Online Testing Patented

An anonymous reader writes "For those who think that online testing is an obvious idea, please be advised that the USPTO recently issued U.S. Patent No. 6,513,042 for online testing to two Ohio inventors. According to an article in NEOhio CrainTech, "As of last week, Test Central Inc. in Cleveland owns the U.S. patent to conduct testing via the Internet and, in essence, owns the online testing business.""

Comments

this is absurd

[jpsst34]

So these guys patented online testing, huh? Does the US patent office even care to research before granting a patent? In the article, it doesn't even say that the recipients of the patent claim to have invented online testing. So they just happened to notice the lack of said patent for an idea that wasn't theirs and thought, "Hey, there's no patent for this, let's make us some bucks!"

I can imagine their think-session 4 years ago...

"Say, Jim, this internet thing seems to be catching on."
"Yup."
"Maybe we can make some money from it."
"Yup."
"I gots an idear. Let's make a list of all the common things we do with the internet, then let's go search the patent archives to find which from the list haven't been patented, and then we'll patent them and force people to pay us for them."
"Yup."
"It's a go. Waahoo! Neudge!"