Slashdot Mirror

Posting to slashdot does not qualify as a proof, unfortunately.

You should have posted elsewhere, e.g., here: http://ip.com/
(just found this website by googling)

So do LEDs bother your eyes? I think CRTs gave me headaches far more often than has any form of flat panel display, at least partly because of the whining noise that CRTs emit.

No. You're imagining things.

No, he's not. That whining noise is well known, objectively measurable, and explainable by actual physics.

Unless IBM was imagining things.. Or you deny the existence of eddy currents in what is essentially a high frequency electromagnet (see material under "stray losses").

But, that being said, once you've blown out your hearing above 15 kHz you have no reason to believe that high frequency sounds exist -- dog whistles, ultrasound machines, animal ecolocation are all a giant conspiracy to fool you, not features of the real world.

Indeed, that has been proposed as the future...

.. from so far back that IBM will see its neural ideas hit their 50 year anniversary this December;

    US Patent 3,165,644
   
    Electronic circuit for simulating brain neuron characteristics including memory means producing a self-sustaining output (12-Jan-1965)

    US Patent Publication (Source: DOCDB)
        Publication No. US 3165644 A published on 12-Jan-1965
        Application No. US 162127 A filed on 26-Dec-1961

    Inventors
        CLAPPER GENUNG L

    Assignees/Applicants
        IBM

    Priority
        US 162127 A 26-Dec-1961

    Classifications
        International (2006.01): G06N 3/00; G06N 3/063
        European: G06N 3/063A

    Patent References
        US 3097349 A Information processing apparatus Jul-1963
   

They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it

Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (plus some of his older books as well) helped kill a patent for waterbeds IIRC. Perhaps Frank Herbert's Dune can be used to help kill this patent. Fremen stillsuit boots generated power from walking.

here's a 2000 article about electricity generating shoes. here's a patent from 1992 and another from 1988. Doesn't anyone do an internet search before "inventing" something?

"A system for transmission, reception and accumulation of the knowledge packets to plurality of channel nodes in the network operating distributedly in a peer to peer environment via installable one or more role active Human Operating System (HOS) applications in a digital devise of each of channel node, a network controller registering and providing desired HOS applications and multiple developers developing advance communication and knowledge management applications and each of subscribers exploiting the said network resources by leveraging and augmenting taxonomically and ontologically classified knowledge classes expressed via plurality search macros and UKID structures facilitating said expert human agents for knowledge invocation and support services and service providers providing information services in the preidentified taxonomical classes, wherein each of channel nodes communicating with the unknown via domain specific supernodes each facilitating social networking and relationships development leading to human grid which is searchable via Universal Desktop Search by black box search module."

Application No. US 12/973387

In 1993-ish, I "inventend" a rotary engine topology, that upon researching was damned similar to one patented a couple of decades earlier by Mr. Charles Bancroft. Out of curiosity, I called directory assistance in his town and ended up speaking with his son, Charles had been dead for a few years at that time. His son told a very similar story about how his dad had built prototypes, demonstrated remarkable efficiencies, and shopped the deal to Detroit and other engine makers, including Mercury Outboard. Basically, there was a collective yawn from the established players. The story they were told was that the industry has sunk billions upon billions of dollars into refinement of the reciprocating piston engine, associated tooling, etc., and at that time - in the mid 1970s, just after the oil embargo, they were _still_ not interested in starting to develop somebody else's patented idea due to the long ramp up required to reach cost/efficiency parity with their existing designs.

Rotary engines, including the Wankel, generally suffer from seal problems, and they're also not so great at keeping all the components cool enough under load. They look great on early examination, a 3x efficiency improvement is easy to extrapolate from early results, but it really is hard to compete with the millions of man hours of sequential development that has been sunk into the steam piston engine topology since the 1800s.

Not sure if you were a troll or not but this was patented in the USA in 1988: http://ip.com/patent/US4892328 oh and is being currently sold by an American speaker manufacturer.

...and here's a patent filed in 1988: http://ip.com/patent/US4892328

Inflatable life buoy launcher gun
Inflatable and recoverable lifesaving projectile apparatus

The above don't use foam though.

Inflatable life buoy launcher gun
Inflatable and recoverable lifesaving projectile apparatus

The above don't use foam though.

If his goal is defensive publication, entities like IP.com provide a Prior Art Database that assures an invention's novelty is established around the world. It's dated and distributed to libraries and patent offices worldwide. However, I think the poster is interested in academic publication, which is something else entirely. (My advice there is to find journals and conferences that have published similar types of algorithms, then write his paper in the same style as papers from those sources. All journals and conferences have templates for authors to follow and combining those with published examples is about the best the inexperienced author can do.)

