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Patently stupid

Last week a Texas judge found in favour of a Toronto company's patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, ordering the company to cease the sale of Word 2003, 2007 and Word for Mac 2008 in the United States.

Last week a Texas judge found in favour of a Toronto company's patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, ordering the company to cease the sale of Word 2003, 2007 and Word for Mac 2008 in the United States. A jury also awarded i4i a cool $200 million in damages for infringing their patent on XML, plus another $90 million in penalties and interest.

Microsoft, obviously, plans to appeal the decision. At the root of the issue is the .DOCX file format, based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), which i4i says was their patented idea. Basically i4i patented technology that lets end users manipulate documents with XML.

From a distance i4i appears to be a credible company, converting labels and ensuring international compliance on labels crossing borders. Mostly they focus on pharmaceuticals, which have to obey certain labeling requirements to pass through customs, including batch labeling so drugs can be traced back to their source.

Microsoft will have no trouble paying off the suit and then paying off i4i for future use - they could probably buy the entire company with loose change from Bill Gates' sofa - but that's beside the point. The truth of the matter is that i4i didn't actually invent XML, XML is a joint effort by half a dozen companies including Microsoft (but not including i4i). All i4i did was patent a way of using XML which was pretty obvious to begin with and, as Microsoft and others have argued, the whole point of XML in the first place.

This is just the latest in a long string of "spit on the cake" patent suits. If you're first to patent an idea, then our stupid patent laws say you own that idea in near perpetuity whether or not you actually put the patent into practice. You could go out tomorrow and patent a general flying car concept, then sue the pants of whatever company finally makes it to market with the first working prototype.

Others would argue that i4i didn't invent anything at all, that you can't patent an application of a product. You can't build a dinosaur out of your castle Lego set and claim that you own the right to all Lego dinosaurs.

Right now Apple is being sued by a company that claims it invented the iPhone and by another company that says they invented the touchpad. Neither company suing Apple has produced anything like a working prototype, but instead filed general patents with rough sketches of what a device might look like.

While all of these patent lawsuits should get laughed out of court, the courts seem to find in favour a lot of the time, which is extremely dangerous in my mind. All you need to do is spit on an idea and it becomes yours forever, whether or not you were the first person to think of it or even have the technological know-how or resources to build a working prototype.

And while you could say "big deal, Apple and Microsoft have deep pockets," it's important to remember that everything in their pockets comes from our pockets. Patent lawsuits infringe on our wallets when companies look for ways to recover their legal costs, and can even stifle innovation as patent holders sit on ideas they have no ability to develop but are still looking to profit from.

In my opinion there should be a standing patent on ideas that last for one year only, after which point a company should be able to produce a working prototype of the software or object they patented. If they can't produce a working prototype then their patent should be null and void.

Anyone can have an idea and these days it's entirely conceivable that more than one person can have the same idea. After all, most patents are logical and follow the progression of technology and science, so why does it matter who calls "firsties," or manages to get their paperwork filed with the patent office first?

Google Voice is the bomb

If you want your mind blown, take a trip to www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html#. While there are still some huge questions about how it will work in Canada vis-à-vis long distance calls, Google has found a way to replace all of your phone numbers with one single Google phone number that can be directed to some or all of your phones, screen calls according to your preferences, and even be used to listen to voicemails online.

You can even get those voicemails converted to text, which is useful for people who are looking for a better way to log or record phone messages as well as for people who are hard of hearing. You can even access your voicemails as text e-mails from your portable device, allowing you to check for messages in the middle of meetings or another environment where it's not cool to pull out your phone. No more scrambling for pens to write down phone numbers.

It's hard to imagine where Google is going with all of this, but if it doesn't cost extra to call - e.g. I can get a Google number for my area code - then I'm all over it. The problem is that the beta of Google Voice is available by invite only - anyone want to invite me?