Website Attempts To Generate Every Possible Patentable Invention (allpriorart.com) 148
An anonymous reader writes: All Prior Art is a project attempting to algorithmically create and publicly publish all possible new prior art, thereby making the published concepts not patent-able. The concept is to democratize ideas and to preempt patent trolls. The work is released on-line and in files of 10,000 ideas under a creative commons license. The system works by pulling text from the entire database of US issued and published (un-approved) patents and creating prior art from the patent language. While most inventions generated will be nonsensical, the cost to computationally create and publish millions of ideas is nearly zero -- which allows for a higher probability of possible valid prior art.
already patented (Score:5, Funny)
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While most inventions generated will be nonsensical
There's the first real problem with this idea: prior art has to be findable before it can be submitted as prior art. As it stands, patent searching is manageable only because keyword searches, sorting algorithms, and classification systems shrink down the number of documents to something that actual humans can actually scan and pick over. Those methods would utterly fail in this case because by the time the database has enough records to stand a chance of containing relevant prior art for a claim the search
Re: already patented (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost of generating them? Nearly $0.
The cost of using machine driven patents as prior art to fight a patent troll? Millions.
A patent troll doesn't need a bullet proof patent to make your life miserable. It can be easier and cheaper to just pay them.
Re: already patented (Score:5, Insightful)
A patent troll doesn't need a bullet proof patent to make your life miserable. It can be easier and cheaper to just pay them.
It can be even easier and cheaper to just ignore them. My company has been threatened many times by patent trolls, including Acacia Research [wikipedia.org] and Intellectual Ventures [wikipedia.org]. In every case, we chose to just ignore them. Sometimes they sent a follow up letter. We ignored those too.
It costs more to pursue a patent lawsuit that to defend against one. Their business model depends on a quick payout. So they shotgun out lots of letters, waiting for some intimidated fool to bite. If you respond, you are basically saying "Hey, look at me, I'm a target!" Unless they have actually filed papers with the court, you have no obligation to respond.
Of course, if you talk to a lawyer, they will be horrified at the idea of ignoring a legal threat, and will instead recommend that you spend a lot of money on your lawyer. Here's another free lesson in life: Your lawyer does not represent your best interests.
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If they mention the patents in question and you ignore the letter, you get to pay for "willful" infringement instead of just infringement, which is much worse.
The US has recently modified its patent laws to become a "first to file" instead of "first to invent", which means the idea of just publishing ideas out there as "prior art" would need to be tested again in court. The defense might have to prove that the published ideas were well recognized in the industry--a high standard to meet.
Re: already patented (Score:5, Informative)
Anonymous Coward that should NEVER EVER pretend to practice law said:
"If they mention the patents in question and you ignore the letter, you get to pay for "willful" infringement instead of just infringement, which is much worse."
No.
Using imprecise words and just spreading misinformation and fearmongering. Better you would have just kept quiet. Didn't even have the decency to sign your name.
A "mention" in a "letter" is nothing.
If they serve you legal notice as per Rule 4.1 (US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) then you can respond as appropriate.
If they send you a letter and "mention" things (whatever the hell that means) you can safely use it as kindling for your weekend campfire.
There are a lot of lawyers. Some actors play them on TV and in the movies. If you want to be one, just go do the whole law-school,
bar-exam thing.
Don't make up shit on slashdot. It's something people like to do... but it's not good to spread FUD and misinformation.
Ehud
Tucson AZ US
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If it's a letter received in the mail - not served by an officer of the court - then there is no proof you ever received it, no way to prove the infringement was wilfull based on "I sent a letter".
If you are served by an officer of the court, then that implies that they've actually filed suit - in which case you had better respond. The burden of proof is on the accuser, accusing you of willful infringement has no weight in law unless there is proof that you knew about the patent, and "I wrote them a letter"
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Because posting AC means you don't give a shit about responses, don't even have the common courtesy to stand behind what you post, and have no culpability if you post something patently false as the other AC did.
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If they mention the patents in question and you ignore the letter, you get to pay for "willful" infringement instead of just infringement, which is much worse.
Willful infringement requires that you actually saw their claim and recognized it as such. "Mistakenly" confuse it for a coupon for something you didn't want and trowing it in the bin isn't illegal or willful.
