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Hey IBM has a patent on determining bra cup size via direct measurement (US Patent 5,965,809).
If they got a patent for that, anything is patentable.

in OS 10.2 that searches ebay among other neat and useful things, is in violation of patent #6,085,176? Or did apple cover their collective ass?

eBay's lawyers may be quite right in saying they have a reason to be hopeful. The patent numbered 5,845,265 has a relatively vague abstract that makes it sound like eBay's business model. But if you read further in the claims, you'll see that what this guy is claiming is something entirely different.

Claim #1 describes a basic system for an on-line auction house where the actual, physical good is escrowed by the auction house, bar-coded, photographed, and placed on a Web site to be bid on. This process is elaborated on in claim #3 with sufficient detail as to make clear that the intent of the patent is to mediate a traditional auction of physical goods by replacing bidders' paddles with on-line terminals.

The mechanisms described for inventorying auctioned goods comprise a major portion of the claims, in particular #15. Subsequent claims from 18-22 do sound more like what eBay does at the conclusion of an auction, but even so, it's up to the buyer and seller on eBay to consumate the transaction. This patent assumes the auction house is clearing the transaction before releasing the physical goods. Seems like another difference with eBay's model.

In my own, particular opinion, I think that it will be settled out of court because eBay will likely be able to demonstrate it can potentially prevail if it goes to trial. Prediction: $10M in one time, go-away money. No royalties, no court case.

Read the patent, it talks about "vetted bailee" and other implementation details.

It looks to me like the patent is pretty specific, and specifies that the goods change hands but stay on the market, so I buy something from you, and then increase the price but leave it on sale "thereby to allow the purchaser to speculate on the price of collectibles in an electronic market for used goods while assuring the safe and trusted physical possession of a good with a vetted bailee". Sounds like some trusted third party safeguards the physical goods while the transaction is in progress too. Not much like ebay, really, I think this guy is clutching at straws. Then again, IANAL.

Except that you're assuming this effect is negative, which is by no means clear. If global warming turns out to be a significant problem, increasing the impact of airplane contrails is one of the more interesting technical hacks that has been proposed to fix the problem.

The relevant patent can be found here: Stratospheric Welsbach seeding for reduction of global warming.

HSV Technologies has thrown together two such devices: a tetanizing beam (similar to a Tazer), and a vehicle-disabling weapon (Oops, did you need those electronics?). In case you were wondering, yep, it's patented.

You can look at the online version of the patent on the US Patent Office's website. Note that the patent process for this one was started 16 years ago in 1986 (stuff 4698672 into the Patent Number Search box on the search page to see this), which would certainly limit how much longer it could be pursued.

To me, the patent seems to largely be focussed around runlength encoding in digital video - not that this always has any real bearing on how a specific patent can suddenly become profitable. That patent itself states:

The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing signals to remove redundant information thereby making the signals more suitable for transfer through a limited-bandwidth medium. The present invention specifically relates to methods and apparatus useful in video compression systems.

The patent describes a single-pass digital video compression system which implements a two-dimensional cosine transform with intraframe block-to-block comparisons of transform coefficients without need for preliminary statistical matching or preprocessing.

It'll be interesting, and rather sad, to see if this actually get applied against JPEGs....

Define "basic research".

• 1960: "FIRST" Re-Entry Glider
• 1961: "Feasibility Study of an Inflatable Type Stabilization and Deceleration System for High Altitude and High Speed Recovery"
• 1989: U.S. Patent 4,832,288. Cone-shaped inflatable reentry system.

Baer invented the apparatus to display graphics on a tv screen for the purpose of playing games (Patent).

Bushnell and Ted Dabney worked in Nolan's daughter's bedroom to create Computer Space, the first coinop video game (also the first coinop video game FLOP).

Pong was engineered by Al Alcorn based on a design idea by Nolan. It is rumored that he saw the original Odyssey at a presentation sometime before working on Syzygy's (as Atari was knwn as then) Pong. Magnavox and Sanders eventually sued Atari, and Atari got a sweet licensing deal out of the suit ($700,000 for the license).

