Haha awesome picture Hodgman, made my day .

There are plenty of patents on car differentials, some truly revolutionary and brilliant. Yet nobody claimed Archimedes' lever as prior art.

Key Performance Indicators was the number of patents submitted per year.[/quote]

A guy from Oracle blogged about that once. Patenting colored visited links in HTML (or something similar) brought his children through college.

There are different patents and in software most are worthless. But this is neither software nor business method.


A better question would be - does there need to be a new category: behavior, UX, or similar. And if so, can human behaviors then be patented? Could psychologists then patent disorders?

First world is rapidly moving towards post-scarcity era (whatever...), where physical matters increasingly less and is disposable good. The value is almost increasingly in lifestyle. Above patent falls right under that hence carriers immense value. Imagine that playing basketball were patented unless you were wearing Nikes. Go from there and see why this is just the start.

So whats the worse software patent?

IIRC the worse I heard was - the machine stores the pictures of your camera in the order they were taken (or something similar)

There's a really good episode of "This American Life" (NPR show) that goes way in depth about the business of being a patent troll. Worth listening to if you can find it. I'll try to track it down and update this if I find it, but I think it's somewhere on itunes as well.

edit: well that was easy.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

The patent system ignores the implications of the commonly observed "simultaneous invention". Often an idea appears novel and innovative (why wouldn't it have been around before)... until you realize that the real reason it is "new" is because the problem it solves weren't around before.

If slide-to-unlock wasn't the result of innovative genius, then why wasn't it around years ago? Because the problems it solves weren't. Problem: You are carrying a touch-screen device in your pocket, and need to be able to activate it easily. Answer: You can just touch it to activate it! Problem: Your device will be activated unintentionally if a simple touch can activate it. Answer: Hmm.... what's the simplest solution to this. You could be required to touch in only a specific spot, but even that precise spot may accidentally be touched. Oh wait, I know!! Maybe you need to touch a specific spot, then move to a different specific spot! That is unlikely to happen by accident.

Coloring visited hyperlinks is equally ridiculous for a patent. Why hadn't such coloring been widely used for years? Because hyperlinks hadn't widely used, not because it takes some one-of-a-kind genius to think up. Being able to put your kids through college from something like that implies that the patent system is like some kind of casino.

until you realize that the real reason it is "new" is because the problem it solves weren't around before.

Why wasn't airbag introduced in Model T? Or ABS? Or servo? Or seat belts?

People were prone to dying back then just as they are today.

Or, a more convenient example - barbed wire. Patented in 1874. It's not like the cattle wasn't running away for millenia.

Coloring visited hyperlinks is equally ridiculous for a patent.[/quote]
The particular patent was problematic because it took something that was effectively a not in a standard and patented it, despite being obvious and in use for a decade. I don't remember the details though. Patent in question was published some 5 years ago or so.

Being able to put your kids through college from something like that implies that the patent system is like some kind of casino.[/quote]
The money is part of compensation package that Oracle apparently offered. Every patent an employee supposedly paid bonus of several $10k (or something to that manner). It isn't likely that it will ever see light of day, it's merely used to pad the portfolio.

Just because I didn't specify my opinion earlier here it is.

I put a lot of blame on ridiculous patents on patent trolls (see above) rather than the corporations. For those of you not aware of the practice, patent trolling is essentially buying patent portfolios which you have no intention of using for any sort of production of some service or product for the sole purpose of waiting for someone else to create said product and then suing them. I feel like this creates a very bad environment where corporations that do actually produce things have to patent everything just to defend themselves from the possibility that they might get sued in the future.

Tbh though, the US patent system is pretty terrible all around. The last two bullet points on this page are generally ignored by far too many patents.

The US patent office basically only looks for prior art in their own patent database

They don't even do that. Lodsys are suing iPhone and Android developers over their patents. Google is challenging one the patents on the grounds that the same idea had been patented five times previously! See Groklaw article.