USPTO Takes Second Look at Y2K Windowing Patent 96
Remember this patent? Seems the USPTO is having second thoughts about it, too. Anonymous Coward says, "According to News.com the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office re-evaluates the Y2K windowing patent."
Good! (Score:3)
Nice to see... (Score:1)
Anyway, " ' Patent reviews are rare if not non existent,' Giga Information Group Kazim Isfahani said." Does anyone else find a problem with this? For all the patents that Slashdot has screamed about, has anyone requested patent reviews?
not much details there (Score:1)
This is a good thing, but... (Score:4)
Sure, we've won this battle, but for the wrong reasons. And, I'm sorry to say, this doesn't bring us all that much closer to winning the war.
Throw it out (Score:1)
If he can patent that, I should patent using an unsigned long to count seconds from 1970! It amazes me yet I sort of expect this sort of behavior from the human race. At most times, I feel ashamed to be part of this race. Others, I feel very proud. I hope the patent office's actions make me feel the latter.
Someday (Score:2)
Clue stick? (Score:1)
patents like domain names? (Score:1)
Hopefully... (Score:4)
Anyway what I was going to say was this...if IBM can get this stupid patent overturned by showing prior art from documents dating as far back as 1991, maybe we can do something about the Amazon patent. I know someone has implemented or described the process of storing user info in a cookie and keeping track of the user's behavior (don't say purchases I'm pretty sure Amazon got a jump on patenting it in a retail environment)... whoever has this info or knows someone who has this info should send that to B&N so they can build a portfolio of prior art. Hopefully we, as a community, can get this stupid patent overturned. It seems like it is about time for that open source patent database.
Bad Command Or File Name
Rubber stamp body? (Score:3)
Given the number of stupid patents that get through, this certainly seems to be the case. Sure they can argue lack of funding, and it is an issue, but that isn't the line they're taking.
From the link in the article [cnet.com]: Patent officials made the decision after some information came to light that was not considered when the patent was originally granted
They're not admitting that they didn't do anywhere near enough checking the first time, or explaining how such a stupid patent could have happend, just covering their backsides about this second look.
Further down: Experts say decisions by the PTO to review patents that are already approved are rare.
It certainly seems to me that someone along the way has forgotten that patents exist to protect original work that contains unique elements. The Patent Office exists not only to grant patents, but to block them when they clearly don't fit the charter.
[0] Admittedly mainly restating the obvious in moderator friendly format. .govs.
[1] Disclaimer: I'm in Australia. I rest my case on pointy haired
Some corporate deep pockets did (Score:1)
after some information came to light (Score:1)
Finally, Some Sanity From the Patent Office! (Score:2)
*sigh* I have a long-standing suspicion that the root cause for the issuance of many of these silly patents is the inability of patent examiners to grasp what is "obvious" to a programmer. Say it's 1989 and you have to write some code that will import and export accounting data to a 3090 mainframe that uses two-digit dates. With a century rollover coming in 11 years, how do you tell what century the data were generated in? The "obvious" solution to a programmer would be to choose some reasonable cut-off two digit date, say 50, and treat all years before that as belonging to the next century. If you were dealing with personnel records with birthdates, 10 might be more appropriate. In any event, that's windowing and it's an obvious patch on the Y2K problem.
Now, if the PTO could only see how obvious "one click" was, the world would be a better place! 8)
Howard Owen hbo@egbok.com Everything's Gonna Be OK Consulting
Re:not much details there (Score:1)
But then, many past patents issued show this condition as well.
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:1)
The fact that whoever has the most money usually wins can't really be fixed by patent reform either...thats a deeper issue that goes to the core of our political and economic system. I don't see much hope in this area for a long time.
Free Patent Foundation (Score:2)
Or there could simply be a non-profit organization that accumulates patents (as silly as possible) and then force companies to cross-license for all open source software.
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:2)
I guess that is why I have this wish that the USPTO upheld the patent. I just would like to see the circus show to which it would lead to...
And if the USPTO overturns this then I just will feel even more frustrated when it will become clear that they have no intention to change the way they operate in general (I almost said "do business") and the same time no offical investigation will follow to find out why this patent was accepted in the first place.
It were too good if the only course of action possible for the companies would be to force the patent laws to be changed to resolve this. That will not happen otherwise.
Matyas
Gee, nice going, I guess (Score:2)
If I ever invent anything, I'm just going to hide it in my closet and let noone see it, rather than trust that office full of chimps to help me protect my property; at least my closet has a lock.
