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John Naughton
If your children are wondering what they should do for a living in the next decade or two, just whisper two words in their ears: intellectual property (IP). Even Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have tumbled to this, as witnessed by their well- intentioned but vacuous statement last week about patenting the human genome. But while the IP problems posed by genetic research lie some distance ahead, those posed by the Internet and the United States Office of Trademarks and Patents are very real and present.
Most people assume you have to be clever to be awarded a patent. The database of US patents maintained by IBM and provided free on the Web suggests otherwise. James Gleick of The New York Times rummaged around in it and found things you just would not believe. US Patent 5E993E336, for example, asserts proprietary rights on “executing a tennis stroke while wearing a knee-pad”.
Then there is “method of bra size determination by direct measurement of the breast” (US 5E965E809). This includes “initially measuring the user’s chest or torso circumference with a flexible tape measure immediately below the breasts, followed by the step of adding five inches to the measured number and incorporating conventional rounding-off procedures”.
My favourite, though, is a patent on a method for exercising a cat (US 5E443E036). “A method for inducing cats to exercise,” it reads, “consists of directing a beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus on to the floor or wall or other opaque surface, in the vicinity of the cat, then moving the laser so as to cause the bright pattern of light to move in an irregular way, fascinating to cats, and to any other animal with a chase instinct.” (I am not making this up.) So next time you play with your cat, remember that you are abusing someone else’s intellectual property.
In these circumstances, Amazon’s infamous “One-Click” patent may seem almost respectable. But it has attracted widespread condemnation. Richard Stallman, the programmer who founded the Free Software Foundation and is ultimately responsible for the Open Source movement, has been campaigning for a boycott of Amazon because of the patent and the company’s aggressive attitude towards defending it. His campaign made some headway with the hacker community, but was ignored by mainstream Net users.
But then it was revealed that Amazon had done something even more crass – it had patented its “affiliates” programme. This is the ingenious scheme whereby if you put a link on your website to Amazon you get a small royalty on anything it sells as a result of people jumping from your site to theirs.
It’s a neat idea and one from which many people have benefited, including this columnist. It fits beautifully with the co- operative ethos of the Net. But using the patent laws to clobber other people who might like to use the same idea is so outrageous that Amazon suddenly began to feel the heat. Internet publisher Tim O’Reilly set up a special website and wrote an open letter to Amazon’s chief executive and presiding genius Jeff Bezos. Several hundred other people e-mailed Bezos to complain.
After several days, Bezos replied with a message that was conciliatory in tone but gave nothing substantive away. “Despite the call from many thoughtful folks for us to give up our patents unilaterally,” he wrote, “I don’t believe it would be right for us to do so. I also doubt whether our giving up our patents would really provide much of a stepping stone to solving the bigger problem.”
Sigh. Even Bezos doesn’t get it. On the grounds that the poor sap will have to be taught a lesson, I’ve written to Amazon resigning from their affiliate programme. You could call it standing down for one’s principles.