[Freeswitch-users] The brilliance of hyper-links

[Steve Underwood]

I would like to strongly object to a story posted on the front page at 
www.freeswitch.org, about patent reexamination. Its the kind of thing 
that gets proponents of patent reform a bad name. It says "Did you know 
that someone actually got a patent on the oh-so-clever concept of the 
hyperlink 
<http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,873,662.PN.&OS=PN/4,873,662&RS=PN/4,873,662>? 
Enough said.". If you can't see the brilliance of the hyperlink you must 
be a fool. When Doug Engelbart demostrated that concept in 1968 it was 
so brilliant it went over the heads of most of the audience, some of 
them making dumb remarks that entirely missed the point. That's pretty 
much conclusive proof that it was not something obvious to practitioners 
in the art.

The patent on hyperlinks was not bad because the idea was obvious. It 
was bad because it was applied for in 1980, 12 years after the concept 
was demonstrated. Luckily, video exists of the 1968 demo, and the patent 
was shot down.

If you can't get your act together about where real innovation lies, 
just shut up. It just makes arguing a meaningful case for a better 
patent system hard for the rest of us.

Steve