About as special as an arrow on the screen that points towards your destination (Sega, Crazy Taxi ). Not saying that’s particularly special either. The US Patent Office has allowed for some pretty broad-reaching patents, which fuels our patent-troll problem, as well as giving large companies legal grounds to interfere with each other’s innovation.

IP law has become so far removed from serving its original intent (according to the Constitution of the United States) we’d be bette4 off with no IP protections rather than the licensing system we have. Not that anyone is near doing something to fix it, or unfuck the courts that are unable to rule consistently about it.