Comments on: Week in review: Microsoft's kick in the patents

While Microsoft finds itself in a dogfight over patents, battles over the iPhone trademark and satellite radio settle down.

[billmosby]

Patents are lucrative in the tech community...

But more for those early patent holders who patented the good
stuff from the old textbooks first. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration,
but only very slight. Many times the advancement of the art that is
granted a patent is "patently" obvious to one skilled in the practice.

[dargon19888]

Yes and no...

If there is something in a text book, its prior art and not patentable.

If the patent is based on something that is "patently obvious" to someone who's read the prior art, then it shouldn't be patented.

Business processes like a "shopping cart" or "one click" should never be patentable. Yet they are.
Those who file the patents know this, yet they patent because it creates a barrier to entry.

Now you have to fight to get the patent made invalid.

So what we need to do is to all go to law school and become patent attorneys. ;-)

[wtortorici]

The article fails to...

explain how and why the verdict was handed down. Every thing the author says in the article is old hat and adds items that have no bearing on the title.

sorry, on a scale of 0 to 10 I would rate 0.

:(

[Fil0403]

Forgot one thing

A CNET reader wisely said: "I'm no lawyer, either, but this (intellectual property) thing seems so outdated in this Digital Age and (with) open source. There are thousands of products using MP3 compression, for crying out loud."

He forgot it's not outdated when the company sued is evil Microsoft.