Patent Wars Get Personal: Developer Jarek Duda Claims Google Patents His Public Domain Contribution

Neuromancer, a novel standing at the origin of cyberpunk as a genre, depicts a future where transatlantic corporations are world’s strongest forces. Their weapons are brute force, blackmail, and bribery. Their authority is higher than state governments and laws. Their interests are above any civil liberties.

Still, while fiction is always an exaggeration to a point, the conflict between people and corporations is quite real these days. However, instead of a cyberpunk horror with androids, memory change and flying cars, today it lies in a seemingly boring realm of patents, as a recent case shows.