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Patents United States Your Rights Online

EFF Runs Patent-Busting Challenge 173

markclong writes "Every year numerous illegitimate patent applications make their way through the United States patent examination process without adequate review. The problem is particularly acute in the software and Internet fields where the history of prior inventions (often called "prior art") is widely distributed and poorly documented. As a result, we have seen patents asserted on such simple technologies as One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.), Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.), The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.). The EFF is hosting a patent busting project to fight the most egregious abuses of the patent system."
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EFF Runs Patent-Busting Challenge

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  • by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:02AM (#9405155)
    That's right, slashdot readers are mounting a "Dupe Busting Challenge".

    However it's still being ignored.
  • by tepples ( 727027 ) * <tepplesNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:02AM (#9405156) Homepage Journal

    Is this article a duplicate of an article from nearly two months ago [slashdot.org]? Or is there some specific news about this patent-busting project? The blurb didn't seem to help.

  • by CA_Jim ( 786327 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:05AM (#9405170)
    And then slashdot could apply for a patent.
  • An idea... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by centralizati0n ( 714381 ) <tommy.york@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:05AM (#9405172) Homepage Journal
    How about a Wiki-type thing that lists some previous art for patents that a watchdog group lists out? Get some serious evidence and archive it in one place so the masses can check and see what patents they don't really have to pay attention to.
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:42AM (#9405288) Journal
      How about a Wiki-type thing that lists some previous art for patents that a watchdog group lists out?

      But then they'll retaliate by patenting Wiki's :-)
    • by lewko ( 195646 )
      How about a Wiki-type thing that lists some previous art for patents that a watchdog group lists out? Get some serious evidence and archive it in one place so the masses can check and see what patents they don't really have to pay attention to.

      That's a great idea. Have you considered patenting it?

    • Re:An idea... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pjay_dml ( 710053 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:32AM (#9405399) Journal
      i like your idea. maybe you should submit it to the people from eef.
      why not even go further and create a whole online community, that deals with patents and intellectual property, from a freedom and civil rights perspective.
      this could be a site, with a wiki, as you mentioned, forums for people to discuss current issues, but also to organize teamwork to bust patents, search for previous art, etc.... the site could be financed by offering support to people who have run into trouble with patents.
      also on offer would be an extensive resource collection, to assist researchers.
      blogs, as 'groklaw' could be affiliated with the site. users could create their own blogs at the site, for patent/ip related matters.

      slashdoters! any more ideas? comments?
      • An exelant idea (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gd2shoe ( 747932 )
        I like this idea quite a bit actually. It sounds a bit like this project is trying to do half of the patent office's job. But even if they were doing their own job, having a full fledged project of this nature would be a boon. Forums, mailing lists, wiki, the whole nine yards. If I was a bit older, and had lived through a little more history, I would gladly help patent bust as a hobby. I think there are many here on slashdot who feel the same.

        It could just fix one problem this way. Without the type o
        • Re:An exelant idea (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pjay_dml ( 710053 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @06:11AM (#9405901) Journal
          i keep hearing an argument going along the lines "doing the job/work of the patent office". i am somehow irritated by this.
          let me explain. whenever we participate in political affairs, for this example, without any financial compensation, aren't we doing someone jobs, which would be located in the government?
          another example. what about the people active in the eco movement? now looking especially at all those involved in research, collecting data, publishing reports, etc.., aren't they also doing the governments job?
          what i am trying to demonstrate is, part of democracy involves copies of existing processes. this is a safty procedure, to ensure the legitamecy of current affairs. this does not mean, doing someones elses job, but controling that other people have done their job correctly.
          just look at sience. every experiment needs to be repeated multiple times, to become validated. why not also apply this concept to patents. to make this seems to make a lot of sense.

          regarding the previous posters comment concerning the popularcy of the project. well this may be so at the beginning, taking the general public into consideration.
          this i see as a benefit.
          at the beginning of such a project, if it turns out as promissing as we hope, the reputation will spread quickly amongst those involved and interested with the matters subject. a community of professional people will form, that hopefully will be able to establish a fairly extensive resource library, and develop information sources specially created for the lai person. having established this ground work, the general puplic WILL tale notice. as what has been established will certainly cause references in the public media, which again will attrack the general public to the community.
          enough written.......
      • Re:An idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by smallfries ( 601545 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @06:01AM (#9405884) Homepage
        This is going down the right track. The main problem with the current patent system is the implementation. There are far too many obvious and trivial patents. One way that we've been using in the sciences for hundreds of years to stop this is peer review. So why not open up the patent system to peer review?