I guess you can safely say that Baer designed Pong, but Bushnell broke it in the marketplace.

But then there's Willy Higinbotham, who created a tennis-like game on an oscilloscope in 1958, but that's a whole other story...

Remember, Perlin's got a patent on Improv: US 6,115,053

Well, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people already know this, but as far as the quality of patents go, they simply stink.

While I don't remember what date the special was aired (sometime in 2001), NBC (in the United States) aired a special on the USPTO and how patent examiners are given performance pay. The third paragraph in this article supports this fact. While the quality of a patent is not measurable, the quantity of patents approved by examiners is.

Since the USPTO does provide performance pay due to a lack of examiners, they have basically created their own problem. Since everything under the sun is patentable (including restaurants attached to hotels and bra size measurements), the examiners have basically build themselves a self-reinforcing problem that continually encourages them to rubberstamps patents, regardless of what the patent application is for.

I'm not at all surprised at what gets through the USPTO these days. Simply put, the excessive number of patents only serves the examiners and the legal system.

Well, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people already know this, but as far as the quality of patents go, they simply stink.

While I don't remember what date the special was aired (sometime in 2001), NBC (in the United States) aired a special on the USPTO and how patent examiners are given performance pay. The third paragraph in this article supports this fact. While the quality of a patent is not measurable, the quantity of patents approved by examiners is.

Since the USPTO does provide performance pay due to a lack of examiners, they have basically created their own problem. Since everything under the sun is patentable (including restaurants attached to hotels and bra size measurements), the examiners have basically build themselves a self-reinforcing problem that continually encourages them to rubberstamps patents, regardless of what the patent application is for.

I'm not at all surprised at what gets through the USPTO these days. Simply put, the excessive number of patents only serves the examiners and the legal system.

most file formats aren't exactly innovative.

B+tree was innovative when it was first used in a product. Most codecs designed for lossy compression of signals are innovative. However, I don't think Microsoft's patent on the ASF streaming file format was justified.

Maybe this is the answer. In their automated sales system patent, PanIP makes the following claim:

"Organizational hierarchies of data sources are arranged so that an infinite number of sales presentation configurations can be created."

Can your e-commerce system generate an INFINITE number of sales configurations?? I can't think of any kind of database that would infringe on this patent, unless maybe Zaphod Beeblebrox invented it.

Henri Charmasson is one the "inventors" of the 'self-service terminal' and several of panIP's patented 'inventions', and simultaeneously one of the "attorneys" representing panIP.

That shouldn't be too hard a connection to make. Their patent was granted September 11, 2001... {here}

For everyone suggesting that they band together, I believe they have taken the first few steps. The link from the question (labeled "more details") leads you to a site with a bunch of defendants. Namely, listed here.

Furthermore, I took a look at the patents (admittedly, only the abstracts), and while not as depicted as explained, still very vague and very obviously a stragety, not an actual protection of IP. First and second.

Looking at the abstract for the former of the above listed, I have a few qualms (besides with the whole thing entirely). The claim that they can have an infinite number of variations in the abstract (actually, on a quick search, they go into further details in the summary of the invention), it doesn't seem to me that what you're implementing can possibly be infinite. Note, I certainly ANAL (yet), but it just seems out of place.

Moving on to the second patent and it's respective abstract... it seems to me that such a patent had to be filed before September 11, 2001 (when the patent was made, hell throw that in your closing speech) as it seems the way it's described in both the abstract and summary of invention is very much alike to many implementations set forth by other companies, not just internet, but stores as well.

Good luck with that all. Open up a donation bin. I, for one, will throw in.

Creeps the hell outta me, but these guys claim they can do it already.

They even filed a patent

Our current form of hyperlink uses free text formatting and there is no blocking involved. We actually have to parse the entire thing to figure out what is displayed and what isn't... A BT hyperlink is structured differently, so their patent doesn't apply to modern HTML code...

Ha!!!

