I was reading this on /. Searching for British Telecom and hyperlink won't find it, because it wasn't actually a "hyperlink" that they patented... it was something basically worded like - "A mechanism... blab blab blab... that tranfers data from a remote PC connected to the users PC by a modem... blah blah blah... on the click of a text marker." Or some such legal mumbo-jumbo. I remember the wording of the patent specifically mentioned PCs and modems though, because the "mechanism" being patented was for something basically like a networked card catalog that BT developed in the early 80's. Of course, according to the wording of the patent, even
if BT won, it wouldn't be a hyperlink if both ends weren't "PC"'s (i.e. a user on a WAP device, a mainframe level server, etc.), or (most importantly) what the definition of "connected by a modem" implies... the user's PC is connected to the internet by a modem? The whole communication has to take place between modems?
The entire patent process is now just bureaucratic BS. It was initially created to protect "the little guy"... independent inventors... so their ideas couldn't be stolen by competitors with more cash backing. Over the years the laws governing this have been twisted and choked off, so now basically the only "people" who can get and
enforce patents are big businesses with major cash backing.
Patents should cover the
specific product being developed. There may be some kind of clauses for further innovations, but they should be added on at the time that the holder of the patent develops those innovations. Patents should cover an actual product or documented process. An "idea" should not be patented. Software is a shady area here. Personally, I see it as falling more under a "trademark" area than a patent area... (i.e. - anyone can develop a
word processing application... they just can't name it "Microsoft Word".
)
A good illustration of this was the infamous Hasbro "Tetris" litigation. Hasbro bought the rights to a lot of older games, and Tetis was one of these. So they decided they wanted to copyright Tetris. No, not just the name... the actual game! They proceded to drive many small time shareware developers of shareware "Blox" type games out of business... not because they were "right", but because they had the financial backing to litigate the smaller developers out of business. Of course, almost all the small time developers settled out of court, and Hasbro sold off it's computer game division (I think to Infogrames... obviously someone at Hasbro didn't know squat about computer games and mismanaged the division...) before any actual cases were tried.
One patent lawyer (on an article linked to in the /. discussion) provided a good illustration of this problem in the current patent laws. (Scarily enough... he talked about this like it was a
good thing...) Basically, he said that the idea behind a patent was to protect your idea against future inventions that may be similiar to your product. So, if you were the guy who developed, say, the hot air baloon, you could sue the inventors of the zepplin, airplane, helicopter, and space shuttle for infringing on your patent for a "flying machine". This is pure BS and indicates the state of the world now. It's too late to work within the system to improve it, and it's too early to start shooting people in the streets.
-Nate
