Using the USPTO Against Itself

fidget42 writes: "This article in the LA Times tells of how a scientist went about using the patent office as a mechanism for trying to force a change in that office's rules. To quote from the article: 'Nearly 10 years ago, a friend called Stuart Newman with an intriguing challenge: Could he think up a new form of life that would be scientifically useful and possible to patent--yet so disturbing that the public would recoil?' Could the same be done with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) concerning software patents? I know some companies have used the rules of the USPTO to 'spoof' it, most notably Despair, Inc.'s trademarking of the frowney."

Comments

What about the obvious?

[xenocide2]

Patent stem cell processes. There's allready many different people working on it, and I'm sure they're all ready to find patents wherever possible.

Re:But You're Missing The Main Objective

[glitch!]

Why are my tax dollars being wasted on proprietary stuff like HP-UX when they could be running BSD or Linux for free?

One has to pay for the hardware in any case, so I presume you are refering to the cost of the OS? I got my copy of HPUX 10.20 without charge... Remember the Y2K unpleasantness? At that time, HP was offering HPUX 10.20 upgrades free to anyone with a 700-series workstation. Maybe they are charging for HPUX now, but it was free at one point.

Now whether you or I actually _like_ HPUX is another matter :-) Personally, I despise their "depot" package system. It sucks the snot out of a dead dog's nose...