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I know there are a lot of strange and bogus software patents out there today, for instance if i remember correctly Microsoft owns a patent for browser plugins (which basically would mean Adobe Flash infriges this patent), another one off the top of my head was relating to drawing regions on a display device, which could apply to any modern GUI.

I'm trying to compile down the most interesting and strange software patents out there that are still valid today, and see what prior art there is to them, so i would ask of you to post any software patent that is broad, ambiguous or has known prior art, or just any software patent in general, most likely it has prior art.

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  • Most big companies have cross-licensing deals with other large companies, so it's highly unlikely that Adobe is infringing at all on Microsoft's patents. Just for the record.
    – Matthew Haugen
    Commented Jul 11, 2014 at 21:31

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While many "ambiguous software patents" may still be technically valid, the Supreme Court's Alice Corp. decision creates a pretty clear way to challenge them. Basically, the court has interpreted "section 101" to limit the categories of things that can be patented. A lot of software patents that have been criticised are in the form of "here is something well known, but let's do it on a computer". Those are probably in trouble after Alice. My thinking is that they would probably have been in trouble because of obviousness too, but that isn't how the Supreme Court approached them.

If you search Google for "section 101 patent invalidated", you'll probably find a bunch of examples of the kinds of patent you are looking for -- except that they will all have been invalidated. Patently-O also sometimes links to 101 decisions -- http://patentlyo.com/patent/2014/09/section-decisions-invalid.html

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