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If you’re like at least a quarter of the people who read my original article, “Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?” a few days ago, you probably read the title of this post as “Killing parents part 2” or “Killing patients part 2.” I have to wonder how many people originally clicked it simply for that reason.

This is but one of the many responses I got, however. Overwhelmingly, people who responded to the article were in favor of at least reforming software patents, and many favored getting rid of software patents altogether. I expected at least a few responses to my challenge, but so far the only patent posted is one that hasn’t yet been granted, and I suspect won’t be.

This may be sampling bias, as there are relatively few people producing software patents, and even fewer who actually want to be. Most people don’t have any real motivation to go find them, unless they want to win the prize of forcing me to write a post about how great patents are. Regardless, the fact that not a single one of the nearly 40 thousand people (almost all software developers, and smartasses too, if I had to guess) who saw this article pointed to one good patent is fairly telling, at least to me.

Several people were skeptical that submitting prior art to Ask Patents would have any effect at all. Well, while it isn’t a landslide victory for patent reformers, there’s a tag for rejected patents that suggests that 24 patents have been denied so far, with several drawing at least partially on answers from Ask Patents. Here‘s one example from 2010:

A computerized method of analyzing weather data to improve the selection of contextually relevant communication, the method comprising:
 1. Automatically receiving geolocation information of a viewer's location;
 2. Receiving weather data relevant to the viewer's location;
 3. Analyzing the weather data to identify a weather condition;
 4. Accessing a database containing multiple available advertisements assigned to weather conditions; and
 5. Selecting a communication associated with the identified weather condition based on a viewer's preference.

In English? Sending ads based on the weather. Sounds boring. Also sounds an awful lot like Weatherbug, an application which has been around since at least 2000, and about a million other weather sites. And, thankfully, the patent office agreed.

24 patents doesn’t sound like a lot, but that represents tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars likely wasted by these companies. That makes me happy!  Why? Because the biggest thing I want out of all this is for companies to stop treating patents as weapons to use against competitors, and status symbols for managers with no direct involvement.

Right now, it’s a gamble, not dissimilar to the VC industry: Apply for a patent and spend a little money upfront, for the potential to make a boatload down the road. It’s a moonshot, but every once in a while they hit the jackpot. The problem is that money is made via dubiously ethical behavior like waiting for lots of people to infringe and then suing when they get successful, instead of actually creating value. At least their lawyers make a lot of money. Direct costs to U.S. businesses have been estimated at $29 billion a year, indirect costs as much as $83. This is grade-A sleezeball material.

So, will my humble daily search for prior art on relatively few patents help? Maybe, maybe not.

Either way, I’d rather do something than nothing.

In the spirit of April Fool’s, but also because I think it might actually make me more productive, I’ve made a Google Chrome extension to slow down Facebook’s timeline feature.

Long for the days of 56k? All this high-speed gigaboot Internets nonsense got you frazzled? Just install Slowpoke in Chrome by going to “chrome://extensions/” and dragging the .crx file onto the page. Instantly, your Facebook addiction will be both sated and abated.

You’re welcome.

(Get it here)

As some of you may know, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein from California has introduced a bill called the Fisa Improvements Act that she is portraying as a reasonable reform of mass government surveillance. I’ve been skeptical from the beginning, reading headlines like “Stop the NSA ‘Fake Fix’ Bill” from EFF and others. I’ve read through some of the bill, but here’s a list of reasons why this bill should be dumped that don’t even require reading it.

The author of the Patriot Act is sponsoring a more reasonable bill

To my surprise, one author of the USA Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, is proposing a competing bill with the support of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, called the USA Freedom Act  (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act). Here’s a summary of what the bill would bring about, including the elimination of the meta-data collection programs often mentioned in the revelations of Edward Snowden this summer, and a closing of the “backdoor” that allowed the NSA to search for data about Americans in collected data that was obtained with non-individualized warrants.

Silicon Valley is revolting in Feinstein’s backyard

Several California tech giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, and others have banded together to call for a reform to government surveillance initiatives to restore trust in the Internet. Crucially, they argue against the provisions in Feinstein’s bill that would continue to allow the meta-data collection programs, in favor of the USA Freedom Act mentioned above. If Feinstein is facing a revolt from the very California companies that she’s supposed to represent, there’s clearly something wrong.

Her donors list shows where her loyalties lie

According to Open Secrets, her biggest donors for the 2009-2014 election cycle include General Atomics, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, and Northrop Grumman, all of which involved in defense contracting. I wouldn’t call it a stretch to say she’s pretty invested in the defense industry, which happens to be the same defense industry the NSA contracts all this mass surveillance work to.

For these reasons, I urge you to write to your Senators to oppose this bill.

Welcome to my blog! I’ll be posting random musings about technology, privacy, entrepreneurship, politics, college, and everything else here. I’m always looking for interesting people with interesting ideas, so get in touch with me if you think you’d make a good fit as a contributor.