Deosyne
Re:Nice to see... (Score:5)
This is absurd. First we patent a user interface to a website (amazon.com), then we patent a business model (priceline.com), and now we're trying to patent (and have apparently succeeded) a method of handling dates??
Somewhere, someone needs to come up wih a way to overturn these absurd patents, AND the patent laws need to be seriously changed to define what is and is not a patentable concept.
For instance, a new drug is very well deserving of a patent. A company spent millions of dollars researching this drug to test its effectiveness on the disease it is supposed to treat, and this company gets in return a patent which prevents others from stealing their invention for a limited period of time, and that period of time is reasonable for that industry.
That's great for the pharmaceutical industry, but the same thing does not hold up in the software and website design industry. What is a reasonable period of time in the pharmaceutical world is an order of magnitude different the a reasonable period of time in the software world. Drugs take many, many years to bring to market, and require a significant investment of time and resources to bring them to market.
Now let's take a look in a little more detail at the amazon.com patent. What they have patented (from what I have read on /. and other places, I have not read that patent myself. If anyone wants to send me the patent# so i dont have to search for it I will read it, but IANAL. While writing this, I decided to do some research of my own, and I did find the patent. Look for some interesting details from it later on.) to be a mechanism for ordering products with one click of the mouse, and having your shipping and credit card information previously stored. A great idea for e-commerce. However, not patentable IM[ns]HO. Perhaps a copyright on the design of the website (the overall design, not that particular element) would be in line, but not a patent. What they have patented is:
1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system,
displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,
receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
I take several issues with this. First is that it also seems to patent a business model, because what it patents is the complete system of one-click ordering. What I have pasted is only a subset of the patent, but its enough to get the jist of it. Later in the same patent, it would appear that they patent the idea of one-click ordering combined with shopping cart ordering. Again, IANAL.
While researching that previous patent, I came across another Amazon.com patent that is even more absurd. It patents entering only a subset of a credit card number online via an insecure connection, and then placing a telephone call to an automated system and entering the complete credit card number, and having the system correlate the two.
Is there anything that the retarded patent office wont patent???
question on the prior art thing.. (Score:1)
Does that count as prior art?
hey *i* have an idea (Score:1)
Just a question (Score:1)
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, a court has already found enough merit in Amazon's case to slap Barnes & Noble with a restraining order. This means that at least that court felt that there was a good chance that Amazon would prevail.
The big danger in these cases--and especially the Date Window case--is that if they ultimately hold up (and there is a significant chance that one or both might), it will become even easier to obtain and enforce trivial software patents. And here we thought it couldn't get any worse...
What Really happened... (Score:4)
When someone like Big Corporation(TM) patents an Obvious Idea(TM) and sues a bunch of Smaller Companies(TM) for infringement, then they are just bullies who are extorting money from those who don't have the resources to fight back.
In this case, Bruce Dickens, the owner of the Y2K Windowing Technique(TM) [no relation to Microsoft(R) Windows(TM)] is attempting to extort money from almost every other corporation in the US, big and small. Many of these companies depend on this technique for their very survival, and it now being so close to the magic date, Ceasing and Desisting(TM) is not an option. And nobody wants to pay money to some guy they never heard of for using a technique that is so obvious even student programmers know about it.
So picture this: Every big company calls their lobbyists in DC and every small company calls their industry association who calls their lobbyists in DC. All of these lobbyists visit the offices of every politician in DC and remind them that Y2K is an election year and if they have to give money to Bruce Dickens, well then there will be that much less money that they will have available for political contributions. The politicians check their records and see that Bruce Dickens has not really contributed anything to their campaigns in the past. The next thing you know, the head bureaucrats at the USPTO are receiving several hundred memos from their political masters suggesting that it would be in their own best interests to review this particular patent.
In a nutshell, Bruce Dickens pissed off a lot of people, and most importantly, a lot of powerful people.
The fool never really stood a chance.
Re:Just a question (Score:1)
And besides, 30 years is plenty of time to fix the software properly. Windowing is most of all a stopgap measure to fix software quickly now, and be able to do proper fixes later.
Re:What Really happened... (Score:1)
From the CNET article
Analysts say that roughly 90 percent of Fortune 500 firms have used some form of windowing to fix their computer systems.
For the USPTO to accept a new patent it must not be considered a logical step forward from current knowledge. Considering the number of companies which have used this method, then windowing must be considered a logical step simply because of the number of people who have 'discovered' it in parallel.
