Evil Home Stereo

Wow, finally some news which bothered me enough to make me post a new blog entry. No, not the fact that tomorrow is my birthay and I totally forgot about it ;~) It’s about that (German) article on the Heise newsticker from yesterday.

It reports that Siemens applied for about 5,000 patents this year, 100 more than last year. That’s right, five thousand. What the hell are they patenting there? You can’t tell me that people are innovative enough to invent 5,000 new things a year. People of only one company.

Granted, it’s the the company with the most applications in Germany (and second in Europe after Philips). But still, how many of those applications must be for stuff which is quite trivial? Any how many might be software patents?

No wonder patent offices grant the most trivial stuff if they get flooded with that mass of patent applications per year.