Microsoft [to patent] Verb Conjugation

streepje writes "Here [to be] the latest egregious patent application. Microsoft [to be] [to apply] for a patent for [to conjugate] verbs. Future postings [to look] like this."

Comments

US

[Mark_MF-WN]

You're kidding right? Their policy is to automatically grant every patent application, and let the courts figure out validity later. Basically, in order to show that they've reduced their budget, they fired all their patent analysts and let them work as consultants to civil courts at one hundred times the overall cost, once you factor in all the legal costs associated with resolving patent disputes the hard way. In a reasonable enlightened nation, this would get the government officials responsible for this decision horsewhipped in a public square before being exiled. In America, the people responsible were instead paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their efforts and will live some of the cushiest lives in the entire world, while the tax payer grapples the massive extra costs introduced by this monstrous decision (as well as paying for the officials' pensions, rather than for a few bullwhips and an exile-barge at a fraction the price). Nice, huh?

Re:Oh please

[Mjlner]

>"If you actually read the linked patent, it isn't a patent on conjugating words. It's a patent on automatically providing all of the different possible conjugation forms of any verb on the fly,"

Yes, that is true, but that doesn't make it any less straightforward and simple.

>"which is something I, for one, haven't seen before and think could be pretty useful..."

...which most definitely does not mean that such a thing does not exist.
I, for one, have created a simple Perl-module which conjugates a given Latin verb in all tenses and forms. Let me tell you: conjugating a verb "on the fly" is trivial. Exceptions to every rule do, however, mess things up a little, but the exceptions themselves build up very simple and trivial rules.

Prior art? Hell, yeah!
Non-obvious? Hell, no!