USPTO Issues Email Address Patent to Microsoft 424
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted U.S. patent no. 6,895,426 for treating electronic mail addresses as objects, which Microsoft notes allows email addresses to be easily added to a contact list, copied to the computer's clipboard, or double-clicked to open the related contact information for that email address sender. After the reaction to news of his first patent, betcha inventor Dan Crevier isn't too eager to let folks know about this one."
My new patent: (Score:5, Interesting)
Since we're on the subject, I thought this would be a good time to let all of you know that I have just patented the
^_^
Seriously, though, I think the exchange on Dan Crevier's blog [msdn.com] regarding his last patent is pretty telling...he gets a barrage of posts criticizing him for stifling innovation, and instead of addressing them, he closes the thread. Yes, yes, I'm well aware it's his blog, and if he doesn't want to play, he' s well within his rights to close the thread...just like that kid who would always take his ball and go home when the game didn't go his way...remember that kid?
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't feel bad. Most of us lost our first game of kickball and took up video games instead.
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My new patent: (Score:5, Funny)
That could seriously damage my .sig business! I've been in the business of selling high-quality signature files for quite some time now. I figure I may as well get my plug in:
This .sig is free shareware. Register now for only $49.95 to get its full 10MB version!
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Funny)
Is Kibo's .sig file [geocities.com] up to 10MB already? Seems like only yesterday that it was merely a few hundred kilobites.
Re:My new patent: (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, what would anyone expect him do do? Arguing the current patent system is as bad or worse than arguing religion. There are good and bad points to both sides of the argument and nothing anyone says could possibly sway the other side's opinion. Especially when their opinion is strong enough to cause them to take the time out of their day to bitch slap someone on their blog...
That being said, I'm sure Dan doesn't want to sit there and get flamed all day... or waste his time getting into a religious argument. The only thing defending himself would do would be to invite more flames... Really, I can't blame him for closing the discussion...
Re:My new patent: (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I'm sure Dan doesn't want to sit there and get flamed all day
Well, then perhaps he shouldn't have boasted about his new patent on his blog, and invited others to respond. I'm sure he would have kept the blog open if all the conversation was mindless adulation for his cleverness (which it looks like he was expecting), but since he got a little heat, he just shut down and ran.
As to what I expect him to do...I expect him to follow through. If you're going to open a discussion, don't shut it down because things aren't going your way. Heck...he didn't even have to post anymore if he didn't feel like it, but killing the thread is just plain cowardly.
Re:My new patent: (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, perhaps he shouldn't have, but as you pointed out, I don't think he was expecting to get flamed for it either. I'm sure we've all done something we've perceived as a personal achievement and sought recognition and congratulations from our peers only to be less than enthusiastically received (I know I have...). They knock you down a few pegs and you want to crawl under a rock for a while...
Granted, a public forum probably wasn't the best place to boast. However, I would think it reasonable for him, since it is his blog, to expect that most (surely not all) people reading his blog are his peers (or atleast people who think like he does) and he would receive a warm reception. It's not like he posted it to Slashdot...
As for not following through, he wasn't planning on getting into the religious argument in the first place. He post wasn't "Hey, software patents kick ass and here's why...". He was just looking for a pat on the back from his peers...
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people here, at least who argue for GPL/FOSS, agree with OBEYING copyright. They disagree with evil companies ABUSING copyright.
The RIAA, for example, is:
Re:My new patent: (Score:4, Informative)
Because the MPAA/RIAA/EULA defines in which ways that you are allowed to copy copyrighted material is not logic to claim that they "remove rights". Removing rights would most likely be an actionable offense. Suppose they said that you weren't allowed to make a backup copy (fair use), then you could do something about that because they are trying to remove a right that you have. That isn't the case though. They are defining (under terms of their copyright rights) what you can and cannot do with their 'stuff'. If any of this violated consumer rights or the like, it would quickly be brought up.
Compared to the GPL, it doesn't "give" you anything. They are defining (under terms of their copyright rights) what you can and cannot do with their 'stuff'.
Copyright holders have kind of a dial to dial in how much of their rights as copyright holders that they can claim. MPAA/RIAA dials their in tight (they want to reserve all their rights that they can under the copyright laws). GPL dials theirs more lose and give up some of their rights that they are otherwise entitled to. They don't "give" YOU anything. They simply forgo some of the rights that they have which ALLOW you to do certain other things with their stuff.
