As a software developer myself...
This sort of shit is what gives me ulcers. I despise and loathe the state of the patent system. It makes my skin crawl. And from the links provided, the
thing of it is, Microsoft might well be completely innocent here. You can't tell, in this day and age, if the method you just figured out through your own
blood, sweat, and tears for solving a class of problem X is, in fact, patented by someone else. You can do a patent search, sure -- and believe me, we do --
but that does no good in situations like this where it appears the patent holder is trying to apply it as broadly as possible, and the judges (through no fault
of their own) aren't educated enough in the field to make a fair judgement.
And it's not just little-guy vs. Evil Big Corporation, okay? Let's clear that up. This affects everybody. Most of us just don't have the cash or
the visibility for it to become known.
The US Patent Office is broken, ladies and gentlemen. This is just a symptom of that.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
This sort of shit is what gives me ulcers. I despise and loathe the state of the patent system. It makes my skin crawl. And from the links provided, the
thing of it is, Microsoft might well be completely innocent here. You can't tell, in this day and age, if the method you just figured out through your own
blood, sweat, and tears for solving a class of problem X is, in fact, patented by someone else. You can do a patent search, sure -- and believe me, we do --
but that does no good in situations like this where it appears the patent holder is trying to apply it as broadly as possible, and the judges (through no fault
of their own) aren't educated enough in the field to make a fair judgement.
And it's not just little-guy vs. Evil Big Corporation, okay? Let's clear that up. This affects everybody. Most of us just don't have the cash or
the visibility for it to become known.
The US Patent Office is broken, ladies and gentlemen. This is just a symptom of that.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs