This is fantastic news. Those patents were ridiculous.
Part of my day job is figuring out how to go about automating or "electronifying" processes relating to financial trading and risk management. In other words, I look at things that people currently do manually (or decide in their heads) and I figure out how it can be codified into language or an algorithm that a developer can turn into code.
Patents like this (and plenty of similar patents that have been granted[1]) effectively try to claim ownership over the concept of automating what is usually (but not always) a pre-existing business process, using a computer. That's not invention. It's problem-solving. And it's not like the person filing the patent is even solving the problem - they're just patenting the concept of a solution to that problem.
In effect, they're trying to patent my work output. It's like someone filed a patent ten years ago on "Methods and apparatus relating to the matching of people seeking temporary accomodation and householders who are willing to rent out their spare rooms", without ever actually having built implemented it, then popped up when Airbnb came along, saying "Hey, we have a patent on that! Pay up!"
Yeah, it's absurd. Somehow, patent applicants have been able to have their cake and eat it - they've been able to get away without having to describe how to actually solve the problem because it's obvious to someone skilled in the art, but yet still get a patent for it because at the same time it's supposedly not obvious to those skilled in the art.
Part of my day job is figuring out how to go about automating or "electronifying" processes relating to financial trading and risk management. In other words, I look at things that people currently do manually (or decide in their heads) and I figure out how it can be codified into language or an algorithm that a developer can turn into code.
Patents like this (and plenty of similar patents that have been granted[1]) effectively try to claim ownership over the concept of automating what is usually (but not always) a pre-existing business process, using a computer. That's not invention. It's problem-solving. And it's not like the person filing the patent is even solving the problem - they're just patenting the concept of a solution to that problem.
In effect, they're trying to patent my work output. It's like someone filed a patent ten years ago on "Methods and apparatus relating to the matching of people seeking temporary accomodation and householders who are willing to rent out their spare rooms", without ever actually having built implemented it, then popped up when Airbnb came along, saying "Hey, we have a patent on that! Pay up!"
Good fucking riddance.
[1] For examples, see http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/goldman-sachs-co/