Patent Office finds voice, calls for software patent sanity

The US Patent and Trademark Office is a convenient whipping boy for problems with the patent system. The USPTO famously approved the junk patents at the heart of the legal battle between Research in Motion and a patent-trolling firm called NTP. The USPTO belatedly recognized its mistake and began invalidating the patents, but didn’t finish the job in time to save RIM from being forced to pay $612.5 million to avoid having its whole BlackBerry network shut down.