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As some of you might know, the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) held its Open Source Software Community Meeting on February 16, 2006. According to the USPTO's press release, this meeting followed up on another one held in December 2005. Both were designed "to ensure that patent examiners have improved access to all available prior art relating to software code during the patent examination process."

GROKLAW covered the February 16 meeting. According to this post, Reports from the USPTO Meeting - Updated, the panelists included Jack Harvey, Director of the USPTO's Technology Center 2100, John Doll, Commissioner of Patents, Jay Lucas, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Policy as well as Manny Schecter of IBM and Ross Turk of SourceForge. GROKLAW addresses the topic with its usual flair so read the full post. My favorite line: “[He yields the floor back to "Jack". I don't know if that is John Doll or some other person (can't see that well from the back row, and middle aged men in suits tend to all look the same to me ).]