New Patent for Serving Ads to Newspaper Sites

mshiltonj writes: "Global Network announced today that they have a new patent on 'serving ads via a computer to a network of newspaper websites.' They are actively going to enforce the patent too. I heard, but could not verify online, that they placed a print ad announcing the patent in the Wall Street journal. 'The placement of this ad is the first in several steps we intend to take in order to notify key industry participants that we have been granted this patent. We are following proper legal protocol by publicly informing members of the publishing and advertising industries who may unknowingly be in violation of our patent,' commented Mr. James Mason, President and CEO of Global Network."

Comments

The pinata approach

[shaldannon]

I've decided that the US patent office has decided to scrap its founding principles in favor of the pinata approach: The pinata breaks, the goodies fall, and the first person to claim the most goodies wins. Doesn't matter if someone else has similar goodes, or even if there was a fight over the goodies. The person with the goodies wins.

Same thing with patents today. Doesn't matter if there's prior art or if you stole it from a competitor or if you acquired it after the fact. Patent it, then threaten everyone you know with a lawsuit for infringement.

At least the government has legal restrictions on what it can/can't do...Modern corporations lack both legal and moral restraint. It doesn't help either that USPTO will give a patent for anything it doesn't understand.