Also, the FSF have not been found guilty of price fixing and collusion for the same end. RIAA have.
This is neither here nor there. Claiming (or not claiming) rights as a copyright holder is independent of then going off and doing activities like you mention. You are ALLOWED to retain your copyrights (or not, as you choose) regardless of whether or not you then go off and price fix or whatever.
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. Some copyright protection schemes make making a backup copy (almost) impossible. So they are taking rights away, and as a consumer you don't have a change in court because you're bankrupt long before the MPAA/RIAA runs out of money.
No, th
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I can ignore the copyrights of the MPAA/RIAA/EULA and use their material as I see fit, then by the same token, I should be able to ignore the GPL and use the code any way I see fit, including using it in a piece of commercial code without making my code GPL as well. Because the MPAA/RIAA/EULA defines in which ways that you are allowed to copy copyrighted material...
For the most part, your copyright-RIAA-MPAA-GPL analogy is pretty good, but it completely misses the mark in adding EULA to the list. Co
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Funny)
Right now if I like flamebait messages, I can give them a +2 modifier and read all of them. Your idea doesn't address the needs of readers who enjoy foaming at the mouth gibberish (at least, not without a hierarchy of moderation types and really making the preferences page unusable).
Re:My new patent: (Score:2)
Well you know what, I was always fucking tired of being the first one knocked out at dodge ball. So THERE!
Re:My new patent: (Score:2, Funny)
I am so happy about this as I am guarnateed to be able to seel this to some regime or another.!!
Please wirte below and congratulate me on my discovery
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Interesting)
I see no reason why if this is proven to be false, punitive action should not be taken.
Yes I do belive it is harsh but if implemented MS, IBm et.al would be divesting themselves of large numbers of patents - or registering them overseas instead.
Re:My new patent: (Score:3, Insightful)
His blog is not your public playplace.
By initially allowing responses to his post, that's exactly what he made it.
Some of the posts he had could be likened to vandalism on private property.
Wrong. In effect, he handed out cans of spray paint to everyone and encouraged them to write their thoughts. It was only after he found that some of those thoughts were not fully complimentary to him that he squealed 'vandalism' and knocked the spray cans out of everyone's hands.
If he didn't want people posting
Time to fight back (Score:5, Interesting)
Hit them in the pocketbook. It's the only sort of censure a government office understands.
Re:Time to fight back (Score:5, Insightful)
Except bring political pressure against it. Have you talked to your political representatives at every possible level of government and asked them to do something about this problem?
Re:Time to fight back (Score:3, Informative)
That look up is most likely a quick search through their own files. Of course if they used a computer to research the topics they would realize people have been doing this for years.
or maybe not they are that smart after all.
Re:Time to fight back (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the USPTO is supposed to apply a standard that demands that a patent be for something that is not obvious to someone appropriately trained and familiar with the technology.
If you read the patent, it could be interpreted as something innovative, until you start looking at the examples of how it's meant to be used. All of those concepts are obvious and have prior art associated with them. I think the patent examiner should have insisted on some example applications that were not rehashes of technology that is decades old, since that might make clear what is actually being patented and thus narrow the scope enough that the patent would be enforcable and reasonable.
Re:The next battefront (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct. Now, I'd imagine that the innovation tagged by use of the phrase "...on the internet" will be replaced by "...as an object". What absurdity. What companies have started doing is disecting broad areas of knowledge/application, and staking claim to individual pieces. In this case, "...as an object" is exceedingly trivial to anyone even mildly familiar with object-oriented programming...ANYTHING can be an object. And to think that having an icon to denote some kind of state, or classification is something new or innovative....
Re:Time to fight back (Score:3, Informative)
Then kick them out and replace them with a new bunch that do care about the ordinary people. One the main points of democracy is to help prevent corruption, but it doesn't work if the people sit back and let it happen.
On the contrary... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Time to fight back (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Time to fight back (Score:5, Informative)
The patent's actually not about treating email addresses as objects.
The patent's about tagging the origin of an email address and altering the display of that email address based on the origin of the email address - if the email address came from the address book it looks one way if it comes from the internet it looks differently.