I, probably like many /.'ers, watched a few of those videos and thought something along the lines of "man, those guys were so far ahead of their time, they had everything already done back then! Screw BT and their specious patents!". But go back and watch the demo again. Then scan the patent again. Doublas Engelbart's demo kept referencing hypertext within the same information store (computer). I couldn't find a reference to a local reference to remote information. Networking and even remote sessions are mentioned but never the context of a local link to a remote chunk of data. BT's patent appears to focus on hyperlinking menus being included with each chunk of data to allow easy access to further information.

Now, having said that, there are some key differences between the hyperlinks we know and love today and the system described in BT's patent. Links in the form of http://, ftp://, etc are known as URLs because they abstract away the differences in local and network locations and various protocols used for transmitting the data. It may be argued that hyperlinks are abstractions of a local data store, not a remote menuing system. Also of interest in BT's patent is the reference to the VIEWDATA system, some quick internet searching reveals systems that used color coded links that may qualify as prior art. Another major factor is the use of a mouse. BT's patent doesn't seem to mention anything besides keypad input methods while today's interaction with hypertext is primarily with some sort of pointing device.

Another thing to consider is BT's first major target in this. While other reports mention up to 17 ISPs being asked to pay royalties, Prodigy has gotten the majority of the attention. Wasn't Prodigy one of the larger online services back in the '80s? Might they have had an early interface system that consisted of numeric menus linking to additional information? Is BT going after one of the only true violators of the patent, hoping to scare the rest of the world into paying royalties? Are they deliberately setting up smokescreens, hoping to distract from the real issues in the case?

So, after a closer look, I still think that Mr. Englebart and his peers were way ahead of their time and I still say "Screw BT and their specious patents!", just for slightly different reasons.

If you read the patent itself (patent office link from the article), or at least the abstract, it specifically mentions "operation of a selected key of the keyboard". (Later on it says "The terminal apparatus may include data entry means, such as a manual keyboard"). Funny if they somehow win, maybe browsers will have to remove keyboard shortcuts, but mouse and trackpad clicking is still A-OK. (And then Amercians with Disabilities Act crew will jump on it...)

But yeah, this is really insane. Also, so many patents like this seem like they don't pass the "not obvious to a practitioner of the field" test.

Amazon now says the recommendation feature isn't really theirs. Actually, the way they buckled under to another patent claim on the obvious application of existing technology is more significant news than just one more instance of their "creative accounting."

In my humble opinion, the XOR cursor patent is worse than any of his top four. That patent totally flunks the "obviousness" test: any first-year computer science student, taking a graphics class, could write code that infringes on that patent.

"Write code to move a cursor around." Hmm, what are the operations I can use to set and clear pixels? AND, OR, and XOR. Hey, wait a minute...

At least they didn't grant a patent on "A Technique Whereby Raster Graphic Image Fragments Are Made to Appear in a Blank Frame Buffer by the Use of the OR Operator". Hmmm, wait, maybe I should file that one before someone beats me to it.

steveha

According to the manufacturer's site:

HSV Technologies Inc., of San Diego, California is developing a non-lethal weapon that uses ultraviolet laser beams to harmlessly immobilize people and animals at a distance. The Phaser-like device uses two beams of UV radiation to ionize paths in the air along which electrical current is conducted to and from the target. In effect, the beams create wires through the atmosphere wherever they are pointed.

The current within these beams is a close replication of the neuro-electric impulses that control skeletal muscles. It is imperceptible to the target person because it differs from his own neural impulses only in that its repetition rate is sufficiently rapid to tetanize muscle tissue. (Tetanization is the stimulation of muscle fibers at a frequency which merges their individual contractions into a single sustained contraction.)

I'm not sure which claim that these folks are asserting to cover browsers, but Claim 1 looks to be the most likely candidate.

Examination of claim 1 would lead one to conclude that the claim is "anticipated" by prior art. That means that the features of the claimed "invention" have been "taught" prior to their claimed date of invention. In this case, they were "taught" by appearing in the disclosure of an earlier patent.

Claim 1 covers a very general computer-based hyperlinking system. The pre-existence of a more-specific system that exactly conforms to those general features (according to the language of the claim) would render the patent invalid.

