Posted by the ManGeek

Friday, July 29th 2005 3:13 pm CDT

Those who closely follow technology innovation may have recently noticed that the number of technology patent conflicts appear to be increasing along with the patent-related lawsuits. In fact, it's become such a massive issue that now even Microsoft is calling for patent reform [www.microsoft.com].

I must however elude at the same time to Microsoft's attempt to patent smiley faces in applications [uk.news.yahoo.com]. In fact, searching on www.google.com [www.google.com] for "ridiculous Microsoft patent" reveals a wealth of pages, currently toped by this ridiculous patents page [www.cs.unimaas.nl]. This doesn't even scratch at some of Amazon.com's web-based shopping patents.

The truth of the matter is that the US Patent and Trademark Office is overwhelmed with so many technology patents in software and biotechnology (elaborated upon by a recent GAO audit of the department) that it is now unable to keep up with the barage of patent filings. As a result of this and other issues in the government office, Patent Examiners are leaving in droves [www.fcw.com]. The USPTO appears overwhelmed with not enough resources to do their work and not enough knowledge of the patents being submitted to properly rule on what to grant and what to deny.

Being that the European Union has recently voted down an attempt at instituting software patents [noepatents.eu.org] I wonder if it will be long before Washington is awoken to the damages being caused by the conflicting US policy. Patents are meant to be innovative, new approaches that required significant intellectual investment. It's meant to be more than having a lawyer fill out the appropriate 20 pages of paperwork and submit it to the USPTO.

Update Aug 12th, 2005: Microsoft has filed another patent request. This time, it's for highlighting numbers in a document [appft1.uspto.gov]. Ingenious.

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