Whenever confronted, pretend that is the first time you heard about them. Now they need to prove that they informed you of the "infringement".
Their business model is based on it being more expensive to prove them wrong than to pay them.
Make sure that they don't get a response without doing actual work.
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If you are, god save your client, and hope you have good malpractice insurance.
This is offtopic, but maybe you might help me. I have a severely disabled friend in Minnesota who suffered extreme damage in the hands of an incompetent lawyer. I don't know the terms in English, sorry if I misspeak, but he basically got schedules wrong and as a result since February she permanently lost the right to receive disability payments. She tried to find a lawyer, any lawyer, that would help, but all of them tell her they either don't do anything against workers' compensation because they work for
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You're aware that email records are admissible in court - as are bounce or error messages, for quite some time now, right? They can, and do, send *some* legal missives via email. I do not know which and what and will not pretend that I do but they've got retention policies for a reason. I guess, if you can prove you bounced it automatically (should be easy) then you're good to go and things like that. However, i do know that email records are considered evidence and that they can be used for a whole host of
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The question is, do you want to make money or do you want to prevent patents? The second one is easy with this machinery.
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Here's another free lesson in life: Your lawyer does not represent your best interests.
This is so true.
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Very informative post.
I'm on the other end of such letters, but am not a patent troll. Several people have copied a set of patents I invented and own. Recently, some other patents have appeared that copy mine without any improvement at all. Mine is a foundational one, meaning that no one can license and actually 'use' their patent without infringing on mine – improvement or not.
Here is how far they will go:
* Copy-past entire paragraphs from my Detailed Description, with a single ch
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I believe it's illegal to claim you're a lawyer when you are not a lawyer - it's also illegal to even hint that you are. Your jurisdiction might have some variation on that theme but not only can I practice law - I can even charge others to do it for them. What I can not do, is claim that I'm a qualified legal professional or the likes. However, if I wanted to open up a shop called "Shoddy Legal Services" then I could do it tomorrow - but I'd want to make it damned clear that I was not actually a lawyer and
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A lawyer is someone who holds a law degree all though if you could potentially be considered a lawyer with independent study and capable of giving legal advice. Study of law and knowledge of it is the primary defining traits of the lawyer although law educated lawyers would probably look down on someone claiming to be a lawyer without a degree. An attorney is someone who has passed the bar exam and also someone who is considered qualified to represent another individual during a trial. By necessity attorney
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Even major enterprises with substantial legal resources get torpedoed regul
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I don't expect the imminent end of copyright because of this; but if your creative work can be expressed in the symbol set used, it's already in the library. They have an ana
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Attempting to construct a 'Library of Babel' and put a stake through either patent or copyright on that ground (while almost certainly technically feasible, PRNGs are handy like that) are more or less certain to be tossed out the moment they hit a court that doesn't appreciate some snide CS punk getting clever;
I think if someone managed to create an actual useful prior art document by this method and it was presented to challenge a patent it could be successful - once. That's how long it would take for the federal government to ram through a change in patent law to disallow prior art that has served no purpose other than to serve as prior art - sort of like tax shelters that serve no true business purpose outside of avoiding tax are deemed abusive.
They could just disallow combinatorically generated documents
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Simpsons did it.
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Re:already patented (Score:4, Funny)
I believe my patent for "A Method and Process for Doing Stuff with Things" has just about everything covered.
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Re:already patented (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately, I hold the patent for "A Method and Process for Doing Stuff With Things Using a Computer", so watch your step!
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He may have borrowed the concept in turn, I don't know.
I hope the patented this (Score:2)
it is an invention
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I hope they patented this, it is an invention
But there's prior art [wikipedia.org].
Of course, this time, it is "on a computer", which as we all know means that it is completely novel.
Stupid Monkey! (Score:4, Funny)
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1) It won't change anything, because it's really unlikely this will produce anything that's considered valid prior art by a court. Think of it more as a performance piece than legal work. PI with each digit pair converted to ASCII also may have a description of everything that can be invented embedded somewhere in its non-repeating sequence, but we don't regard that as proof of prior art either. So, chill out.
