The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has issued a list of the 10 patents it considers most dangerous to the continuing freedom of use of the Internet and related software.
The nonprofit consumer organization is including these patents under its Patent-Busting project which began late last week.
The EFF claims that these patents represent the worst cases where patents that have been issued are clearly too broad, ignore the existence of prior art or are so obvious as to be too trivial for patenting.
Patents identified by the EFF for challenge include:
“What makes these patents among the worst of the bunch .. (is) .. the fact that their owners are threatening and filing suits against small businesses, individuals and nonprofits, not to mention the threats to free expression and innovation that each of them pose,” the EFF said on its Web site.
The EFF says the harm these patents cause the public is “profound”, as with the rise of the Internet, patents do not just target rival companies, but the “vast number of small business, nonprofit, and individual users each of whom has adopted and built upon these resources as part of their daily interaction with computers and the online world.”