This week I have been busy infringing various software patents.
Of course every week I work as a programmer I am implementing ideas, some that other people have thought worth patenting, usually they are billed for less than the price of a patent application to the client.
But this week I have been implementing a solution that allows somebody to use credit card details without having to re-enter them. The client asked, we provided, it is an obvious request with an obvious solution.
Also I found that dan crevier (http://blogs.msdn.com/dancre/ slashdotted for a couple of minutes) has patents on treating email contact information as an object, and autocompletion of email addresses in email clients - the former is unbelievably obvious, something I have just done in another project, and the latter of which I use every day in Thunderbird.
Perhaps microsoft and amazon should be grateful that the many many people who have to infringe their ridiculous patents haven't taken them to court yet to nullify them
I’ve heard it quoted that it takes about a million dollar to nullify a granted patent. I guess that’s why noone’s doing anything about the many ridiculous, but granted patents. The system is just grossly unbalanced; getting patents filed is so much cheaper than removing them that removing doesn’t happen.
Guess what will happen after you get the court to nullify one of the MSFT patents they bring against you? They will trot out another. And one million later, they’ll trot out another. And one million later, they’ll trot out another. And one million later, they’ll trot out another. And one million later, they’ll trot out another. It doesn’t matter how right you are. It doesn’t matter if you nullify every last patent they accuse you of violating. You’ll be crushed like a bug under a landslide of legal expenses.
Re:
cog on 2005-05-20T10:38:16
getting patents filed is so much cheaper than removing themJust like tattoos, uh?
Re:
Aristotle on 2005-05-20T17:06:47
Ahm, that’s one way of looking it, uh, I guess.Re:
jmm on 2005-05-24T18:15:15
Filing them is a painful way to remove tatoos.
