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Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It
An anonymous reader writes "BlueJ is a popular academic IDE which lets students have a visual programming interface. Microsoft copied the design in their 'Object Test Bench' feature in Visual Studio 2005 and even admitted it. Now, a patent application has come to light which patents the very same feature, blatantly ignoring prior art."
This kind of patent abuse should be remedied with action against the abuser. At the very least the patent attorneys should be barred from filing or working on patents for a period of at least 10% of the duration of the patents they are abusing. And the filer (eg. Microsoft), if guilty of conspiracy to abuse (provable by repeated offenses) should be barred from filing or working on patents for a similar period.
That kind of consequences would force the filers to carry most of the responsibility for researching prior art and other patent invalidators, rather than the incompetent/overloaded PTO. And weed out many of the crooked patent lawyers who make money regardless of how badly they construct the artificial government monopolies they attempt to create.
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make install -not war
Except in the legal sense, Microsoft is not a single entity. It is a collection of people who does not always know what each other do.
The story seems to go like this:
BlueJ becomes popular in academia. When Microsoft ask people in academia which new features they would like to see in Visual Studio, naturally they suggest some of the features that makes BlueJ popular.
Now some people from Microsoft gets assigned to implement this new feature, and for extra credit also write a patent application (or submit the idea to the people who write the patent application).
Later, another person from another subdivision, who happen to be an active blogger, get wind of the BlueJ people are angry that Visual Studio has a new feature copied from BlueJ without acknowledgment. So the blogger find out that it was most likely BlueJ that inspired the academicians to suggest the feature, and acknowledge the fact.
And now, because people think of Microsoft as a single entity, they are angry because Microsoft both patent the idea, and at the same time acknowledge where it came from.
I see a website which takes and publicly sums donations from people using Paypal, to collect money to combat bad patents. The sie could allow people to vote on which dodgy patents the money will go towards combatting.
I should so patent that idea.
Uhh - apparently you wandered in from an alternate universe. The RIM case has been debated ad nauseum on /. but one thing is clear - Campana's "heirs" (which in bizarro universe apparently is the word for lawyers) got a payout that is in no way proportionate to Campana's contributions to the world. No one believes that Campana's inventions added one iota of knowledge to the process that ended up with RIM selling Blackberries. Campana's attorn"heir"s just got incredibly lucky that Campana won the race to file in a moronic patent system.
... oh yeah ... bizarro world .. backwards is forwards ... I get it now ... you were just exhibiting a sly and subtle wit. Well played my friend, well played indeed.
And that is a bizarre thing to be trumpeting as a laudable achievement.