[Infowarrior] - More USPTO stupidity

[Richard Forno]

New low in patent stupidty: searching for a used car with a clean title

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/12/new_low_in_patent_st.html

The US Patent and Trademark Office has just granted a particularly ludicrous
patent: Carfax now owns the idea of searching for cars that have clean
titles. Somehow, this didn't qualify as "obvious."

    A method of searching for used vehicles comprising:

    * Using VIN numbers to look up the title status of a vehicle;
    * Storing the title status of the vehicle in a database; and
    * Providing a list of vehicles based on title status to users who search
for them online.

    Could this be any more obvious? Even the patent itself admits that
methods of compiling title information on used cars have been around since
1991. So what's the novel aspect of this invention?

Why does stupid stuff like this matter? It matters because every click and
every idea is becoming someone's property. It doesn't matter if we've been
doing it forever (like querying databases!), or if it's totally obvious,
someone ends up owning it. The USPTO is open for anyone who wants to claim
ownership of any idea (no wonder -- their funding comes from filing fees for
patents), and once those patents end up in the hands of patent trolls, it's
open season on the firms and people who make great stuff.

We all pay: we pay for the legal costs of fighting patent battles, built
into the price of our stuff. We pay for the technologies that never come to
market because of patent fears. We pay for all the ridiculous "defensive
patents" filed by startups (there's no such thing as a defensive patent:
having a patent doesn't mean that the USPTO won't give the same patent to
someone else, and then your "defense" consists of not running out of money
to fight the patent in court), which then turn into patent-troll armaments
when the startups tank.

Astroturfing companies run bogus sites like this one, where they argue for
"patent reforms" that consist of not reforming anything. Sites like Patent
Fairness are a good place to get the real story.