IBM's But-I-Only-Got-The-Soup Patent 267
theodp writes "In an Onion-worthy move, the USPTO has decided that IBM inventors deserve a patent for splitting a restaurant bill. Ending an 8+ year battle with the USPTO, self-anointed patent system savior IBM got a less-than-impressed USPTO Examiner's final rejection overruled in June and snagged US Patent No. 7,457,767 Tuesday for its Pay at the Table System. From the patent: 'Though US Pat. No. 5,933,812 to Meyer, et al. discussed previously provides for an entire table of patrons to pay the total bill using a credit card, including the gratuity, it does not provide an ability for the check to be split among the various patrons, and for those individual patrons to then pay their desired portion of the bill. This deficiency is addressed by the present invention.'"
Not a problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
In Germany the waiting staff are more than happy to split the bill with you so that each person pays for what they ate and drank separately. I suspect that this is because, unlike in the US, tips aren't expected and aren't at a more-or-less fixed percentage and instead patrons who want to tip usually round up the bill amount.
So if the waiting staff take the time to go through 10 separate payments for each person, they probably get a larger total tip than the tip on one big payment.
And the person who only had a glass of water and a starter is happy he didn't pay for the steak-guzzling alcoholic ;-)
Re:Bad summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Definitely a bad summary, this is the abstract of the patent:
Patrons at a restaurant or bar can pay at their table using credit cards, without involving the restaurant or bar cashier and/or wait staff. Patrons are assisted using this system in dividing the bill by displaying the amount due (including tax) and allowing each patron to enter the amount they wish to pay. When the initial bill is presented, a balance due will be displayed and the indication will be provided that the bill has yet to be paid in full. As each transaction is entered, a running total will be displayed indicating the remaining balance due. When the running total reaches zero, the bill is paid in full, and an indication will be provided, such as by illuminating a green indicator light or by displaying a balance due of $0.00.
If you can patent a cash register you should also be able to patent this device.
Prior art? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the patent seems to have been filed in 2000. The "Resto" application I wrote for the Newton was doing pretty much the same thing in 1997...
I wonder if I could sue IBM...
Millions here I come!
This is interesting.... (Score:4, Interesting)
My knowledge of the credit card payment industry is not complete, but as I recall, the rate that a business pays for CC services is based on average transaction value and number of transactions per day/week/month/quarter. This would have a more than insignificant impact on that rate.
It does however have some far reaching possible effects: If the patrons are paying at the table (no wait staff involved), the value of wait staff is reduced and the likelihood that they could be replaced by robotic wait staff is increased. Already wait staff are paid some of the lowest wages on the planet. If their value decreases, it could be interesting times for restaurant patrons.
I'm not saying that robots could replace waitresses at Hooters, but there are places where robots could be used. It was always the payment end of things that made using robots impossible.
NO IT'S NOT!!!! Damn... (Score:5, Interesting)
Really. A 20 second glance at the patent link answered this.
Should they be able to patent this. Not likely...its an obvious idea but they are making something than CAN do something very useful.
BUT, even if you ask for seperate checks up front, this approach is very attractive.
Think about being out with a large group, trying to make it somewhere by a certain time, trying to hunt down the waitstaff because everyone's ready NOW vs. when they came by 20 min ago and one person was still eating, identify who got what, how much to put on what card, wait for them to ring it up, put slips in little balck books, bring em back, hand them out, etc.
Device shows check.
You can select the items you had through the touchscreen interface.
It gives a total.
You pay your part.
You FN leave.
Re:Actually that's not a bad idea (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure I'd equate "changes in what is and is not profitable" with "proof of obviousness" though. It's like saying that if in 5 years we all use electric cars instead of ones that burn hydrocarbon fuel it is because electric cars are not obvious. I just don't see it in this example.
Your 5-year scenario results because once enough restaurants adopt such a device, not having it will lose you business. Kind of like credit cards at fast-food places: they got along forever without this, but now you couldn't survive as a fast-food place without accepting credit cards. Does this mean the credit-card accepting POS at fast-food places is patent-worthy (based on the combination of credit-card reader and traditional POS)?
re: portable terminal at the table (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah... I actually thought of this back in the mid 90's, when going out to lunch with fellow I.T. co-workers. At that time, everyone said "Wow... why DON'T restaurants have that already, anyway??"
