bt continues on it’s ridiculous idea of extracting a license fee from every hyperlink. the article contains this statement from the patent office:

it seems ludicrous that a patent for one technology can cover another but patents are anything but precise and are meant to cover things that aren’t yet inventedso basically the patent office are saying that their job is ludicrous? i agree with that much at least.

in another ludicrous move the charity actionaid is trying to patent the ready salted chip. in this case however the patent application is designed to show up how silly the whole thing is. it’s part of a campaign against multi-nationals who do this kind of thing with agricultural patents in what actionaid calls bio-piracy.