And whatever else they added to the patent.
It's NOT about patenting
I'm not aware of prior art in this one - do you know of an email client that visually differentiated between internet based email addresses and ones from the address book?
Re:Time to fight back (Score:3, Interesting)
It's NOT about patenting
Of course it's not. That's MY patent, you insensitive clod!
BTW, your use of the word '.sig' just cost you $0.14. You will be billed shortly.
^_^
Re:Time to fight back (Score:2)
Pegasus mail.
Netscape mail.
AOL.
UUNet.
Re:Time to fight back (Score:2)
Prior Art (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely.
Lotus CC:Mail in the late 90's did this, as did all of the early mail apps which had to contend with Internet vs. FIDOnet vs. etc... networks.
-David Barak
Re:Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
My comment, and I stand by it, was that CC:Mail did differentiate between email sourced from the Internet and email from internal systems
Trivial (Score:5, Insightful)
The patent's about tagging the origin of an email address and altering the display of that email address based on the origin of the email address - if the email address came from the address book it looks one way if it comes from the internet it looks differently.
Trivial. Seriously.
"Check the address against all entries in the address book. If it's there, underline it. If it's not, italicize it."
I'm not aware of prior art in this one - do you know of an email client that visually differentiated between internet based email addresses and ones from the address book?
Remember, kids: just because you do something first, doesn't mean that it deserves a patent.
Re:Time to fight back (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever tried to sue the Federal Government before? Try it and see how far you get and don't forget that these agencies have the power to make your life miserable while your case winds its way to defeat through the courts.
Get you nowhere; republicans are in control (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You can't sue the government (Score:2, Interesting)
You can't sue anyone unless the government gives you permission, cocknose. That 3rd branch of the government? Yeah that's the judiciary. Stop hiding behind FLAs and say it like it is - "I know nothing, ignore me, I should'nt have wasted your time making you read this crap."
God slashdot would be so much better if people only posted when they knew what the fuck they were on about.
Re:You can't sue the government (Score:3, Insightful)
In your face MS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In your face MS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In your face MS (Score:4, Insightful)
Back the question of objects, wouldn't any patent that begins "blah, blah, treat X as objects" be invalidated because of prior art due to the existance of pure OO languages like Smalltalk. I mean if there has ever been an email client implementated in Smalltalk or other OO language wouldn't the email address be treated as objects by the definition of that language?
Re:In your face MS (Score:3, Interesting)
The USPTO is Moderately Broken (Score:5, Insightful)
People have a lot of theories for why bad patents are granted. In reality, it's a bunch of different problems combined. I've dealt with a few trademarks and I've been involved in some patent review talks. Here's my IANAL take on some of what's involved:
There's a company out there called M-CAM [m-cam.com] that does IP valuation - in other words they can tell you if what you have is a bogus patent worth nothing that shouldn't have been granted, or if you've got something that is fundamentally innovative. I saw a presentation a while back from the guy who runs the company, and they really get it. (The presentation started off by likening bogus patents to counterfeit money, particularly since companies use these patents to inflate perceptions of their valuation when sold)
Re:The USPTO is Moderately Broken (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing to note, the people examining patents are not attorneys. All you need is a techinical degree, like chemistry, physics, or engineering. You need only qualify to sit for the patent agents exam. I don't even think you actually have to take the patent agents exam to be an axaminer, and if you're an examiner for 5 years, you can waive the exam to become a registered patent agent. As an aside, the USPTO is recruiting at my law school for patent examiners, and I don't think anyone can afford to pay back $100K+ of law school loans on what the government pays (around $35K i believe).
The problem is that you get a lot of people who have english as a second language that go into government service because you don't have to be particularly qualified or competent, you just have to pass a civil service exam. Most examiners leave the PTO after a few years to make bigger money prosecuting (filing) applications.
Having dealt with the USPTO, the biggest problem is that PTO examiners generally only examine the US patent database. They don't realy search online for more prior art. Additionally, even if there is something that eveyone in the field knows about, but nothing is written down, the examiner probably can't point to it and say it's prior art. That's the reason so many software patents get granted. As a former programmer, I know I may comment my code, discuss my solutions on message boards, but rarely did I write a book or post a webpage on a clever hack. There's no paper trail.
