The Devil’s Advocate: Francis Malofiy may be the most hated man in the Philadelphia legal community. He may also be on the cusp of getting the last laugh on rock’s golden gods.

I posted this in ~music but I think it's relevant to any creative field that suffers from patent/copyright trolls, including software. My knowledge of music is limited but it's my understanding from reading about related lawsuits that using similar chord progressions or other aspects of a song in one's own work is not only common (and is advocated for in classic books on composition) but that it is practically necessary. Music, like any other creative medium, is more about building off what has come before than it is about a sole genius creating something wholly original. (No matter how certain creatives might choose to present their own mythos.)

It's telling that the lawyer in the article emphasizes that he's never lost a jury trial. Juries don't understand music the same way they don't understand software and a good lawyer could convince an ignorant jury that something which is a necessary standard in how an industry works is in fact theft. I worry that lawsuits like this one, if successful, could have a chilling effect. No song, novel, or program is truly original in all of its parts and if we lose the ability to "stand on the shoulders of giants" without paying off the giants' lawyers then our culture will ossify.

(NB: the title was too long for the post, so I combined it with the shorter title of the print edition)