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IBM Patents Changing Color of E-Mail Text
theodp writes "Last week, the USPTO granted IBM a patent for its 'System and method for comprehensive automatic color customization in an email message based on cultural perspective.' So what exactly did the four Big Blue inventors come up with? IBM explains: 'For example, an email created in the US in red font to indicate urgency or emphasis might be mapped to a more appropriate color (e.g., blue or black) for sending to Korea.' IBM took advantage of the USPTO's Accelerated Examination Program to fast-track the patent's approval. BTW, if you missed the 2006 press release, IBM boasted it was 'holding itself to a higher standard than any law requires because it's urgent that patent quality is improved.'"
Because most of them would take most competent software engineers about 5 minutes to think up themselves if presented with the problem that the patent claims to be a solution to.
Sometimes, though, figuring out what the problem is, or even that there is a problem in the first place, is decidedly non-trivial.
I'm not nearly as anti-patent as most people around here are, and this patent is borderline at best IMO, but I do think it falls into this category.
So you perjured yourself several times? Nicely done!
This is the root cause, and is the case I suspect in many corporations.
At IBM, you get something like $500 USD for a filed patent, something like that again if it's accepted, plus internal "points" which give you additional bonuses after a certain number of patents have been reached.
In addition, promotions to higher levels are significantly helped by displaying a large number of patents.
Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if the lawyers that decide whether to file or not a given patent proposal also get more bucks based on the count of how many gets pushed out.
From there, it's only logical that whatever the execs say or claim, underneath, everybody's going to file as much crap as possible.