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MSNBC Looks At Patent Abusers' Victims

Posted by timothy on from the does-the-uspto-count-as-a-conspirator dept.

Camel Pilot writes "Patent claims have reached a new low when "inventor" Witold Ziarno sued the American Red Cross for using the web to accept donations. This MSNBC article discusses this case and how it was beat using web archives and prior art! Also Pangia Intellectual Property has given up hope on extracting fees from small e-commerce websites for its supposedly patent on e-commerce. The only problem with the PanIP case is that they got away without having to pay for the legal fees for the defense in an obvious abuse of the system." (See this previous post for more on PanIP's dropped case.)

2 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. no conscience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    what does it take to chase a charity for alleged patent abuse. How does he sleep at night?

  2. Re:Charity should not matter by odano · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article is really more for shock value than anything else. This has gone on for a long time, but when you see something like this "Man sues red cross for trying to accept donations" it jumps out at you. I don't think the fact that it is a charity matters, The main issue is how stupid it makes the patent system out to be.

    However, my grandfather used to work at the patent office, and still is a practicing patent attorney (at age 90), and will defend to the death the needs of patents. He is incredibly conservative and an old engineer who was in the army during WW2 and then went to a steady job at GE. The main issue is that people like him are controlling the importance of patents, and from prior experience debating with him, he has no understanding of the new type of intellectual property and the new needs of the patent system. Sadly, since people like him are the ones making the decisions, I doubt the patent system will change in the near future.