Writing Software? Setting Up A Website? How Many Patents Do You Violate?
from the too-many dept
The stories of stupid patents seem to be showing up every day, and this article points out that if you're writing your own software or setting up a website, it's likely that you violate a ton of patents already. The article has the story of someone who wanted to set up an online video store, only to realize that just about every part of the store violated some patent. The cost of "licensing" all of those patents made the business impossible. Note that all he was trying to do was build the fairly obvious idea of an online video store. He wasn't "taking" any intellectual property - but because of the way the patent system is designed, his site never got anywhere. We're certainly beating a dead horse, but it's apparently not dead enough - because there's no real talk of changing the patent system. If the entire point of the patent system is supposed to be about promoting innovation - and it's clearly not doing that, why isn't anyone talking about changing the patent system?
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The people who need to be hearing about the problems inherent in the system aren't the ones reading techdirt, more's the pity.
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