Smartphones Patented — Just About Everyone Sued 1 Minute Later 407
This week the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a surprisingly (although I guess it shouldn't be) broad patent for a "mobile entertainment and communication device". Upon closer inspection you may notice that it pretty much outlines the ubiquitous smartphone concept. "It's a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, ATT, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others. Amusingly, the company actually first filed the lawsuits on Monday, but realized it was jumping the gun and pulled them, only to refile just past the stroke of midnight. "
abusive behaviour (Score:5, Interesting)
they cost money to other companies, but also to state and law
how can tribunal tolerate such behaviour and not fine a big toll ?
Awesome` (Score:5, Interesting)
They sued WHO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Methinks a couple of those plaintiffs are going to get dropped from the suit, quite quickly. Unless of course IBM wants to make an example of them (not out of the question), in which case they will have their patent forcibly invalidated, with maybe some Sherman Act sprinkled on top for good measure.
SirWired
Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/03/technology/rimm_ntp/ [cnn.com]
Other situations companies settle such as this one where a company claimed it owned rights to JPEG
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2005/02/21/daily14.html [bizjournals.com]
So yeah, patent trolling can be quite lucrative from a financial standpoint
Manipulatin' me! (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt they are trying to actually win this thing, but merely point out that there are some SERIOUS problems with the patent system.
What better way to do so then to do it in grand fashion? The media are going to put up articles stating such stuff as "Is your cellphone doomed?", etc. etc.
Let the media do the ground work.
So, calm down. If it works, the patent system will get the desperately needed overhaul it deserves as a result.
patent lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
every time i see cases like this, i have to wonder... do i just need shadier patent lawyers? or should i just rely on the people who review these things to be completely blind to all prior art?
Re:Three words ... Initial Public Offering (Score:4, Interesting)
Still not the best example, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas#The_patent [wikipedia.org]
FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
Can We Please Legalize Idiot Sniping? (Score:0, Interesting)
Mod Parent Way The Hell Up... (Score:5, Interesting)
"I hereby swear under penalty of perjury that I am filing this lawsuit in good faith. Furthermore, if my lawsuit is found to be without merit, and is dismissed with prejudice, then my corporate charter shall be dissolved, and my corporation's holdings shall be split and sold to the highest bidder at public auction. Furthermore, my corporate officers, who are members of my corporation's board at time of filing, shall be individually levied personal fines of 3x their individual annual personal income (consisting of, but not limited to: salary, bonuses, incentives, and all other forms of income), as calculated on the year this lawsuit was filed. My corporation furthermore cannot be sold, merged, transferred, or acquired by any other entity until the lawsuit is concluded, nor can board members be replaced except in the event of death or permanent incapacitation. My corporation furthermore cannot issue any further financial instruments during this time period, until the lawsuit is concluded (instruments include but are not limited to: stock issues, bond issues, or any other forms of publicly traded debt)."
That would simultaneously wipe out the RIAA, the MPAA, and damned near every real patent troll on the planet...
(PS: if you can improve on it or correct dumb mistakes that I was bound to include inadvertently, please, go for it).
Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, that's what I thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't the standard procedure for a patent troll to pick the smallest infringing fish, go to court and hope to establish a precedent, THEN go for Sony, Apple, Sprint, etc?
Treo 600 (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an IT Week Review [itweek.co.uk] of the Treo 600 dated November 6, 2003.
It sounds like they read the review and worked up a patent for it over the Thanksgiving holiday.
How about a new standard for patents - that if a patent is filed when a practitioner of the art would ordinarily know the patent to be invalid, and the patent is not withdrawn between the time of filing and the time of issue, that it's a criminal offense?
This is getting out of hand - not the least of which that it's over 4 years since filing for this patent to issue because the system is all gummed up with bogus patents.
You seem to have missed one (Score:3, Interesting)
(They buy vulnerabilities from security researchers, and then they try to patent all possible security fixes)
The 1997 patent looks a little more realistic (Score:3, Interesting)
The one thing that annoys me about this is I remember seeing promotional videos for PCS when the technology first came out (prior to '97) which suggested that some day basically everything covered in this patent would happen. At some point we just need to recognize that some things are just an inevitable result of progress, rather than innovations in their own light?
Payola (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd just look for a patent clerk driving a Lamborghini. Why look to stupidity when we have other equally icky human motivations for this?
I'm serious.
