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Google Takes a Small Step in Lodsys Patent-Troll Case
The Lodsys saga continues; reader WyzrdX writes with this excerpt from Wired: "Google has intervened in an ongoing intellectual property dispute between smartphone application developers and a patent-holding firm, Wired.com has learned, marking the Mountain View company's first public move to defend Android coders from a patent troll lawsuit that's cast a pall on the community. The company says it filed a request with the United States Patent and Trademark office Friday for reexamination of two patents asserted by East Texas-based patent firm Lodsys. Google's request calls for the USPTO to assess whether or not the patents' claims are valid."
Except Google doesn't use them offensively to stifle other companies.
Other than with the expected value of a patent monopoly, how will the maker of a new drug finance FDA-mandated clinical trials? Show a viable alternative to patents for industries that are as heavily regulated for product safety and truth in advertising as the drug industry, and the case against patents will become clearer.
As much as I think the patent system in the Pharmaceutical industry has been misused (Omeprazole vs. Esomeprazole) comes to mind, at least they are patenting a molecule, or a change in a molecule. A substantial thing. As in something of substance.
Software patents are all too often patenting vague hand waving processes or ideas. Usually just one brain cell shy of completely obvious. Hot air and lawyer drivel.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This after Google themself take a broad patent like this?
It's not as broad as you might think. The patent applies only to "a broker computer system independent of the shipper and a merchant", not one where the merchant's system directly uses the shipper's web service, and especially not one that uses a table from the warehouse ID and the destination postal code prefix to the expected transit time.