2) There is no right to profit. The world doesn't owe you protection because, "I thought of it firs
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There is no right to profit.
- a correction: there is no entitlement to profit. A right is a protection of an individual against government oppression. An entitlement is an obligation by somebody to supply someone else with something under market value.
Everybody has the right to profit unless there is a law that prohibits that person or a group from profiting. Nobody should have an entitlement to profit, but unfortunately welfare is just that - an entitlement to profit.
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I am 100% ideological, my ideology is objective reality.
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And you are nothing, if not consistent. I've said it before and I'll likely think of again another time. I don't generally agree with much of what you have to say but you are consistent in your beliefs and your expressions of them. That may seem trivial but it's not. Not many people are like that - most hold some rather absurd views that are contradictory to one another. And yes, that is most. That is not hyperbole nor intended to be mentioned in passage. I might even go so far as to say that the vast major
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Sure it does, because in most cases, the number of people who think of it second is often zero. That is, only the original inventor will come up with the invention. Of course, the commies that rule this site will assert that the creation does not belong to the creator, rather it belongs to the masses.
Re: Way to ruin things (Score:1)
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And that's why I said "often zero" in my original post. In the some rare, exceptional cases, multiple inventors come up with same invention, but usually, it's only one individual/group that comes up with the invention.
Re: Way to ruin things (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if we go back to the age of the steam engine. Who invented it? The first known patent of something we would today call a steam engine was Thomas Savery. That was at the end of the 17th. century. But Thomas Savery's invention was a special typ of water pump, not just an engine. The first one who actually build an universal steam engine was Thomas Newcomen around 1710. His machine could be connected to many different types of consumer load. James Watt is said to have grown up with a Newcomen engine in the neighborhood, which he was watching for hours as a child. So what did James Watt actually invent? Differently than Thomas Newcomen's machine, his machine relied solely of the pressure of the steam boiler, while the Newcomen machine also needed the atmospheric pressure to work. James Watt's engines were faster running, could be built smaller and took less fuel than the engines before. Newcomen's machines were still running, his first one even survived James Watt, before it was decommissioned in the 1830ies. The company Boulton&Watt, which sold James Watt's machines, achieved 80% market share, so most steam engines sold for the next time were actually Watt's steam engines. But James Watt didn't invent the steam engine. He invented one type of steam engines. A pretty good and successful one. At the same time. James Watt's patents hindered any real progress, because engines with several coupled cylinders to make better usage of the boiler pressure could not be built as they all were found to be in violation. And James Watt fiercely fought anyone trying to improve the steam engine.
I think, the sole inventor who disrupts how the world does things is more of a romantic story then a real thing. Sometimes, a single inventor invents exactly that item at the tipping point which turns lots of loosely connected ideas how to do things into a workable and reliable product. But the product consists of so much more than that single item. And maybe it's another iteration of inventions, which renders the original invention of that crucial item obsolete, but the inventor of the item still gets remembered as the inventor, because he got some publicity for successfully selling the product, before better versions ate into his market share. Or he was late to the party, but because his version had some real advantage, he gets hailed for inventing the whole thing while all he did was some improvement.
Out of curiosity, once I tried to find out who actually invented the mixing valve. After digging up more than 2500 patents dating back to the 1920ies, I gave up. I couldn't even be sure what the first mixing valve was actually called. Probably not "mixing valve". But we have at least 2500 inventions which improved upon the mixing valve, so today, we just pull that single lever at the faucet not even thinking about how many people were involved in actually figuring out how to built it.
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Well, the cell phone is complicated device... it's practically a shrunk version of your laptop/PC so its many software/hardware components have been individually patented.
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So the coupled cylinder idea is independent of James Watt's type of a steam engine, as the princ
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I've independently invented lots of things that I later found out were commonplace.
I've also independently invented two things which were not common, and which were later patented by someone else.
In the second case, had I published my work, I might have (at least) had a chance at limiting the other party's patent on my creation.
But since I did not publish it, and never pursued a patent myself, I don't have a verifiable leg to stand on.
If TFA describes a place where ideas can be published, then they are prov
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Without patent protection how can medical R&D investment be justified?
