discuss evolving strategies and global efforts to staunch the flow of settlement money. This talk is an update on the situation since last year and a deeper dive on recent trends and financial models that impact our ability to just get back to making awesome free software already.

**This talk may also include an in-depth look at what the Unitary Patent vote in the EU means for free software developers, depending on the outcome.