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And that's where I have a problem with software patents in particular. I'm not in the camps that believe nothing should be patentable, or that some ideas shoul

And that's where I have a problem with software patents in particular. I'm not in the camps that believe nothing should be patentable, or that some ideas should be patentable - but not software. I'm okay with software patents as a concept (for now). However, with software patents it seems there is a higher than average likelihood that an obvious and trivial patent will be granted. You'll have patents for things like: "a method to confirm a user action whereby a dialog window is presented to the user with several buttons including but not limited to Yes and No." This is just an example but I've seen similar patents granted.

greyfade 15y ago
There is also an non-insignificant number of patents that expressly cover an algorithm that would have been found in most computer science textbooks - verbatim - since the '70s. One notable example is the Quicksort algorithm (US 5,175,857). Another is arithmetic coding (known since at least 1976), which has been patented no less than 31 times. If basic information theory can be patented, there's a problem.