From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

Dave Ings wrote:
> (Before you ask I don't know much more than I read in the press.) The press
> reports that Amazon has been sued because unlike many others they have
> refused to licence the patents in question. They also report that some of
> these patents date from the days of the IBM / Prodigy / Sears joint venture
> ... i.e. before the Web.
>
> FWIW I will point out that IBM recently took a public stand (including
> congressional testimony by John Kelly) *against* business method patents, so
> it is very unlikely these are business method versus technology patents. (I
> will leave for another thread the ongoing debate about whether software
> should be patentable.)
>
> (subscription required)
>
> http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20F13FD34550C758EDDA
00894DE404482#
> Hoping to Be a Model, I.B.M. Will Put Its Patent Filings Online
> By STEVE LOHR
> I.B.M., the nation's largest patent holder, will publish its patent filings
> on the Web for public review as part of a new policy that the company hopes
> will be a model for others.
>
> If widely adopted, the policy could help to curb the rising wave of patent
> disputes and patent litigation.
>
> The policy, being announced today, includes standards like clearly
> identifying the corporate ownership of patents, to avoid filings that cloak
> authorship under the name of an individual or dummy company. It also asserts
> that so-called business methods alone -- broad descriptions of ideas,
> without technical specifics -- should not be patentable.
>
> The move by I.B.M. does carry business risks. Patents typically take three
> or four years after filing to be approved by the patent office. Companies
> often try to keep patent applications private for as long as possible, to
> try to hide their technical intentions from rivals.
>
> ''Competitors will know years ahead in some cases what fields we're working
> on,'' said John Kelly, senior vice president for technology and intellectual
> property at I.B.M. ''We've decided we'll take that risk and seek our
> competitive advantage elsewhere.''
>
> The more open approach, I.B.M. says, is intended as a step toward improving
> the quality of patents issued in general because the process of public
> review should weed out me-too claims that are not genuine innovations.
>
> ''The larger picture here is that intellectual property is the crucial
> capital in a global knowledge economy,'' said Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.'s
> chief executive. ''If you need a dozen lawyers involved every time you want
> to do something, it's going to be a huge barrier. We need to make sure that
> intellectual property is not used as a barrier to growth in the future.''
>
> 

Astonishing that these patents last so long. Astonishing that they were
once even "novel" given Sci-fi writers were proposing them years
ago.



Adam

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