Take a look at this patent, for example. It covers a specific example that seems to satisfy the requirements of invalidating prior art.

Since a specific example predated their claimed invention date for the general case, Claim 1 of ther patent must be invalid.

Some links:

The patent

The company with the patent.

Wired article

I wrote to the patent holder to see if I could use GP in a GPL'd project (offered him a big chunk of my prize money if my project panned out), and after suggesting I publish my results if I get anywhere instead, he totally blew me off. The project in question was a "go/igo/weichi/baduk AI", a really challenging artificial intelligence problem that has eluded many. I'm actually more interested in giving away my code than the prize money though.

So you can probably assume that where OSS and FS are concerned, this guy isn't interested, although maybe if you're project doesn't have prize money involved, he might react differently; I don't know. I'm beginning to think lawyers tell their clients not to tip their hand either way where patents are concerned, because it seems there's a big vacuum surrounding FS/OSS and patents. :(

I believe the patent in question is 4,935,877.

My vote for the most obscure goes to FreeVMS. Warning: very little code got written and there hasn't been activity in years. But the way in which it failed was interesting: no one wanted to do anything unless it had the blessing of Digital ^W Compaq ^W Hewlett Paqard. The biggest leverage of the proprietary OS was over the minds of the users/enthusiasts/etc. One could argue about whether the legal issues were real, but the free unices managed to get around legal issues with Unix including the setuid patent.

The use of digital computer systems to solve this problem has been suggested. U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,551 issued to Logan et al., on Dec. 6, 1994, teaches a method for concurrent video recording and playback. It presents a microprocessor controlled broadcast and playback device. Said device compresses and stores video data onto a hard disk. However, this approach is difficult to implement because the processor requirements for keeping up with the high video rates makes the device expensive and problematic. The microprocessor must be extremely fast to keep up with the incoming and outgoing video data.

It would be advantageous to provide a multimedia time warping system that gives the user the ability to simultaneously record and play back TV broadcast programs. It would further be advantageous to provide a multimedia time warping system that utilizes an approach that decouples the microprocessor from the high video data rates, thereby reducing the microprocessor and system requirements which are at a premium.

Here's a link to patent in question (RES36801) from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The link was pulled off the pause technology website.

Yeah, that Jonas Salk sure was one corporate whore. And awful folks like Tishler, Conover and Sheehan, damn those antibiotics. Who needed them? I'm sure they would have made it to all those poor people eventually.

The question is whether Salk et. al. would only have made their discoveries if their research was funded by a private company, as opposed to if they worked eg. at a research university and their research was funded by the university and government grants. I can't conceive of a reason why there would be any difference. I'm certainly not aware of any suggestion that Salk was motivated by the promise of monopoly patents rather than a desire to save millions of children's lives.

Now, the question you have to answer is this: what if Salk et. al. had their own companies, and prevented anyone else in the world from developing killed virus vaccines, or antibiotics, for the 17 year patent period? Back in the 50's, only the vaccines or antibiotics themselves were patentable. If invented today, the entire fields of killed virus vaccines and synthetic antibiotics would likely be signed off on by the USPTO.

By the by, you might be interested to know that Jonas Salk didn't patent the polio vaccine. Incidentally, he is a national hero.

By contrast, Lloyd Conover wasted 27 years of his life defending his tetracyclene patent in court. For his efforts, he got inducted into the USPTO Hall of Fame. (As were Tishler and Sheehan. Salk, as mentioned above, did not merit an invite.)

Incidentally, I had never heard of Lloyd Conover before in my life.

... the user directs the Internet browser to a Internet clinical services provider web site computer and logs in to the site using an identifier and a secure password...

Does this mean... that if i dont go there with an internet browser, i "worked around" the patent ? Lets take Microsoft and their .NET software... If I'm not totally wrong here, the idea there is to provide these types of services. You run programs of the servers, and maybe pay per use. So, Microsoft just integrates a .NET browser, (instead of an internet browser), a client software that can search the MS.NET for .NET applications out there.

