The New York Times reports today that tax strategies can be patented, that forty nine have been granted, and that eighty one are pending. This absurdity results from a case in which the court ruled that tax avoidance strategies are a business method and under a 1998 federal appeals court ruling, business methods can be patented. This has the potential for all kinds of mischief, as the article points out. Someone wishing to use a strategy will now have to search whether it is patented, and such a search could prove time consuming and expensive. If the strategy has been patented, a new user will have to seek a license. Patent trolls will have a field day with this one. (I am unable to provide a link, as the New York Times now insists that I must subscribe to its on-line access, TimesSelect, in addition to being a hard-copy subscriber, and I refuse to pay twice for the same product.)

I believe that if you are a hard-copy subscriber to the NYT, you get TimesSelect for free.

http://www.nytimes.com/products/timesselect/overview.html

This is totally absurd. So what happens when a corporation patents ALL of the possible tax strategies? Will they then be able to charge EVERYONE a fee for using ANY of their strategies?! Excuse me but something is completely and totally wrong with this picture. If the patent office can not be responsible enough to see this for themselves without help from me or the public at large then people there very very badly need to be FIRED and REPLACED with people who have a synaps firing in their heads.

Another related patent absurdity has to do with the patenting of Life.

DNA Patents Create Monopolies on Living Organisms

The patent office appears to be out of control. Corporations are like children - they will do exactly what they can barely get away with. The patent office appears to be acting like a parent who can't help but spoil their children. This will result in greater and greater abuses by Corporations over time. Do we really want that?

In the end will we wind up with having to pay a fee to do the "Process of Breathing", and another one for "the Process of beating the heart", and another to do ANY sort of task that requires a "strategy"? Because that is the direction this heading. Personally if it goes to that then there really is going to be "Hell to Pay".