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Greg Aharonian’s Internet Patent News Service has just announced its
unofficial awards for the worst software patents issued in 1998. Aharonian lists
20 unjustified monopolies granted by the US Patent Office on fixes for the
millennium bug and accuses the official examiners of “gross failure” in not
warning the public of prior publications that could invalidate the patents. The
USPO missed a 1984 article in Computer World, another published by IBM’s
Systems Journal in 1986 and a third in IBM’s Technical Disclosure
Bulletin in 1991. These suggested date formats to avoid year 2000 roll-over
problems, which inventors are patenting as new.