The Web’s longest nightmare ends: Eolas patents are dead on appeal

Web pioneers united to stop "interactive web" patents at an East Texas trial.

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It's pretty depressing that people needed to testify about prior art when this should never have been granted and barring that should have later been thrown out purely on grounds of obviousness (I'm not saying that obviousness didn't play a roll, but in any rational system, this case would have been decided on those grounds alone). What does it take for something to be considered obvious?

 

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precambrian[/url]":3gjm9tpz]

ApproximateIdentity[/url]":3gjm9tpz] ...What does it take for something to be considered obvious?

Let us know when you figure that out.
Sure this is all obvious now, just like telephones, fuel injection, and toasters. I certainly don't support Eolas and their ilk, but was this obvious in 1994? I was 34 at the time, and I hadn't thought of it. I bet a bunch of other people hadn't either.
I believe there still needs to be a high bar between not-obvious and patentable. I'm tempted to suggest that patent should be handled by peer review, but I fear that then nothing would ever get approved, because the peers would say, "Well that's obvious. I'm surprised I didn't think of it."

"People hadn't thought of publishing information about this or patenting it" is your definition of obvious? So what you're saying is that "obviousness" means absolutely nothing and is instead superceded by "novelty"? The claims (http://www.google.com/patents/US5838906?printsec=claims) of the patent seem to just be saying that there is a server and a client machine and "interactive" media is displayed. How is such a vague idea possibly patentable? And the decision as to whether prior art applies is also completely subjective. Any idea could be stated in slightly different ways and without a judgement call prior art would never apply. Why should be pretend that the judgement call inherent in "obviousness" is any different?

Also as to your second point, what's the problem if basically no software patents are approved? That's exactly what so many people are arguing for. What I don't understand is how anyone can defend a patent on an idea that would have occurred regardless of the patent. Patents restrict the flow and application of knowledge so they should be approved judiciously for the purposes of increasing knowledge down the road (say by enticing pharmaceutical companies to invest millions of dollars in research). I don't understand how anyone could believe that "idea" would not have evolved without patents. (Well actually it clearly did, since it was ruled that it predated the patent anyway.)