StoutFiles - 11:47 pm on Mar 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

You're right, the growth of the Internet is dead because the precedent may have been set to make it so you can't copy someone else's method of doing things and have to think of a different idea someone is not already using or a different method of doing what they are if you want to copy it.

Directly copying is one thing. Witnessing something and then building it myself is completely different...it's not going to come out exactly the same. And because this is web related, it's not like the important server-side code is even copyable. I'm surprised CSS designs aren't being copyrighted since it IS copyable and is more original then the news feed.

Are you saying you'd be perfectly happy if one day a feature on your site was patented by a major company and then they contact you saying "Yeah...this is our idea now. Remove our idea from your site." You'd be ok with this? I'm just saying that the patent could lead to more dumb patents and more restrictions on what people can do.