Facebook and Privacy

I missed the news tonight thanks to Mother Nature's strong storms last night.  But because I didn't get to complain about this topic earlier, I have a great rant tonight.  The title of this post appears to me as an oxymoron from all that I've read.  But that to me is just another reason to avoid it.



There was more proof that our patent system is broken, this time in a 3 part form.  Part one, 6 years after applying for a patent, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberger was awarded a patent.  No wonder we have so many problems!  It takes 6 years to approve a patent.  In that amount of time many things can happen.  Not only can the patent become obsolete but many other companies could create very similar things that perform the same function without violating the original patent.  This is just a really stupid process!  I get that there are a lot of things that they need to look at but that seems to be a bit too much time to me.  We live in a world of lightening fast change, waiting 6 years to be able to start collecting on you invention seems to be a lost cause.


And that sort of leads us to the second part.  If you clicked on the link I provided and read the short article, you would see that this patent application was rejected a couple of times in the past.  So how did it get awarded?  After going public, Facebook began to put a lot of pressure on the US Patent and Trade Office to review the application again.  So let me see if I have this straight, Facebook gets a huge influx of cash then suddenly the founder and president of the company is awarded a patent that was previously rejected.  Sounds a little bit like someone at the USPTO got a little side job.  Of course, that is just opinion and speculation.


The last part of the proof has to do with the patent itself.  It vaguely describes a method.  No code, just a method.  How can you put a patent on a method?  This is why our courts are filled with huge companies paying high prices to lawyers just to "protect their property."  That "property" is just a bunch of methods that they supposedly created before anyone else.  They don't innovate anymore, they just battle in court then buy some small company that is truly innovating just to get more "property" to protect the other "property" that they are already battling over in court.


Wow, a lot of quotes there!  But I think they are necessary.  Allowing patents on such generic methods is going to lead to the end of innovation.  Patents are there to protect companies that do create something completely unique, these huge companies are taking advantage of the loopholes to really hurt the consumers by curtailing innovation.  No one wants to take a chance at having to attempt to fight a huge company like Facebook, so they just sit back and do nothing rather than think outside the box.  It needs to change!