Macrovision's Patent Hedge
from the patent-everything dept
Over at the Constitutional Code blog, they’ve noticed an interesting combination of patents from copy protection firm Macrovision. Apparently, the company has patented both the concept of a P2P file sharing system and a way to stop copying on it. Certainly opens up all sorts of new possibilities for companies: patenting both the problem and the solution to an issue. Perhaps they’re just learning from Microsoft. Of course, maybe this is similar to AT&T’s decision a few years ago to patent spamming techniques. Either way, you have to wonder about the validity of that P2P patent, though, that’s hardly stopped Macrovision in the past.