The United States used to be the country aothers looked to for patentability. If a patent had been granted in the United States, then it was pretty certain that other countries would grant the same patent with little examination. Now, the U.S. has been slipping, and Europe and Japan do a much more thorough examination.
Interesting question (Score:2)
This is a very real and practical issue that the USPTO is facing. I'm not sure that there is a good answer.
One of the problems IMHO is that the review and litigation process is too slow, too expensive, and too difficult. People can threat
Re:Interesting question (Score:3, Insightful)
As for doing away with all method patents, most patents have some method attached to them. Patent holders generally don't
Re:Interesting question (Score:3, Insightful)
When you talk about where innovation happens, remember that most of the really amazing breakthroughs in computer science happened _before_ soft
Researching prior art. (Score:2)
Re:The USPTO is Moderately Broken (Score:3, Informative)
And just to let you know, this is the tr
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Women as objects (Score:5, Funny)
I kid. I kid.
Re:Women as objects (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Women as objects (Score:2)
Re:Women as objects (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, for most people here they are probably Abstract anyway.
J.
Re:Women as objects (Score:2)
YES! YOU TOO! (Score:2)
1000 different patents each with unique super-powers, descriptions and battle-histories!
collect them all!
This might actually work (Score:2)
B: No way, my lawyermon has 10 patents on water.
A: Oh f**k...
B: Lawyermon uses +10 patent lawsuits on your flubbomon!
A: Flubbomon rolls a 7 for "prior art defense" and takes.
B: D****d! I've now got only 3 patents left on water.
A: That's +5 water attack minus 3 patents... 2 damage for your lawyermon!
I get dibs on everything else! (Score:3, Funny)
I just gotta get my staff to write legalistic-sounding descriptions for everything (as if I had personally invented them), and get them over to the USPTO.
In the meantime, all of you please send me your mailing addresses so I can forward the royalty bills (I patented those, too).
First violation (Score:5, Funny)
{
string name;
string location;
emailAddress()
{
name = defaultname;
location = default@example.com;
}
}
Re:First violation (Score:2)
I usually only code when I have to do homework on my way to my CS degree...
This shows utter Incompetence at the USPTO (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This shows utter Incompetence at the USPTO (Score:4, Insightful)
There are also quite a few claims with some specificity in them, which might have led the USPTO to think this was a new idea. One problem with these "obvious" ideas is that if it's really obvious, no one ever publishes anything on it, which lends credence to the claim it's a new idea. After all, if it wasn't a new idea, wouldn't someone have written about it?
Keep in mind also that a patent is frequently used as a defensive mechanism. There's a difference between having a patent with the claims that they have attached, and having something that will lead to a successful suit in open court against an infringing party. Sometimes though just the threat of an expensive lawsuit is enough to get people to back down.
My guess though would be that this is so widespread, MS probably patented it to prevent someone else from doing the same and then beating them over the head with the patent.
Re:This shows utter Incompetence at the USPTO (Score:2)
Race ya to the patent office... (Score:2)
Lemme try to fire up my creative juices...
class Person {
std::string name;
}
Whoopee! Patent office here I come!!!!!
My patent (Score:2)
A process by which imaginary problems are solved by painfully obvious methods which have previously been utilized to solve the same imaginary problem for decades.
USPTO has been broken since State Street. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: software patents, there's a whole lot going wrong. More to the point, just about everyone knows it's wrong -- except for IP lawyers, for whom this is all a tremendous boon, and who will fight tooth-and-nail to keep the system that way. It's just a matter of:
1. Understanding why it's wrong;
2. Formulating a clear position;
3. Taking that position to your congressman;
4. Over and over and over.
Did you know that the USPTO has a public advisory board? Did you know that it's populated almost entirely by IP attorneys?
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/007may05/features/
This is what the uspto spends their time doing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Prior art... any more examples? (Score:2)
I seem to recall Netscape doing something similar to their mail system.
I know for a fact that Oberon-F (the OS w/ the Oberon language) has had object-like self-contained thingies that could be used to send emails to.
What the heck is a vCard if not a contact object?
Any more examples?
Re:Prior art... any more examples? (Score:2)
Re:Prior art... any more examples? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that while this is an obvious idea, I think MS were actually the first to do it.