Perhaps by public funding instead of private? That would eliminate the Martin Skrelis of the pharmaceutical business
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That ship has sailed. The patent system already does a fine job of depriving people of the fruits of their labor and handing it over to people who did nothing. If this can actually kill the trolls (doubtful), then it will be a boon to all genuine inventors.
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Doing this requires a re
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Where are the grown-ups around here? (Score:2)
Disney is using stories and characters that have been in public domain for centuries and if you try to use any of the those properties, they'll sue you into oblivion.
Disney will sue you based on their modern interpretation of these stories and characters. If the Disney version is what you or your kids will remember, it is most likely because the studio is really, really, good at this sort of thing.
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If you're so concerned about making a profit from your idea and you don't want others profiting from it, keep it a trade secret.
Then responsibilty for protecting your profitable ideas remains solely with you rather than with government enforcement, you need never reveal your idea to anyone, ever, and so everybody wins, right?
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Then they are obvious and should not be protected anyway.
Re:Time to Rethink Patent and Copyright Law (Score:4, Interesting)
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The Constitution sets up the patent system. Yes, it's Constitutional law.
Actuallly, the Constitution of the USA merely allows for it, it doesn't mandate it. Having no patent system at all would be just as constitutional as the current situation.
Looks pretty much useless (Score:1)
Having looked at the site, I'm not too impressed. All they're doing is generating abstracts, not specific embodiments.
It's normal for any patent to come up against prior art (there's about 100 million patents on Espacenet, similar in the US archives). To get a patent granted you have to pick those apart and figure out what makes your invention novel. It can often be a minor difference that allows you to get a valid patent.
Since the abstracts generated by this site are not very specific, it'd be a trivial ex
Public Patent (Score:2)
Library of Babel (Score:5, Insightful)
This is essentially no more than the concept of a library containing books with every possible letter combination:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Such a library necessarily contains every work that has ever been (or will ever be) written.
The problem with such a library (and the problem with All Prior Art) is that of search. Finding prior art that disrupts a patent that you need to make "go away") is just as impossible as finding the cure for cancer in the Library of Babel,
So the important question is whether you can go to a court of law and say "My opponent's patent is provably invalidated because it's already explained in the Library of Babel"? If that's a valid legal argument - then perhaps this is of use. But I strongly suspect it's a complete waste of time.
Of course one might argue that a physical embodiment of the Library of Babel (or *ALL* prior art) is impossible - but I might also argue that I've merely done text compression by writing;
while ( 1 )
for ( int i = 0 ; i MAX_PATENT_LENGTH ; i++ )
putchar ( "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789., " [ rand() % 39 ] ) ;
Re:Library of Babel (Score:4)
I think you may be taking the comparison a bit too far: Combining actual English phrases together has significantly fewer combinations than all combinations of letters in the alphabet.
You miss the point: his algorithm is the most simple way to create all actual English (and many other languages free on top) phrases, including all the patents generated by the other generator - and also a lot of nonsense indeed. For practical use, as for generating usable prior art, both the algorithms are on par: none at all. It's an art project, not a serious attempt at solving anything.
In France, some groups have been generating text, graphics, architecture, history, theater, comics, etc... in a systematical way since 1960 [wikipedia.org].
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i'm not so sure about it. for example, the following could sell :
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Also, your post, and the entire /. database are contained in pi and e.
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Such a library necessarily contains every work that has ever been (or will ever be) written.
With that set of characters. But what if there are ideas which can't be expressed with that set of characters?
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Re:Library of Babel (Score:4, Informative)
This is essentially no more than the concept of a library containing books with every possible letter combination:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Such a library necessarily contains every work that has ever been (or will ever be) written.
The problem with such a library (and the problem with All Prior Art) is that of search. Finding prior art that disrupts a patent that you need to make "go away") is just as impossible as finding the cure for cancer in the Library of Babel,
So the important question is whether you can go to a court of law and say "My opponent's patent is provably invalidated because it's already explained in the Library of Babel"? If that's a valid legal argument - then perhaps this is of use. But I strongly suspect it's a complete waste of time.
