Anyone who doubts that the U.S. Patent Office is mired in the 19th century need only look at a patent it awarded to Facebook this week: the news feed. The concept of the news feed has been around for a decade or so. Blogs, podcasts and, more recently, social media sites use news feeds to update subscribers when the sites post new material. This is simple technology which has been widely used for years.
Yet in 2006 Facebook filed for a patent on the following six-step process:
- Generating news items
- Attaching informational links
- Attaching active links
- Limiting number of viewers
- Assigning an order
- Displaying news items
Hardly rocket science. Indeed, it’s the sort of thing a smart junior high-schooler could code up in a weekend. But not only did Facebook apply for the patent but the Patent Office granted it! This is the sort of thing that makes a farce out of our patent laws.
The purpose of patents is to protect truly ingenious or revolutionary products and processes for a limited period of time. This way, inventors, engineers and the companies they work for will have the motivation to invest in the research and development needed to create useful new products. But when patents are granted for obvious and trivial processes it makes a mockery of the law. Worse, it actually stifles progress because a patent holder like Facebook has the ability to quash the use of the “technology” by others.
Idiotic patents like this have been a problem for a long time. Back in the late 90s Amazon was granted a patent on the one-click checkout—another ridiculous patent on a trivial process. Not only was Amazon awarded a patent but they also took action against Barnes & Noble to prevent them from using the concept in the same way on the B & N website. Companies and consumers everywhere have to be inconvenienced every day because of a nonsensical ruling by the patent office on an obvious piece of computer code.
Unlike the Swiss patent office in the early 20th century there are no Einsteins in the U.S. Patent Office. In fact, I have to wonder if they haven’t turned the process over to some mechanical patent-approval machine.
And don’t get me started on copyrights…
For more info, see Facebook Patents the News Feed.
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I agree, this is an outrageous patent award. I see no redeeming value in this at all. It will simply create problems for everyone.
I hope someone puts a stop to all this foolishness. What next? They’ll patent the human genome or something?
Dave K.