USPTO Issues Provisional Storyline Patent

cheesedog writes "The USPTO will issue the first storyline patent in history today, with two others following in the next few months. Right to Create points out that this was anticipated several months ago in a story by Richard Stallman published in the The Guardian, UK. With the publication of this not-yet-granted patent, its author can begin requiring licensing fees for anyone whose activities might fall within its claims, including book authors, movie studies, television studios and broadcasters, etc. The claims appear to cover the literary elements of a story involving an ambitious high school student who applies for entrance to MIT and prays to remain sleeping until the acceptance letter comes, which doesn't happen for another 30 years."

USPTO Broken

[TheSpoom (715771)]

RMS: If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written.

USPTO: Ooh, good idea!

Seriously, the US patent system is very broken, and it appears they are moving in a direction to expand, rather than contract, the amount of things that are patentable. They clearly have no care for whether the patents they grant are stifling innovation. Action is needed to reverse this, but I doubt we'll see it while Bush is still in power.

Re:USPTO Broken

[CosmeticLobotamy (155360)]

Action is needed to reverse this, but I doubt we'll see it while Bush is still in power.

I'm not a Bush fan in the slightest, but I don't see it being the kind of thing a Democrat president would give a crap about, either. Whoever is president when some ridiculously hyped movie gets its opening delayed by litigation will be the president to fight it.

Blame the voters.

[I am Jack's username (528712)]

>> Action is needed to reverse this, but I doubt we'll
>> see it while Bush is still in power.
>
> I'm not a Bush fan in the slightest, but I don't see it
> being the kind of thing a Democrat president would give
> a crap about, either.

So long, and thanks for all the fish — Douglas Adams:

"On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."

Re:USPTO Broken

[Guspaz (556486)]

You think that's bad, wait until you realize that this means that books written outside the US will be banned inside the US because the represent patent infringement.

The US is going to start banning books

I wonder how they're going to dispose of confiscated books, hmm? Perhaps burning them would be an efficient and effective way to destroy them.

Yes, of course, the US must confiscate and burn all banned books! Because this is what capitalistic democracies do to protect their citizens.

How many rights does a democracy have to curtail or eliminate before it ceases to be a democracy?

Think I'm overreacting? Then think of all the rediculous things that software patents have allowed and then apply that to BOOKS.

Re:USPTO Broken

[evilbuny (553280)]

At least porn will be safe, there is no story lines in those :)

Re:USPTO Broken

[Lisandro (799651)]

Pornography is art! YOU CAN'T BAN ART! *shakes his fist to the sky*

Re:USPTO Broken

[Jonner (189691)]

By referring to the "the US' banned books list," you imply that the Federal government has a master list of books that are disallowed in the the United States. However, it's really a list of books that have been removed in very specific, local contexts, usually school libraries. If the US patents on storylines were enforced, it would be much more repressive than any current banning.

Re:USPTO Broken

[gowen (141411)]

A constitutional republic is three Christian fundamentalists and a homosexual deciding on who can marry.

Re:USPTO Broken

[$RANDOMLUSER (804576)]

> Can you imagine anyone scanning umpteen zillion unpublished short stories and novels for prior art? Whew.

Oh puhleeese. These bozos (the USPTO) couldn't find prior art if somebody filed a patent for fire fer chrissake.

Reality TV

[nitehawk214 (222219)]

Hopefully someone will patent reality TV shows. I am rather sick of those.

Wait no, this wont work. You need to have a story to be able to patent it. Soon all that will be on the air is reality TV. Noooo!

I've got a storyline patent too.

[Maradine (194191)]

Claim 1: a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who is so shocked and enraged by the concept of patenting a storyline, that he "snaps" (see USPTO #12006213391)

Claim 2: a communication process according to claim 1, wherein said character subsequently goes to his bedroom, where he keeps a loaded Glock 32C, and racks the slide.

Claim 3: a communication process according to claims 1 and 2, wherein said character subsequently flies to DC and unloads his plastic fantasic on an unsuspecting USPTO in a singlular act of biblical fury.

Claim 4: a communication process according to claims 1 2, and 3, wherein said character subsequently returns to his hometown and has a slurpy, cosmic justice being served.

Publish, not issue

[Aneurysm9 (723000)]

Get it right. Even the article does. These are patent applications that are being published because of a recent statutory change requiring publication of all patent applications 18 months after filing. This has nothing to do with whether or not letters patent will be granted.

Re:Publish, not issue

[cheesedog (603990)]

Oh, you might be surprised what kind of triviality the patent office grants -- see this poster's list [slashdot.org].

And, sadly, it looks like this guy is serious. Looks like he's even set up a practice [plotpatents.com] to promote helping others get storyline patents.

They haven't issued anything

[imthesponge (621107)]

U.S. Patent Office Publishes the First Patent Application to Claim a Fictional Storyline; Inventor Asserts Provisional Rights Against Hollywood

...

Will Knights claimed storyline pass the rigors of nonobviousness and issue as a U.S. Patent? ...

Reductio ad Absurdum

[ewhac (5844)]

...And here are the assholes [plotpatents.com] who have been doing the legal legwork to make this possible. Here is their argument in law [plotpatents.com], which draws heavily on the flawed, idiotic precedents established with software patents.

The system is now officially broken, and anyone who takes the USPTO seriously after today is part of the problem.

Schwab

Re:Followup

[aussie_a (778472)]

Nah, they're obligated to accept it, so long as the paperwork and bribe are all proper.

You misspelt bribe. I corrected it in my quote for you.

