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This post is yet another rant against software patents. If you're tired of reading about people's frustrations with our current patent system, then move on to the next article in your RSS reader. Otherwise, read on to find out about my personal sob story.
I found an application that was interesting to me called City ID. The gist of the application is that it looks at the first six digits of an incoming phone number and looks up in a table the city and state and displays that on the phone. It works pretty well, but it has a lot of room for improvement and add on features. So, I decided to go ahead and write my own implementation. I grabbed the number/location pairing information from the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA) web site and then threw together a little app that does what City ID does. Nothing more than a table look up. I also added a handful of features that I thought were incredibly useful, but I'm not going to post them here. I finished it off and then gave it to some beta users who were all very excited and enthusiastic about my application. I really thought I had a good thing going, but then I looked at one of the about screens in the City ID application, only to find that they claimed patents covering their application. Curious and slightly nervous, I hit the US Patent web site and read their claimed patent. I was floored by what I read. Apparently, Cequint (the company that created City ID) has patented the entire concept for their application. In a nutshell, they have a very, very broad patent that covers adding geographic location to caller id information. That's about it. Apparently, all of the work that I have done is worthless. I'm no lawyer and I don't really have the ability to hire one either, so I just have to try to come to grips with the fact that I am stuck. Now, I understand why we have patents, and I understand how they protect businesses, but I really have a problem with how they hurt end consumers. Case in point, I would really like to take the concept for displaying geographic location information and add some very useful features. However, because Cequint was able to patent a table lookup, end consumers lose the benefit of our free market system. What I really don't understand is why the patent system hasn't been overhauled. I have read rant after rant after rant about how flawed our current system is, and yet nothing changes. Ok, I guess I'm done ranting for now. I'm going to go look at some applications for law school now. -Jon |
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| Submitted by bosshogg on Saturday the 21st of January 2006, at 10:42 pm | |
