Nothing to see here. Move along please.

Oh dear. But how not surprising.

Not to be outspoken or anything, but …

I finally gave up on the patent system completely in late 2000 when I learned from a friend that the start-up company he worked for was under attack by a competitor who had somehow patented the idea (only recently at the time) that you could determine if a particular cellular comms module ‘had coverage’ by assessing the voltage on the signal strength (RSSI) pin of its radio chip. DUH. Being as that’s the only reason the chip manufacturer put the signal there in the first place and, besides the same standardised signal having been present on hundreds of radio chips and interfaces for many years, they had also fully (publicly) documented its purpose in this instance. So it all seemed a pretty clear case of an invalid patent.

But the start-up spent over NZ$70,000 of investor funds trying to get the judge to see that simple fact before giving up in disgust. As I recall, they continued with the product by adjusting the code to simply see if a call could be initiated as the method of determining coverage in boolean fashion. (And set about publicising that fact in the public domain as far and wide as they could so as to foil the rogue patent attorneys and their questionable client.)

Flip the roles around of course and you’ll find thousands of highly expensive, completely valid patents begin reduced to worthlessness for the same legal costs reason.

That’s just one of thousands upon thousands of similar stories since patents began. The original idea was good. I invent a bicycle and patent the two-wheeled form of transport. You invent the flip down stand so the thing doesn’t need a lamp post to stay parked upright. You pay me a licence for the original idea, I pay you a license for the nifty advancement, and we both go on to manufacture better bicycles. Now everyone, not least the consumer, wins. But long gone are those well intentioned ideas it seems.

Now you have this nonsense from Amazon as reported reported by PC World — Facebook, stop what you’re doing: Amazon has patent for ‘social network’.

In my perhaps not so humble opinion, the patent attorneys responsible for this embarrassment to all things good in the human race should be lined up and shot … or at least laughed at and ignored. Personally, I’d rather invite the tax man to dinner than partake of a single piece of bread with those low-lifes.

Patents seem to me today as little more than a tool used by the greedy to stay (or hopefully fail to get) wealthy.  Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone pays them any attention any more. Oh yeah. Legal costs of not doing so. I forgot. What a crock. *shrug*

Long live open standards and open source!