Patents, NYTimes mag

[John Nolan <jpnolan@sonic.net>]

James Gleick has an article on this topic in Sunday's
NYTimes magazine:

  http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000312mag-patents.html

There's a schematic diagram there, titled
"Procedure for Simultaneously Walking and Chewing Gum"

Here's a quote:

  This is just the beginning. Patents marking off broad swaths of electronic
  commerce will soon be pouring from the patent office, unwelcome
  surprises to whole categories of new entrepreneurs. In the last few
  months, companies have gotten patents for keeping calendars on the
  World Wide Web, for downloading Web pages at regular intervals, for
  storing documents in databases, for "real-time shopping," for auctioning
  cars, for creating profiles of users; for search engines, for payment
  systems and for variations of every other fundamental gear and lever in
  the theoretical machinery of online business. 

And this quote:

  Meanwhile, the dollars-and-cents reality of running the American patent
  office has also encouraged the patent explosion. In 1991, the patent
  office was cut off from general tax revenues and required to subsist
  entirely on fees for its operating budget. The political argument was that
  customers should pay for government services. Thus, officials think of
  their fee-paying patent applicants as their customers: the more the
  better, again. Examiners know that their year-end bonuses depend on
  productivity. Each morning, as Commissioner Dickinson arrives at his
  Crystal City office, he walks past a framed poster bearing the motto "Our
  Patent Mission: To Help Our Customers Get Patents.


>   Bezos responds to patent opposition
> 
>   After criticism about Amazon's Internet shopping patents,=20
>   CEOJeff Bezos called for reform for Net patents -- but=20
>   says he still plans to enforce the company's existing=20
>   patent awards.
> 
>   http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/CWFlash/000310F576



-- 
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# John Nolan
# jpnolan sonic net
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