DISQUS

eee_eff · 3 years ago

Mailing list software existed years before this patent was filed in 1998. The only difference between this invention and mailing list software is that the type of message they send is different .... But neither of those difficulties really changes the technical design principles involved. This is an obvious patent.

This is a recurring problem with software patents: often someone takes a well known software design, apply it in a new context, and declare it a new, patentable invention.

Well this is problem in more than just software patents; in the world of genomics, the same thing has been happening for quite sometime.

To make an analogy with software, it is as if everyone had been patenting a whole algorithms, and then, several years later, someone came along and patented the semi-colon, and claimed rights to all comments made in the software. At least that is the claim made by Drew Endy, a prof at MIT. And in my informal conversations with several scientists, they had generally agreed with that description.

See the podcast "Open Source Biology"

Open Source Biology Podcast by Drew Endy