        A site like this could be used to coordinate this process in much the same way as conferences and journals coordinate the peer review of scientific publications. It would be in the interests of companies to get involved as they would have some say in the granting of patents in the fields that they operate in.

        Combine this with a shorter term (say 3 years) and software patents wouldn't be such a bad thing...
        • Re:An idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pjay_dml ( 710053 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @06:27AM (#9405922) Journal
          exactly. peer review! that is a term i should have used in my other reply.
          i only managed to compare the patent granting process, with the scientific process of replicating experiments.
          The idea of coordinating peer review of patents to grant, organised by an online community could prove to be quite revolutionary.
          as many /.'ers might have to swallow first, befor excepting your last statement, i must agree.
          patents + open peer review + short term licence == fair compromise
          with a system like this in place, we could all live.

          just let me state: in general, i do not believe in the concept of intellectual property. to me this is a joke. a bad one, but never the less a joke. i won't go into this though. why do i then state the above? we live in a democratic organised society. most of believe, that the every human being on thie planet should have the right to live under such cirumstances. the cosequenzes of this is, we need to find compomises - all the time.
          democracy is about finding an agreement, that all can live with. of course this is crap to a radical mind. then again.....just take a look at the alternatives.

          i have written all this to underline the importance of a change in the patenting system, and elude to the possibilety, that our democratic future might be connected, or at least a part of our societies actions, in how we decide to deal with intellectual property.
          will we erode our individual rights and liberties, for the benefit of a few corporations?
          • I could almost have written your post myself! I agree totally about the need to find a compromise over software patents, also because I feel that deciding that people 'own' ideas just because they had them first is a ridiculous concept. However, people who have ideas for a living do need to have some form of renumeration for their work so the two positions need to meet in the middle somewhere.

            So the question now is how to get somebody to suggest the idea to the right person? I was thinking of writing to my
      • I just registered wikipatent.org... I'll definitely look into contacting the EFF. And maybe even Groklaw. Then the Wikipedia people. Wow... I need to contact a lot of people. Well, what is is summer break for than doing some cool slashdot-oriented project?
    • Re:An idea... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lightknight ( 213164 )
      Interesting idea. Have you tried patenting it? j/k.

      Seriously though, with the exception of a few scummy companies/people, patentees like to patent because they believe that their implementation is new, original, and unique. We would drop a patent application if some serious prior art was found (no one likes be to unoriginal).

      Part of the problem is that a prior-art search is supposed to cover this. Lawyers will not be happy. Their clients will be unhappy that they spent money on both the lawyer and the fil
      • As you migth have noticed, there is actually going to be a WikiPatent website, and right now it's looking just to be a forum to discuss the main points of WikiPatent. If you want to mod, you're invited, email if such.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:06AM (#9405174)

    On June 30, the Patent Busting Project's team of tough lawyers and brainy geeks will announce the contest winners - or losers, depending on how you look at it. And that's when the real fight for great justice begins. We'll be needing your help to research prior art for each patent and offer your technical expertise or historical knowledge. Using a legal process called "reexamination," the Patent Busting Project will ultimately go to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and attempt to take those bad patents off the books.


    I hope every /.er who has complained about the patent system is going to contribute to this... if not by submitting information, then by submitting some cold hard cash. The EFF gets 80% of their income from donations, and even though they say the lawyers will be donating their time, patent re-examinations don't come cheap: the 2004 fees [uspto.gov] are $2500 (ex parte) or $8800 (inter partes)
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Why should the reexam cost so much... How about a refunable fee if it to be found in error? Why should it be so cosly to fix a mistake that was made? I guess I don't get it.

      I guess I should...

