You are more likely to be granted patents on obscure little corners, not the overall concept. Think of some clever solution to some difficult problem. For example, if we came up with a really good solution to the Vandalism problem, that would be a good candidate for a patent.

-Kelly

At 08:34 PM 3/12/2004, you wrote:

"Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com schrieb:

...

Good grief. The patent system is out of control.

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 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.

Problem is that patents cost money and time to issue. On the other hand, if we find a way to issue it in some way that it is "free, provided you don't stand on our mat with your patents either", it might be useful.

Now, I don't know the inner workings of the Wikipedia software well enough to know what might be patented there, but on the outside:

• best to patent, but most likely to fall short on being the first would of course be the combination of wiki-like technology with databases. Something like using a database to enable users to change webpages and storing them in a simplified format that can be worked into HTML.
• namespaces. Having webpages in a database with both a title and an identifier giving various kinds of pages. Could be patented as a way of allowing users to make comments on webpages (on a separate page)
• reverting. Having an interface to show changes to webpages and restore them easily to an older version

There's probably more, but it's past 4 am here...

Andre Engels

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