I happen to be a lawyer and one of the most infuriating aspects of the law, in my opinion, is some of the truly laughable “business method” patents that businesses are able to obtain and then wield as a +50 Sword of Extortion against some other company with Big Pockets that happens to wander into their trap.

For example, read this and try not to choke:

Two companies are taking social networking heavyweight Facebook to court over claims that Facebook’s website infringes on patents related to personal pages and establishing human relationships. Tele-Publishing Inc, a Boston-based company known for providing personals services to newspapers since the 1980s, is accusing Facebook of violating its patent on “providing a personal page.” Meanwhile, Japan-based Mekiki Co Ltd is suing Facebook for infringing on three of its US patents for a “human relationships registering system.”

Tele-Publishing Inc was awarded in 2001 US Patent #6,253,216, “Method and Apparatus For Providing a Personal Page.” The patent abstract is generic enough that it honestly could apply to any social networking service or other website that allows the creation of a profile page. The main aspect of this patent that Facebook may be running afoul of is that it covers a method of selectively controlling who can and cannot view a particular person’s information. Facebook’s privacy settings include fairly fine-grained control over who can see what part of your Facebook profile, including contact information, wall posts, photos, and more. Tele-Publishing uses the technology ostensibly to allow users of its online dating and personals sites to limit access to personal information.

Yes, you read that right. Some company with a creative patent lawyer was able to get a patent on the concept of selectively restricting who could see certain information on a person’s profile page.

Shit like this just makes me sick. It’s one of the big reasons why I used to fancy myself something of a conservative/libertarian, because one of the main problems with government is that once government starts monkeying around with things (by, in this case, creating a completely dubious class of patents called “business method” patents), all-too-often whole industries spring up around the governmental edifice with the express purpose of taking advantage of the legal and regulatory structure that’s been created (see, e.g., patent trolls, ethanol subsidies, rural telecom subsidies, etc., etc.).

But, like with most everything else that pisses me off, nothing will ever be done about it and the slow train of imperial decline will chug, chug, chug toward the ravine…