Microsoft Wants Your Body

Here's another unusual tidbit from the Guardian. Apparently Microsoft has been granted a patent to use the human body as a computer network:

Call it the ultimate wireless network. From the ends of your fingers to the tips of your toes, the human body is a moving, throbbing collection of tubes and tunnels, filled with salty water and all capable of transmitting the lifeblood of the 21st century: information.

In what may seem a move too far to some, the computer software giant Microsoft has been granted exclusive rights to this ability of the body to act as a computer network. Two weeks ago the company was awarded US Patent 6,754,472, which bears the title: Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body. (click here for the full article)

Let's avoid the sci-fi fascination with the idea of using your body to power and operate a computer and related devices. What I want to know is why on Earth would Microsoft be granted so vague a patent, and one that utilizes the human body. We're not talking about a drug, or a well designed widget. We're talking about something all of us have, a body.

Legalistic spin and byzantine arguments may come up with a tissue of justifications for a patent like this, but do the people who grant these things have any common sense? Allowing a giant corporation to corner the market on something for which no product, market or even any real application exists, will only serve to close off research and innovation.

More importantly we're talking about the human body. Unlike a brand of car or toothpaste, you can't simply switch to a different model. What if I don't like Microsoft's future human body network, because its implementation, like much of Microsoft's software today, is shoddy, cumbersome and prone to failure? Will all companies have to pay a tithe to Microsoft, because they managed to convince some rubber-stamping patent office fools that a particular application of the human body should be Microsoft's corporate property? How about using the human body to play basketball, or wear clothes; are those applications perhaps not novel enough or will we see patents on other kinds of behaviour as well?