What you are looking for is a defensive publication that patent examiners are likely to search when reviewing a patent application. One candidate is The IP.com Journal, part of the prior-art database maintained at ip.com. The ip.com prior-art database is accessible on-line; in addition, physical copies of the journal are distributed to patent offices and libraries worldwide.

ip.com has many well-known corporations as clients, entities most likely to need the services provided by an effective defensive publication. The cost of electronic publication for an individual invention, $200 (plus $40 if you want the entire disclosure, not just an abstract and reference to the online version, to be in the printed edition), is much less than a patent application.

[Disclaimer: I have no association with ip.com, other than as a satisfied user: They have published several of my inventions, none of which I have ever seen patented elsewhere.]

What you are looking for is a defensive publication that patent examiners are likely to search when reviewing a patent application. One candidate is The IP.com Journal, part of the prior-art database maintained at ip.com. The ip.com prior-art database is accessible on-line; in addition, physical copies of the journal are distributed to patent offices and libraries worldwide.

ip.com has many well-known corporations as clients, entities most likely to need the services provided by an effective defensive publication. The cost of electronic publication for an individual invention, $200 (plus $40 if you want the entire disclosure, not just an abstract and reference to the online version, to be in the printed edition), is much less than a patent application.

[Disclaimer: I have no association with ip.com, other than as a satisfied user: They have published several of my inventions, none of which I have ever seen patented elsewhere.]

What you are looking for is a defensive publication that patent examiners are likely to search when reviewing a patent application. One candidate is The IP.com Journal, part of the prior-art database maintained at ip.com. The ip.com prior-art database is accessible on-line; in addition, physical copies of the journal are distributed to patent offices and libraries worldwide.

ip.com has many well-known corporations as clients, entities most likely to need the services provided by an effective defensive publication. The cost of electronic publication for an individual invention, $200 (plus $40 if you want the entire disclosure, not just an abstract and reference to the online version, to be in the printed edition), is much less than a patent application.

[Disclaimer: I have no association with ip.com, other than as a satisfied user: They have published several of my inventions, none of which I have ever seen patented elsewhere.]

What you are looking for is a defensive publication that patent examiners are likely to search when reviewing a patent application. One candidate is The IP.com Journal, part of the prior-art database maintained at ip.com. The ip.com prior-art database is accessible on-line; in addition, physical copies of the journal are distributed to patent offices and libraries worldwide.

ip.com has many well-known corporations as clients, entities most likely to need the services provided by an effective defensive publication. The cost of electronic publication for an individual invention, $200 (plus $40 if you want the entire disclosure, not just an abstract and reference to the online version, to be in the printed edition), is much less than a patent application.

[Disclaimer: I have no association with ip.com, other than as a satisfied user: They have published several of my inventions, none of which I have ever seen patented elsewhere.]

What you are looking for is a defensive publication that patent examiners are likely to search when reviewing a patent application. One candidate is The IP.com Journal, part of the prior-art database maintained at ip.com. The ip.com prior-art database is accessible on-line; in addition, physical copies of the journal are distributed to patent offices and libraries worldwide.

ip.com has many well-known corporations as clients, entities most likely to need the services provided by an effective defensive publication. The cost of electronic publication for an individual invention, $200 (plus $40 if you want the entire disclosure, not just an abstract and reference to the online version, to be in the printed edition), is much less than a patent application.

[Disclaimer: I have no association with ip.com, other than as a satisfied user: They have published several of my inventions, none of which I have ever seen patented elsewhere.]

What you are looking for is a defensive publication that patent examiners are likely to search when reviewing a patent application. One candidate is The IP.com Journal, part of the prior-art database maintained at ip.com. The ip.com prior-art database is accessible on-line; in addition, physical copies of the journal are distributed to patent offices and libraries worldwide.

ip.com has many well-known corporations as clients, entities most likely to need the services provided by an effective defensive publication. The cost of electronic publication for an individual invention, $200 (plus $40 if you want the entire disclosure, not just an abstract and reference to the online version, to be in the printed edition), is much less than a patent application.

[Disclaimer: I have no association with ip.com, other than as a satisfied user: They have published several of my inventions, none of which I have ever seen patented elsewhere.]

So, what exactly is the precedent here? I didn't think you could copyright the layout of a board game.

If they copy the board, even if they subsequently modify it then it's copyright infringement.

So the test is probably whether the same colours are used for the squares, and whether the double-letter, triple-word, etc., squares are in the same place.

---
<Rant on USPTO website starts here!>

Incidentally I tried to view Butts patent from 1938 but the USPTO.gov website is about the worst internet site I've seen. It took about 5 clicks, through pages with absolutlely no UI design, to get to the search. The search hasn't changed in about 10 years, which you'd think might mean it works well - you'd be wrong. Then the search results are displayed so poorly, older patents just having a list of codes next to them. Then to top it off you can't see the images because they require you to use some weird-ass TIFF viewer. Seriously, a tiff-viewer! This website is like something slowly cobbled together by someone who has no clue about the internet, UI design, accessing information.