Or the open-source approach ? Use a peer2peer-style software. You start GnAppliTella, enter search for "word processor", and voila, you have a bunch of servers providing you with an online word processor. And.. since the patent seems to require some password authentication, what if you provide these online software services for free ?

What I'm trying to point out, is that this patent is only useful if you use an "internet browser". I dont really think the online future lies within the restrictions of a web browser of todays style. They are big, sometimes filled with advertisements, they crash, they have security flaws, etc etc etc. Perhaps this patent seems like a big deal right now, but my guess is that tomorrow will tell different.

The patent has some interesting background as well as, of course, full technical descriptions of the various claimed methods. Click on "images" for a scan of the patent, it includes some interesting (if very grainy) pictures of a blade and the famous "damask" texture of the metal.

...but look what I DID find. MS holds the patent on in-car wireless internet. Patent #6202008. Sorry for the OT post.

My understanding from the ZDNet article is not that SMB is changing, but that SMB already contains the patented password-changing technique. Allegedly, patent #5,719,941 is the one in question. That patent was granted back in 1998, but was filed in January 1996, long before the .NET project began. In other words, SAMBA may already be in violation of 5,719,941.

What Patent is it? Well click on this link here to see the 11,000 some odd patents that at least refer to M$ patents or this here to check out the over 1,700 patents assigned to M$. Then, take your best guess, a free beer for anyone who guesses correctly on the first guess!

My guess: This nice little patent on electronic transactions, the key to M$ Passport strategy. After all, we all know that is what they want, which is a piece of everybody's cake. This is what many Fortune 500 financial service (banks, insurance, finance, investement banks) have been worrying that M$ would do for years. Passport is the key, you will be borg.

Or maybe one of these if you just look for transactions in the patent Abstract field.

Anybody have a better idea?

What Patent is it? Well click on this link here to see the 11,000 some odd patents that at least refer to M$ patents or this here to check out the over 1,700 patents assigned to M$. Then, take your best guess, a free beer for anyone who guesses correctly on the first guess!

My guess: This nice little patent on electronic transactions, the key to M$ Passport strategy. After all, we all know that is what they want, which is a piece of everybody's cake. This is what many Fortune 500 financial service (banks, insurance, finance, investement banks) have been worrying that M$ would do for years. Passport is the key, you will be borg.

Or maybe one of these if you just look for transactions in the patent Abstract field.

Anybody have a better idea?

What Patent is it? Well click on this link here to see the 11,000 some odd patents that at least refer to M$ patents or this here to check out the over 1,700 patents assigned to M$. Then, take your best guess, a free beer for anyone who guesses correctly on the first guess!

My guess: This nice little patent on electronic transactions, the key to M$ Passport strategy. After all, we all know that is what they want, which is a piece of everybody's cake. This is what many Fortune 500 financial service (banks, insurance, finance, investement banks) have been worrying that M$ would do for years. Passport is the key, you will be borg.

Or maybe one of these if you just look for transactions in the patent Abstract field.

Anybody have a better idea?

What Patent is it? Well click on this link here to see the 11,000 some odd patents that at least refer to M$ patents or this here to check out the over 1,700 patents assigned to M$. Then, take your best guess, a free beer for anyone who guesses correctly on the first guess!

My guess: This nice little patent on electronic transactions, the key to M$ Passport strategy. After all, we all know that is what they want, which is a piece of everybody's cake. This is what many Fortune 500 financial service (banks, insurance, finance, investement banks) have been worrying that M$ would do for years. Passport is the key, you will be borg.

Or maybe one of these if you just look for transactions in the patent Abstract field.

Anybody have a better idea?

Method and computer program product for efficiently and reliably sending small data messages from a sending system to a large number of receiving systems

It looks like it might not, but it's all I could find

Here's a link to the full text of the patent. But according to the article, "Microsoft does not have to disclose any patents on .Net technologies, unless it is not willing to license them in a nondiscriminatory fashion." And a "nondiscriminatory fashion" toward Ximian Inc would probably involve a royalty-free license. IOW, Microsoft will probably do its usual routine of "We won't sue you over our patents on this technology if you don't sue us over your patents on this technology" in the white paper, as it has done for the FAT specification.

