Wired News: Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft? Eager to allay fears about the scope of Palladium, Biddle insisted that the impetus behind Palladium was solely to secure digital entertainment content and that he knew of no way that it could be used for the enforcement of software licensing. This assurance was made while he spoke on a panel at the USENIX Symposium.
Skeptical that this was actually the case, fellow panelist Lucky Green quickly filed two patents soon after the conference. The patents described methods for using the Palladium infrastructure to assist in the enforcement of software licensing. Green has a third patent application on the way.
The twist is that Green has no intention of implementing these techniques himself -- and in an interview with Wired News, declared his intention to "aggressively enforce his patents," if granted, to prevent anyone else from doing so.
Green has not disclosed the specifics of his patents. However, even without those details, Dan Burk, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Law, says it is perfectly legal to patent any kind of automated technique, such as Amazon's One-Click patent and Priceline's reverse auction patent. Additionally, he says, "Improvements on known technologies are patentable."