I'm guessing there's a single "designer" who's the sort of person that simply piles everything up in his room, he can find anything at the drop of a hat. But the appearance is of absolute chaos to anyone else.

I've been on the 'net since about '94 (JANET and all that) and started surfing the www in about '96 (Mosaic on UNIX terminals at Uni). In that time I don't ever recall seeing such a poor website in terms of the expectation of a large organisation, the vast number of users that must be subjected to it and the paucity of the results it produces.

Couldn't the USPTO afford to employ one actual web designer?

Compare their patent search with that of Espacenet from the EPO or Patentscope (RTM) from WIPO or the IBM backed Prior Art DB! Can you tell which were actually designed to retrieve information from?

http://gb.espacenet.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Action=FormGen&Template=gb/en/advanced.hts

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/index.jsp

https://priorart.ip.com/search.jsp?searchType=freetextSearch

IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin.

IP.COM provides a way for you to publish your own work and add it to their searchable prior art database.

You may also be interested in the Patent Commons.

Try http://ip.com/. Quoting from their website, "IP.com, Inc. is the global leader in providing enterprise-wide innovation management solutions. IP.com provides both web-based and desktop solutions to facilitate rapid and reliable publication of technical disclosures as well as providing irrefutable protection of electronic documents. With IP.com's comprehensive suite of products, companies can effectively manage and strengthen their intellectual property portfolio. The world's largest and most innovative companies trust IP.com to process and authenticate their records of innovation."

There's ip.com's Legal Safeguarding Agent, which has Windows software that will automatically (or manually, if you prefer) compute a document hash for pretty much anything; the company then publishes a daily digest of hashes -- and they even get printed in hardcopy format.

I don't know the specifics of their hash algorithm, other than it's some combination of MD5 and SHA-1.

There are several web sites out there that do nothing but publish your ideas (like these guys) so that they can be recorded as prior art. The stupid part is that they charge a very high fee. There needs to be a free site that is add-sponsored and community supported. In fact, if no one else does it, I'll do one. I already have my own dumb idea blog for this purpose. If a few of you respond to this post, suggesting that I actually provide this free service (and maybe some nice ideas about what web host, what CRM software, what to do to get paid adds, etc), I'll go ahead and do it. If any of you would rather do this yourself, please say so. I'd like to be an early user.

No, proving its existence will be enough to get the patent overturned. The burden is on you to do so. Plus, their patent may well be upheld if there is enough of a difference[...]

This could all be achieved without government intervention just by publishing in a Journal of No-Longer-Patentable Ideas. (Or web-site. Are there such sites?)

I found this, and I'm pretty confident that simply officially copyrighting (method varies depending on countries) protects from patents, as it is an offical fact of prior art.

Usual IANAL disclaimer, etc.

I don't understand why being philosophically against software patents is always equated with socialism, and that patents are the ultimate expression of capitalism. I don't agree.

Patents in general are entirely anti-capitalistic devices. Their primary purpose is to inhibit competition, by making it illegal to compete. They enforce monopolies at best, and at their worst totally destroy entire fields of endeavor due to their mutually-assured destruction effect. They are not just about protecting theft of trade secrets, dumpster diving, or espionoge; but about controlling both thought and activity. If I completely and totally independently discover the same trivial algorithm, but you patented it somehow I'm breaking the law...I certainly didn't steal anything. Is anybody else worried about how IBM is dealing with SCO? I'll be as glad as anyone when IBM flattens them, but using their patent treasure chest to do so really bothers me.

And it also drives me crazy when I hear companies say they obtain patents for defense only. Patents by their very nature always offensive, they prevent others from independently working even if they never harm you or your market in any way and you don't sue them. That's agression plain and simple. If you want a defense then publish, don't patent (go to ip.com's Prior Art Database as an example of this approach).

And another misinformed justification is that patents are only dangerous if you try to make money with the patented idea. That is so wrong, go read the actual patent law! (yes it is very long, but still more readable than most patents). Even if you "practice" a patented idea in your home for your own amusement you are still breaking the law. You may get by with it, just like speeding, but patents intrude on everybody's rights.

I had an employer approach me once with the idea of patenting some software I wrote for them, and I took it as a serious ethical threat, and I told them that too. But when that happens, you tend to be very careful about how you apply your talent afterwards...being careful not to invent anything new, which I'm sure has resulted in some less than optimal solutions. But again, this is not socialist thinking. My company makes money from selling software I write, and I give them ownership over it in exchange for a salary, and I'm not distributing this code to the world. But likewise, I'm definitely against preventing somebody else from independently inventing the same software.

