IP: from Edupage WEB PATENTS WEAVE CONFUSION

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

WEB PATENTS WEAVE CONFUSION 
A federal appellate court ruling in July confirming that computerized 
"business methods" can be patented has sparked a wave of patent applications 
that electronic commerce proponents fear will amount to "holdups in 
cyberspace." The July case involved a computerized mathematical formula for 
apportioning the administrative costs associated with a family of mutual 
funds, but by "claiming the computer as part of the invention, you can make 
things patentable that weren't patentable before," says a patent attorney in 
California. Skeptics say many of the new patents won't hold up in court, 
and will suffer the same fate as the 1993 patent granted to Compton New 
Media, protecting a method for combining text, audio and video on a compact 
disk. That patent was revoked in 1994, after critics demonstrated the 
technology was already in common use. "Everyone is under the impression the 
Patent Office thoroughly investigates your claims," says a Forrester 
Research analyst. "They really don't." (Wall Street Journal 9 Oct 98)