      1) Patent a whole lot of stuff (that I may or may nat have invented)
      2) Sit back and wait
      3) Sell patent for $$$

    • by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:54AM (#9405318)
      I hope the patent re-examination fee gets refunded if the claim is found to be legitimate. I mean, why should we have to pay for the USPTO's mistakes? That would be some racket!
      • by hawaiian717 ( 559933 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:00AM (#9405336) Homepage
        I don't know the answer, but if the fee does not get refunded, things start to make sense. In this case, USPTO has no incentive to deny any patents, since they get more money for the patent re-examination than if they simply researched and denied the patent in the first place.
        • By your logic, this wouldn't be happening. Mainly because lawyers are also supported by a bad patent system. All the lawsuits give money to the lawyers, yet they're helping out with this.

          If this gains support, I think it's quite possible a politician will try to reform the patent system to get voted into power.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        How about the fact that the fee goes towards the costs of examining if the patent is legitmate. If you're going to make them give back the fee everytime they make a mistake, they'll just automatically turn every applicant down. Applicants would have an incentive to make their patent applications as obfuscated as possible.
        • Have you ever tried reading a patent? I actually have two that I was lead inventor on when I was working at Apple. When the lawyers got through with the application I couldn't figure out what we had patented and I suspect we didn't actually patent anything. Since all I got was a pat on the back and (I think) $1000 per patent I really didn't care if the patent wasn't good for anything.

          In any case, the original poster was talking about a refund of the RE-examination fee. That's the fee you pay when you c
  • How about an email every day that says: do you know of anything like this that existed before (patent date) if so, please reply...

    I mean, most of us get a lot of email but maybe less than every day, how about a digest every week saying the same? Distributed patent-invalidation?

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:18AM (#9405217)
      Essentially, you are suggesting that the US Patent Office use volunteers, rather than patent examiners, to determine the validity of patents.

      The problem comes when these volunteers start submitting bad and misleading information, either unintentionally (by not understanding the patent) or intentionally (maliciously). For example, you are one of the volunteers. You are evaluating a patent of your competitor. So you might create a fake website with some "prior art" and point to it as an example.

      The problem comes not in whether or not that fake prior art will be believed--it will be sorted out in the end, for sure--but rather that you've just created additional work for the patent examiner. Suppose everyone did this--submitted garbage that the examiners need to sort through. Some "prior art" might be valid, some invalid, some irrelevant. Notice on Slashdot how very few people RTFA? Well, consider how few people will RTFP. Much of the prior art suggested to be reviewed will be irrelevant. There are lots of people who will try to come up with something just to show how smart they are.

      The net result will, unfortunately, be far more work for the patent examiner, not less.

      This is not to say that your idea should be discounted entirely, but rather that implementing it would simply be a lot more complicated than your initial suggestion. It would probably have to be done more along the lines of an anonymous peer-review system like that which is used in academic journals. However, anyone who has had an article turned down for Physical Review Letters will tell you how well that works.

      Indeed, it's a complicated problem.
      • Indeed, I just had a paper rejected, though as it's still going to be resubmitted elsewhere I won't say what the subject/journal are.

        My suggestion was just kind of thrown out there to stimulate discussion and I'm glad to see someone has discussed :)

    • i find your idea description too brief and difficult to understand, what exactly you are asking for.
      if you had been thinking of this as an additional measure, combined in a packet along with other changes that need to be done to the 'system', then it may have some merit. though as a single meassure, trying to improve the current mess, it has no merit. the previous replyer has elaborated this nicely.
      as mentioned above, i could see, how an email system, that professionals could sign up for, would be implem
    • http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documen t s/1900.htm

      Something similar to this is in place. Apparently, with the sheer volume of patents that are applied for, not every application gets commented on appropriately. Its much easier to bust a bad patent BEFORE it's granted though.

      I don't know of any services that send out notice of pending patents, but the USPTO has a searchable database of pending applications at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.h tml
  • by Baki ( 72515 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:11AM (#9405191)
    Apparently the current US patent system does not want to spend the time/money to carefully check new patents. Now the EFF and volunteers are doing the USPTO's work for free.