Re:Reductio ad Absurdum

[ewhac (5844)]

Maybe the MPAA and RIAA will have to put those lawers [sic] to a good use for once.

Are you kidding? The MPAA will pee themselves with delight over this. They will support this wholeheartedly.

Analysis:

The issue of, "Who owns the story," is a thorny one in Hollywood. Professional screenwriters -- many of whom, by the way, are unionized because the studios kept abusing them way back when -- often retain the copyrights to their stories. Among other things, copyright affords the author the right to enjoin performance of their story in most media (since those are derivative works). However, copyright's scope is limited. You only have a case against a studio if the copying was direct. If the studio's work was substantially similar, then you get to sit in court for years and argue exactly how similar it was, and whether the studio's work A) constitutes plagiarism, and B) whether the degree of plagiarism is sufficient to warrant punishment by the courts. See Buchwald vs. Paramount [wikipedia.org] for an example of how messy this can get.

Further, if a writer feels that s/he's being maltreated by the studios, s/he can vote with their feet and simply choose to work for someone else under different, hopefully better conditions. (In practice, this is more difficult than I'm making it sound.)

However, if plotline elements can be patented, then there will be a mad rush by the studios to acquire as many patents as possible. Once done, screenwriters will no longer be able to ply their trade without being expressly licensed by the studio to do so. The balance of power will shift massively to the studios, who will wield absolute veto power over who may write screenplays, and under what circumstances. ("I want to retain rights to the story." "I'm sorry; we don't offer plot element licenses under those conditions.")

This will also effectively kill those pesky independent screenwriters and film studios, since the large studios will simply refuse to license the plot elements. (The large studios won't have any difficulty; they'll merely cross-license with each other.) The studios could also, if they so wished, break the screenwriters' union overnight.

And, of course, you'll hear a bunch of self-serving blathering about how film production is massively expensive, and successful film plots are already hard to come by, so successful plot elements should be afforded the maximum protection possible because, darn it, it was expensive to develop. This "reasoning" is, of course, complete bullshit, but it'll play well in the trade magazines and the halls of Congress.

Schwab

Palm Sunday.

[killjoe (766577)]

In his book Palm Sunday Kurt Vonnegut talks about a project he completed in school where he graphed the happiness curve of the main character over the course of the book/story. He examined many popular stories and found out that all of the stories he looked at shared only a handful of common graphs. It's been a while but I remember him saying that the book of genesis has the same graph as cinderalla for example.

Whoever patents the five or six storylines that are the basis for virtually all books will become richer then Bill Gates.

The neat thing about this is that you don't have to actuall write the books yourself. The patent office punishes the people who get off their ass and do things while rewarding people who get in the patent line early and patent things they have never built or made.

Hey America

[Quirk (36086)]

You're fucked!

Seriously fucked

What sickens me is your sickness is going to seep into Canada. I'll fight this one tooth and nail.

Really, at the risk of being redundant you are deeply badly fucked.

Marines

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA (619114)]

What on earth does the statue of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima have to do with this patent company's About Us [plotpatents.com] page?

    They have another reason to be ashamed... Not to mention their whole site looks like it was done in Front Page. Oh wait... It was :)

meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"
   

Good news!

[JamesTRexx (675890)]

Hollywood will die slowly as a new Hollywood without patent restrictions will emerge in Europe or Asia.
Maybe it'll be the end of the Oscars as a bonus.

Re:Patent these quickly!

[Maradine (194191)]

Leaving us the fertile artistic ground of [The Environment vs. Nature] and [The Machines vs. God]. I am *so* in.

M

Re:You aint seen nothing yet

[patio11 (857072)]

On behalf of all Americans, I apologize if our screwy patent office has deprived Aussies of their God-given liberty to write bad novels combining MIT and Rip van Winkle.

Re:You aint seen nothing yet

[1u3hr (530656)]

On behalf of all Americans, I apologize if our screwy patent office has deprived Aussies of their God-given liberty to write bad novels combining MIT and Rip van Winkle.

It's a test case. If approved, there will be literally thousands of similar ones approved and used to harrass writers all over the world.

I found this on the asshole who is making the claim's website [plotpatents.com]:

As far back as high school, [Andrew Knight] authored various works of short fiction that were published in national magazines,... Since then, he has conceived of a variety of unique fictional storylines. Recognizing that fierce competition for publication and financial reward focused on the quality of storytelling, as opposed to the quality of the underlying storyline itself, and further recognizing that even the world's most skilled storytellers (of which he is clearly not) rarely turn a profit, his unique fictional storylines have matured into pending patent applications instead of novels or screenplays. He thus seeks reward on the true value of his innovations--the underlying storylines--instead of forced, sub-par expressions of these underlying storylines.

So the same concept as submarine patents: don't create a sellable product, just patent the concept and wait to ambush someone who has the talent to think of it AND bring it to market. The main target will be movie studios I think -- already they have to fight off hacks who claim that someone read their script and stole the idea, now they'd be liable even if the "idea" was never shown to anyone or published.

Re:Copy

[craXORjack (726120)]

So if I were to photocopy a page out of a textbook and give it to students would I be a) infringing the patent b) violating copyright c) both?

A textbook wouldn't have a storyline so the answer could not be (a) or (c). However, whether you are violating (b) depends on whether the page you photocopied was from a textbook printed on paper or an electronic book which displays text encoded digitally. In the first case, the old and established Fair Use Act covers this and no violation has occured. In the second case, the DMCA comes into play and you would be subject to penalties on par with those for second degree murder.