Melbourne Man Patents ... The Wheel

ssergE writes: "This article in The Age (A Melbourne, Australia newspaper) tells the story of a patent lawyer who has just recieved an Innovation Patent for a 'circular transportation facilitation device,' aka: a wheel." Of course software should be patentable. Look at how closely the patents are looked over -- clear indication that the world is ready to patent extremely complicated pieces of code. *sigh*

Comments

Re:hilarious

[Dr_Cheeks]

Then we can eliminate the influx of needless patents by denying the use of patents....

10 Ah, but if you deny the use of patents then your patent on patents can no longer be enforced, allowing people to patent stuff once more, only then they'd be infringing on your patent on patents and your ban on patents, though of course your ban on patents would invalidate your patent patent.....
20 GOTO 10

I'd love to see this go to court. And isn't it weird how funny the word patent starts to sound after you've squeezed it into a sentence 10 times? Patent patent patent....

It might be nice...

[geomcbay]

Do the Slashdot editors read the articles? Clearly they do not. This is an Australian "Innovation Patent". If you had read the article you would see this is really nothing more than a registration of an idea. Quick, easy, simple to do. Doesn't give the 'patent' holder any rights to lawsuits, etc, it's just an official registration of an idea.

The guy who patented the wheel wasn't really trying to make a point that patents were too easy to get, his point was that these "Innovation Patents" should be renamed so as not to be confused with *real* patents, where prior art, etc are actually researched. These "Innovation Patents" are just rubberstamped, basically like a way to notarize them for timing purposes (should someone want to prove prior art, or that they registered the idea first in the future).

Once again Slashdot editors show their ignorance of what they are even posting.