Jimmy Wales wrote:
Good grief. The patent system is out of control.
I get the impression that the pharmaceutical companies are the worst offenders.
Actually, since the original captcha idea is in fact clever, and since I'm not a totally anti-patent person, I could it being reasonable to reward the inventors of the idea with a 2 year patent. 17 years is an infinity.
I believe that it was changed from 17 years from the date of granting to 20 years from the application date. That prevents extensions from arising through playing games with the application process. But 20 years is a lot more reasonable than the 95 years for copyright. :-)
I wonder if there are things that we've developed in house here at Wikimedia that we should patent, just to license our patents freely of course, and also to make fun of the patent system.
Good idea! Especially now that such things as business processes have become patentable.
Ec