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Reminds me of when the US Patent Office declared "everything that could have been invented has been patented." That was in the mid 1800's.

You know, it occurs to me that given the amount of bad patents we've been seeing, maybe the above misquoting of commissioner Charles H. Duell's supposed statement "everything that can be invented has been invented" (which is most likely itself a misquote) is more true than most people might like to admit. Though it was supposed to have been stated in 1899, not the mid 1800s. See here for some interesting reading on this quote.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

Sorry, but that quote's an urban legend.

...an opponent of "intellectual property" (he never patented any of his inventions)

Ya it's a wonder that men born in 1706 never filed a patent before congress approved patents around 1790. This also checks out by looking at the oldest scanned patents on the uspto website.

I know you're against DRM (I am too). There are enough reasons to argue against its use without making things up.

P.S: Happy Birthday Ben, you rock.

See this interesting writeup on the "everything has been invented" myth.

I recall a quote attributed to the then director of the patent office, requesting the patent office be closed, as all concieveable inventions had been made.

It's an urban legend.

There is a popular story that some official of the U.S. patent office resigned some time in the 19th century, or even wrote a letter to the president suggesting shutting it down, because he thought that everything that could be invented already had been invented.

This article inspired me to find out more about that and found that it was a myth. Interesting though.

Ok. Finished reading everything. Here goes:

I am inserting the following:

0. I boot up my computer.
0a. I load in my OS.
0b. I load in my watchdog program.
0c. I log on to the network.

(1) You contact an RIAA music sales server and provide your system credentials. These credentials include secure signatures chaining back to the Trusted Computing Group's root key, and a public key. They also contain a signed hash bound to and identifying the currently running program.

1a. I do not use my system's credentials. I use my forged system credentials I got from my other system via my watchdog program. I do this by capturing all i/o over the network on another machine. Since cpus are fairly cheap - I will probably be able to buy one or two of them for this project. My system is never known to the RIAA. Please note: I am not trying to crack/decode the keys
1b. Please note also that there is at least one piece of hardware you can buy, right now, off the shelf, which will monitor all traffic on your network and store it for later processing. (So this isn't being made up. It is for real.) Also note that at least one of these devices has the capability to allow a person to modify incoming/outgoing messages.
1c. I am spoofing the RIAA's website with another computer's id as well as hash. I can do this because I've already captured what needs to be sent back over the internet. My computer's DRM hardware is never notified about anything. That is because I intercept any/all requests to the DRM via my watchdog program. I specify that if command X is ever attempted that my watchdog program instead issues an interrupt and passes command back to me. Since the command was never executed the DRM can not be activated and instead, I can then tell the watchdog to send a different set of commands instead (ie: the previously captured information).

(2) RIAA server verifies the chain of Trust for those keys. That chain effectively indicates that the public key you sent was generated inside a genuine Trust Module and that the matching private key is secure inside that module and bound to the hash bound to the DRM program they wrote.

2a. Actually, they THINK I am a trusted computer. Sadly, I'm not. :-(

(3) The RIAA generates a random 128 bit session key (different for every sale) and encrypts the music using that key.

3a. Ok. First, it can't be VERY random because the chips on my system have to be able to decrypt the thing. If it were totally random garbage no one would be able to decrypt it. Which would make it totally useless. So let's throw out the word "random" and instead stick in "algorithmically created". Ok - now an algorithm might be really hard to decipher - but it can be done. Just like the Beale Codes.

(4) The RIAA encrypts the session key using the public key you sent (the one bound to the hash of the currently running program they they wrote).

4a. Actually, they encrypt the session key using the public key I wanted to send. Making my job of breaking their encryption easier.

(5) RIAA sends the encrypted music and the encrypted session key.

5a. Great! Thanks for both of those! :-)

(6) Only the program with the EXACT hash can use the private key inside your Trust Module to decrypt the session key, so their DRM program decrypts the session key.

6a. Actually, no. Any program which does not even use the DRM calls can use the data. But you feel that someone would not be able to decode the DRM'd data. This just isn't true. The initial time to decode the music may take longer but it still can be done. And whoever said hackers wouldn't take the time to do the decoding? After all, didn't they just recently show that even using nobrainer techniques to just crunch the possibilities of a 128 bit encrypted message only took them three days to circumven

It is in the Patent Office's best interest to accept everything and let lawyers battle it out.

So, why would someone smart enough to do a great job at an understaffed office work for government pay and crappy workload when they can work in the private sector for more $$$ and recognition?

Why would the Patent Office examine patents thoroughly when they don't have to? When it is in their best interest to be a cash cow for the government? When the private sector does all the work, research, and 'enforcement'?

How can we change the Patent office so that it's useful again? Here is a rather extensive history of the Patent Office. (When it was useful)

Answer these questions that are clouded by money, and we could have patents that actually encourage innovation and invention rather than controlling the use of obvious technology for which prior art is bigger than life.

Remember, the US is only slightly older than 2 centuries (the constitution wasn't ratified until 1788). Prior to that, well...this page has some info on inventor protections before the modern patent office.

here's some info about the legitimacy of the quote to begin with.

Maybe 1899 as an arbitrary year is bad, but Edison created both the phonograph and the nickelodeon (though the Lumiere brothers did the latter as well in France). I'd say alternate methods of doing things would count as variations on an invention (LCDs, plasma screens, CRTs instead of projection). Compact discs are descendents of records; instead of pits and grooves they have bits. Digital photography isn't very different from analog photography, except, again, bits instead of embossed light onto film. There's been some innovation, but is it worthy of patent?

A patent must be invented by a human, not a corporation however patent law encourages assignments to a company.

The $50 figure is a result of contract law requiring that each side get something. When the $50 figure was first used, it was quite a nice sum of money (it was more than than the cost of the patent)

Models used to be a requirement until the Patent Act of 1870, which left it up to the Patent Office commissioner. Space and time constraints really don't allow the luxury of model examination and storage by the PTO. ( Patent Office History ).

Add to your list better cataloging and indexing of patent documentation, advanced electronic search and cross referencing of patent files, and better paid, more experienced patent examiners.

Regards