Losing the War on Patents

Posted by michael on Friday February 15, 2002 @01:49AM from the advance-in-a-retrograde-direction dept.

theodp writes: "Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly's once-hyped BountyQuest.com takes a beating in a Salon article today that takes note of Amazon's recent decision to license one of the few patents BountyQuest claimed to have found winning prior art for, a patent held by the InTouch Group, who had sued Amazon for infringing on the patent prior to Bezos' reported $1+ million BountyQuest investment. In the article, professional patent buster Greg Aharonian provocatively remarks that "BountyQuest was always a joke...Bezos and O'Reilly were never seriously interested in patent quality...Bezos just used O'Reilly to help Amazon...That Amazon ended up licensing the InTouch patent just shows how stupid the whole thing is.""

2 of 179 comments (clear)

New Idea by Tremul · 2002-02-15 01:56 · Score: 3, Funny

Next thing you know, somebody will try and patent the hyperlink. Oh wait...

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"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
Let's strike back... by DocSnyder · 2002-02-15 02:07 · Score: 4, Funny

Patent-No. 3.14159265 Method to increase the choice on a public online opinion poll Reference A shows an apparatus to perform a public online opinion poll (Reference B) which is to be increased by one option (Reference C) containing the nickname of a person related to the mentioned apparatus (Reference D)... References: A) "http://slashdot.org/" B) "http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl" C) "http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=740" D) "http://cowboyneal.org/"