Ridiculous Patent: Paying Programmers

A company called OpenLogic has come up with an innovative way to provide expert-level technical support for open source products, while also funding developers of those projects: pay participating developers for support activities. Unfortunately, IBM patented a very similar idea in 2003.

(Note of interest: IBM has agreed to be the guinea pig for the peer-review patent pilot program. No word on whether or not they are hoping to have more of their embarassing patent applications rejected. Either way, they get points for trying to help improve the process.)