WordLogic Patented the Predictive Interface

Packetl055 writes "Have any of you heard anything about this company, WordLogic, with a soon to be granted/issued patent with 117 claims for predictability software? They recently received a patent approval/allowance letter from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Their patent application was submitted in March 2000. If I read this correctly, any software that gives you any prediction after you type something is infringing on their patent — e.g. vehicle navigation systems, cellular telephones, PDA's, Google with their 'Did You Mean' when using Google for a search, the new Apple I-Phone, Blackberry, Sony Playstation-3, etc., etc. If true, this is going to be huge: lawsuits after lawsuits." Their stock trend over the last few days suggests that somebody was paying attention to the the USPTO news from August 9. WordLogic makes products (assistive input software) and doesn't seem to be merely a patent troll.

Damn it, Thunderbird!!

[Overzeetop (214511)]

Their stock trend over the last few days suggests that somebody was paying attention

I just checked and my damned junk mail filter put that email in the trash!

Hello, incremental search anyone?

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

Gee, this thing has got "prior art" written all over its face.

Re:Hello, incremental search anyone?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I hope they enjoyed the intellisense autocomplete feature in Visual Studio when they developed the software that their patent is based on.

Japanese prior art patents from 1989

[barwasp (1116567)]

Fongboy found their (likely) patent application [espacenet.com]. That paper tells they use dictionaries in predicting input text in various computer devices. Well, I found these two 1989 patents with very relevant summaries.

First patent is using dictionaries in predicting incoming text

1) SYSTEM AND DEVICE FOR PREDICTION OF SUBJECT [espacenet.com] ( JP1029972 )
PURPOSE:To analyze the content of a text based on prediction, by analyzing an inputted text by using the grammatical rule of a targeted language, predicting the subject of the text from a word possible to regulate the subject, and predicting the subject predicted from the largest number of words as the subject of the inputted text. CONSTITUTION:The titled device is provided with a subject dictionary 1 in which the candidate of the subject predicted from each word is registered in every word unit, and a subject indicating word segmentation part 2 which analyzes the inputted text grammatically and extracts the word to become the main constituent of the input text. At a subject selection part 3, the subject dictionary 1 is referred, and when no subject candidate to be predicted exists in every word unit extracted at the subject indicating word segmentation part 2, no operation is performed, and when it exists, it is taken out, and the number of taking out is held at every taken out subject candidate, and when the taking out and the counting of the number of appearance are completed, the subject candidate having the largest number of appearance out of taken out subject candidates is outputted as the subject of the inputted text. In such a way, the subject of a supplied text can be predicted.

The second patent uses previous text inputs in helping to predict the incoming text

2) METHOD AND DEVICE FOR PREDICTING SUBJECT> [espacenet.com] ( JP2280272 )
PURPOSE:To analyze the content of a text based on prediction by holding the set of micro features having the number of times of appearance exceeding a critical value as the present status, and assuming a subject expressed in the partial set of the micro features most neighboring to the above set as the present subject. CONSTITUTION:A recent appearance word meaning storage means 2 stores meaning by the expression of the micro feature of a constant number of words appearing recently, and a critical value filter 3 delivers only the micro feature in which the number of times of appearance of the micro feature existing in the recent appearance word meaning storage means 2 exceeds the critical value to a present status storage means 4. A most neighoring subject selection means 6 compares the set of the micro features held by the present status storage means 4 with the expression of the micro feature corresponding to individual subject in a subject dictionary 5, and outputs the subject having the least common part as the present subject. In such a manner, the content of the text can be analyzed based on the prediction.

I predict WordLogic's patent application is not viable.

Re:Hello, incremental search anyone?

[ajs (35943)]

Don't assume that there's prior art just because the Slashdot summary seems to be similar to things you used in the past. The only measure of valid prior art (other than actually going to court) is when a patent lawyer looks over both the letter of the claims and the claim of prior art. Often, in that light, the prior art turns out to have no relevance.

Patent submitters typically know about the most obvious examples of prior art, so most patents are worded to carefully carve out a niche in which the patent almost, but not quite, describes existing technologies.

Re:Hello, incremental search anyone?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that prior art must be exactly what the patent is claiming, but infringing work just needs to be similar to what is claimed?

Re:Hello, incremental search anyone?

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

Because most patent infringement cases are decided by juries. Prior art claims need to be ruled on by a judge, but 12 people, too stupid to get out of jury duty, get to decide if the infringing work actually infringes on the claims.

Don't you just love our court system here in the U.S.? :D

Re:Hello, incremental search anyone?

