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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Sep 9th 2003 1:04pm





Patent Issued On Web Filtering

from the non-innovation-at-its-best dept

The latest in a long line of silly patents has been issued to Websense. They now own the patent for "controlling access to internet sites". How is this possible patentable? It's a filter. It's not unique. It's not innovative. It's so damn obvious that it's amazing anyone bothered to patent it. No, actually, it's not amazing - because of the way our patent system is set up, where you simply patent anything and everything - knowing that it will get by the patent examiners and then you're granted a perpetual monopoly on a blatantly obvious idea. In the meantime, Websense uses this announcement to again promote their misleading statistics about "lost productivity". Maybe it's time I patent the process of "trusting your employees." Of course, I wouldn't be able to enforce it because it seems like everyone is, instead, using web filters to make their employees feel like little kids who constantly need to be looked after.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    Ed Halley, Sep 9th, 2003 @ 1:13pm

    No Subject Given

    Cool. We need the censor-nuts to censor each other, not the rest of us. Let them fight over patented methods which have been in use for thousands of years (except "on the Internet").

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Sep 9th, 2003 @ 2:14pm

    No Subject Given

    Its the law.
    Follow the law and accept and obey what you are told.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    CharlesW, Sep 10th, 2003 @ 9:10am

    No Subject Given

    Im going to go file a patent for "encoding alphanumberic text and symbols into a machine readable format" Then sue everyone that uses ASCII, ANSI, and all the other character sets. That will make me a ton of cash. Everyone that owns a computer will have to pay me royalties so they can use a keyboard.

    *Insert evil laugh here*

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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