Facebook, Google, Zynga Ask Courts To Reject Patents On Abstract Ideas That Plague Tech Innovation

Just because you take an abstract idea and say you do it "on a computer" or "over the Internet" doesn't mean you deserve a patent, according to an amicus brief filed on Friday by Google, Facebook and six other tech companies. It asks the courts to reject lawsuits based on patents for vague concepts instead of specific applications because they rack up costs and retard innovation.