Small Patent Shop Going After Sites That Use Pop-Ups, Interstitials

from the like-we-need-more-bad-patents dept

Because there just aren't enough silly patent lawsuits going on, we've got another one to toss on the fire. A company whose entire point of being in business is to take random patents and try to force companies to pay up is filing cases against major online media sites for for using interstitials or pop-ups. The patent is for advertising that happens before or after content is displayed. Once again, this is a completely obvious idea that should not be patentable. Furthermore, it's another case of a patent shop, that does nothing productive for society, sits around and waits for other companies to come up with the same perfectly obvious idea that they hold a patent on, and then sue sue sue. As the article points out, this company has brought similar bogus patent lawsuits before, including a big one against Intel (who referred to the company as a "patent troll"). I fail to see how this helps encourage innovation. The guy who got the patent did nothing with it, while others who came up with the same idea on their own and actually use it, get sued.