To this day, it seems they still don't.
Long ago, I decided the problem was one of the expense of the hardware, vs. one of people "coming up with the idea".
Almost all restaurants use Point of Sale systems provided to them under contract by one of only a handful of providers out there (IBM being one of them). My buddy works for one such company right now, and they definitely have a little market niche. The touch-screen terminals and software are proprietary, and although large users manuals may be provided for modifying the software, 99% of people in the restaurant business have no time or inclination to tackle doing all of that themselves. Therefore, they're stuck paying huge hourly fees for changes every time they re-price some things or change around menu items, or ??
I can see, now, how tough a "sell" it would be to convince a small restaurant they should pay for a secure wireless network and all of these proprietary card readers for EACH table, PLUS however much money for a corresponding software upgrade to the PoS software back-end.
They're going to say "No obvious bottom line cost savings? Just something to save my waiter or waitress from doing an extra little bit of work? Umm.... no."
Re:Actually that's not a bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Either you're better looking then I think you are, or you should check your credit card bill very carefully.
Obvious or not? PTO should decide this way: (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought of an idea some time ago to get rid of obvious patents, like the (not-so) Amazing One-Click. It would mean less work for the PTO (Patent/Trademark Office), too. The case of prior art might be considered a special case of "obvious" (or known) patents. See what you think:
When someone submits a patent, claiming to have found (let's say) A Wondrous Way For Customers to Order What They Want By Clicking The Mouse Only Once, the PTO would publish the claim. Not the contents of the patent, simply the claim itself, the problem that the patent claims to solve. They would give the general public some set time, say 30 days, to come up with some way to solve this problem. "We have a patent application claiming to offer A Wondrous Way For Customers to Order What They Want By Clicking The Mouse Only Once. Can anyone come up with how this might be done? If someone gets a valid submission in within 30 days, then this patent will be considered obvious."
People who would be motivated to work hard to look for a solution within the allotted time would include, besides the Slashdot crowd, firms who have a vested interest NOT to pay licensing fees every time they want to use the invention. They would have some idea what sort of patent apps might be coming down the pipeline. PTO doesn't have to figure out whether a patent is obvious (which is good seeing as how they're doing a pretty lousy job of it). As for prior art, if the public can come up with a way to solve the desired problem using prior art, then that's another sign that the patent is obvious! Of course, these submissions tbhemselves of "that patent is so obvious even I could come up with something in 30 days" would be published and be available to the public.
Some patents, including algorithmic software patents, are worth patenting. The MP3 algorithm, for example, was the result of hard work and research. If the PTO had given the public a chance to come up with "A Way to Compress Sound Files With Unnoticeable Loss", people might not have been able to produce a solution in 30 days, showing that the MP3 patent is not so obvious. Someone might have come up with a different solution (Vorbis, FLAC, etc.), and that would be okay but the MP3 patent would be granted. (Of course, then large firms might have used Vorbis instead of paying the MP3 fees.)
What do you think?
(I posted this comment before [slashdot.org], but too late to generate any discussion. I'm reposting it to see whether you think this would be a valid test of whether a patent is "obvious".)
Re:For everything else, there's the patent office (Score:5, Interesting)
About 7 or 8 years ago, I worked with a guy who talked--a bit more than idly--about opening a restaurant. One of the features/gimmicks was to be the ability to order from a computer screen at the table. We spent some time discussing how this would work, and how the customer would interact with it.
Of course we came up with the same idea as what's in this patent (pay at the table, split the bill how you like), because it's fucking obvious. We didn't think anything of it, because it hardly seemed like an "invention" of any sort: using a custom thin client POS system to order and pay? What, so exactly like the one (or ones) that waiters use?
How does simply using more of some things that already exist--without even modifying them in any meaningful way--constitute a patentable "invention"? If something like this is the very first thing someone not even in the industry thinks of, it's pretty dumb that it can be patented, IMO. In fact, I'm shocked there wasn't a ton of prior art for this, as I'm sure hundreds of people, if not thousands, had already independently thought of this solution.
(OT) "check" (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do Americans refer to bills/invoices as "checks"?
-b