bleeding obvious—preventing obvious patents

A new website called Bleeding Obvious allows people to post the most obvious ideas they can think of—not because it makes interesting reading, but because companies file patents on supposed inventions that should never be granted. Exhibits A and B: Microsoft's attempt to patent the double click, and BT's attempt to patent the idea of links between webpages.

At best these patent applications add to the backlog of the already-clogged patent system. At worst, if the patents get granted, they could be used to extract money from people who were happily going along, doing an obvious thing, without suspecting they might have to pay someone to keep doing it.

From the New Scientist technology blog