Relating back to yesterday's mention of Interwoven's absurd patent claim on web site versioning, Boing Boing points us to this Wired interview with Ralph Nader where he says:
Name one genius inventor who has gotten rich from a software patent. There must be some, but the system mostly benefits a handful of businesspeople and lawyers who don't write code. Look at British Telecom. It took years before BT's patent lawyers
discoveredthe company had invented hypertext linking. Now General Electric claims it invented the JPEG file format. If GE is so smart, why did it take so many years to figure out it invented such a popular technology? Which genius inventors get rich on such claims?
<p>Relating back to <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/archives/000219.html">yesterday's mention of Interwoven's absurd patent claim on web site versioning</a>, <a href="http://boingboing.net/">Boing Boing</a> points us to this <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.03/view.html?pg=3">Wired interview with Ralph Nader</a> where he says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Name one genius inventor who has gotten rich from a software patent. There must be some, but the system mostly benefits a handful of businesspeople and lawyers who don't write code. Look at British Telecom. It took years before BT's patent lawyers <q>discovered</q> the company had invented hypertext linking. Now General Electric claims it invented the JPEG file format. If GE is so smart, why did it take so many years to figure out it invented such a popular technology? Which genius inventors get rich on such claims?</p>
</blockquote>
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