And the only reasonable argument for patents (as eliquently stated in the US Consitution) is to discourage the hording of information, so that others may build upon and progress technology. But look at how the patent system really works to completely subvert and prevent that one goal: submarine patents (those that through legal trickery stay in a filed state for perhaps decades without ever being divuldged). Patent laywers make sure that patents are entirely unreadable...even most lawyers who don't specialize in patent law are completely inept at reading them, let alone inventors and technologists who supposedly should be benefiting from them. Also it's almost impossible to ever find anything or make any sense of all that knowledge as its locked up so tight that it's completely worthless for anything but legal agression. The patent office should operate like a well indexed library of human knowledge, but instead it acts like a black hole locking away information so it is illegal to use.

I for one mostly agree with the capitalistic society, not the socialistic view. But I'm still extremely anti-patent, especially for non-physicial inventions of thought and expression. Patents are an extreme offense to humankind, captialism is not.

IANAL - but I work at an intellectual property publishing company (around a number of lawyers) so I've had to learn quite a bit about IP law and practice.

First off, we need to clarify what patents DO and DON'T DO for you.

The only thing a patent really does for you, is gives you the right to exclude others from using an invention. The way in which you can exclude them is by (civil) lawsuit (or threat of a lawsuit). There is NO reason to obtain a patent UNLESS you want to enforce it by excluding others from using an invention.

If all you want to do is ensure your/anybody's right to use an invention, you want to make sure future patents aren't granted to others - or failing that - that if they are, you have adequate proof that the invention was part of the public knowledge prior to the patent application which gives you the right to use it.

To do this, you DON'T need a patent yourself. All you need to do is "pollute the waters" by publishing prior art. In a perfect world, if a future application with similar technology crosses a patent examiner's desk - he'll find your prior art and reject the patent. Since prior art isn't always found, a patent may issue, but that prior art can be used in your defense when you are accused of infringement by others.

Publishing information for the express purpose of adding to the pool of 'prior art' is a process used by lots of companies, and is commonly known as 'technical disclosure' or 'defensive publication'.

At the risk of sounding like a corporate shill (bye bye karma) - you can read more information about how to do this on the website for the company I work for. (I wrote most of it, so I hate repeating myself here).

Whether you use the services (Prior Art Database) there or not doesn't matter to me - I don't get commission ;) - but I think you'll find some useful information about this topic.

It really sounds like technical disclosure is what you want. You may still get a cease and desist letter from somebody in the future, but you'll have evidence to back up your ability to use the invention yourself. That is all that having a patent would do for you as well. But unlike a patent, technical disclosures are much cheaper to produce, and should provide the protection you're looking for.

IANAL - but I work at an intellectual property publishing company (around a number of lawyers) so I've had to learn quite a bit about IP law and practice.

First off, we need to clarify what patents DO and DON'T DO for you.

The only thing a patent really does for you, is gives you the right to exclude others from using an invention. The way in which you can exclude them is by (civil) lawsuit (or threat of a lawsuit). There is NO reason to obtain a patent UNLESS you want to enforce it by excluding others from using an invention.

If all you want to do is ensure your/anybody's right to use an invention, you want to make sure future patents aren't granted to others - or failing that - that if they are, you have adequate proof that the invention was part of the public knowledge prior to the patent application which gives you the right to use it.

To do this, you DON'T need a patent yourself. All you need to do is "pollute the waters" by publishing prior art. In a perfect world, if a future application with similar technology crosses a patent examiner's desk - he'll find your prior art and reject the patent. Since prior art isn't always found, a patent may issue, but that prior art can be used in your defense when you are accused of infringement by others.

Publishing information for the express purpose of adding to the pool of 'prior art' is a process used by lots of companies, and is commonly known as 'technical disclosure' or 'defensive publication'.

At the risk of sounding like a corporate shill (bye bye karma) - you can read more information about how to do this on the website for the company I work for. (I wrote most of it, so I hate repeating myself here).

Whether you use the services (Prior Art Database) there or not doesn't matter to me - I don't get commission ;) - but I think you'll find some useful information about this topic.

It really sounds like technical disclosure is what you want. You may still get a cease and desist letter from somebody in the future, but you'll have evidence to back up your ability to use the invention yourself. That is all that having a patent would do for you as well. But unlike a patent, technical disclosures are much cheaper to produce, and should provide the protection you're looking for.

Here is an excellent article on IP issues and mad patents.

Also check out IP.com and BountyQuest

so I imagine well be seeing something here about this soon!

I'm tempted to immediately blame the companies for doing this, but I guess they are just trying to work within the system to make money. It's the system that sucks. Still I'm gonna hold off buying that antivirus software for a while now.