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Story: US firm claims patent win in online rich media

"...demonstrates both the good and bad of software patents"

Well it's more of a "business method" patent than it is a software patent, and it is the granting of patents such as this one, which claim the exclusive rights to so much for so little disclosure (none), that has brought the patent system into disrepute even in the eyes of those unaware of what is wrong in principle with software patents. Read the claims of this latest abomination and ask yourself what you have learned from it. Has it contributed anything at all to progress in the sciences and useful arts? Does it disclose any particular method of doing what it describes in its claims? No - it simply claims the doing of it. Claim one, for example, is equivalent to:

A method for users to create and maintain a rich-media application on said host website via the Internet comprising: creating and maintaining a rich-media application on said host website via the Internet.

It is far from the only such tautologous abuse of the patent system I have seen, but it is one of the worst, and I cannot imagine what Rotibi supposes this despicable document demonstrates that is good about software or business method patents (even if it was logically possible for a single patent to do such a thing). Perhaps ZDNet could ask Rotibi to explain?

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