Mark Zuckerberg, Inventor

theodp writes "Move over, Thomas Edison. Here comes Mark Zuckerberg, inventor extraordinaire. Zuck's still waiting for that elusive first patent to be issued, but take a gander at the Facebook founder's patent application for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary to get an idea of what's in the works. After you check boxes on a form to indicate that 'Everyone from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard' can see your profile, Zuckerberg's 'invention' will miraculously display: 'People from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard can see your profile.' How dare Rolling Stone question his inventiveness!"

Comments

Re:WOW

[morgan_greywolf]

I thought you weren't allowed to get a patent for something that's considered basic functionality?

No, you aren't allowed to patent something that is either prior art (someone else did it first) or obvious to someone skilled in the trade.

This would fall in the latter category. It's obvious that anyone who develops Web sites that you can do dynamic pages, so that means you can do dynamic legal agreements.

Duh.