    It might remove the most harmful and obviously insane patents, thus making the idiocy of the current system less visible.
    • by The Hobo ( 783784 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:17AM (#9405216)
      Not to be overly simplistic about answer this, but two wrongs won't make a right (the system as it is, and not doing anything about it), in an optimistic light if many patents get overturned it might embarrass the system into change, or at least expose it to more of the general public who use the common 'patented' technologies. Cleaning off the ridiculous patents might prevent frivolous cases from making it to court as well, and with a clogged up court system as it is, that wouldn't hurt either. I'm sure we can all think of a patent case that seems obvious that it shouldn't be in the courts but is. On an offtopic note, happy birthday me, still up to post on /. at 2 in the morning EST.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:38AM (#9405273)
      US patent system does not want to spend the time/money

      The problem is that Congress won't give the USPTO the money it requires to do its job. This is on its way to changing with the new fee bill H.R. 1561 [house.gov], but it may take some time. It is still largely a step in the right direction.
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:49AM (#9405304) Journal
      Apparently the current US patent system does not want to spend the time/money to carefully check new patents. Now the EFF and volunteers are doing the USPTO's work for free. It might remove the most harmful and obviously insane patents, thus making the idiocy of the current system less visible.

      It should be obviousness that prevents such patents, not so much prior-art. Most software prior art is in the form of trade secrets, not prior patents.

      They should use the "graduate criteria". If at least 20% of computer-sci graduates with a B or better could implement the functionality being claimed for a patent, then it should be tossed.
      • Difficulty of implementation and obviousness of an idea are completely unrelated.

        An artificial intelligence system is an obvious idea these days, but its implementation is very difficult. On the other hand the proverbial "better rat trap" would be comparatively simple to implement, but unobvious.
        • True, but most of the "problem" patents are merely taking existing physical processes and automating them. The patent office seems to think that this is novel. The "concept" is merely implementing something physically common and putting it on the web.
          • Be careful with your terms. In the legal sense novel (see MPEP 2131 Anticipation [uspto.gov]) means that the exact system as claimed does not exist in the prior art. Most of the time this is true, the real question becomes whether or not the claims are obvious. The condition for obviousness in the legal sense is that references exist which teach all parts of the claims, and that there exists motivation in the prior art to combine the references to obtain the claimed system with a reasonable expectation of success (s
      • Here's another possibility for dealing with obviousness.

        The federal government establishes scholarships for people who which to obtain a graduate degree in a particular field.

        Once these people recieve their degree, however, they are required to review a small number of patent applications in their field for obviousness each year (perhaps for a certain number of years).

        There are obviously a lot of rough edges and unresolved details -- what if people change fields? How do we deal with the larger number of
        • "The jury system works reasonably well"

          Yes, that's what OJ (at least in the criminal trial) and the Menendez brothers keep telling us. Hurricane Carter, et. al. are probably also ecstatic about the effectiveness of juries.

          There is no evidence that the current patent system fails in anything but two areas:

          1. Allowing process/software patents at all. This is an issue of law, not something under the patent office's control.

          2. Allowing enough time per application for the examiners to properly review the
  • by numark ( 577503 ) <jcolson.ndgonline@com> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:16AM (#9405210) Homepage Journal
    I have a bit of confusion over one patent they have listed, however. They label it as patenting "using a credit card online", whereas the patent that they link to is described as being a voice-based terminal for collecting loan applications and processing them based on user input and credit rating information. Can anyone tell me if I'm missing anything or if that's just a mistake on EFF's part?
  • by grozzie2 ( 698656 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:17AM (#9405215)
    This is an interesting concept. This can potentially turn into a mobilization of the masses to do the due dilligence that patent office employees are _supposed_ to do, prior to issuing a patent. Assuming the office itself has an employee review system internally, where one of those actually granting patents gets black marks because a patent they granted is overturned, this could provide an interesting check to balance the system a bit. I dont believe for a minute that the USPTO employees are so clueless that they cannot recognize some of these patents as bogus, but they have a system where they have to 'clear them off the desk' in given timeframes, so they just approve them.

    If only one or two of the folks in that office find themselves unemployed after an annual review, because to many of the patents they granted were overturned, it wont take long and the rest will actually take the couple hours required to document prior art on many of them.

    An obvious next step, would be for the patent office itself to provide a public input period for feedback on various applications. Heck, if they posted new applications to /., they could save a lot of effort. At least half of the new applications would get responded to with a link documenting valid prior art within an hour of being posted, thereby saving the office the trouble of processing that application.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      The employess are on very tight schedules as far as how long they can spend on each patent. If they don't meet a certain production requirement, they will be fired. The office as it currently stands puts a large focus on production over quality, although they are starting to focus more on quality (without giving any breaks to the production requirement, which probably isn't going to work).

