(Photo: Mike MIka)

Weird guys spying on women through their webcams sounds like something your dad made up in high school to keep you from getting a MacBook. Actually, it's very real--and very creepy. [Ars Technica]

Some awww for your Monday morning: a dad hacked Donkey Kong so that his daughter could play as Paulina and rescue Mario. Who run the world? [Reddit]

"In fact, 'innovation' is something of a magic word around here, shape-shifting to fit the speaker's immediate needs." Finally someone fucking said it. [San Francisco Chronicle]

If you can't catch a cab at SXSW, employees of ride-sharing service Lyft will give you a piggy back ride. Gimmicky! [AllThingsD]

Hookup app Grindr is responsible for revolutionizing the way we connect with each other? Sure why not. [New York Times]

Let me introduce you to my lobbyist. Image by David Saracino

President Obama signed a bill on Friday that was supposed to be a sweeping reform of America's badly broken patent system. But the legislation that went into effect won't do much to change the landscape, currently dominated by large corporations and IP hoarding patent trolls. In fact, the new law will make life much harder for the startups and universities who generate so much innovation.

"For the little guys, the young companies and the universities, this is a sea change, probably the biggest shift in 100 years," James Mullen, a patent partner at Morrison and Foerster told Betabeat by phone. "The law now honors first to file, instead of first to invent." That means the race will be won not by the creators, but by the lawyers, and the patent trolls that can afford to hire swarms of them to file patents.

The bill does try to cut back on bad patents by creating a post grant review, a nine month window in which a weak or repetitive patent can be challenged. But again, this favors larger, more established firms, who have the resources to scan through hundreds of new filings and keep tabs on all their competitors.

And the overworked patent office won't be getting any relief thanks to this new bill. "The original legislation would have provided the patent office with all its user fees. Over the years the patent office has had hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that it generates directed away from their office and into the general coffers. When people say this bill has been watered down, this is the portion that best fits that description," said Mr. Mullen.

In 2010, according to USTPO, $200 million in fees collected were diverted away from the patent office. In 2011 this number is expected to grow to $300 million.

There is a nice round-up of the major changes in the new law on Chris Dixon's blog. Mr. Dixon, who has been fierce critic of the current patent system, also felt this new legislation would favor coporations over startups. "My (non-expert) analysis:  seems to me this doesn’t fix any of the very serious problems in our current patent system," he wrote. "First-to-file seems to reward companies with the resources to file many patents.  The post grant review seems to imply you should to monitor every patent issued and challenge them within 9 months. I don’t see how any organization without massive resources could do this."

From Lodsys' mock Twitter account.

Developers at WWDC were frustrated not to hear a word from Steve Jobs about the war patent firm Lodsys is waging against third-party developers. But at long last—okay fine, nine days later—Apple has come out swinging. Yesterday, they filed a motion to intervene in Lodsys' lawsuit against seven small-time iOS app developers for an in-app purchase mechanism. The court has yet to decide whether it will grant Apple's motion to act as an intervenor,which Lodsys has the power to oppose. But Apple has already submitted its answer to Lodsys' complaint and a counterclaim. Apple's proposed defense is that the alleged infringements are covered under an existing license agreement in Apple's favor.

Skepticism against the value of patents and their potential deterrent on innovation has been heating up lately, with Fred Wilson leading the charge. Apple's intervention, if successful, could ward off similar patent trolling against other iOS developers. The defendants in Lodsys case are bound by an NDA and thus can't speak about their relationship with Apple. The motion to intervene says that the developers:

"Are individuals or small entities with far fewer resources than Apple and [...] lack the technical information, ability, and incentive to adequately protect Apple's rights under its license agreement."

Foss Patents speculates:

While I don't have any confirmation from anyone that Apple has agreed to cover those defendants' costs and potential risks, it's hard to imagine how else this could work.

Stay tuned as this could get ugly. Developers at WWDC earlier this week certainly made their hatred of Lodsys known. On Monday, Hector Ramos, an iOS developer and Polsense employee tweeted:

Just said the name "Lodsys" out loud in a bar and the music skipped, everybody shut up and a car crashed outside

Hernan Pelassini chimed in:

“@cffry: If I'm correct, the One More Thing will be a live performance of a real Lion devouring the Lodsys team.” best #WWDC rumor.

But our favorite anti-Lodys joke came via Yves Gonzalez who tweeted, "Look who's at WWDC!," followed by this Instagram photo: