Well they fucking did it!
No more than 18 hours after reading that Interwoven, some gay web content company, had patented a very, very, very popular programmers tool (that was free and open), Amazon is rewarded a patent for the “message board”. The patent, which is described here, pretty damn much describes a message board, blog, or bbs.
So…. What the hell does this mean? When will the USPTO ever stop granting patents for things as intangible as these? Ohhh, i see sir, YOUR web application allows users to be notified that there was a reply to their post. Here you go, heres your patent on that ingenious and NEVER used before idea.
The scariest part about all of this is that yesterday, while reading about Interwoven patenting CVS, i made a joke to my buddy about patenting the message board. i guess someone else already beat me to it. And it sure wasn't Amazon.