A company in Belgium has a patent-pending system (“SMS2mail”) whereby you can text a word to a free short code and get back more information by email to the address of your choice. So where’s the invention, exactly? ;-)
For further details see this article: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25732

Given the current fuss around Linus and the Linux trademark, I should perhaps clarify that I think intellectual property (IP) is important. Basic copyright and trademarks make sense. Patents also, they give an inventor some time to market their creation.
It just goes horribly wrong with software patents. See my recent post for an idea about where the line can be drawn effectively.