The patent world isn’t really something navigable by common sense alone. Like copyright, privacy, and every other area being reinvented by the internet, it has long become a playground for lawyers, who build strange labyrinths for themselves, as oblivious to users as users are to them.
From CrunchGear, a great example of how software patents are a very unhealthy thing. It’s a bit ridiculous when a software company is suing a book store. Software patents are an obscure field of law, as the quote above describes nicely, so here’s a simple scenario to explain what exactly is going on here:
Imagine you were part of a team of bright young things – for instance, a couple of students who had just racked up tens of thousands of pounds of debt studying one of those STEM subjects you heard about at school. You have an idea for a new product, and one of the things it does is display information from the internet on a computer screen. You can even click on links to see new information. Let’s say it relates to cancer treatment, and could prove beneficial to the human race and popular to boot.
Well, Microsoft might claim a chunk of any money you make – or even put you out of business altogether – using US Patent No. 5,778,372: Remote retrieval and display management of electronic document with incorporated images. You might look at said patent – filed in 1996, several years after I started using the internet – and say, “Isn’t it a bit of an obvious idea to download documents from the internet? Isn’t it bad to interfere with people wanting to do simple, obvious things?”
And the software patent lobby would say, “No. Very innovative, really. Forget the Ancient Library of Alexandria, the idea that people want to read other people’s documents is revolutionary. And using a telecommunications network invented in the 60s to telecommunicate? Pure genius. Now pay up for trying to steal the corporation’s inventive fruit.”
I confess I’ve lost track of the status of software patents in the UK. We have traditionally not recognised them, and Europe similarly so. But despite being an impediment to innovation and disliked by many established software houses, there’s a powerful lobby that wants them put into law here as well. Why try to grow an economy when you can sue it for a percentage instead?
Although to be fair to the patent lobby, the idea of using the internet for communications purposes is still a bit radical to some people. The Lib Dems, for instance, have a working group on IT and Intellectual Property (which should include software patents) but seem to prefer physical meetings with a few people at conference to virtual ones for everyone with an interest.
That’s irony, I suppose, Alanis Morrisette style.
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