The New Yorker on Business Process Patents

Posted by michael on Tuesday July 8, 2003 @05:34AM from the bending-is-patented dept.

caledon writes "The New Yorker has a clear, concise, nontechnical essay by its finance columnist James Surowiecki criticizing business process patents: Patent Bending. 'Although we have always had a vibrant patent system, we've managed to strike a balance between the need to encourage innovation and the need to foster competition. As Benjamin Day, Henry Ford, and Sam Walton might attest, American corporations have thrived on innovative ideas and new business methods, without owning them, for two centuries. In the past decade, the balance has been upset.' Makes the argument persuasively."

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I hereby patent... by GillBates0 · 2003-07-08 05:50 · Score: 0, Redundant

The office says on its Web site that its role is "to grant patents," but surely its role should be to distinguish between innovations that are worth patenting and those that are not.
I hereby patent the idea of granting patents and distinguising between innovations that are worth patenting and those that are not.

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An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam