Interesting read, I was not aware that software patents were reviewed by programmers (at least in the British Patent Office) but I would still argue that many granted are so patently (pun intended) obvious that they simply do not have merit.
It is a difficult subject and the current standards for granting patents were never formulated with software/computers in mind. Further down the page is the statement -
@@@ A computer program is a linguistic work and a virtual machine at the same time. Neither copyright nor patent law were designed with computer programs in mind. Some scholars and politicians have therefore argued for a "Third Paradigm between patent and copyright law", also called specially tailored right or ius sui generis. Others have called abstract-logical ideas a "nobody's land of intellectual property" and demanded that it should be kept free of all property claims. @@@
Oops, something got snipped in the next to last sentence, it should have read:
"This works on almost every date (well until 2050) except birthdates and a few other exceptions dealing with less than 1900 dates). For at least birthdates you could substitute greater than 20 in almost every case, especially in HR systems."
I guess it didn't like the greater than and less than symbols, even though I specified "Plain Old Text"...
The patent office is nowhere near capable of determining what is truly patentable in technology. IMHO the key to a enforcable patent has to be that it is truly a next-level advance in technology, not easily reasoned, or millions were spent developing it, etc, etc.
Some guy went to the patent office regarding Y2K, and asked for a patent on the logic below (which I thought of in like 2 minutes, along with 1000's of other programmers) and the patent office granted the patent. Then he went aroung mailing threatening letters to corporations. HA HA! Nothing every came of it, he would have been laughed out of court.
If YY > 50 then
YYYY = 1900 + YY else
YYYY = 2000 + YY
This works on almost every date (well until 2050) except birthdates and a few other exceptions dealing with 20 in almost every case, especially in HR systems.
What I want to know is did anybody else think about the Y10K problem? (Make those dates YYYYY, LOL!)
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Interesting read, I was not aware that software patents were reviewed by programmers (at least in the British Patent Office) but I would still argue that many granted are so patently (pun intended) obvious that they simply do not have merit.
It is a difficult subject and the current standards for granting patents were never formulated with software/computers in mind. Further down the page is the statement -
@@@ A computer program is a linguistic work and a virtual machine at the same time. Neither copyright nor patent law were designed with computer programs in mind. Some scholars and politicians have therefore argued for a "Third Paradigm between patent and copyright law", also called specially tailored right or ius sui generis. Others have called abstract-logical ideas a "nobody's land of intellectual property" and demanded that it should be kept free of all property claims. @@@
On this I would wholeheartedly agree.
Oops, something got snipped in the next to last sentence, it should have read:
"This works on almost every date (well until 2050) except birthdates and a few other exceptions dealing with less than 1900 dates). For at least birthdates you could substitute greater than 20 in almost every case, especially in HR systems."
I guess it didn't like the greater than and less than symbols, even though I specified "Plain Old Text"...
The patent office is nowhere near capable of determining what is truly patentable in technology. IMHO the key to a enforcable patent has to be that it is truly a next-level advance in technology, not easily reasoned, or millions were spent developing it, etc, etc.
Some guy went to the patent office regarding Y2K, and asked for a patent on the logic below (which I thought of in like 2 minutes, along with 1000's of other programmers) and the patent office granted the patent. Then he went aroung mailing threatening letters to corporations. HA HA! Nothing every came of it, he would have been laughed out of court.
If YY > 50 then
YYYY = 1900 + YY
else
YYYY = 2000 + YY
This works on almost every date (well until 2050) except birthdates and a few other exceptions dealing with 20 in almost every case, especially in HR systems.
What I want to know is did anybody else think about the Y10K problem? (Make those dates YYYYY, LOL!)