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British inventor seeks to take $18bn bite out of Apple in bitter patent war
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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You’re not missing anything. There was a period of time where a lot of patents were granted for “basic idea, but on a computer!” The USPTO stopped doing it and these patents, which should have never been issued, have been systematically invalidated, including most of this guy’s. He’s a classic patent troll suing over patents that were then invalidated.
One of the criteria for whether a patent is valid or not is that it is “non-obvious.” I remember reading about a patent troll who held a patent on a “system for distributing software updates over a computer network.” Which is, forgive the pun, a patently obvious use for a computer network.
People had been talking about buying music and videos online for at least a decade before this guy filed his patents. IANAL (or an engineer) but nothing in the patents seems more detailed than “sell music online, accept money for it, make sure people don’t copy it.” Which boils down to “buy music, but on the computer!” to borrow your phrasing.