[Patents] [Fwd: Patent Absurdity]

[seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson)]

(Forwarded from the Interesting People list,
ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com)

-------- Original Message --------
Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 16:48:31 -0500
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Reply-To: farber@cis.upenn.edu


From: "Bob Webster" <bob@upperspace.com>
To: "dave@farber.net" <dave@farber.net>


>Patent Absurdity
>
>It's been literally days since I've done any
>serious whining and complaining about stupid
>software patents. I'd like to remedy that right
>here and now. Stupid software patents keep on
>coming. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,
>in its infinite wisdom, has given out a patent
>for something as simple as an electronic greeting
>card. This is something that anybody with a
>little programming knowledge can turn out in less
>than a day. It's simple, obvious, and not very
>original.
>
>         http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=2701&width=1024
>
>To further the cause, the USPTO gave an unusually
>general patent to a Canadian company who is now
>claiming that the RDF web standard
>(http://www.w3.org/RDF) is infringing on their
>monetary liberty.
>
>http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8351560.html?tag=lthd
>
>Here's some more on recent software patents.
>
>http://slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=155

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