And as an example: OS X! (Score:2)
Is MS the only corp that files "obvious" patents? (Score:2)
Do companies like IBM file these kinds of patents too (if not, why not or conversly why does MS do it?)
Prior art, anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Come on.
RFC821 (Score:2)
A "path" is either a forward-path or reverse-path in this document. Elsewhere in the document these paths are described as being what we now know as "e-mail addresses".
So from the very start of e-mail, even before it was called e-mail, e-mail addresses have been described as "objects".
Is this prior art?
How to read a patent (Score:5, Informative)
IANAL. The following does not constitute legal advice (if it did, you'd have to pay for it
The patent does not claim "treating an e-mail address as an object" except in the most incidental sense.
There are various parts to a patent: Abstract, References, Claims and Description. The Abstract gives a broad and often-misleading overview of the patent. The References give the references, and the Description gives a human-readable description of the invention. None of these have any legal force or meaning, except possibly as guidance with regard to how the claims might be interpreted.
The only part of a patent that has real legal teeth is the Claims. Unlike the Description, Claims are not human-readable.
Each claim is a single sentence, which is often broken into separate sub-clauses to give it a quasi-sentence structure. However, all the sub-clauses in a claim stand and fall together. That is, a claim to a process [X, Y and Z] does not cover a process only involving X and Y.
Claims may have conditional clauses, but they still stand and fall together. That is, a claim to a process [X, (one of P or Q) and Z] does not cover a process [X, Y and Z], because neither P nor Q is used.
Claims come in two forms: independent and dependent. The typical structure of the claims is:
1) A claim to everything.
2) A method/process/machine as described in claim 1 but specialized in some way.
3) Further dependent claims...
4) A method/process/machine as describe in claim 2 but further specialized in some way.
5) A claim to everything else.
6) A method/process/machine as describe in claim 5 but specialized in some way
7) etc...
That is, patents are typically written in claim groups, with each independent claim having a number of dependent claims following it. Dependent claims may be dependent on either an independent claim or another dependent claim, as shown above.
Independent claims are typcially made a broad as possible.
To read a patent you should first read the abstract, to get a vague sense of what the thing is about. Then skim the description and figures, but don't get too caught up in them because a lot of the stuff they describe will not be covered by the claims. The description usually deals with "the prefered embodiment", which is the best concrete example of the patented systems the author can come up with.
Reading the claims is the important thing. First, look for each set of claims. That is, find the independent claims and their dependents. Count the independent claims. This is a measure of how long you'll be at it. The thing that really matters to understanding the patent is the independent claims: the dependent claims are just specializations.
I prefer to read each independent claim out loud, very slowly. If one is particularly complex, I try re-writing it in human-readable form. After a few minutes of this it is usually possible to figure out what the general intent of an independent claim is. I then try to think of examples of systems that would and would not be covered by the claim, because the claim describes a boundary between covered and uncovered things.
Patents can be daunting to the uninitiated, but anyone who can navigate the complexities of C++ or Perl should be able to make a reasonable patent yield up its meaning without too much difficulty.
To return to the patent in question here, it has a single independent claim. It consists of 11 unconditional sub-clauses and 1 series of conditional sub-clauses with 6 options. So to violate this patent a system would have to perform all of the actions in those 11 sub-clauses and at least one of the actions in the conditional sub-clause. This includes actions like the following:
"upon establishing correspondence with said one or more servers, determining if the address corresponds to an address in a contact list of at least one server;"
Rea
*sigh* here we go again (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't sound terribly innovative to me but can we at least be sure to criticize the right thing?
are they f***in serious (Score:5, Funny)
since this is just a combination of already established comptuer science methodolgies (object serialization, etc.) I propose the following:
- user goes to mexican restaurant
- user eats spicy burrito
- user consumes spciy sauce
- user drinks strong coffee afterwards
- user takes huge shit
clearly the user serialized his data (i.e. the burrito), put it into a container (his stomach), then treated his data as an object by running it through drinking application (coffee) then running through another application (colon) and receiving final confirmation. toilet bowl full of shit.so, who's with me?
USPTO didn't even check the grammar (Score:3, Interesting)
Did somebody at USPTO really read this, or have they begun to simply rubber-stamp "granted" on all applications?
