IBM to give away 500 patents. Curiouser and curiouser. Why now? And, what patents? IBM makes a great deal of money licensing their patent portfolio - is this meant to stimulate additional licensing? How does this fit in with the open source movement? In other news, IBM just received the go-ahead to sell off their PC unit to a firm that just won a rather large contract to provide PCs in China.
posted by FormlessOne on Jan 11, 2005 - 18 comments

Jeff Bezos has patented the idea for "A method and system for conducting an electronic discussion relating to a topic." Clearly, an idea way ahead of its time... (via somebodydial911)
posted by bluno on Feb 26, 2003 - 14 comments

U.S. claims Canada's greatest invention. Congress awards creation of telephone to Italian inventor living in New York. Uh oh. Canada's inferiority complex takes another blow.

"Bell was either a thief, a fraud, or extraordinarily lucky."
posted by percine on Jun 22, 2002 - 15 comments

Are you infringing this patent? Please make sure that you (or your 10-year-old nephew) aren't.
posted by lawtalkinguy on Apr 10, 2002 - 26 comments

License for love. Although some might call it a license for stalking. This is a patent for a method to request a date with a someone knowing only their vehicle license plate number. Quite a concept. I wonder what Mr. Wertheim will name this service.
posted by borgle on Jan 28, 2002 - 12 comments

What you get when you type "something strange and different" into Google Am I the only person who bangs random words into Google to see what comes back? In this case I feel rewarded - bizarre patents from around the world. What's your favourite Google query string?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen on Oct 26, 2001 - 47 comments

Kill a patent, make a bundle. This is one of the more creative uses of the web to date. A new kind of matchmaker, actually. Patents are a common source of litigation and often a company accused of violating a patent wants to prove that the patent is invalid. The easiest way to do that is to find "prior art", to prove that the invention described by the patent actually existed elsewhere before the owner of the patent filed for it. So this web site offers prizes ($10,000!) for leads to prior art in specific cases. Those offering the prizes are anonymous, though it's often possible to figure out who they are just by the questions they ask if you have a knowledge of disputes in the industry.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Feb 3, 2001 - 3 comments

The ethical problems of biotech patents have been noted here before. Now the New Scientist reports that those patent applications are on the brink of crippling the world wide patent system to the detriment of real inventions and to the disadvantage of poorer countries (and what is the PC term for those now that 'third world' and even 'less developed countries' have fallen out of favor?)
posted by norm on Dec 12, 2000 - 6 comments

FLASH! Sanity breaks out in Congress! Doesn't sound like grandstanding to me; sounds like these guys have a clue on software and business method patents. "Healthy skepticism" sound like real friendly words to me.
posted by baylink on Oct 4, 2000 - 0 comments

Amazon is approved for a patent on the technology behind their affiliate program. Wow, this really has the potential to shake things up a bit. Will software patents like this destroy internet commerce?
posted by webshaping on Feb 27, 2000 - 3 comments

Web-related software patents are starting to look like the new cyber-squatting equivalent. People are patenting all sorts of mundane things like "electronic shopping carts" and "making secure purchases via the internet." My guess is in 3 or 4 years, after many of these silly patents have been awarded, we'll see a restructuring of the US patent system.
posted by mathowie on Feb 22, 2000 - 2 comments

The patent and license exchange An ebay for intellectual property
posted by efader on Aug 12, 1999 - 0 comments