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Six major Internet companies have been sued for using computers to process their e-mail.

AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo stand accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Texas-based Polaris IP.

Attorneys representing Polaris IP filed a claim of patent infringement on Monday in U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas.

http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802746

There are several things wrong with this.

1) The patent has been granted for a non-invention. Software has been sending email for 25 years. This "invention" is a little like finding a newly built road and being granted a patent for the idea of driving a car on it.

2) The company holding the rights to this "idea", Polaris IP, creates no product. It exists solely for the purpose of filing, and profiting from, exactly these sorts of legal actions. Indeed as the piece above notes:

"Crouch pointed out that the message routing patent at issue has been involved in litigation many times. "There are no published opinions associated with these cases and they have all been settled," he said.

"Polaris IP, Crouch observed, "appears to be part of a web of IP-related companies associated with attorney David Pridham." These companies include Orion IP, Constellation IP, IP Navigation Group, Cushion Technologies, CT IP Holdings, Triton, Circinus IP, and Firepond."

Someone needs to fight this suit and get this (and many, many other) pointless patents invalidated. But this is not easy. It requires a judge with either some knowledge of technology, or the willingness to learn a little. And it would not require learning very much. By and large judges are intelligent people, and these issues are obvious. It could be done.

A third point is the harm these legal actions do to technological progress. The companies that exist to file such actions create no product. They do not use the "technologies" they claim to own as a business vehicle, aside from the legal action. At worst they may prevent technology from serving consumers. At best they drain off resources by increasing the cost, not just of actual innovation, but of the basic operation of genuine companies.

More worrisome yet are threats from companies like Microsoft to begin using these tactics in areas where its products can not compete on their merits. Fortunately, these patents are rediculous on the face of them and the technology community is fully aware of this. Reform should be just a matter of time.