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Business Process Patents Taking The World By Storm

Posted by timothy on from the not-the-nice-kind-of-storm dept.

Siriaan writes "DE Technologies, a company based in Montreal, has hit a number of web retailers in the U.S., New Zealand and Singapore with patent infringement claims covering such things as purchase histories and online currency conversion. A small wooden model kit firm my company does business with is amongst those hit; they received a demand for a US$10,000 'signing fee' and then 1.5 percent of all transactions ongoing. "

5 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Any legitimate Business Process Patents? by Flying-Cow-Man · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriousy, I have had some long chats to my (lawyer) brother about this. Has anybody heard of any real, legitimate, honest-to-goodness, business process patents that have been granted and licensed?

    Obviously, being an engineer, I believe that technical processes should also be public domain...

    --
    Don't knock HTML email. It makes my life easier, since I /don't/ _have_ to "find" STUPID *workarounds
  2. Safe Haven(Co) by thecampbeln · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The more I read these stories about the abuse of the American (and now international) patent system(s), the more I believe things like HavenCo and Sealand have a good idea behind them. Until it gets really bad, I suppose you could simply move your site hosting from country to country, but for the love of god when will this end? As a little guy software developer with a site (shameless plug - NanoWeb, but it needs an update) I am beginning to fear that my after hours source of a little play money could get me into legal trouble for using techniques and technologies that have been used collectively on the net for years! We thought the "Microsoft Tax" was bad, how about making up for the 1.5% patent taxes?

    --
    "1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
  3. 97? by dammitallgoodnamesgo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The men behind DET's far-reaching patents, Ed Pool and Douglas Mauer, claim to be the first inventors to "computerise the ability to do international business transactions".
    Now, if I understand this right, until their "invention" you couldn't carry out international business transactions on the internet before '97? Now I'm fairly sure theres a mistake there...
  4. Patent by dammitallgoodnamesgo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In fact, looking at their white paper - the patent link is broken - the system they appear to have patented is a system which automatically adds any taxes you have to pay onto the bill (so, for instance, if the buyer is in Europe, adding on VAT). How on earth can you patent something like that?

  5. Re:20 years at a stand still. by moncyb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Organized crime will flourish too[1]. I'm sure many of the "little guys" will start up illegal businesses because that is the only way they'll be able to get by...

    [1] I mean traditional organized crime--I suppose most of today's large corporations can be considered organized crime as well.