2 ms·

Farming patents either via filing them or acquiring them was a big business move in the early 2000s. Even basic business on the internet felt like a patent mine

Farming patents either via filing them or acquiring them was a big business move in the early 2000s. Even basic business on the internet felt like a patent minefield and there was constant debate about patent trolls and overreach. It still happens to an extent, but we’ve gotten far enough to be in a place where basic patents have expired so that most basic companies don’t have to think about this stuff as much. I do not miss the days of having to work with corporate counsel to try to determine if someone’s “system and method for data retrieval over the internet” patent could be construed to cover our basic REST API and then watching as they evaluated the likelihood of a lawsuit or if it was an empty threat designed to extract a settlement.

dathinab 2mo ago
> but we’ve gotten far enough this is a partial misconception, at least in the US the difference between then and now isn't that the patent law was majorly improved or that patent offices better apply the theoretic bars for quality, intuitiveness, etc. (actually many countries still measure their patent offices by nr. patents granted, setting very bad insensitives.) the actual difference is a small number of concerns own such a shitload of "unreasonable" patents that they could more or less nuke the whole economy and decided its best for them to put them into a pool and not touch them this is pretty much a ticking time bomb