04.13.08
Patents Roundup: Abstract Ideas and Perceptual Monopolies
The insanity never stops. This time it’s IBM.
IBM hopes to patent ‘dealing with chaos’
[...]
IBM wants to patent a means of responding to hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, solar flares, flooding, terrorism, war, pandemics, and other situations where you would hope companies aren’t worried about patents.
See this post about patents that kill. Whether action will be taken against these dangers (the patents, not the disasters) remains to be seen, but Microsoft, Google and Corel are specifically named in this call for patents on abstract ideas to be voided. The following paragraph illustrates the seriousness of the situation.
The case in question concerns a patent submission for “managing the consumption risk costs of a commodity”, whatever that means. The patent office refused to consider such an abstract idea as patentable. However, many of the patents that are owned by such behemoths as Microsoft and Google could conceivably be argued, are based on abstract ideas.
You can find a good and lengthy new report at advogato.org, which goes a step further and proposes a rethink about intellectual monopolies as a whole.
# Dissolving WIPO – The World Intellectual Property Organisation needs to be shut down – or its job transformed into one which *protects* sovereign nations from the interference of intellectual “property” hoarding. I consider the concept of “Intellectual Property” to be “slavery”. even the name says so! Intellectual. Property. Intelligence. Owned. Information. Enslaved. It’s got to stop. We’re not a bunch of savages. any more.
# Dissolution of Patents. See above. Also: see the documentary “The Corporation”. Even the reasons why the Patent system was created is flawed: hoarding of information so that the inventor can benefit from it is so completely against the grain of an enlightened world that it hardly needs mentioning – but there will be people reading this who will genuinely believe – just like the Victorians did about their life-long human captives – that Slavery is perfectly acceptable because “everyone does it”.
# Banning of Articles of Incorporation with “profit” as the main focus. This is absolutely essential. There are plenty of alternative Articles of Incorporation where profits are made, but not at the expense of world resources. Companies House has a boilerplate designed for social clubs.
We mentioned before why we might be seeing a slow transition into a 21st-century feudal system. Unless the economy collapses and radical steps are taken to ensure sanity prevails, the patent system might become worse and worse as time goes by. Rebellion against it would only be natural.
A hoarding culture taken to the extreme becomes incompatible with rapid development of the sciences. It’s not about innovation; unless this innovation is the creation and amplification of an economic model which favours only a few and spins words like “secure” (the wealth), “protect” (the upper management) and “license” (unlock basic human rights). █