      Read the POPA (Patent Office Professional Organization) newsletter [popa.org] for the last new years (issued bimonthly) to get a
  • by Ninwa ( 583633 ) <jbleau@gmail.com> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:25AM (#9405241) Homepage Journal

    When they say fight the outrageous patents, are they referring to the ones that already exist, or future ones? Or both? How would you combat a patent that already exist? Show prior art? Anyway, I think it's rediculous that we have to go as far as to create an organization to stop what should be common sense. Come on, a patent for double click? Oi..

    Then again, if life were perfect, I'd have better things to do than rant on slashdot at 2 am in the morning. Hehe =)

    • ....against the big end of town.

      Only via mega victims/abuse will there be patent law reform.

      It was a real pity BT didn't succeed with it's hyperlink patent suit - the mega-economies would've reformed their patent laws quick smart if BT had succeeded.

      Really the more outrageous the suit & the bigger the defendents, the better off we all are in the long run.

      Fact is law reform virtually only occures if the big end of town are victims of bad laws.
  • by sharkb8 ( 723587 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:30AM (#9405250)
    Anyone notice that the EFF announced that they were going to be challenging bogus patents 2 days after PubPat [pubpat.org] announced that they had submitted a request to have Microsoft's FAT patent re-examined?
  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:39AM (#9405279) Journal

    h = openFile("regular_business_behavior.txt");
    while (w = readNextWord(h)) {
    if (random(0.0,1.0) > 0.96) {
    w = w + " using a computer ";
    }
    print(w);
    }
  • by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:42AM (#9405286) Journal
    Currently, it is possible to request a patent re-examination of one of two types.

    However, the person who must pay the fees is the person who wants the patent to be re-examined. Fees may start (for inter partes) at $8K, plus $12K for legal fees. Getting a patent accepted costs only about $1K. With legal fees and prior art searches (which I swear that a lot of these people don't do) that might get up to $8K or so.

    This keeps the playing field quite tilted towards those that file patents -- there is little incentive not to file bogus patents.

    I'd like to see this system modified to impose the fee (perhaps with some multiplier) on the *patent filer* if the reexamination finds that the patent is indeed invalid, rather than on the party requesting the reexamination.

    If pro-bono legal work is available, or a simple walkthrough on how to do basic requests for review ("I wrote a program that already does this that was sold five years before the patent was applied for, and here it is"), the process could be made effectively zero-cost for organizations like the EFF that attempt to eliminate bogus patents.

    I see few drawbacks. It does impose the difficulty of collecting fees on the USPTO, but besides being part of the federal government (and thus being in a good position to locate patent owners that refuse to pay), they can refuse to issue more patents to an individual until he pays his fees.

    Old patents, many of which are quite bogus, will have to be grandfathered in. There's no other reasonable way to deal with them, but eventually they will expire, and this prevents future abuse of the system.

    It also increases the potential cost of obtaining a patent (not good, if you want to protect the little guy). However, patent filers are *supposed* to do prior art searches ahead of time, and are *supposed* to only be submitting legitimate inventions. Thus, if a patent holder has performed his tasks as he should, there will be no additional cost added.

    I don't think it's feasible (since the USPTO can't hire the best researchers in every field) to never let through an illegitimate patent. I do think that making the review process more oriented around discouraging people from filing bogus patents is possible. This also takes a lazy approach -- bad patents are only dealt with and the patent holder only imposed a penalty upon if an actual problem comes up -- otherwise, there's little reason for an organization to go after patents.

    I would like to see review fees reduced if possible.

    I would also like to see it be made possible for an inventor to freely invalidate a patent. This means that if a company (let's say Microsoft, or the FSF) discovers that someone is going after them with a patent, and they are able to produce prior art, it's easy for them to just send a letter to the patent holder noting that they have identified prior art, and unless the patent holder wants them to initiate a review, to mark his patent invalid within the next month.

    That way, Microsoft or the FSF doesn't have to pay the legal fees associated with requesting a review (so it's in their interest to first send out a letter), review load on the USPTO is reduced, and the inventor is never hit with the fee associated with losing a review.

    There are some details to be resolved -- how should invalidation of individual claims be resolved? Should a per-claim fee be increased, and fees for review on individual claims be lower?

    I don't think any of them are showstopping issues, though.

