Patenting Language

September 6, 2006 10:22 AM by Stephan Kinsella (Archive)

It never ends. Here's an effort by Microsoft to patent a "Method and system for selecting and conjugating a verb." The first claim reads:

1. A method in a computer system for conjugating verbs in a target language, the method comprising: receiving a verb in a base language; identifying verb forms in the target language using a translation of the received verb from the base language to the target language; and displaying the identified verb forms in the target language.