8 Ways to Sunday

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent that covers virtually all rich media technologies on the Internet, including AJAX remote scripting techniques, Macromedia Flash, Java, Microsoft’s XAML, the Mozilla Project’s XUL, and online video. If upheld, the licensing fees required of content developers could set the Web back ten years.

In the above-linked Information Week story, representatives for the obscure little company that filed this patent essentially admit to gaming the US patent system for fun and profit. They are hoping to sell the patent off to the highest bidder rather than enforce it, and some rich software company will no doubt take them up on the offer in order to protect its own investments. But what then? Will the buyer of the patent opt for enforcement, suing competitors and demanding licensing fees of anyone who puts video or Flash on their web sites?

The very fact that this patent was granted is ludicrous, and exemplifies the problems with the USPTO. There is so much prior art here that anyone looking at the patent for more than two seconds would know better than to let it pass.

Because the US uses a first-to-invent patent system, this patent should never have passed in the first place and (in theory) ought to be easily invalidated. The fact that this ridiculous patent is sparking a bidding war rather than a legal battle makes me wonder about the intentions of the potential buyers. The fact that the patent was granted at all makes me wonder whether the patent system in this country is corrupt, ignorant, incompetent, or just plain broken. It also convinces me that software patents are dangerous, and that the protection of software IP should be left in the realm of copyright.'’

The Supreme Court will hear a case tomorrow on what kinds of inventions can be patented. The case involves medical technology, but hopefully some steps will be made in the right direction.

Props: (Jeffrey Zeldman Presents)