{"id":166,"date":"2008-07-25T11:47:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-25T15:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2008-07-25T11:57:51","modified_gmt":"2008-07-25T15:57:51","slug":"google-patents-invalidated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/2008\/07\/google-patents-invalidated\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Patents Invalidated??"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I really wish I understood patent law better, I must say.\u00a0 But I just read this article and it seems unbelievable to me.\u00a0 If I gleaned this correctly, a shifting of the Patent Office&#8217;s position on what technically qualifies for patents basically invalidates software patents.<\/p>\n<p>Now that I look around, it seems like this has actually been up for debate for quite some time.\u00a0 Even <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Software_patent\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a> seems pretty opinionated about the matter.\u00a0 And I guess there is definitely some debate as to whether software should be protected by patents or by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Software_copyright\" target=\"_blank\">copyright<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Still.\u00a0 Seems pretty aggressive on the part of the patent office to go after Google.<\/p>\n<p>And this after the nonsense yesterday where one guy (he&#8217;s got a company called Anascape, but it&#8217;s basically one guy working out of Carson City, Nevada &#8212; the sketchiest place on earth) <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20080723-nintendo-cant-fight-off-patent-metroids-faces-injunction.html\" target=\"_blank\">is suing Nintendo over patent infringement<\/a> on his highly specific patents such as<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Patent 6,208,271 &#8220;Remote Controller with Analog Button&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Patent 6,344,791 &#8220;Variable Sensor with Tactile Feedback&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230; which seem like they could be applied to pretty much anything!\u00a0 I mean, a mouse is a remote controller with an analog button! And the guy already won $21 million from Nintendo in &#8216;damages&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Long ago I should&#8217;ve patented &#8216;Flat Surface with Texture&#8217; and sued the entire world.<\/p>\n<p>All of that said, I&#8217;m all for open source culture.\u00a0 I think it&#8217;s a step in the right direction.\u00a0 But when it&#8217;s the patent office and the courts that are making the decisions, I find they are generally completely ignorant about most things technical.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m all for making Google fight harder for their bread.\u00a0 But only if the Patent Office actually knows what they&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I really wish I understood patent law better, I must say.\u00a0 But I just read this article and it seems unbelievable to me.\u00a0 If I gleaned this correctly, a shifting of the Patent Office&#8217;s position on what technically qualifies for patents basically invalidates software patents. Now that I look around, it seems like this has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,22],"tags":[70,99,100],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-nerdiness","category-ramblings","tag-google","tag-patents","tag-software"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}