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Google Patents Displaying Patents
theodp writes "Google has actually managed to patent displaying patents. The USPTO issued US Patent No. D603,866 to six Google inventors for their 'graphical user interface for display screen of a communications terminal.' Among the six inventors is the guy who introduced Google Patents. Ironically, Google Patents can't seem to find the new Google patent for Google Patents."
"I don't think Google is here who is to blame."
I disagree. Every company that files for a ridiculous patent is supporting the broken patent system. And I don't buy the "defensive patent" or "altruistic patent" lines that Google and IBM keep feeding us. If they were really altruistic and intended to patent things to prevent other companies from doing so, they'd simply publicly implement whatever they were patenting to ensure that prior art was clearly demonstrated.
Any company that patents something intends to use that patent to prevent others from doing whatever the patent covers. If they say anything else, it's their PR department spinning things, and Google's PR department understands how to spin things to win the applause of geeks. If we geeks consider ourselves so smart, why do we keep falling for the spin that the new breed of PR execs in companies like Google feed us? It seems all a company has to do is say "We use Linux", contribute a bit to open source and then we hand over our undying devotion.
Come on people, pay attention. Google is a company no different from Microsoft or Boeing. Patents are bad. If Google wanted to protect everyone from patent trolls they would have put this into the public domain. They don't however, they intend to use this for what any other company would; to prevent their competition from doing this.