Z:gnu-www-ja-danger-of-software-patents--7dc508-You see, if somebody has made/en

You see, if somebody has made a machine that does something once, and somebody else designs a machine that will do the same thing, but N times, for us that's a for-loop, but for the Patent Office that's an invention. If there are machines that can do A, and there are machines that can do B, and somebody designs a machine that can do A or B, for us that's an if-then-else statement, but for the Patent Office that's an invention. So they have very low standards, and they follow those standards; and the result is patents that look absurd and trivial to us. Whether they're legally valid I can't say. But every programmer who sees them laughs.