Pop-Under Ads Patented

gopherdata writes "The Oregonian is running a article about a company, Exit Exchange, that claims to have invented the pop-under ad and is currently in the process of patenting it. According to the article the company hopes to collect royalties from other companies using pop-under ads. Are two lines of javascript worthy of a patent?" On the other hand, this is one stupid patent I'd love to see held up, just so that the licensing fees could discourage advertisers from attacking their potential clients.

Comments

Re:Doesn't make any sense

[Chiasmus_]

How can you patent a method of using a tool?

Well, nearly every patent is, in a sense, a method of using a tool.

While it doesn't make sense to patent the hammering of nails, it does make sense to patent, for example, a better hammer. And when it comes down to it, a hammer can be reduced to "a method of using a foundry to pour an alloy into a particular shape" and "a method of using a sawmill to cut wood in a particular shape" and "a method of using a robotic arm (or Indonesian eight-year-old) to attach a handle to the head of a hammer"

A computer itself is a tool; few would argue that *no* "method of using a computer" should be patented. If I spend ten years of my life developing an entirely new OS from scratch, and it's awesome, I should get some compensation.

The question, I guess, is the level of "tools with tools" at which a patent becomes reasonable. He who figures out how to fashion a computer from a series of factories deserves a patent. He who creates a more efficient OS for that computer probably deserves a patent. Even he who creates a new programming language under that OS probably deserves a patent.

But he who writes a three line script in an that programming language probably does not.