Stupid Patent of the Month at Electronic Frontier Foundation
The image above is a part of US patent 10,042,822 that can be used to sue both Medium and you, the reader.
It is titled a “Device, Method, and System for Displaying Pages of a Digital Edition by Efficient Download of Assets.”
The Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) issues tens of thousands of software patents a year, or more than a hundred every single day.
On average, examiners spend only 18 hours reviewing each patent application, and this, of course, is not nearly enough time to properly check every aspect of the claims the patents make. To make things worse, the claims are often purposely most vague and overbroad — to widen the technological range a patent can cover.
If you are not closely following this literal flood of patents over the past few years, you can’t imagine how low the quality of an average patent actually is. I’ve spent quite some time in search for any other word besides “stupid” to describe some of them — and have not found any less harsh ones, only six more insulting — but also more precise.
It seems that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had the same problem, as their web series devoted to this issues is called exactly like that: Stupid Patent of the Month.
Every month the EFF patent lawyers cover the stupidest patent they could find. With the emphasis on the “could” — as it’s really not easy to examine every single one of them:
“But in an effort to highlight the problem of stupid patents, we’re introducing a new blog series, Stupid Patent of the Month, featuring spectacularly dumb patents that have been recently issued or asserted. With this series, we hope to illustrate by example just how badly reform is needed — at the Patent Office, in court, and in Congress.”
Be very aware — these are not just patent claims that people file and go back to inventing. These are the bases of their claims in courts — there are thousands of lawsuits every year targeting both startups and end-users. It’s a long-lasting problem, and it should be addressed. We do need a rational discussion on the matter and a reform.
Some of the stupidest examples of the EFF’s series for your amusement:
• A Newspaper on a Screen (US Patent №10,042,822)
“Device, Method, and System for Displaying Pages of a Digital Edition by Efficient Download of Assets.”
— can be used to sue both Medium and you, its reader for violating the amazing patent №10,042,822.
• Suggesting Reading Material (US Patent №7,958,138)
If you read Popular Science, you might like reading Popular Mechanics. (Hold your breath) This suggestion is patented.
— again, Medium can be sued. The patent holder already sued smaller targets.
• Facebook’s “Social” Dating (US Patent №9,609,072)
A sneaky attempt to monopolize dating by stuffing words like “social”, “social graph” and “introductions” into it.
— read it to see why your parents wanted you to be a lawyer, and not read Medium naked.
And — as a dessert — a Business Insider article on patented colors.
Cheerios tried to just boldly patent the color yellow last year, so expect more colors gone with time.
We need a discussion — and a reform.