This almost has to be the work of bribery. How the hell could anyone not know that people have been putting video on cellphones already? How could you possibly claim that you haven't seen this before? Either it's bribery, or there's a patent clerk out there somewhere who doesn't own a TV and is communicating solely by carrier pigeon.
Re:Prior art -- SIM card? (Score:4, Interesting)
1994: IBM Simon (Score:1, Interesting)
Except for video playback it seems pretty prior art to me.
Re:"what needs to happen" (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like a tweak of the existing system...
Here's a completely different setup that I've been thinking of (please give feedback):
Limit the total # of valid patents to some reasonably small number. The idea is to have a database of valid patents small enough so that people can easily search it to make sure they aren't violating anything, and also to limit the probability that doing little things is going to violate some tiny little patent somewhere.
As an alternative, perhaps break down the patent "pools" by industry (have a small # of valid patents per industry).
As they currently do, valid patents will become invalid either when they expire, or be found obvious or have prior art.
As valid patents expire or are invalidated, their "slot" will become open to be filled by a new valid patent.
Every year, anyone can file a patent application. In the process of filing the patent application, they are giving up ownership of that idea & putting it up for potential "purchase" by a bidder.
Each year, there is a patent "auction" on all of the patent applications which have been submitted that year. Any bidder can put in their bid to try and "own" a patent on any of the ideas that have been submitted as patent applications.
Since any given patent can be invalided due to obviousness or prior art, it is in the bidder's interest to figure out exactly how much any given patent application is worth before they bid on it.
Between the limited # of patent slots available, and the competition between bidders to own the "best" ideas, this should weed out all of the really stupid patents that currently get granted. In addition, you don't need any patent examiners for this step (since the bidders should be doing all the work).
(You will probably still need patent examiners to rule on obviousness or prior art claims.)
Whichever set of patents "win" (i.e., become valid patents), all of the money that the bidder paid to own that patent will go to the person who submitted the patent. If the idea was considered really valuable by the bidder, this could be an immense jackpot for the patent idea submitter.
My basic goal for this system was to use market-forces to figure out how valuable (in a financial sense) a patent idea REALLY was, and to make sure small innovators got potentially big payoffs while the patent ideas were delivered into the hands of organizations that had enough resources to immediately use those patent ideas.
I've got more details & rationale, but I figured this description was plenty for a discussion :-)
Re:Payola (Score:3, Interesting)
How many know that you can buy a computer with RAID 5 that will protect you from failing drives?
How many know that you can buy a computer with dual SLI video cards?
If you introduced any of these ideas as your own to the average consumer, they'd think you were a genius, and be sure that you invented them. They're such high-end tech, that no consumer even suspects they exist.
A smartphone in 1996 would have been similar high-end tech. I realize the USPO is supposed to do research for these patents before granting them, but the entire world is full of morons, and the government bureaucracy is full of professional morons, so what do you expect?
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Interesting)
A set of laws made by lawyers, for lawyers... (Score:3, Interesting)
A politician who wrote a law which stated that from this point in time on anyone who wished to engage in economical activity could not do so until he paid due to his party would immediately be recognized for what she is. A lawyer writing a similar law telling the public to pay due to their caste is for some strange reason not recognized for what he is.
In many countries it is practice to have a civilian head the armed forces. This is supposed to ward off the danger of having those armed forces take over the government. A similar construction might help to avoid creating the current abysmal state of (parts of) the legal system which has turned into a sort of social security for the legal caste. Sure, lawyers will still be needed to work on the nitty-gritty details - like soldiers deployed on the battlefield. But in the same way as most societies do not tolerate those soldiers to impose a constant state of emergency and military rule those societies should not tolerate a constant state of legal emergency.
Laws should be written to benefit society as a whole. Not just to feed part of it.
Re:Why this invention was not "obvious" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yes, everyone. (Score:4, Interesting)
This patent should have been dropped dead due to both prior art and obviousness. I just hope that the courts are going to dismiss the claims completely.
Re:A set of laws made by lawyers, for lawyers... (Score:2, Interesting)
This country did have an amendment to that effect that was passed by the states in 1812 but not formerly recognized as such. The text still sits in the smithsonian with a article that it failed to pass. Amazing its on the record that the necessary number of states voted yes for it and the lawyers used a bureaucratic excuse to block it from eliminating them. Funny how it disappeared during the civil war to be replaced by the emancipation proclamation too. It would have kept lawyers out of government and deported them if they lobbied for a foreign power. The very kind of lawyer problems we have now it would have prevented.