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Has the US patent system gone too far?
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| When Samuel Hopkins came up with a method for improving the production of
| potash, it was probably just the kind of invention that President George
| Washington had in mind when he created the US patent system. Hopkins, who in
| 1790 received the first American patent ever issued, had discovered a way to
| increase the production of a critical resource used to make glass, soap, and
| soil fertilizer.
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http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/03/12/has-the-us-patent-system-gone-too-far/
The Fight To Patent A 'Paradigm' For Marketing
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| For a variety of reasons this should be unpatentable, and so far
| (thankfully), the USPTO and the courts have agreed -- but Harris keeps trying
| to appeal, claiming that a company is no different than a machine -- and if a
| machine can be patented, so can the "paradigm" of the company.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090311/0448334074.shtml
Want To Create A Simple App To Tell You Where Someone Is Calling From? You
Can't, It's Patented
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| As he started to write the app, he figured he should take a quick look around
| to see if anyone else had done so... when he came across the fact that
| someone had written that app, but thanks to a patent threat, it had been shut
| down. In fact, the patent holder, Cequent, has sued a few others who dared to
| create such a simple database lookup app themselves. The patent itself
| describes an incredibly simple database lookup... yet, now no one else is
| allowed to create such an app.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090305/0239154005.shtml
“Staff at the European Patent Office went on strike accusing the organization
of corruption: specifically, stretching the standards for patents in order to
make more money.”
“One of the ways that the EPO has done this is by issuing software patents in
defiance of the treaty that set it up.”
--Richard Stallman
Recent:
The Economic Impact of Software Patents
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| The UK's Patent Office – which now goes by the awful name of UK Intellectual
| Property Office, which means it's really the UK Intellectual Monopolies
| Office – is a curious beast. On the one hand, as its name suggests, it's tied
| into one of the biggest confidence tricks around, dressing up conceptual
| mutton as intellectual lamb. On the other, there are odd outbreaks of sanity
| that suggest someone in there understands some of the deeper issues
| concerning software patents.
|
| [...]
|
| It's not coincidence that Microsoft still maintains that GNU/Linux infringes
| on some 200 of its sacred software patents – and yet is strangely coy about
| naming them, since it doesn't want its bluff called.
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http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1492&blogid=14
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