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Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents
theodp writes "The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"
Just yesterday you ran a story about Google's nonsense RSS-for-delivering-ads patent like they were doing something great by revealing the inner workings of their system, and Microsoft files equally inane patents and only now do you call this evil?
Bah! Fair and balanced my ass!
Jefferson has been dead for 200 years. People may disagree with patent law, but there's not historical basis to assume Jefferson would have objected to this practice in the IT industry. Save the Ouije board for parties, and stop imposing your opinions on people who've been dead for a century or more.