According to Groklaw, the EU has issued a patent on yellow pages, which you might have seen if you live in America.  Apparently in the EU it’s a novel invention that no one has seen before:

From Groklaw:

An EU patent on a kind of yellow pages phone book?
[PJ: You laugh. But Compro has evidently received a notice from the patent holder that it wants some money for infringing the patent. The article is in Swedish, but a computer translator does an interesting job of one paragraph: “Letter arrived via juristbyrån Iaru, Institute for affärsjuridisk guidance in Uppsala , from Gislavedsföretaget Jesearch as occupy patent. Letter is dated the 28 Jun. – When self was reading letter first gangway stayed self both excitement and afraid and wonder if wes really done somewhat dumt. When self sedan was reading letter several gangway was thinking self that ”det here is nots really sensible , says Erik Bergdorf vd on Compro.”

You said it. Here’s a description of the patent. Read it and weep and then ask yourself, why was this patent approved?:

Summary of the Invention

The objects described above are achieved by an information system according to the appended patent claims. In essence, the invention may be described in simplified terms as a telephone or address register known per se being integrated with a product register known per se for forming a new kind of database, which also contains link information for establishing contact with information sources on the Internet. – EU Patent Office

This is just another example of patents being used to literally steal ideas that were free and then force people to pay for doing things that they used to do for free.

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