Some patents, are needed and form the foundation of a new invention and protect the inventor.
Other patents though, fall into the realm of the ridiculous, being so generic that it has the potential to stop progress in a broad variety of applications.
My major problem with the current patent scheme, is how big business patent ideas at every whim, whether it makes sense to their business or not. Their intentions are not always to create it, but rather to stifle competition and use their patents as bargaining chips.
Over the last year, I have had a few original ideas, original thoughts and found that they had portions patented already by big business, where the product does not exist. Plainly a strategy to stifle the new technology.
Patent infringements are a plenty, with court procedings everywhere. Many of them, are injust.
If you take xFire as an example, where technology is used to benefit a wide audience and where the patent is somewhat suspect. The patent mentions the coupling of a messenger and a game client and the ability to start the game by gettign information regarding it.
The technology aspect here is basic. One machine sends another the "IP address" and "Game Name" of the server you are playing on and the other launches the same game and points it to teh same server.
If you think of this in depth, all it means, is that data is sent via a port and a executable is passed a connect command line parameter.
Now if the patent is saying that only the inventor can execute a game with an IP address to connect to and if they are saying that the IP address if sent via a message to another machine is protected under law, what are we writing any software for?
With patents like that, we are basically not allowed to develop anything, we may as well all pack up and sell coconuts on an island somewhere.
xFire (read more about the legal side, here) taken to court over Yahoo patent The xFire petition can be signed here.
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