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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
[Peer patent...]
I read an article recently about peer patenting. I didn't read it very thoroughly, but I believe that the idea behind this was that before a patent is approved/awarded, the general public (with relevant areas of expertise) are allowed to examine the patent and they decide if it should be awarded, based on the idea itself and whether awarding this patent would be good or bad for the public at large.
I thought that it was an interesting idea, but where would you find the people willing to invest time in participating? Then again, people contribute to Wikipedia for nothing, so who knows? In any case, I thought it was interesting, it's already being done now, but I'm not sure if it is sustainable. Patents are generally very expensive to file, so I guess they didn't expect any jokers to file nonsense patents in the first place but a lot of them still slip through the cracks. I guess this is what peer patenting is trying to "catch".
After reading the newspapers today, I sure hope that this peer patenting idea pushes through, because I just read a totally WTF article.
I couldn't find the article online, but basically, (to the best of my understanding...it sounds so absurd that I wonder if I've got it wrong) a local company has patented the concept of hyperlinking using images, and they've started sending out letters to websites that link using images. They intend to start collecting from the smaller, local websites first, before moving on to the big names like Microsoft or Google.
So basically, they patented the usage of A HREF and IMG tags together. You can't use the IMG tags inbetween the A HREF tags.
If the courts enforce this decision, it would change Internet surfing as we know it. You can forget about clicking on an image, all links will be in text. It's so absurd that I cannot imagine any court in any country not run by monkeys to grant the enforcement of said patent.
And the cheek of the guy to say that he's sure the courts would enforce his silly patent....
What this is, is a waste of resources. All the sites who has received invoices should just band together and go to court against this firm together. This firm should have just gone after the big boys like Microsoft or Google to begin with. I would love to see how the big boys kick their ass all over the yard.
Peer patenting would have caught this for sure.
^^^ by Locksley @ 9:09 PM.
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