Patent Issued On Web Filtering
from the non-innovation-at-its-best dept
The latest in a long line of silly patents has been issued to Websense. They now own the patent for "controlling access to internet sites". How is this possible patentable? It's a filter. It's not unique. It's not innovative. It's so damn obvious that it's amazing anyone bothered to patent it. No, actually, it's not amazing - because of the way our patent system is set up, where you simply patent anything and everything - knowing that it will get by the patent examiners and then you're granted a perpetual monopoly on a blatantly obvious idea. In the meantime, Websense uses this announcement to again promote their misleading statistics about "lost productivity". Maybe it's time I patent the process of "trusting your employees." Of course, I wouldn't be able to enforce it because it seems like everyone is, instead, using web filters to make their employees feel like little kids who constantly need to be looked after.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Follow the law and accept and obey what you are told.
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*Insert evil laugh here*
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