Stupid Patent of the Month: A Patent on Following Privacy Laws What if we allowed some people to patent the law and then demand money from the rest of us just for following it? As anyone with a basic understanding of democratic principles can see, that is a terrible idea. In a democracy, elected representatives write laws that apply to everyone, ideally, based on the public interest. We shouldn’t let private parties “own” legal principles or use technical jargon to re-cast those principles as “inventions.” But that’s exactly what the U.S. Patent Office has allowed two inventors, Nicholas Hall and Steven Eakin, to do. Last September, the government proclaimed that Hall and Eakin are the inventors of “Methods and Systems for User Opt-In to Data Privacy Agreements,” U.S. Patent No. 10,075,451 . The owner of this patent, a company called “Veripath,” is already filing lawsuits against companies that make privacy compliance software. With Congress and many states actively e...