DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Anyone familiar with the web industry knows of the trend of patenting so-called inventions to prevent competition. What’s unusual is that some of these “inventions” should not be patentable: according to James Gleick (in Patently Absurd), an idea cannot be patented. Actual programming code cannot be patented either, although it is protected by copyright. “Software and algorithms used to be unpatentable,” says Gleick. But that appears to have changed, as evidenced by recent well-known patents on ideas: Amazon’s “1-click” ordering method, Priceline’s “name your own price” shopping methodology, and Intouch Group’s method of sampling music.

This last example strikes close to home. I know people who used to work at Intouch. And I know some people who work at the companies Intouch has sued for patent violations: Amazon, Liquid Audio, Listen.com, etc.

Today the legal landscape shifted dramatically. A website called BountyQuest, established to find “prior art” in contested patent issues, has announced 4 winners. “Prior art” is something that proves that a patent should never have been issued, because the “invention” was not original to the patent holder. In the case of Intouch’s patent on music sampling, Perry Leopold was able to prove he had released his music-sampling concept to the public domain years before Intouch existed. This would tend to call into question the validity of Intouch’s patent — and if the patent is overturned, the Intouch lawsuit should disappear quickly.

The core problem seems to be that USPTO analysts are not equipped to find prior art when they issue patents on software algorithms (see Gleick’s article for more on this). I hope BountyQuest’s recent success leads to a fundamental change in the USPTO approval process.