Does anyone know what patents are used by MP3

When you license MP3 encoding rights for $2.50/unit, you get these patents such as 5,742,735, which covers the process of transforming audio into a spectrum, quantizing the amplitude by frequency band so as to minimize audible noise, and allocating any leftover bits to the most powerful frequency bands. (Skillfully engineered VBR may avoid infringement by skipping step 3 altogether.)

and when they expire

Patents expire 20 years after they're filed or 17 years after they're granted, depending on various factors. Because it typically takes three years to get a patent granted, it really doesn't matter. This patent, filed in August 25, 1994, will expire in 2014 or so.

I tried Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and got similer results: Searching 1996-2001... Results of Search in 1996-2001 db for:
AN/"Advanced Micro Devices": 3562 patents.
Hits 1 through 50 out of 3562 So maybe that is just standard business practice.

this search at the USPTO, and found:

Searching 1996-2001...


Results of Search in 1996-2001 db for:
AN/"intel corporation": 3598 patents.
Hits 1 through 50 out of 3598

and wondered how I would find the time to burn both ends of that candle.

Of course, if you actually work in a lab about half of the apparatus you use is very likely to be patented even if your lab coat isn't. The material might be this or this, unless you work with radioactive material, in which case it's likely to be this It might have been washed using this.

You can console yourself further that you're writing with this... the point being, if you start looking for patents you realise just how many of them there are. And there probably is one on a lab coat... somewhere. There certainly was one on your fly (zip fastener- US Patent 5, 791, 023)

Patenting lab coats was yesterday's job ;-)

Of course, if you actually work in a lab about half of the apparatus you use is very likely to be patented even if your lab coat isn't. The material might be this or this, unless you work with radioactive material, in which case it's likely to be this It might have been washed using this.

You can console yourself further that you're writing with this... the point being, if you start looking for patents you realise just how many of them there are. And there probably is one on a lab coat... somewhere. There certainly was one on your fly (zip fastener- US Patent 5, 791, 023)

Patenting lab coats was yesterday's job ;-)

Of course, if you actually work in a lab about half of the apparatus you use is very likely to be patented even if your lab coat isn't. The material might be this or this, unless you work with radioactive material, in which case it's likely to be this It might have been washed using this.

You can console yourself further that you're writing with this... the point being, if you start looking for patents you realise just how many of them there are. And there probably is one on a lab coat... somewhere. There certainly was one on your fly (zip fastener- US Patent 5, 791, 023)

Patenting lab coats was yesterday's job ;-)

Of course, if you actually work in a lab about half of the apparatus you use is very likely to be patented even if your lab coat isn't. The material might be this or this, unless you work with radioactive material, in which case it's likely to be this It might have been washed using this.

You can console yourself further that you're writing with this... the point being, if you start looking for patents you realise just how many of them there are. And there probably is one on a lab coat... somewhere. There certainly was one on your fly (zip fastener- US Patent 5, 791, 023)

Patenting lab coats was yesterday's job ;-)

Of course, if you actually work in a lab about half of the apparatus you use is very likely to be patented even if your lab coat isn't. The material might be this or this, unless you work with radioactive material, in which case it's likely to be this It might have been washed using this.

You can console yourself further that you're writing with this... the point being, if you start looking for patents you realise just how many of them there are. And there probably is one on a lab coat... somewhere. There certainly was one on your fly (zip fastener- US Patent 5, 791, 023)

Patenting lab coats was yesterday's job ;-)

Of course, if you actually work in a lab about half of the apparatus you use is very likely to be patented even if your lab coat isn't. The material might be this or this, unless you work with radioactive material, in which case it's likely to be this It might have been washed using this.

You can console yourself further that you're writing with this... the point being, if you start looking for patents you realise just how many of them there are. And there probably is one on a lab coat... somewhere. There certainly was one on your fly (zip fastener- US Patent 5, 791, 023)

Patenting lab coats was yesterday's job ;-)