    I've brought this up once before on Slashdot and haven't gotten any idea-killing issues brought up -- I'd be interested in any feedback.
    • There are several issues here:

      It's $2500 for an ex parte reexamination, where you just request the re-exam, and $9000 to request a inter parte re-exam. Even if the the work is done pro bono, it quickly gets expensive to go after anything but the most injurious patents.

      In addition, it generally can cost quite a bit to get a pantent approved. it cost about $1000 to do the initial filing. Most patents actualy get rejected the first time they get submitted. However, you can keep resubmitting it ad infin
      • Even if the the work is done pro bono, it quickly gets expensive to go after anything but the most injurious patents.

        I rely on two points:

        * First, that review fees are placed on the patent holder in the case of an invalidated patent.

        * Second, that there will presumably be fewer bogus patents to deal with if there is no reason for folks not to invalidate patents that they know are invalid. Right now, huge numbers of bogus patents are issued because they aren't going to get shot down under the existing s
    • Let me add something - The way the patent office works, Patent examiners get one "point" for opening the patent file, and one more "point" when the file closes. Sometimes, an applicant just keeps resubmitting the application until the examiner gives up to make them go away.

      I guess the point sytem is the government's way of keeping track of how much "work" their employees are doing.

      My understanding is also that patent examiners can't even do Boolean searhing on their own patent database. This has to ma
      • by Anonymous Coward
        My understanding is also that patent examiners can't even do Boolean searhing on their own patent database.

        Not true. The patent office's search system is incredibly nice compared to others that I have seen. They can use: AND, OR, NOT, WITH (same sentance), SAME (same paragraph), ADJ# (second term is # of words after first term), NEAR# (first term is within # of words of second term) as well as limiting the searches to certain sections of a patent, the database, a certain inventor, company, date ranges a
      • This is interesting, and I will agree that it sounds as if internal USPTO improvements could definitely be made.

        I do think that the external improvements I'm suggesting would still be worthwhile, though.

        I'm curious as to what the effect of giving each examiner a 'point' upon rejecting a patent would be. I'm not sure whether an examiner is expected to identify all the issues with a patent when it is submitted -- if so, this obviously wouldn't be great, since it would mean that there is incentive to identi
  • by starworks5 ( 139327 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:42AM (#9405287) Homepage
    well, the most nafarious patent of them all was when an ozzie man decided he wanted to patent the wheel, and actually succeded.

    the lawyer patented the " circular transportation facilitation device". so that means anyone who ever produced car, bike, even unicycle in australia would have to pay royalities.

    dont believe me, well check the BBC [bbc.co.uk] or CNN [cnn.com]

    personally this is a prime example of intellectual rights gone amok. i would rather convert my car to square wheels before paying any damn royalites on a wheel. but i dont think it will be a problem. but just in case, im going to go patent the spherical rolling device. lets see MR. Keogh drive home without any ball bearings.
    • by valisk ( 622262 ) * on Saturday June 12, 2004 @04:33AM (#9405708) Homepage Journal
      As it's obvious from the tone of your comments that you didn't read either of them.

      I just like to point out that Mr. Keogh applied for his patents to highlight the fact that so many bogus patents are allowed to stand.
      Not to try and grab royalties from wheel users.

      So show him the respect he deserves for standing up for common sense instead of trying to sound righteous about his nefarious act.

    • Furthermore, the patents were done in Australia, and the point is that they literally don't read them. In the US, we at least pretend that someone reads them, rather than just stamping them.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:48AM (#9405301)
    There was a recent slashdot post about Microsoft's patent on the autogenerated TODO list in an IDE. They filed in 2000. Well, as usual, it's pretty easy to find prior art for something like this, if you just search google on the grand-daddy of IDEs. [google.com.ni]

    I was so confident, I went with "feeling lucky". Sure 'nuff, the very first hit, automated TODO lists in 1999, From Tulane University.

    • Even though the application was only 200, it's the invention date that matters, specifically, the "reduction to practice" of the patent, or when you figured out how to actually make it work. The applcaiton date is generally the presumed invention date, but the inventor can file an affidavit stating that he concieved of the invention some time before. Also, how do you prove that the tulane prior art was invented before the Microsoft app?