[GooberToo (74388)]

but 12 people, too stupid to get out of jury duty,

I always hate it when people use that expression. Another way of interpreting that statement is, hundreds of people too selfish, greedy or stupid to perform their civic DUTY, often prevents the system from working properly. But then these hundreds will go off complain how broken the system is. Its kind of like throwing lit matches around ones home while pointing out how every day items around the house tends to be flamable. So who is really the stupid one?

IMO, there are three serious problems with the current legal system. One, most any moron can be a judge. Judges are not even required to be knowledgable or communicate with a subject matter expert for issues on which they rule. Two, too many laws are writen by lawyers which only benefit lawyers; serving only to generate more billable hours. Three, people try hard to break the legal system by avoiding their civic duty, thereby insuring the "dumb ones", by in large, are on juries. So we have idiot judges ruling on topics well outside of their expertise, often for laws which make no sense, running a trial for jurries too stupid to get out of their duty because the people that should be there lied their way out of it.

Re:

[zeromorph (1009305)]

You are so right.

But the problem actually is that the /.summary contains nearly all the information the press release (it's not an article) contains. If you read it closely it only states that it's in "the predictive input arena" - could be a lot.

The whole thing does not even contain enough information to talk about it on slashdot.

Re:

[Matteo Vescovi (1147215)]

J. Carlberger published a paper titled Design and Implementation of a Probabilistic Word Prediciton Program [psu.edu] in 1997. That should pretty much take care of the prior art argument.

Re:Hello, incremental search anyone?

[5KVGhost (208137)]

Patent submitters typically know about the most obvious examples of prior art, so most patents are worded to carefully carve out a niche in which the patent almost, but not quite, describes existing technologies.

Fine. Then the submitter should almost, but not quite, deserve a patent.

Prior art

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

I remember something like this running on a Kaypro 10 using CPM back in the 80s.

Re:

[drachenstern (160456)]

which begs the question, didn't they merely copyright an inevitable evolution of processing systems?

I have always been led to believe that if there is a natural outgrowth based on logical trends, that you couldn't patent the idea? Like patenting the premise for a machine that can process 4 trillion floating point operations per second.

I predict....

[MarkovianChained (1143957)]

that they wouldn't get anywhere with a lawsuit.

Re:

[linumax (910946)]

But they'll try, and try hard:

"We are very excited about the obvious opportunities that will be open to WordLogic in the near future."
Frank Evanshen, WordLogic's President and CEO.

Yet another reason why software patents are bad

[Scareduck (177470)]

It's just too easy to create infringing code. I don't much like FDR's administration (there's a decent argument [mises.org] that he actually prolonged the Great Depression by his attempt to ram a centralized economy down the country's throat), but one of the good things he did do was to radically cut back the number and scope of patents on the theory that handing out monopolies was a bad idea.

Re:

[sweatyboatman (457800)]

Well, let's see. The story is about a new software patent that appears to place a lot of currently ubiquitous software/devices in violation. The GP's post is about FDR. And it asserts the rather flimsy premise that the New Deal prolonged the Depression. Since FDR and the depression have nothing to do with WorldLogic or their patent, it's hard to imagine why the poster brings up either point.

So I would say that the GP contributes very little of value to the current discussion. On top of that he injects

What about Miss Cleo?

[downix (84795)]

Would she infringe upon their patent? 8)

Re:What about Miss Cleo?

[Eponymous Bastard (1143615)]

They'll probably try to sue her anyway.

The big question is: Will she see it coming?

Microsoft to the Rescue!

[hondo77 (324058)]

Prior art from 1996 [wikipedia.org], anyone. Thank you, Bill! ;-)

Re:

[Speare (84249)]

If I recall, the Microsoft Money product was the first in the Windows realm to do this sort of thing. They dubbed it IntelliSense and more apps gained the feature. It was only a slight improvement on the interfaces given by Un*x apps like Emacs years earlier, in that the user didn't need to "ask" the application to try to complete the string. The app merely made a zero-risk completion on every keystroke (zero risk, because the selected text could be dismissed by simply continuing to type).

Re:

[Creepy (93888)]

I'm pretty sure their European patent (granted in 2004) is used as a basis by the description. That patent # is 1171813 (I got my info off this site [edgar-online.com]

From the description it appears to be the same, at least, and it does pretty much describe a form of autocomplete (when a list of choices is displayed not a single choice). I don't know if it requires some form of activity to show the choices, but this sounds a like pressing cont-D after set filec in the csh (tcsh, zsh and bash use tab completion, but filec is

Does this mean I'll be able to turn it off?

