David's Mumblings
The Stupidity of (some) Software PatentsAccording to this Slashdot article, a big provider of pay-as-you-go cell phone services (BCGI - Boston Comm. Group, Inc.) has been shut down because it infringes on Freedom Wireless's patent. BCGI powers Cingular's Go-Phone and Sprint-Nextel's Boost, two of the biggest pay-as-you-go programs in the country. BCGI owes $128 million, and must shut down services within 90 days. In the meantime, they must pay royalties of 2.5 cents per minute of customer calls to Freedom Wireless. OK. So what exactly does this patent say? From this article from the Boston Globe, we get the following: Freedom Wireless, a four-person company, has never set up an actual business serving customers; it seeks royalties from companies like BCGI, Verizon Wireless, and Nextel Communications Inc. At the heart of Freedom's 1996 patent is the idea of using a computer to match a cellphone number with a database showing how many paid-up minutes the cellphone owner has, then deciding whether to complete a call. In other words, Freedom Wireless has patented the idea of using a database to associate minutes with a phone number. Wowzers. I thought that patents weren't supposed to be awarded for the obvious, or for things that had been done before. People have been counting minutes in databases associated to a customer number since the days of dial-up internet access. In other words, since before 1996. The surreal absurdity of this situation astound me. I'm not sure what is more unsettling: that the US Patent Office awarded this patent, or that there exist companies whose sole purpose is to patent the obvious and leech real companies. I suppose the latter is not surprising, but the Patent Office is supposed to uphold some kind of intelligent standards. This is not an argument against software patents in general. It is an argument against handing them out stupidly. If, however, the Patent Office is unable to hand them out intelligently, then it might be a better idea to not hand them out at all. I imagine that BCGI will take this to court. I hope that they win. It would also be very satisfying to see them rake in all kinds of damages in compensation for what's happening now. ^ TOP
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