      I've actually read this MS application, and it is VERY narrowly worde
  • by opencity ( 582224 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:49AM (#9405305) Homepage
    Probably partisan of me but this problem started at the end of the previous Bush (41) admin when downsizing the government starting forcing the patent office to pay for itself.

    I got called for a job once when some friends had a patent and wanted me to dummy the technology in Flash - they already had the patent(?!), which I scrolled through, and some fun double talk about the technology. I said this was the 'Artist conception of flying car' patent. We haven't built it, but we want to sue you if you figure it out.

    • For the past 5 years and more Gregory Aronian has been campaigning to allow the patent office to KEEP all the fees it collects instead of paying ost of them to the government.
  • by professorhojo ( 686761 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:53AM (#9405314)
    hi all,

    we are a small software company developing a new open instant messaging-based support application and i'm sure we are already "infringing" on many patents that would hold NO water if they were actually challenged.

    http://www.qunu.com [qunu.com]
  • by broothal ( 186066 ) <christian@fabel.dk> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:03AM (#9405341) Homepage Journal
    Guys (that's you guys across the pond). This is a governemt office. You have democracy. Your politicians will do anything for a vote. Tell your congress man that if he will make sure you vote for him again, he will do something about the hilarious patent office that's the laughing stock of the rest of the world.

    This project might help an awful lot in proving that something is rotten in the state of patents.
    • Yeah, that woudl be nice, but the slashdot crowd is part of the small percentage of people who realise what a farce the patent office is. Maybe if we try hard enough, we can evenually spread the word.

      Does any one else try and e-mail out articles to peopel they know who are politically active?

    • O ye of too much faith...

      Democracy is overstated... the effects of campaign financiers and lobbyists is understated. Lobby groups are formed by those with money to put that kind of pressure on politicians in the first place, and they're paid a lot better than grass roots campaigns.

      Not that grass roots campaigns are a waste of time, but they don't work as well as the lobbyists.
    • by Grrr ( 16449 ) <cgrrr&grrr,net> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:33AM (#9405402) Homepage Journal
      Your politicians will do anything for a vote.

      Ah, if only.

      It has turned out to be simpler to block [usccr.gov] the people most likely from voting a certain way so they can't vote at all [uaw.org].

      The legislators will really do anything for... a campaign contribution.

      Unfortunately, most people can be counted upon to vote for the incumbent, or the slate from the same political party with which their parents identified themselves. And patent reform is too esoteric of a subject to capture the interest of most folks.

      Democracy was great, in theory...

      <grrr>
      • "The legislators will really do anything for... a campaign contribution."

        You're right. In my opinion, election law should work like this: Only registered voters can donate money to a candidate or party.

        This would would eliminate organizations and businesses from tainting the political process, since they cannot vote. Every donation made would be tied to a voter ID number, to ensure that this law is not broken.
        • Slight modification. Only registered voters can contribute to a candidate running "in their district". You can only donate to people you can vote for. That would clean up lcal and state elections from money polution, it would even help Congressional races at the Fed level. This would even block all of the money from outside the country.

          It is far from perfect, but would be a great start.

  • The EFF apparently does not realize that the crazy patents are caused by deliberate corruption. Not allowing enough money for an agency to do its job is a deliberate strategy of those who want corruption in the U.S. government. When corrupters don't want government oversight, they just reduce the operating funds. Those who want corruption don't mind if they destroy a thousand things to get one thing they want.

    Those who want corruption will introduce bills that, if passed, would give the EFF what it wan
    • by sharkb8 ( 723587 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:31AM (#9405395)
      Actually, the PTO is one of the few government agencies that brings in more than it spends. The problem is that that extra money is not used to upgrade what's there, it's put into the general coffers. Call your senator and tell him to help stop fee diversion.

      • You are saying what I was saying. The government is starving the PTO of money.

        How was what I said in the grandparent post a troll or flamebait? It is documented very well by links to articles at a university and at the Washington Post.

        Was that a case of "I don't want to believe, so I will mod down?"
  • Every time there has been article about a strange patent on slashdot, hundreds of people have presented prior-art cases.

    I understand that patent officers can't review profoundly every patent, especially when software patents swarm in great numbers.

    Why not to use power of the Internet to review those patents. Similar to grid computing, but using users' brain capacity.