Re:USPTO didn't even check the grammar (Score:3, Insightful)
Errors like this really should have been corrected before the patent was granted, and this indicates that there has been spent too little time examining the patent.
This is not just a grammar error somewhere in the patent. It is a grammar error in the only independent claim of the patent. Without the sentence that contains this grammar error the entire patent would be useless in court (and would probably not have be
Generic Problem with Modern Political Thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know how you solve this problem more generically with the steady growth of doctrinare propertarianism in politics throughout the world, especially since property, to many, appears as "common sense", without the more sophisticated, economist's understanding of what property is, and means.
The battle to promote educated opinion is a difficult one indeed, requiring a honing of arguing skills so that the informed opinion can be presented as common sense over the prejudiced one.
I think, personally, that the root of the problem [slashdot.org] is deeper than patents [kerneltrap.org].
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Just want to be the first (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just want to be the first (Score:2)
If you want to do something against these sorts of patent system abuses, use (and contribute to) open source software on generic hardware.
Re:Just want to be the first (Score:2)
Re:Bull Hockey! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bull Hockey! (Score:4, Funny)
Luckily, it won't damage the porn industry, they have plenty of prior art on record for treating women like objects. But that scared me for a minute..
Re:Bull Hockey! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bull Hockey! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bull Hockey! (Score:3, Informative)
And if you look at the patent, it's about a user interface that displays icons next to e-mail addresses to give extra information about them (having looked them up in your address book to find that information).
Re:both sides of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
That's BS. Let's assume that a company admits the patent system is screwed, so it obtains patents for defense. That makes no sense unless it is also working to change the current patent system so defensive patents are NOT necessary.
Obviously because Microsoft is not working to fix the current system, it is using these patents for offensive means, not defensive means.
Re:both sides of the story (Score:3, Insightful)
First approximation:
Businesses aren't there to fix society's problems. They are there to make a buck for the stockholder.
Second approximation:
OK, that's not completely true: we as a society grant them incorporation and all its benefits because as a side effect they do solve a lot of society's problems. Hunger is not wiped out in the US, but all the hunger than can be wiped out by the profit motive is, which it t
Prior art (Score:2)
* We did innovate in this space in MacOE.
Well, not quite. A number of e-mail clients on the Mac treated e-mail addresses as 'objects' well before Mac OE. It was the natural evolution of Apple's push from Drag-and-Drop functionality across the OS from MacOS 7 onwards (which was on-going from 1990-97 and beyond). Off the top of my head an example would be MailDrop from Baylor Univ. doing this well before OE was even released.
Re:Prior art (Score:2)
Also, this patent isn't about treating e-mail addresses as 'objects'. That's just a gross oversimplification of what it deals with that has been snagged from the summary. The claims talk about displaying e-mail addresses in a message preview pane with icons attached to them to provide more information and enable the user to manipulate them.
Re:both sides of the story (Score:2)
Re:both sides of the story (Score:2)
Its more than that. There are parts of Patent law that state that the only people that can decide about patents are registered patent lawyers.
When the law says lawyers must make technical decisions, something is very broken.
Re:both sides of the story (Score:3, Informative)
Patents are supposed to be written by practitioners for practitioners. If only lawyers can understand what a patent means, then the patent is a bad patent no matter what it covers (and it may also be invalid).
This is not a patent for autocomplete. It is much more specific.
Yes, it is more specific: it is autocompletion for Email addresses, which is a straightforward extension of aut
Re:so... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there any sort of public submittal process for showing that prior art exists against someone elses patent applicati
Re:Useless patents (Score:3, Informative)
That's not the issue. The issue is that when people who already have a lot of cash are given patents like this they can use them to threaten the competition regardless of the validity of the patent, because they can afford to take you to court and bankrupt you while you wait for the pathetic legal system to throw out their case. Which is not even a given since the judge will know squat about the issues or IT or basically anyt
Re:can't use Java, c#, Ruby, ... anymore (Score:3, Informative)
It looks that what they are trying to patent is a mail address object that calls another server to see if the mail address is known.
So if, for example, you had a mail address object that did a call to your company LDAP server to implement a method isCompanyMailAddress() you might infringe on their patent.
It is a sad thing. Even though there might be no prior a