Facebook recently received a patent for “gift-giving”. This must be a red flag for many people as to the direction we are heading with our patent system. There are tons of problems with the system, but this recent development represents something much more fundamental: we are entering an age where patents are being granted not on technology, but on human action.
True, there is technology behind the ability to give a digital gift, but what we need to recognize is that we are entering a time where basic human incentives and actions are no longer translated but transferred into the digital world. Technology is no longer the mechanism, it is the platform. These “action patents” are giving companies the rights to human action in the digital world, which is scary to think about.
