
More Patent Nonesense - alexandros
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/more-patent-nonsense.html
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kmavm
Disclaimers: I haven't read the patent in question, I work for facebook, and
therefor know some of the engineers whose patent we're discussing..

Most eye-rolling at patents never get past the title. This betrays a
misunderstanding about what a patent is. Putting it in terms that are more
readily accessible to engineers, a patent's title describes the problem to be
solved; the USPTO, on the other hand, grants a patent to confer rights on that
problem's _solution_. If I titled my patent "System and method for offline
sorting", and armies of bloggers started scoffing, "Offline sorting! That's
been around since the 1950's!", they would be missing the point. The relevant
question is whether _my_ offline sorting technology is sufficiently novel and
non-obvious.

Applying this to facebook, "System and method for a social news feed" or
whatever is not the same thing as "having a patent on a news feed." The patent
is on the combination of techniques and systems that facebook in particular
contrived to deliver a newsfeed. It could still be the case that this is
insufficiently innovative, but the discussion is not as simple as pulling up
another example of a news feed and closing the case.

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yanw
imagine where facebook would be today if someone had patented 'social
network'.

