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Browser Cookie Patent
resistant writes "Here's more patent madness, this time on cookies used in browsers. (By now, even Forbes has a commendable attitude about this rampant greed)." This is actually a pretty interesting article for folks not so familiar with why patents are such a big deal in this day and age.
I read an interesting article in the New York times last week that sheds a little light on the practice of filing for these obviously ridiculous patents. Evidently companies are using these useless patents by donating them to universities or organizations and taking a huge tax write off for it. It is starting to make more sense now. $4000 (US) to "research" and file the patent, and then if they happen to get it, donate it to a college and write off the "Value" at $800,000.00! A very large profit without ever having to enforce an obviously unenforceable patent.
(sig on loan to Smithsonian)
Anyone remember IEMSI? I think that was it. Anyway, it was a mechasnism that allowed BBS's and dial-up clients to exchange login information to create a session that was persistent. It was actually pretty neat. I remember I lobbied for it be included in Renegade (COTT LANG in da hizouse!). That was close to a decade ago.
Interestingly, as the technology is being used in some kind of load balancing router (if I understand the article properly, it's fairly vague) it actually looks like a hardware patent more than a software one (routers run software, but then so do milling machines...)
It still looks "obvious" to me, but it's not the patent the submitter claims it to be. Bad submitter! No cookie for you!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Everyone is just trying to get a dollar and a cent out of a tech industry they still think is hemmoraging cash. But here the implications are even worse. The worst thing about a domain name grab is that it points to a hack portal like xupiter.com and that in two years (with the anti-tech economic downturn) they'd probably drop the domain name.
By having a patent though... well, it can be bad news all around. I wonder, why didn't W3 try and pick up all these patents? Or are they out of their element here?
What is music when you despise all sound?
[why cookies]
Any web app developer can tell you that there's half a dozen more reliable and secure ways to persist data.
Care to list them? Aside from making every simgle page a form, or re-writing pages to append an ID to every single URL link? Cookies are still the most convenient way to maintain a session with lower server-side overhead. Using session cookies is certainly no less secure than the above methods (possibly more so, if the browser history allows another user to continue the session due to bad coding on the server).
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Set up a 501c3 non-profit corp which will act as a pool of patents to be used as a counter-threat against patent racketeering. These large companies can then donate their patents to it, get a tax write-off, and they can simultaenously continue to benefit from the defensive protection of those patents.
The USPTO is hiring patent reviewers.
In the short amount of time you spend reading slashdot and shaking your fist at "The Man" you could have reviewed (and rejected) an obvious patent.
Seriously, It is a nice government job, with benefits, and you'd be doing a lot of good.