I believe you're right. In patent law, there's a doctrine that says that prior art is only useable for what it teaches. For example, H.G. Wells' "Time Machine" is valid prior art for the concept of time machines, such that you couldn't get a patent that claimed "1. A system comprising: a time machine," but if you went one step farther and included a claim directed to your temporal disruption modulator, Wells' story wouldn't be applicable against that.
Here's an example of the output of this database:
A faucet includes a spout, a handle, and a capacitive sensor operably coupled to at least one of the spout and the handle. The systems, methods, and programs may extract a language pattern from the stored text sample and may create an authorized profile based on the language pattern. The second part is put on standby and storing parameters of the action are stored in the chip card.
That's a nice string of phrases, but they teach nothing. You couldn't even use that to invalidate a patent on a faucet that extracts language patterns from a stored text sample and stores it in a chip card, because it has no teaching of how to build such a thing. Or even what that really means.
At best, you could use those sentences individually to invalidate a first patent that claimed "a faucet including a spout, handle, and capacitive sensor operably coupled to at least at least one of the spout and the handle" and a second patent that claimed "extract[ing] a language pattern from the stored text sample and may create an authorized profile based on the language pattern and a third that claimed "putting [something] on standby and storing parameters of the action in the chip card."
But there's a problem with that, too. From the database's description:
The system works by pulling text from the entire database of US issued and published (un-approved) patents and creating prior art from the patent language.
In other words, each of those sentences already appear in issued or published patent applications, and are already prior art. In fact, if you wanted to really invalidate any of those, you'd pull up the corresponding patent they used to create the prior art database, and it would include that sentence plus a whole bunch of additional details.
So, not only does this not actually create any new prior art, it's less useful than the original data they're pulling from.
Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. Feel free to accuse me of bias and say that my background invalidates my opinion, but that doesn't mean it's legally or logically incorrect or that federal circuit judges - many of whom are patent attorneys - will not come to the same conclusion.
Oblig What-If (Score:2)
How many unique English tweets are possible? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud? [xkcd.com]
Even with only 140 characters, there are *a lot* of possible English phrases.
And what if you tried to store them all for future reference? You'd end up boiling the world's oceans [oracle.com].
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I'd never read that before. It was greatly amusing. The thing is... I'd kind of want to turn it on. We'll have to find another way to cool it. If we ran it on a planet that was insanely cool AND were able to capture the energy from the two being in proximity then we might be on to something. I kid when I say it but it'd be kind of awesome if turning it on caused the nearby stars to dim for a brief second. Yes, yes the picture in my head is most awesome. Thanks for the link. (Can you imagine the sound of it
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Such a library necessarily contains every work that has ever been (or will ever be) written.
The problem with such a library (and the problem with All Prior Art) is that of search. Finding prior art that disrupts a patent that you need to make "go away") is just as impossible as finding the cure for cancer in the Library of Babel,
So the important question is whether you can go to a court of law and say "My opponent's patent is provably invalidated because it's already explained in the Library of Babel"? If that's a valid legal argument - then perhaps this is of use. But I strongly suspect it's a complete waste of time.
Even assuming they could generate stuff that was recognizable as prior art (which I doubt) I'm dubious a court would treat it as such.
An invention is an idea, the patent is part of your reward for sharing the idea with the world. But if the invention was generated by a machine and never read by a human being then the idea doesn't exist.
Or to put it another way, you can't have discovered something if you don't even know it exists.
rubbish (Score:1)
what a lot of rubbish: patent lawyers will argue:
prior art has to be public and it must be possible for the skilled person to find such prior art. Therefore, prior art needs to be embedded in a context where it could or would be found (text books, patent documents, publications on web whose intent is to publish non-jokes). That's not the case here: a database with largely shitty or random content would not be searched by the skilled person, and/or is not 'made public' in the sense of the relevant patent law
commentary on abuse (Score:1)
Won't help (Score:4, Interesting)
Prior art has never been a hindrance before...
Not gonna happen (Score:2)
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You don't need something that:
1) works
2) even exists
3) is even logical
to get a patent on it in the US.
A large number of patents are so verbose and basic that they probably all violate each other given a good lawyer and enough bad blood between 2 companies.
This is the reason many companies cross-licence their stuff between each other rather than suing the hell out of each other because it would be a MAD situation.
