Quoting Oliver Mason <O.Mason@bham.ac.uk>:
> Surely it must cost money to apply for patents, and this one should
> never be granted, so it'd just be a waste of time and money.
"Should never be granted" doesn't mean "will never be granted". It is notorious that at
present the US patent system is so overloaded that it is simply unable to do the checks
it should and is frequently granting patents for processes that have been in routine use
for years or decades. To a large company, it is well worth the cost of gaining as many
patents as it can for use in competitive tussles with other companies.
Geoffrey Sampson
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