Re:Just a question (Score:1)
The windowing solution doesn't allow you to keep using 2 digit years forever. It allows a program to interpret old 2 digit years correctly.
Chris
Patent reviews are rare because... (Score:1)
Would the guy be guilty of extortion? (Score:4)
Let's assume that the holder of the patent knew that the technique was prior art, and a criminal court can prove it. They would be very close to an conviction for extortion. How are Mafia 'protection' schemes any different? You threaten someone that if they don't pay, you'll take some action against them, with the threat being based on criminal activity.
Is it a crime to obtain a patent on prior art? IANAL, but it seems like it should be, at least if it can be proven that you knew about it beforehand. If the reason he obtained the patent was specifically because he wanted to shake down other people?
It'd be great if this gonif got sent to jail... =-]
Now that is easy (Score:1)
I can't see the difference between this and the amazon patent. I really can't. Can anyone convince me otherwise?
Johan
They had 30 years the FIRST time (Score:1)
Old firmware is another case, for the most part, the engineers seriously didn't think that their gadgets would be used for so long. It's been hardcoded and no one can change it.
Personally, I use 64-bit double precision to store times and dates in my software. It'll be quite a while before I have problems. =-) Wait, maybe I should patent that idea! Pretend you never read this...
(I hereby assign all rights to RMS for the 64-bit dates idea under the LGPLv2 license)
New website needed (Score:2)
We could add comments like:
"I was doing that 5 years ago at company x"
"This method is in the Linux kernel dated 1994"
:-)
New section for /. ? (Score:4)
Only by highlighting abuses like this will the USPO maybe change. Once there is a list of abuses then the problem can be highlighted in a stronger manner.
Re:Free Patent Foundation (Score:3)
The Software Patent Institute [spi.org] keeps up a searchable prior art database, and they accept submissions.
I'm not out to force companies to do anything they don't want to do, but as far as the cross-licensing part goes, and all silliness aside, (parden the pun), I'm trying to promote the notion of a cross-license agreement at www.openpatents.org [openpatents.org] as a method of solving (some of) the problem of software patents.
If people who use their patents defensively could cross-license their patents with each other, that larger total portfolio could help protect them against patent lawsuits. (And of course they wouldn't have to worry about lawsuits among themselves. Well, at least patent infringement lawsuits about covered uses.)
Microsoft is one of the good guys on this issue. They have never used their software patents offensively. You can perhaps complain about them for other reasons and in other contexts, but IMHO it's not appropriate to complain about them as far as software patents are concerned.
Re:hey *i* have an idea (Score:1)
Re:Good! - OFFTOPIC? (Score:1)
Rubber stamp due to patent flood (Score:2)
It was suggested at the time that the USPO may just rubber stamp all the patents and let a lawsute frenzy sort it all out.
Latter I read again that the USPO was overloaded and planned to just let lawsutes deside what patents were valid.
It seems the USPO had the idea that only larg corperations could be effected and they can battle it out.. They didn't take small busnesses or the open source community into account.
This explains why we have all thies lunatic patents being issued... The USPO has desided to just screw us all over (big busness included) and just let everyone have there patents rather than giving them a proper review.
I'm shure a lot of companys (big and small) screammed fuzzy blue mud when they found out about the Windowing patent...
Bug busness dosn't like to spend a lot of money on ANYTHING even lawsutes and if enough big busness IP lawsutes come out over lunitic patents then maybe we could see some IP reform...
Good idea but.... (Score:2)
... better idea (Score:1)
As your billions acrue you will be cured of these irrational thoughts concerning the human race.
Re:Now that is easy (Score:1)
(On a side note: Every single specification for software development at my work always starts with "I want to press a button and...". While this is getting annoying, it does highlight that one of the main objectives of computing is automation, and as such reducing every task to a single initiating action (click) has been part of the culture since year .)
Re:Nice to see... (Score:1)
How about a patent for patenting patents? :)
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:1)
I thought about that. Is this patent real any more or less valid than many other software patents, on the grounds of either obviousness or prior art? If the USPTO does invalidate it, it will at least tell us how high they consider the bar to be on those criteria. Maybe Andover.net should patent online flamefests via the web. There's got to be some way to write that up so it will pass the test.
