Company Claims Ownership of Digital Messaging 325
An anonymous reader writes "Kootol, yet another patent troll, is going after everyone who makes messaging software for violating their soon-to-be-granted patent, which claims they invented one- and two-way messaging in 2005. From the article: 'Kootol, founded in 2010, says it has a patent license agreement with Yogesh Rathod for control of U.S. Patent Application 11/995,343. Rathod, in fact, is a co-founder of Kootol with his brother Vijay Rathod. According to Kootol, the patent application “covers core messaging, publication and real time searching technology.” Interestingly, the patent in question hasn’t actually been awarded to Kootol or Rathod yet. Rather, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued “A Notice of Allowance.” That’s the term for when the USPTO says that an applicant is entitled to a patent under the law, but must pay an issue fee (and potentially publication fee) first, within three months.'"
Patent system is broken! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Software patent implosion (Score:5, Insightful)
The mere fact that we're having to pin our hopes of patent reform on corporate interests is disgusting, and proof of the inherent failure of the US government to act on behalf of the interests of the greater good of its citizens in practical matters.
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Software patent implosion (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the thousand juggernauts you speak of are only juggernauts themselves because the patent system is the way it is. They'd much rather pay some miniscule fee than destroy their entire business model. It's going to need to get much worse before it gets better.
(emphasis added)
Isn't that so typically the case? I'd say there seems to be nothing more American than avoiding at all costs the use of foresight and prevention (i.e. before something turns into a crisis) but unfortunately, the USA doesn't have a monopoly on this.
Fools are the sort who really desire political power. Nothing is less evident to a fool than the fact that every large national crisis was once a small problem that could have been resolved with relative ease, but the failure to do so allowed it to grow and evolve into a monster.
The idea scales in both directions. It's true of individual personal lives and it's true of national affairs. Those who don't understand this think they are victims of misfortune. The reality is, an actual victim of misfortune that was completely unforeseeable and non-preventable is an extremely rare entity. On the national scale though, there is a grave injustice built into this: the fact that those who did see it coming are few and tend to be drowned out by the din of reactive fools. When they are affected by broken systems, they get to suffer along with those who really deserve it.
Funny how when politicians talk about "fairness" (really a puerile version of justice), distribution of wealth is the only kind they seem to recognize.
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not really even about messaging. The abstract in the patent application is so ass-backwards and contorted that nobody could make heads or tails of what the actual invention is. Here is the abstract:
A system for transmission, reception and accumulation of the knowledge packets to plurality of channel nodes in the network operating distributedly in a peer to peer environment via installable one or more role active Human Operating System (HOS) applications in a digital devise of each of channel node, a network controller registering and providing desired HOS applications and multiple developers developing advance communication and knowledge management applications and each of subscribers exploiting the said network resources by leveraging and augmenting taxonomically and ontologically classified knowledge classes expressed via plurality search macros and UKID structures facilitating said expert human agents for knowledge invocation and support services and service providers providing information services in the preidentified taxonomical classes, wherein each of channel nodes communicating with the unknown via domain specific supernodes each facilitating social networking and relationships development leading to human grid which is searchable via Universal Desktop Search by black box search module.
My favorite part has to be "knowledge packets"...
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
The most prescient is that the USPTO doesn't look for prior art, obviousness or novelty when granting patents.
The next reason is that the USPTO along with many ill-informed politicians believe that the number of patents granted in a year has a direct correlation to the technological development of the country. This is easily nullified by the very fact that patent trolls exist. Since a company can buy a patent which is a monopoly on a theoretical device, method, or nowadays even a data set (see Monsanto's gene patents), the actual technological imperative to produce is gone. It has been replaced with an incentive to suppress a technology defined in a patent, and when it has been developed by an independent company unaware of the patent, to sue and generate a profit.
Patents are defined in US law as a way to promote the progress of useful sciences and arts. In the last twenty or more years, it has been shown hands-down that patents do the exact opposite. They grant a monopoly to a company. The company then stands to gain in the short term far more by suing than by investing money in developing the device or method described in it's patents.
The way that the patent system has been gamed to prevent the public from doing real research and development is deplorable, and I will be glad of the day when patent is done away with.
I'm sure that patent will exist forever in US government, but all of my observations have show that it is not merely worthless as an institution, but detrimental to technological progress.
Re:Software patent implosion (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you have no understanding of patents... There were meant to protect inventors of things from those that would steal the ideas.
I guess you have no understanding of patents or at least not if you're from the US. They were never indented to protect inventors from anything. You might want to take just a little peek at Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution [wikipedia.org]. The only Constitutional justification for granting monopoly rights to something is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Nothing in there about protecting inventors from anything. And seems to me that justification is pretty focused on the greater good of society.
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tons of older protocols...
So? This is the USPTO we're talking about, they stamp anything (so long as they get their fee...)
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
I currently make most of my income dealing with patents (searching, reading, analyzing, finding problems with them, writing material for them, etc). And guess what? Nobody reads the abstract to figure out the details. All it is useful for is to determine if it's even vaguely related to what you are working on.
If you base any analysis on a reading of the abstract alone, you are making a huge mistake. Don't bother.
I'm not saying the patent is valid or not. I'm just saying don't read the abstract.
Re:Software patent implosion (Score:4, Insightful)
It may surprise you but there are a few people out there who actually will fight for the people given a chance. Think of the Roosevelts. Of course, since the modern GOP deliberately sabotages the government for the purpose of proving that government doesn't work...
Re:Patent system is broken! (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps we should go back to actually funding the USPTO mainly with tax revenue. I realize that there's a lot of people here that are opposed on principle, but sometimes taxpayers are the correct party to fund things.
Communist! Socialist! Pedophile! Pothead! Music pirate! Think of the children! If we violate the principles of God and the Founding Fathers by doing such a thing, the terrorists have won!
There. Hope that clears things up for you.