Something Way Out of Whack (and I Just Patented Whack)
The way you wear your hat
The way you sip your tea
The memory of all that
No, no they can’t take that away from me
-George and Ira Gershwin
Unless of course George and Ira's lyrics are made meaningless in a patents dispute and the particular 'way you wear your hat' has been secured, nailed-down and salted away to lie in wait until you walk out the door.
Okay, so I exaggerate, but not by much. A how-you-wear-your-hat patent isn’t all that far from what we euphemistically call a ‘business-method’ patent. Business method? You mean like knocking on doors or soliciting on the phone? C’mon. Not funny.
Maybe not all that funny, but true enough to put a chill in the air of commerce and raise goose-bumps of avarice among the collectors of such arcane dreck. Dreck, no doubt (with appropriate disclaimers and apologies to Messrs Gershwin), but protectable and (sometimes immensely) profitable dreck.
There are no concrete definitions of patentable business-methods, but that didn’t stop U.S. Patent No…