What happened to that Australian Kid? (Score:1)
prior art and patent reexamination (Score:2)
Re:Would the guy be guilty of extortion? (Score:2)
Re:Rubber stamp? some general info about the law (Score:2)
1. The statement "Experts say decisions by the PTO to review patents that are already approved are rare." This statement is likely refering to the PTO deciding to reexamine (the legal term for reviewing an already issued patent) a patent at its own discretion. This is very rare. However, third parties (and the patent holder, too) can also initiate a reexam by submitting prior art (and paying a fee) to the PTO that calls the validity of the patent into question. Third parties rarely initiate reexams either, though, because reexams are ex parte proceedings. This means that after the third party submits the prior art, the rest of the reexam proceedings are between the PTO and the patent holder, the third party does not get a seat at the table and essentially has to trust that the PTO will do the right thing. Most third parties would rather use whatever "good" prior art they have to challenge the patent in court because although much more expensive at least in court they have a chance to make arguments themselves instead of relying on the PTO. The revisions to the Patent Act that passed this fall did make some changes to the reexam proceeding to allow inter partes proceedings that give the third party more input but there are still problems with it and going to court still has a significant benefit.
2. The revisions to the Patent Act also added a new defense against infringement, the "First inventor defense", intended for use against patents for methods of doing business (not really applicable against the windowing patent but likely to come into play against the one click patent and the Priceline reverse auction patent). This new defense is essentially designed to stop someone from patenting something that other people are doing and then being able to sue them for it. (Well, its a bit more complicated than that but I don't want to write pages and pages on it).
Disclaimer: This is not legal advice and represents only my personal opinion not that of my firm.
Re:Would the guy be guilty of extortion? (Score:2)
Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. These are my personal opinions and not those of my firm or clients.
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:2)
Sure, we've won this battle, but for the wrong reasons. And, I'm sorry to say, this doesn't bring us all that much closer to winning the war.
I agree that the USPTO couldn't care less about Open Source geeks, and no doubt this "review" is taking place because many powerful companies started leaning heavily on lawmakers, enough that the USPTO is more afraid of not reviewing the patent. With that much pressure on them, there's good reason to hope the patent will be overturned; nothing else would satisfy those who are pressuring the lawmakers to pressure the USPTO.
However, despite the fact that this review is obviously political in nature, it may have a future benefit. If the patent is overturned (and I hope it is), it makes a much stronger example of how out-of-control the USPTO is, that it fails to identify extremely obvious techniques and refuse patents on them -- i.e. the USPTO is incompetent to perform their duties, at least in the area of software.
I'd be interested to see what the General Accounting Office would say about such blatent incompetence -- if Open Source geeks could pressure their lawmakers enough to get them to have the GAO take a closer look, that could potentially lead to some actual reform...
Re:not much details there (Score:2)
As for IBM pamphlets using it, I coluld (at one time, long ago) present MS-DOS 3.1 floppies, which used a windowing system for dates as far back as 1986 or so. Presumably, Unixen have been using this technique since the '70s.
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:1)
I think that it just means that the burden of proof is on B&N to show that the patent is invalid.
Re:Free Patent Foundation (Score:1)
Is there a central repository (apart from the library of congress, maybe) that files and stores such pubs?
Being 'public' is a strong advantage of open source software: as everything (okay, most of it) is heavily documented there's practically no way for some idea hijacker to make big $$$ in no time.
So, document your source code! Publish your ideas and findings! Be a "prior artist"!
Re:prior art and patent reexamination (Score:1)
signature smigmature
Reexamination -- An Opportunity for Reform! (Score:3)
For some intuition, this is precisely the process by which the Compton's patent was neutered.
Here's the deal. Reexam can happen three ways: (1) the applicant asks for reexam; (2) a third party asks for reexam; or (3) the commissioner asks for reexam.
What happens is this: if the Office decides to reexamine the patent, it is treated for these purposes as thought the patent had never issued. No presumption of validity. The examiner makes another search (help them! help them! this may be the last chance!) and issues another official action, probably rejecting all the claims. This is the upside.
The downside is this: the applicant may then Amend his claims to narrow the scope of his patent to avoid the prior art. Unlike a trial on the patent, where a binary valid/invalid decision can be made -- and in which the patent can disappear forever, reexam permits a good lawyer (and he's nuts if he doesn't get the best) to tailor the patent to just barely distinguish the prior art, but still "read on" a meaningful royalty base.
There are limits to what he can do, because he is stuck with his present patent specification. (He can't make up new limitations out of whole cloth -- each element of the new claim must be drawn from the spec). But as I said, a great lawyer could make a deadly asset out of what is presently a harmless patent.
