>> And is exactly the same as electronic technology 50-60 years ago.
>> Back in 1957 IBM research discovered something they thought was
>> perfectly obvious but to their surprise was never patented. So they
>> filed and got a patent for it. On the flip side, a dubious patent
>> claim forced IBM to pay out millions of dollars in royalties.
> The difference between this situation and the current situation is that
> in 1957, the patent office had inspectors who were familiar with the
> technology, and who would reject attempts to patent devices that did not
> work, or which had become part of standard industry techniques decades > beforehand.
> Today, we have the additional issue that the patent office does not
> have enough inspectors with actual familiarity with software
> technology or with algorithms. This is how Microsoft can get away
> with patenting the ring buffer, a data structure used at least as
> early as the CDC 6000.
> We currently have a situation where huge numbers of obviously invalid
> patents are being issued, and there is no way for the patents to be
> declared so without going to court. And once it comes time to go to
> court, sadly it tends to be a situation of the person with the most > money winning.
So the patent office needs to hire some CS, IS and EE grads. That'd change things in a hurry.