All Encompassing Patents 283
SpicyMcHaggas writes "Looks like another bogus lawsuit over an incredibly broad patent on something that already exists. StarChamber, an online strategy and collectible card game seems to be one of the infringing factors, along with a player ranking system on the site. The patent supposedly covers any sort of ranking system that indicates a player's proficiency in said game. This sort of practice is what deters would-be great games from making it into the gaming world."
Proficiency? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I don't think it does. Can someone name a game that hasn't been made due to broad patent that patents something pre-existing?
Re:Patents help. (Score:5, Insightful)
* Note: I'm talking about people like PanIP, etc. who obviously do not plan on creating anything useful except a business around patent litigation.
Re:Patents help. (Score:0, Insightful)
Why go after Starchamber... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next step, move up the food chain. Keep trying to get more licenses so you are armored when it comes time to go after the big boys.
Secondly, you don't want to go after someone with obvious prior art.
My understanding is the patents are specific to casino games. Not sure why they went after Starchamber in particular.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn`t. But they know the Patent Office forgets it all too often.
Or, to be precice. They know that the Patent Office has neither the manpower nor the machinepower to check all sources of prior art and therefor is liable to overlook the bleeding obvious.
Re:Patent craziness... (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually people like to blame the lawyers, and there are ambulance-chasers who are worthy of blame. But the lawyer's job is to represent the client as aggressively as the law allows. If I were facing a legal situation, I would certainly expect no less from my lawyer. I remember an injury lawyer's TV ad from Boston: "Other lawyers call me an S.O.B., but I'm your S.O.B.".
If a person wants to take advantage of a legal loophole, why blame the lawyer? Why not blame the law (for being bad), the legislators (for not fixing it) or the person (for unethically exploiting it)?
Re:Patents help. (Score:5, Insightful)
the problem isn't patents but what can be patented. you can patent, say, a rocket ship design but the core concept of setting fire to fuel to create force shouldn't be patentable.
maybe i should just patent f=ma and retire rich...
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
> but frankly, it's not, and chances are there is tons of prior art to boot. Let's all remember that
> the USPTO's job is to deal with paperwork, not to deal with prior art; that's what the courts are for.
So.. they deal with paperwork only...
Then I wonder..
1. Why is there a fee of more then a few dollar?
2. Why does it take them so absurdly long to handle a request?
Wither they do more then paperwork, or they are incredibly inefficient.
Besides, the court system is not there to deal with every possible problem, it is there to deal with problems that cannot eb resolved in a normal way. The following checks should really eb part of the process or the patent office is simply failing to do a proper job:
- Check on if the patent would be obvious to experts in the field. This is simple, you ASK EXPERTS IN THE FIELD.
- Check for prior art, also simple, again, you ask experts in the field.
- Check for being specific, a patent should describe a specific invention, not an entire field, and should never ever apply to an entire field because if it does it will definitely hinder others from inventing, and as a result work against the explicit purpose of having a patent system.
I don't care about political bs as to why the patent office works as it does now, I simply conclude that it fails to do its job, and as it seems, fails to even define its job properly.
Remember, the patent system has a purpose, and components that no longer help that should be fixed or be taken out, the patent office is a good candidate for that.
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patent craziness... (Score:0, Insightful)
If a person wants to take advantage of a legal loophole, why blame the lawyer? Why not blame the law (for being bad), the legislators (for not fixing it) or the person (for unethically exploiting it)?
If you leave your door unlocked and I go in your house and steal your money, why blame me ? Why not blame *you* (for leaving the door unlocked), the police (for not catching me in the act) or the capitalist system (for making money such an important thing in order to get stuff you want) ?
Not just games, banner ads and other stuff too (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, many of the claims of the Goldberg Patents are not limited to games. For example, some claims of the Goldberg Patents are broadly directed to network-based persentations, i.e. changing advertising such as pop-up advertising or rotating banners, in connection with network services
With that being the case, why didn't they go after the pop-up spammers first?
Re:Patents help. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Patents help. (Score:4, Insightful)
One day, he decides he's going to reorganize them by date. So, he thumbs through the files, comparing them two at a time. If one has an earlier date than the one before it, he switches their order, then checks backwards repeatedly, switching as many times as needed to put it in its place.
Tell me why the fuck a person should be able to patent something this fucking trivial if it's done digitally. There are a lot of things about computing that logical, obvious and are that way by design. This is why you aren't supposed to grant patents on things that are 'obvious to experts in the field.'
Now.. Apparently, we can patent using cookies indexed in databases to track user sessions and preferences, despite this being plainly obvious and the entire purpose of creating cookie technology in the first place.
There are a lot more examples I can name, would you like some?
Patents have a place, but 'doing X on a computer' doesn't deserve a patent, 9 of 10 times.
Re:Patent craziness... (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is precisely the problem.
No longer are we using the "spirit" of the law, we are arguing about the "letter" of the law.
So if you are caught drinking and driving, you get a lawyer to argue some obscure point of law to get you off.
But you WERE drinkng and driving, and therefore breaking the spirit of the law.
Lawyers have created a huge industry which does nothing but split hairs. And they profit from it.
Damn it, if you break the law you SHOULD be held accountable!
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patents help. (Score:5, Insightful)
What should be obvious in this instance, and in many others, is that patents are proving to be an ever increasing barrier to creation and productivity. What's worse, is that the creativity that patents are shutting out is the creativity of the individual inventor, who is not able to afford million dollar lawyers to push his case. That is the exact opposite effect that patents should be having.
Re:Patent craziness... (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean even if it were possible for the average person to affordably, and conveniently resolve a frivilous lawsuit against them, someone still has to pay the lawyers for it. Not many lawyers are going to work for free, even if the cases are total bullshit.
Re:Patents help. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bite.
