Companies Petition Congress To Reform 'Business Method' Patent Process

ectoman writes "This week, a coalition of more than 40 companies sent a letter to Congress asking for legislation that expands the Covered Business Method (CBM) program, a move some feel would stem patent abuse in the United States. Expanding the scope of CBM—a program that grants the Patent and Trademark Office the power to challenge the validity of certain business methods patents—would expedite the patent review process and significantly cut litigation costs, they say. "The vague and sweeping scope of many business method claims covering straight forward, common sense steps has led to an explosion of patent claims against processes used every day in common technologies by thousands of businesses and millions of Americans," says the letter, signed by companies like Amazon, Netflix, Red Hat, Macy's, and Kroger)."

Comments

Re:You see!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, of course. The point is that the pursuit of profit is neither good nor evil.
Our task as a society is to adjust the system's incentives so that businesses' pursuit of profit aligns with our best interests.

Re:You see!

[gstoddart]

Because we have a finite amount of resources as a nation (man hours, kilowatts, lumber, etc.) at any given time, the only way to make everyone richer is to use those resources as efficiently as we possibly can to provide what people need and want.

And what evidence do you have to suggest that is happening? The gap between rich and poor grows every year, which means it isn't making 'everyone richer'. In fact, it certainly looks like the opposite is happening.

And as far as using those resources as efficiently as possible, again, I'm not convinced we do. How is it more 'efficient' to make Larry Ellison even more wealthy and a bigger asshole? Is he proportionally doing more work, or is he just the guy at the top collecting massive rewards?

Profit is the measurement of how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted.

Bullshit. It's a measure of how much it costs you to extract money from your clients relative to how much you rake in.

A credit card scam can be hugely profitable, but it has no relation whatsoever to 'how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted'.

So many corporate profits these days are a shell game to make one thing look more expensive and defray the costs to someone else. You think Hollywood accounting is about 'how efficiently an endeavor is providing what is needed and wanted'? Or do you think it's about shuffling around money to tell one group of people you lost massive amounts of money and can't pay them, and tell another group how much money you raked in.

There's an unwillingness to really look at everything when you over-simplify so you are by default being ignorant of the whole truth.

And you have so over simplified what 'profits' mean as to make everything you said meaningless drivel.