patents

I have mixed feelings about software patents. Some patents are ridiculous, giving too broad coverage and/or for being obvious and/or for having prior art. I also dislike IP companies who simply create and buy patents not to use, but to block and sue others. And possibly patents should be used to block larger companies but not small startups? I'm not sure how I feel about hardware vs. software patents. Some people think hardware patents are ok but software patents should not exist, but that doesn't make sense to me.

I think that patents other than the above are useful to identify the original inventors and to protect inventors.

Here are the patents I have gotten over the years:

• Active documents, Interleaf (need to find ref)
• Vendor comparison, advertising, switching, Intuit
• Automated retrieval, evaluation, and presentation of context-sensitive user support, Intuit
• Individualized marketing to improve capacity utilization, Kayak
• Sharing or collaboration of search results in a travel search engine, Kayak
• Multi-phase search and presentation for vertical search websites, Kayak
• Flight caching methods and apparatus, Kayak
• Travel exploration methods and apparatus, Kayak
• Email-based customer support management system, Kayak