    There could be either web pages similar to slashdot or networked review application. Hundreds of thousands users could review those patents
    • It'd have to be at least a bit more complicated than that.

      There would need to be some incentive to discourage people from submitting poorly-documented prior art, or incorrect prior art examples.

      Furthermore (and my own ideas fall prey to the same issue) while this may help invalidate patents based on prior art, it doesn't really do anything for the obviousness property -- where patents must be nonobvious to people in the field.
  • Unfortunately, they probably have laws to prevent this since a long time ago. But, hey, it would certainly make them think about what they were letting through.

    It would also make patents extremely expensive due to the new risks involved for the patent officials and the insurance they would need to take out.

    Another approach could be to make the patent holder liable for any losses incurred to other businesses due to the enforcement of wobbly patents.

    IMHO patents may have been a good idea once but right no
  • by Anonymous Coward
    That one really gets me bent because they learned how to construct shopping carts from folks at another company.

    I worked at a company in the early '90s, which had one of the very first ecommerce sites on the early web. The public production prototype of the site was being used by a restricted subset of the public a year or two prior to OpenMarkets patent. This was back when the web was relatively small and ecommerce was a novelty. It was C language CGIs running on NCSA, the horror. This site included,

  • by AeiwiMaster ( 20560 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @03:35AM (#9405540)
    There is a wiki page on How to improve patents here [c2.com].

    If your add to the page, remember to add a how not a just a what.

    Knud
  • Closer inspection of the abstract of patent 4,873,662 reveals that:

    Informaton for display at a terminal apparatus of a computer is stored in blocks the first part of which contains the information which is actually displayed at the terminal and the second part of which contains information relating to the display and which may be used to influence the display at the time or in response to a keyboard entry signal. For example, the second part of the block could include information for providing the comple

  • Peer review (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pacc ( 163090 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @04:00AM (#9405587) Homepage
    Why not implement a deposit sum for patent to be granted to the person that found prior art or faults invalidating it. This would probably end all talk about underpaid or overworked reviewers and spawn a new profession on the internet.
  • by faber0 ( 234887 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @05:44AM (#9405848)
    IBM got a patent on CAPS LOCK status indicator: Here's the link [uspto.gov]
  • by xyote ( 598794 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @07:30AM (#9406073)
    It's patent 5,924,098 [uspto.gov]. It's owned by Sun and it's basically on using the Boehm style GC to do well known lock-free programming techniques, one of which RCU is based on. I even commented on the obviousness of the technique before Sun was issued the patent here [google.com]. It's not prior art but it does show obviousness to someone (me) versed in the art of lock-free programming. It's a standard technique that depends on some mechanism to delay deallocation of data nodes until they are no longer referenced. Which is by definition Garbage Collection. Specifying a known form of GC in conjunction with this technique is not an invention. Coming up with a new form of GC or proxy GC is an invention.
  • Last week I responded (apparently after the thread closed) on the previous discussion of patents, about somebody having patented the jelly sandwich or something like it. It is hard to tell if it is even meant to be frivolous or not.

    Actually it is a patent for a crimped bread sandwich that holds the insides intact. The patent is from 1998 and it has been on the market since the 80s in Japan, would this not be prior art? Called the manufacturer here in Japan to let them know but they are so behind they ca

  • ...What are the odds that the EFF is serious about busting the software patent issue? --- What is more profitable for them? to feed off the manifested symptoms of the real core issue (keeping it hidden) or exposing the source of the manifested symptoms (pulling the carpet out from under the whole software industry?)

    an email to JS

    "Mr, Schultz,

    It is very clear to me that the #1 problem regarding invalid software patents, is the simple act of denial of what is in fact the fundamental basics of progr
  • Prior Art (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HermanAB ( 661181 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:58PM (#9408209)
    The only prior art considered by the patent office, is prior patent filings and since there are no prior software patents, every piece of crud is approved. Fortunately, patents have a limited lifetime, so the problem will eventually go away, when all the patents expire.
    • Your statement is incorrect. Prior art in terms of the patent office includes publications, scientific or otherwise pertaining to the subject matter in question.

      For instance, if you came up with something which you considered to be patentable in the software realm (i hate sw patents) and something had been published more than a year before your filing in a computer journal, lets say.. communications of the ACM or something. The publication of this material would render your idea unpatentable.

      The issue i

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