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The problem with this approach to patents is that when I create a patent that covers similar technology as the "non-working" version, but actually works properly, I still get my patent granted.
You *can* patent nonsense, but that doesn't prevent actual patents of existing inventions from parallel (non-infringing by addition of crucial invention) patents.
They have re-invented monkey by the typewriter (Score:3)
They have re-invented monkey by the typewriter, and they are using computer power to stitch not separate letters, but words and phrases.
They have, however forgot several things.
It is the math. Some numbers, representing a possible number of combination of letters and words and ideas, are so high and so large, that there is not enough quarks in the universe to represent the number. If you have an infinitely large number and you use automation and software to reduce, you will still have a very large still unfathomable number of possible combination of ideas left.
Or put it the other way, you can employ not one but a trillion billion of monkeys and give each a super fast computer and the outcome will be exactly the same as having one monkey with the typewriter.
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They have re-invented monkey by the typewriter, and they are using computer power
So, completely in keeping with the existing patent process then.
Submit 'Something, something, blah blah blah' (all prior art) and append using a computer or using the Internet and you have a brand new patent.
Won't work (Score:1)
They changed it from first to invent to first to file if people remember in an effort to save time and money while speeding up the patent process. I also doubt it would help fight against the obvious clause as the person who does the patenting could say that a person didn't think of it and it was randomly generated and buried so the idea was in fact not obvious since a human did not think of it until now.
The America Invents Act (September 16, 2011) (Score:2, Informative)
The US switched from First-to-invent to First-to-File starting March 16, 2013.
This website is about 5-10 years too late.
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The US switched from First-to-invent to First-to-File starting March 16, 2013.
This website is about 5-10 years too late.
Just replying to try to mod this up a notch (my postings seem to come in at 2, and I don't have moderator points today).
This needs to be emphasized: Prior art doesn't mean what it used to mean as of 2013 as said above. This further tilts in the direction of large companies who can better afford to "carpet bomb" the patent office with filings.
Anyone who thinks the patent system has any resemblence to "fair" should try filing just one patent on their own, without legal representation. If you have a career
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won't work (Score:2)
the patent office isn't going to check this database and after a patent it approved, it (sadly) requires more than just prior art to have the patent invalidated. the patent system is borked but this isn't the solution.
Prior Art for Prior Art Generators (Score:1)
There is prior art for prior art generators:
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/priorart.cgi
The older one is certainly more amusing.
Too late (Score:2)
April 1st was over a week ago, but nice try.
Missing the point. (Score:2)
This is like pointing to the sci-fi of E.E. "Doc" Smith and claiming you have prior art for a faster-than-light drive.
Prior art has to be anchored in the real world of invention and application or it means nothing.
Was thinking of the same for music (Score:2)
Re: Was thinking of the same for music (Score:1)
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It's just a mash-up of abstract sentences. (Score:2)
This is Probably Not Prior Art (Score:2)
10,000 monkeys (Score:2)
This is so much more efficient than training 10,000 monkeys as patent attorneys and letting them loose to patent ideas.
thingamagig (Score:1)
Surely prior art has to be an actual, physical thingamagig,
not just an 'idea' scribbled on the back of a napkin.
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If you've seen what qualifies as actual patents these days, then you'd know that most of the time they haven't even bothered with scribbling on a napkin before it gets shoveled through and approved.
Yip, covered. (Score:2)
Peanut-butter powered horse launcher? Check!
Easy to bust (Score:1)
It's only art if someone produces it. Unless you can show there's some sort of AI or other intelligence, I would think they could argue it's not art. It's machine output.
There's also a heck of a lot of work to do for patents. You have to have a notebook, that has numbered pages. You need to show how you came to this invention. You also have to mention prior art. And so on.
Being a patent troll isn't easy work. A whole lot easier than coming up with a real invention, however. I'd argue that if a company is
And that's ... (Score:2)
... how most Internet of Things devices were invented.
> A device for interconnecting the buttering of tcp-aligned toast for a network-aware breakfirst.
> Wearable bluetooth-capable scarf designed to fulfill the modern needs of internet connected fitness tracking on the go
Re: Now that we have 3D printers (Score:1)
Re: This is why we have courts (Score:1)