Microsoft The Latest To Try To Patent An Entire Bio Industry

from the just-what-Jefferson-intended dept

Microsoft's Bill Gates once famously pointed out that if software patents had been used back in the early days of Microsoft, the personal computer revolution almost certainly never would have occurred. But, over the last few years, Microsoft has become quite aggressive in the patent space, not just working hard to acquire as many patents as possible, but also waving them around at times and threatening other companies with them. Now, some will point out that, in the software space at least, many feel the need to stockpile patents, just for the sake of having something to use to threaten those who threaten you with patent infringement (the nuclear stockpiling theory).

However, now it seems that Microsoft may be trying to stockpile outside of its core industries, and it has some folks up in arms. A bunch of folks sent in the story about how Microsoft is trying to patent clustering phylogenetics methods (here's the application) that supposedly are quite common in the evolutionary biology industry. Of course, it's just an application -- so one would hope that, if it's so widely used, that the examiner will knock it out with plenty of prior art. But, the Patent Office isn't always known for doing such a good job on these sorts of things. And just the fact that such a patent is being attempted should be troubling enough.

Filed Under: clustering phylogenetics, patents, stockpiling