Software patents are bad because
1: The life cycle of a patent is about 4-5 times longer than the life cycle of software.
2: Patent language does not fit well with software language. Patent language often fails to cover a specific algorithm in the lawyer's attempt to cover everything possible.
3: Given a single patented algorithm, its impossible to tell if a given program is using THAT algorithm, or some other method of performing the same task. The "business process" patnets currently touted and used as the model for software patents only cover processes, not results, yet the outcome of these patents is that everyone who obtains the same results is lawsuit bait. Companies will be sued and forced to open their source for scrutiny.
4: The USPTO is unable to handle the current patent process, empowering them with even more oversight is certainly not what I'd call punishment for its failure to operate properly.
5: In the event of failure in the above mentioned government organization to perform its duties properly, the cost of undoing the patent is footed entirely by the victims. Assuming no court time is needed (ie, the patent holder does not appeal, which they ALWAYS do) it still costs a considerable amount of money just to present your prior art to the USPTO for a simple review, and a considerable amount more to pay the USPTO to actually listen to your argument. (in the cheaper review, the USPTO takes your evidence and you go home. The USPTO calls up the patent holder and asks them to explain, and if they have a good explanation for not citing the prior art, you loose. The more expensive version allows the victim to actually participate in the process.)
From the customer's POV, #1 makes it even worse. Lets imagine a few scenarios:
1) Xerox patents "the process by which a document is converted into data which the printer can understand" and suddenly has a 16+ year long monopoly on printers because no other company can write a driver for their printer.
2) Brother patents the word processor in the mid-80's (I really have no idea when they started making those things). If you wanted to do any word processing at all, you would need to buy a Brother word processor machine, and that would be in addition to the PC (if you even owned one, without a wordprocessor, it would be no more useful than a Nintendo).
3) Microsoft patents the operating system (or more accurately, the patented DRM required to boot the OS on their patented Palladium technology, which will only be licensed to companies who use it in every motherboard. The alternative is being unable to produce any motherboards that can run windows). Windows DRM2005 is released, requiring yearly fees of $700 per user. No further development on windows is done for 16 years as they rest on their government-provided monopoly.
4) A company called PanIP "renews" an old out-of-date patent by adding a few words to a patent on selling things using a display and a phone line. The USPTO, seeing that the patent is an "improvement" over their existing patent automatically grants it without even stopping to think. PanIP then goes about suing small e-commerce sites for infringing on its "new" patent from the early 80's... oh wait, this one's really happening
Re:Patent craziness... (Score:1, Insightful)
Because it's no more possible to make laws without loopholes than it is to write programs without bugs. People ought to take some responsibility to use common sense.
Why not blame the law (for being bad)
Er... because blaming abstract concepts is silly?
the legislators (for not fixing it) or the person (for unethically exploiting it)?
Why not blame all three? If any one of them was doing their job better, the problem wouldn't exist.
Re:Patent craziness... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Patents help. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
> with prior art; that's what the courts are for.
Lets kindly not remember that, and I ask that you forget that incorrect bit of info as well.
In the USPTO's Manual of Patent Examining Procedure [uspto.gov] it clearly states in this section [uspto.gov]:
1.104 Nature of examination.
(a) Examiner's action.
(1) On taking up an application for examination or a patent in a reexamination proceeding, the examiner shall make a thorough study thereof and shall make a thorough investigation of the available prior art relating to the subject matter of the claimed invention. The examination shall be complete with respect both to compliance of the application or patent under reexamination with the applicable statutes and rules and to the patentability of the invention as claimed, as well as with respect to matters of form, unless otherwise indicated.
(Bold added by me)
So they are not doing their stated jobs by not looking for any/all prior art.
While yes I realize this is not a possible feat for them, not being specalists in any field but law, the fact remains that their own guidelines still state that it IS their job to do so.
Re:Patents [DO NOT] help [AS THEY ARE APPLIED NOW] (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, word processors. Imagine if the people who made WordStar [wordstar.org] were able to take out a patent back then on the concept of word processors, or the idea of using an editor to format documents. We either would still be using html-like command tags to do thing like
or we would still be in stone age wysiwyg. I remember those days and am happy they are past. Regardless, there would have been no competition and no incentive for WordPerfect [corel.com] or Microsoft (Word) [microsoft.com] (and others) to make better word processors. Heck, Open Office (Writer) [openoffice.org] might not even exist if WordStar had been able to obtain a patent back then. Who would waste time dreaming about working on a project you would get sued for starting?What would happen if other industries used/abused patents in such a way? Imagine if only one pharmaceutical company were allowed to patent the concept of treating cancer or other diseases. Our life expectancies would be 10 or 20 years less. Thank goodness this isn't the case. But hold it, maybe they should be able to patent the idea of taking a pill? Just kidding (for the overly literal minded people), but only just... software patents are like patents on the idea of fighting cancer with chemicals, and many times like the idea of patenting the idea of taking a pill when really, it is the active ingredient (for want of better terminology) of the pill which is patentable.
The idea of patenting concepts like shopping carts, score tallies, ranking, etc. is ridiculous, and will ruin competition and innovation, and hurt the average citizen immensely. Patenting the algorithms and the inner workings I can understand. i.e. If you want to do it, do it, but don't steal my code. JUST DON'T STOP ME FROM BUILDING A BETTER MOUSE TRAP!!
Ya, this might be redundant, but I just had to rant on this one. :-)
Re:Patents help. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that almost everybody (except, perhaps, the very rich) is bothered by the power advantage that the wealthy, whether individuals or corporations, enjoy when it comes to civil litigation. I just haven't heard any plausible solutions. In some types of litigation, the less well-to-do are able to get around this problem by employing lawyers on a contingency basis. But this has its own set of abuses.