Harmless? How can it be harmless? Well, its like this: McDonnell Douglas had a patent which, if valid, in the next twelve months or so is like having the right to a royalty on sex. If it were what it purports to be, it would be worth untold zillions. Instead of putting every legal body behind a licensing program, they assigned it to an employee. What do you think that highly sophisticated company thought about its validity/enforceability?
At last report, no one has bought a license from this guy. This is because no one has taken his claims seriously, not even the small potatoes folks. No small entity is going to be terrorized by him, because the first defendant will be helped by every major economic force on the planet to assure no powerful judgment of validity is made. In short, this patent is harmless (unlike run-of-the-mill patents -- with respect to which small guys would be on their own and forced to capitulate rather than go broke fighting the good fight) for the ironic reason that, if it were valid and enforceable, it would be too great a commercial threat.
Testimony to this is that the patent issued years ago and has yet to be a meaningful commercial threat.
Bottom line, for a narrow class of patents, reexamination make self-healing the limitations of USPTO novelty-standard examination.
But for many reasons, the process is practically useless for the rest of them. It is absolutely true that reexamination often serves to make a patent much, much stronger. The applicant can disclose all prior art that defendants have raised, distinguish it on commercially irrelevant grounds, and then rewrite the claims to read directly on the prospective defendant's righs. Once surviving the examination, the new patent, as amended, is VERY difficult to avoid, both on infringement and on validity grounds.
Third party reexamination is not effective, because the applicant, not the requestor, controls the process. While the requestor gets to play a bit (and under a recent revision, can play a bit more), the applicant effectively controls the show, and gets to use amendments to "shuck and dive" around any argument it can't win straight up.
Recent attempts to empower the Office to make the process more practically useful have been vehemently opposed by the so-called "independent inventor" lobby. I believe their conduct to be misguided -- certainly for the software patent market. Strengthening the reexam process to be more generally useful would go a LONG WAY toward mitigating the harms of software patents issued as the result of limited examination.
More important, there is a substantial interest in the Congress to do this -- and a large lobby that would support it. Reform has been proposed and seriously debated, and limited versions have been passed. If a strong technical lobby were also to get behind it (particularly the open source community), it would go a long way toward neutralizing the "little guy" appeal of the independent inventor lobby. More important, if the position were stated articulately, it would be an EXCELLENT foothold to begin making the case against sotware patents generally.
So, there it is. Reexam is good for a limited class of off-the-scale-dangerous patents, like Comptons, the bunny and the Y2K patent. Indeed, for such patents the process is virtually self-healing. It has dangers, and reexam (or reissue) is a strategy this patent owner should have considered in the first instance.
More important, getting behind the PTO on reexamination, and pushing for more effective Reexamination reform in the Congress would also be an EXCELLENT political vehicle to begin the process of making real patent reform changes.
Another observation. If the slashdot community wanted to target particular patents, and found slam-dunk prior art, a reasonably inexpensive means can be found to force those patents into remission. Perhaps we ought to get our leaders and foundations to invest reources investigating this little-used process to shut down egregious patents that are not only "bad for the community," but also genuinely "bad for the patent system because they are clearly invalid." This might be useful, particularly for patents that genuinely threaten the open source community.
Money (Score:1)
Re:Would the guy be guilty of extortion? (Score:2)
If you know of prior art you don't tell the patent office about, that's "inequitable conduct". Inequitable conduct renders the patent unenforcable. Inequitable conduct can also, at the discretion of the judge, render the case "exceptional" entitling the defendant to reimburisment of all his reasonable costs, including attorney's fees. Inequitable conduct is evaluated by looking at the materiality of the misrepresentation or omission, and the intent to deceive the examiner. Both need to be present, and the judge weighs them, so more of one requires less of the other.
If you know that the patent is invalid (more than just a likelihood it is invalid, you know the thing is no good) then you can get hit with antitrust violations. This requires high materiality and very high bad intent. Damn rare thing.
Re:What Really happened... (Score:2)
In this case, Bruce Dickens, the owner of the Y2K Windowing Technique(TM)...
I generally refrain from correcting minor spelling and grammatical errors in other folks posts, but this one was rife with a repeated mispelling of the mans name.
It is, more correctly, Bruce Dickhead.
Lets try to get it right.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Re:... better idea (Score:1)
Better grab that patent on 64-bit second counters quick. That give us time stamps for (approx.) 585 billion years. By the time 128-bit counters would be useful I suspect that the universe will have died out, let alone any humans who give a second thought to petty ownership of ideas.
