[Patents] Internet and

[Jean-Paul Smets smets@ens.fr]

This one is a nice article 
        http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/opinion/story?id=382a24f90

It just made me find out the risks of "contributory infringement" with 
internet patents due to the high interconnection of the Internet and the 
multiple combinations of existing services.

Suppose a company X provides a service which allows to
        - publish a shipment plan
        - publish employees agenda plan
        - optimise employees from shipment tracking information
Then patents this service

Imagine also then that
        - UPS provides an Internet based-tracking service
        - A company A (customer of UPS) has an ERP software which includes 
employees management - it used the UPS tracking service to determine in 
advance the agenda of employees in charge of receiving
parcels (this is an example)

In this case, 
        - UPS is a contributory infringer
        - Company A is an ingringer
        - the ERP publisher is a contribury infringer.

>From an abstract point of view, the possibility to create zillions of 
>combinations of elementary services on the internet, and the possiblity to 
>patent any combination of internet services, means that
many service providers may become contributory infringers.

JPS.