We wish we could catalog them all, but with tens of thousands of low-quality software patents issuing every year, we don’t have the time or resources to undertake that task.

But in an effort to highlight the problem of stupid patents, we’re introducing a new blog series, Stupid Patent of the Month, featuring spectacularly dumb patents that have been recently issued or asserted.

Their first example:

U.S. Patent No. 8,762,173, titled “Method and Apparatus for Indirect Medical Consultation.”
...
    a.    take a telephone call from patient
    b.    record patient info in a patient file
    c.    send patient information to a doctor, ask the doctor if she wants to talk to the patient
    d.    call the patient back and transfer the call to the doctor
    e.    record the call
    f.     add the recorded call to the patient file and send to doctor
    g.    do steps a. – f. with a computer.
...
What we found was that the original claim 1 (which was similar but not identical to the claim that eventually was patented) had not claimed a computer.
The examiner correctly issued a rejection, saying the claim was abstract and thus wasn’t something that could be patented. In response, the applicant added element (g) (“providing a computer, the computer performing steps “a” through “f””). And the rejection went away.

Somehow, something that wasn’t patentable became patentable just by saying “do it with a computer."

:-\

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from aGupieWare Blog

IIRC there used to be something called a "job object" where you could do something similar.

-40hz (August 09, 2014, 03:44 PM)

There still is:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684161%28VS.85%29.aspx

A job object allows groups of processes to be managed as a unit. Job objects are namable, securable, sharable objects that control attributes of the processes associated with them. Operations performed on a job object affect all processes associated with the job object. Examples include enforcing limits such as working set size and process priority or terminating all processes associated with a job.

No idea where to go from there, but there's example code from the links at that page.

It's almost like that same short-sighted venture capital goal of an early "cash-out" has come to the art and creative world. That mindset has hurt business. Because there's no longer a long-term goal to actually build sustainable business. Just to get them to where they can be sold. Then, take the money and move on.

-40hz (August 10, 2014, 11:48 AM)

AHA!  So that's why there have been so many web services that only existed to irritate their competition into buying them out, while short-selling their customers/users in the interim. 
>:( >:( >:(