Maybe it's a good idea, though, to issue the call to arms on getting the Y2038 ``bug'' fixed. (Yah, I know it's not a bug but that's what the press will call it.) We'll all be running on 64-bit processors in a couple of years anyway. Hopefully, 38 years will be enough time to migrate all those older UNIX systems to 64-bit versions of the libraries. It might seem a bit early to be working on it now, but think how much fun it'll be when you can say you got the problem solved with 35 years (or whatever) to spare.
Re:f1rst (Score:1)
Anyone got some bad JScript that'll take down IE 5? I'm guessing stuff like this rarely come from Netscape or Mozilla.
Re:What Really happened... (Score:1)
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
My favoite example of PTO absurdity (Score:1)
Damn, I guess I've been in violation of the law since '95
Why these stupid patents are really frightening (Score:2)
Take a simple, obvious, widely deployed idea (such as ordering with one query)
Mix some combination of "computer", "network", "automatic"
Pat self on back for contribution to the so-called state of the art.
Release the hounds ..errr.. licensing and infringement laywers.
The truly frightening part is that mixing in computers and/or networks seems to make the obvious somehow insightful. As for One Click Ordering, am I doing something different when I call a supplier with whom I have an established relationship ship?
me "Hi, this is Bob at Widgets Are Us, I need two gross by Thursday. That's all."
widget wholesale "Two gross widgets are on their way."
I've never thought twice about ordering from suppliers by leaving a voice mail message with nothing more than my ID (usually my name and company) and a product ID (often a code from a catalog). Take this simple, common practice and add in a computer and suddenly it is somehow non-obvious to an examiner. Or at least the PTO thinks so.
The scary part is realizing the shift to the information age along with this patent recipe is like granting patents during the industrial revolution for "a machine that [insert useful task here]" and not requiring anything novel about either the machine or the task.
I think the test for nonobviousness should place the idea in front of a group of reasonbly intelligent programmers and have them invent a apparatus/method/process. If the programmers find no difficulty in "inventing" means to implement the idea, then it should be rejected sumarrily. If the applicant wanted to limit the scope by detailing a particular implementation that was non-obvious, perhaps that might be patentable. At least then the rest of us could "invent" one of innumerable equivalent mechanisms.
Our only hope is that the PTO does such a thoroughly bad job with poor patents that high dollared companies begin to consider the PTO a liability rather than an affordable weapon of commerce.
Re:Just a question (Score:1)
The only real solution is 4 digit years (until Y10K anyway).
Fight fire with fire (Score:1)
How about designing and submitting a patent request specifically to highlight the weakness(es) in the system? Something like Goedel's theorem in legalese?
For example, try to patent a "one-click patent" web page?
Re:My favoite example of PTO absurdity (Score:1)
I know folks who've been 'infringing' on this patent since years before it was issued (and before handheld lasers were readily available - this couple was into home holography). Mind, they had a dog, not a cat.
You've got to wonder why anyone would even bother paying the patent application fees for something (a) so obvious and (b) that they don't stand a hope in hell of ever collecting a royalty for.
Re:Hopefully...I think ISP's implemented this.. (Score:1)
This is a good place to start for previous examples.
Re:... better idea (Score:1)
Off with his head (Score:3)
--Kevin
Deththththththpicable! (Score:1)
Did we pay their bullsh*t nuisance fees? Hell no! We made a real control algorithm (which worked much better, incidentally) and patented that as a defensive measure against the same numbskulls. We needn't have worried, though. Tying their shoes was taxing for these guys; figuring out a mathematical rule would be beyond their capacity.
unDees
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Apple described windowing in 1990 (Score:2)
See a copy of ProDOS 8 technical note #28 here [wpi.edu].
It contains the following:
The best part of this technote is Apple's advice for 2039...
Another data point... (Score:1)
A related question: what kind of self-respecting programmer would even attempt to patent a KLUDGE that is guaranteed to break AGAIN sometime in the next hundred years? I'd be embarrassed to put my name on it, myself.
Re:What Really happened... (Score:1)
"Pick" systems windowed since at least 1980 (Score:1)
Re:Just a question (Score:1)
I did this over 10 years ago (Score:1)
It never even occurred to me that this trick could be patentable. It's so freakin' obvious, I'd be completely astonished if it hasn't been used by a multitude of other people too.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
how about: !? (Score:1)
Re:This is a good thing, but... (Score:1)
If anything it should be the cookie feature that has a patent -- but, thankfully (hopefully), it's far to late to patent cookies
On that line, has anybody considered the idea of patenting GPLed ideas, and then GPLing the patent?? It would, I think be an interesting way to push the GPL issue.