Patents guru Greg Aharonian runs the Internet Patent News Service and each year tots up the statistics on software related patents. The numbers several thousand software patents in the USA alone each year.
This, Aharonian posits, means that someone in the patent office thinks that in the early 1990s software developers came up with about 20000 entirely novel, never-been-thought-of-before, totally unobvious software ideas.
So are we likely to see some fantastic new programs in time for Christmas? Aharonian doubts it. The patents all claim one of several common-or-garden ideas: word processor, web browser, e-mail, spreadsheet, database and several others, stuff we have all seen before. The statistics seem to correlate with the size of the industry rather than reflecting innovation. This would point to the fact that either the companies simply ignore other patents in writing theirs or that the examiners are so overworked they cannot check back – or both.
If you happen to have been granted a software patent before the current boom, in 1971 say, when there were only 100, you should get on to your lawyer straightaway, your idea might not make it into the shops for Christmas but you might have a nice little earner suing IBM, Apple, Microsoft et al.
Happy Victoria Day to our Canadian friends, by the way.