[seebs (15766)]

I spent half an hour once trying to find a way to disable that in NeoOffice, and never succeeded. I hate that feature so much. It distracts me, and I'm a fast enough typist not to benefit much from it.

Seriously?

[Lumbergh (1053438)]

The I-Phone? Does it work with MACS?

Shouldn't be granted

[Sciros (986030)]

Patents this broad on software just shouldn't ever be granted, period. Effectively this patents inference, which is ridiculous. I'm also fairly certain that tech existed prior to 2000 which was capable of predictive i/o. Browser histories, etc.

Re:

[penguinbroker (1000903)]

Tegic, the owners of t9 started filing patents in 1996, http://www.tegic.com/about/patent-leadership.asp [tegic.com]

I didn't read through all the patents but I'm pretty sure worldlogic doesn't have anything on tegic when it comes to the cell phone industry.
just one obvious example of why these patents shouldn't have been granted in the first place..

here's the original t9 patent for reference: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fnet ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1 [uspto.gov]

Re:Shouldn't be granted

[kidgenius (704962)]

Exactly. Patents for "predictive text" shouldn't be allowed, but I have no problem with patenting a particular method for predictive text, like T9. I mean, have as many patents as people want that cover a specific method, but not for EVERY method in existence. It's like allowing me to patent the automobile. I shouldn't be able to patent the whole thing, just be able to patent part of it, like a steering system. I don't see how these patent examiners can't make that relation to non-software items.

Re:

[samkass (174571)]

The Wright Brothers patented the method of inducing roll by differentially changing the angle of attack of each wing. It was the key invention that made the controllable airplane, and the many requests Curtiss made to the Wrights for details (promising only to use them non-commercially) shows Curtiss deception in that area. I'd call the Wright's patent a great example of when the patent system worked. The Wrights innovated, Curtiss stole, and the Wrights successfully sued them for it in exchange for reas

Re:

[just_another_sean (919159)]

Haven't Vi, Emacs, heck even Visual Studio's Editor had the ability to autocomplete or provide a list of predicted completions for years before 2000?

I'm not sure when the code completion based on language syntax became available in any of these but I could swear that even older vi/vi clones have had the word mapping and completion functions for a long time. And when was auto complete added to the bash/c/korn shells?

I'm too busy to go check dates at the moment but I agree that there is absolutely a ton of p

Hmmm......

[8127972 (73495)]

"WordLogic makes products (assistive input software) and doesn't seem to be merely a patent troll."

Just because they make products doesn't mean that they aren't a patent troll.

Re:

[Speare (84249)]

Yep, they're a patent troll, but they're not merely a patent troll. Like a pig wearing a tutu isn't merely a pig.

Re:Pig in a Tutu

[andrewd18 (989408)]

Of course it's not merely a pig. It's Dancer Pig!

Dancer Pig! Dancer Pig!
Does whatever a Dancer Pig does!
Can it dance
In ballet?
No it can't,
'Cause it's a pig.
Look out!
Here comes the Dancer Pig!

Re:Hmmm......

[Raphael (18701)]

And even if they haven't been a patent troll in the past, they may be becoming one.

Let's look at their latest quarterly report (SEC filing) [yahoo.com] and pick a few bits:

The Company reports a net loss of $840,446 for the six-month period ending June 30, 2007 [...]
For the six-month period ending June 30, 2007, total revenues were $2,673 compared to $9,705 for the six-month period ending June 30, 2006. As the Company is a Development Stage Company its revenue streams are not established and are not impacted by economic or market trends.

Recent Business Activities
On January 9, 2007 the Company announced it had developed a new text entry/text messaging input solution for cell phones utilizing the WordLogic's patent pending prediction engine. [...]

Plan of Operations
A critical component of our operating plan impacting our continued existence is the ability to obtain additional capital through additional equity and/or debt financing. We do not anticipate enough positive internal operating cash flow until such time as we can generate substantial revenues, which may take the next few years to fully realize. In the event we cannot obtain the necessary capital to pursue our strategic plan, we may have to cease or significantly curtail our operations. This would materially impact our ability to continue operations.

So it is a company that is making losses and focuses mainly on a single product. The success of this product depends on the licensing deals related to that patent. It looks like that company is betting a large part of its future on that single patent. So their best hope may be to become a patent troll. It may be a bit sad for the engineers working at that company, but I have serious doubts about their future business plans and methods.

Is it surprising that they issued a press release related to that patent a few days before issuing their quarterly report?

