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IBM's But-I-Only-Got-The-Soup Patent
theodp writes "In an Onion-worthy move, the USPTO has decided that IBM inventors deserve a patent for splitting a restaurant bill. Ending an 8+ year battle with the USPTO, self-anointed patent system savior IBM got a less-than-impressed USPTO Examiner's final rejection overruled in June and snagged US Patent No. 7,457,767 Tuesday for its Pay at the Table System. From the patent: 'Though US Pat. No. 5,933,812 to Meyer, et al. discussed previously provides for an entire table of patrons to pay the total bill using a credit card, including the gratuity, it does not provide an ability for the check to be split among the various patrons, and for those individual patrons to then pay their desired portion of the bill. This deficiency is addressed by the present invention.'"
They are effectively stating that "it is a common procedure in restaurants to split the bill, but no one claimed it yet. We are hereby putting down a flag."
So what is the actual invention? Where is the method or apparatus for splitting a bill? Is anything described in the patent that allows us to do this in a novel way? Or is it just a codification of a practice that is as old as the country of the Netherlands? (I'm Dutch, I can make the joke... ;-) ).
It goes without saying that, if it is just a codification of something that is hundreds, and potentially thousands of years old, it should not be meriting special protection...
...until my patent gets approved for filing pointless patents. Holy shit, am I gonna be rich.