The intellectual property farce goes on. Charge Notification Services Corporation is suing credit card company Visa for patent infringement when it uses SMS (short message service) to inform card holders that their cards have just been used link here.

Knowing that, I'm looking forward to patenting the use of mail, email, and the telephone to do so. The profit in this must be immense. Oh, obviousness? Is that a problem?

This sort of legal action is making a joke out of the system of granting patents and of the courts in enforcing them. Have the bureaucrats, lawyers and judges no shame or respect for their profession?

I well understand the incredulity some have expressed concerning this patent, but I find it troubling that persons are "blasting" it and using it as an example of what is wrong with the patent system without having taken the time to actually read the specification, the prior art cited, the claims, and the file wrapper before "blasting" it. This in my view is intellectually dishonest because opinions such as this are being made without a factual predicate.

Maybe it deserves to the "blasted", but doing do without having salient facts at hand eviscerates such opinions.

Patents are what's wrong with the patent system.

What I find intellectually reckless if not dishonest is that by identifying 'bad patents' one encourages people to infer that there can be good patents, indeed that most patents are good but for a few bad apples that give patents a bad name.

"We just need to improve the quality and the patent system is reformed. QED: Patents are good."

No. Patents are bad, because they suspend the people's natural right to liberty in order to reward and commercially privilege favoured industrialists with monopolies.

You might as well have a handicapping lucky dip for competitors at the Olympics - "Whatever handicap you pick will be inflicted upon all but yourself - you will thus more easily outrun the competition!" Duh? Why not scrap the arbitrary handicap and let everyone compete to the best of their natural ability?