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                               Patent nonsense

> In fact, nine of the 16 claims on Sorensen's patent relate to the waffling.
> What requires so much elaboration? "Spacing. Depth. All sorts of things,"
> Sorensen offers, then fesses up. “Basically the attorneys write a bunch of
> b.s. and hope they bore the patent examiner to death and he'll approve it.”
>

Fighting off Starbucks [1]

Mark [2] filed a patent while working for a previous company. I saw the
original idea, and he read me the original patent before being submitted to
the patent board at the previous company. He also read me the patent after it
came back from the patent board and I swear, I wouldn't have recognized it at
all. Mark barely recognized it. The lawyers made all sorts of extra claims
because of the parts involved. They removed some claims because of the parts
involved.

I think the lawyers basically made stuff up and turned it into Legalese™ in
order to keep their jobs.

[1] http://netbusiness.netscape.com/fsb_nb/features/sp_f_102601
[2] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/

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