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Now IBM Wants To Patent Responding To Chaos
from the no-one-but-IBM-can-do-that... dept
theodp writes "Thanks to IBM, the next time a crisis of 9/11 or Katrina magnitude strikes, you may have to worry about patent infringement. Just-published USPTO documents reveal that Big Blue has a patent application for Optimizing the Selection, Verification, and Deployment of Expert Resources in a Time of Chaos, which covers responding to 'episodes of profound chaos during hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, solar flares, flooding, terrorism, war, and pandemics to name a few.' If anyone from Homeland Security is reading, it's apparently this easy." Yes, this is actually a patent application for a computerized process (not, as theodp suggests, just for responding), but it still seems rather bizarre that you would patent such a thing. Does one firm really deserve to have a monopoly on a computerized system for responding to a chaotic event?