I met them - they're not a patent troll

[Geof (153857)]

I met with them earlier this year. I don't think they're patent trolls. They develop and sell products; though nothing came with it, they were interested in technical cooperation. For the businessman I spoke to, the patents were evidence of their technical innovation and a point of pride. Most of us on Slashdot see patents differently, but his perspective is how they have been seen in other industries and in the past. Of course, this was just one guy (though senior) and may not reflect the company as

As if you didn't see this coming:

[Borealis (84417)]

I predicted that they'd do that!

Unnecessary Quote from the CEO

[acvh (120205)]

"We are very excited about the obvious opportunities that will be open to WordLogic in the near future."

I'll bet you are....

Prior Art

[SheldonLinker (231134)]

Eeco flight navigation system, some time in the '80s or '90s. Contact me at mailto:[e-mail] [mailto] for expenses-only expert or factual testimony if anyone sues you on this nonsense. I've been sued on this sort of nonsense before (and won), and I'll do whatever I can to abate it. Maybe /. can set up an area where patent-fighting experts can help out /.ers on this stuff.

Re:

[CodeShark (17400)]

http://www.peertopatent.org/ [peertopatent.org] is where it is at, and they have a mailout list that will keep you informed on new patent apps.

Although I haven't seen one where my knowledge could affect the process, the very first time I hear of a patent application that I can attack with prior art, I will do so immediately.

That way things like this patent don't get so damn close to being approved before we can jump on it.

Like a spellchecker?

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

In what way would this differ from a spellchecker, said technology being available since at least the 1970s?

command completion?

[cdn-programmer (468978)]

I've not read the claims of course, but from the description if _any_ form of completion is claimed then it would seem to me that prior art would include command line completion as well. We've had things like this since the 70's in many forms.

If I read this correctly

[by Anonymous Coward]

You are concluding what a patent covers without even seeing the claims, based upon a corporate press release.

Par for the course....

yawn

bad links

[gravesb (967413)]

Editors, for these stories, please include a link to the patent, not just the news release and a general description.

Re:

[gravesb (967413)]

That was filed in 2004, and has a different assignee. Although, I wonder how that patent interacts with the one that is the subject of the story.

Supermarket coupons.

[HockeyPuck (141947)]

When I check out at my local grocery store, I've consistently received coupons for "similar products that I might like" since the 80s. Buy Ben n Jerry's ice cream? Get a coupon for Breyers. Something is predicting I might like another brand of ice cream.

I've been getting these coupons since the early 90s.

We should be able to sue this coupon for "wasting taxpayer dollars" similar to how you can be fined for pulling a fire alarm as a prank.

Cell Phones... gadgets...

[Panaflex (13191)]

Pretty sure I've seen predictive input for a LONG time... some examples..

Cell phone input (T9 & iTap circa 1995)
PDA writing interfaces (Newton?)
Shell command line completion. (bash, ksh)
Visual Studio 6...
Emacs
Windows 3.1 tablet edition
Automatic spell checking correction ( MS word 95, possibly before)

I'm sure there's tons more here... but wiring a dictionary up to an input is obvious prior art, no matter how you spin it.

T9

[jeti (105266)]

Nokia introduced T9 in 1999 with the Nokia 3210.
Should count as prior art and is widely known.

This is OLD

[jpetts (208163)]

I used to be a sysop at Imperial College Computer Centre in London, and the mainframes I worked with, a Cyber 176, and a CDC7600 had this on the console back in 1978. It was also available on the 6600, which was a 60s era machine.

The big issue

[webrunner (108849)]

We have a situation where prior art isn't related enough for, but it is related enough that you can sue products the same technology that came out after the patent was issued?

IntelliSense pre-2000 isn't infringing, but 2000 on is? How does this make sense?

Predictive INPUT not Predictive TEXT

[jkgamer (179833)]

Does anyone here ever read these patents before posting how stupid they supposedly are? Reading the patent clearly shows that they are not applying for a patent on predicting text alone, but rather on an input method used by most PDA's and visual keyboards. In addition to displaying possible words, it HIGHLIGHTS the keys on the visual keyboard or displays the input strokes required to generate the next character that it thinks you want to select. Visual Studio never lit up characters on my keyboard, it never even displayed a visual keyboard on my screen. I'm all for patent reform and striking down obvious techniques, but in this case, while IANAL, on its face value it looks pretty legitmate to me.

(Not entirely sure that its all that much more useful than the standard predictive text stuff that I've already seen or used, but that is not the point.)

Re:

[drachenstern (160456)]

"The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards."
-Arthur Koestler

"Only when it's a discovery."
-Me

This is like patenting dropping rocks on the ground, not figuring a better design to skip rocks across the lake surface.