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Apparently, the particular patent involved in this case was originally filed in 1992, and then got a long series of "continuations".

Now, I haven't gone and looked at it, but I rather doubt that the patent filed in 1992, before what we know as the Internet existed, bore much resemblance to what is being claimed today...but that's the patent system for you. Anything that was created after the original filing date cannot count as prior art, so they can claim they thought of it all, even if they added various claims a decade later based on stuff they saw people already doing, by more "continuations."

Aren't submarine patents illegal at the US Federal level, due to Symbol Technologies, Inc. et al. v. Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation, LP (PDF)?

In fact, patents are denied or set aside frequently based upon prior art evidence, and the Supreme Court has recently strengthened the power of prior art challenges. So Apple would have little chance of obtaining a patent on the functionality or interface of "Where To" (if they were even trying to, which as the actual patent claim makes clear, they are not). And if by some error the patent were granted, it would not hold up in court.

Thanks for backing that up with proof. No wait, that's what I'm doing.

http://www.patenthawk.com/enforce.htm
http://www.generalpatent.com/faqs/when-enforce-patent-rights

I know there have been the oppositte, where the theft of your patent idea becomes a "state secret" and you are hosed.. take a look at this one for an example. Lucent stole this guys idea, and sold it to the military, and he can't touch them

The article has the facts wrong. The actual appellate decision on the merits was made one year ago, and not by the 10th circuit, but by the Federal Circuit court. The when the case returned to the District Court, the defendants moved for attorneys fees and costs. The current sanctions were made by the district court judge. If the plaintiffs and their attorneys appeal, it will go back to the CAFC, not the 10th circuit.

Opposition to patents like this often doesn't work well because it costs the patent holder more money to defend it. So the smaller companies can lose their patents and the bigger ones like Amazon survive it. It might not seem so, but public opposition to patents to good for big companies and bad for small ones.
    Amazon recently lost with their one click patent because a NZ guy paid about $2000 to challenge it. Taking the same patent to court costs far more so the US system is better.
    Actually with the recent KSR decision by the supreme court possibly 80% of patents in some areas, particularly software and business patents are now probably invalid. That's because the new rules are that if something is likely obvious to the average guy it is not patentable. Before something was patentable if someone had not done it before or suggested something like it as an area for research.
    Most of the proposed changes to US patent laws are from large companies like Microsoft trying to not pay royalties to small inventors. This is a good blog for these issues:
http://www.patenthawk.com/

Not quite sure what is going on but M$ brought a company that was being done for patent infringement at the time.

These lawsuits are annoying, sure, but for those looking for a more common sense approach to invalidating obvious patent claims, this is the most hopeful time in decades.

The standard you describe as "practically inevitable" is similar to the "predictable" and "obvious to try" standards that have been reaffirmed by the KSR vs Teleflex U.S. Supreme Court ruling (on April 30th, 2007).

In a nutshell, KSR said that those trying to overrule a patent need not show that related prior art specifically "teached, suggested, or motivated" the claimed innovation in question (the TSM standard). The court ruled that if it was simply "obvious to try" a new combination of components or if it was "predictable" due to market demand or other factors, then these are sufficient justifications for overruling the patent as obvious. The court ruled that the TSM standard is just a guideline and when courts started using it as the primary standard, precluding obviousness itself, then the tail was wagging the dog and that was never the Supreme Court's intent. (Yes the Court, incredibly, had to overrule a lower court ruling that "obvious to try" was not a sufficient standard for determining obviousness. Of course it is! And the damage done by that outrageous stupidity will take decades to undo...)

The TSM standard really was a lazy standard because it allowed judges to adjudicate patent cases with standards that focus the case on cataloging and interpreting prior art. Now the judges, if they do their job, will have to make subjective rulings on the complexity of technologies and whether someone skilled in the art made a leap beyond ordinary, predictable innovation into something different. This is going to be tough. The supreme court affirmed some pretty good standards for invalidating like "predictable" and "obvious to try" but it remains to be seen whether these "negative" standards are going to be sufficient or found unreasonably restrictive (which is worrisome because the standards could change who knows how).

It should not be underestimated how large the impact of this ruling (still less than 6 months old) will have on software patent litigation. It will take years for it to work its way through the courts. You can already start to see an effect already though, and the tide has definitely turned against awarding patents for "predictable" innovations. Take a look at some example thoughts on recent rulings: http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/2007/07/chilling_in vention_at_the_pto.html

The most interesting thing to me about the KSR ruling was the reaction of patent lawyers. At my company, the software developers applauded the ruling but the patent lawyers did not. My discussions with one lawyer about the reactions he described has convinced me that the entire Patent Bar is biased towards having a system of patents that are easier to get, presumably because that leads to more litigation and job security. Of course, he really didn't appreciate the argument that KSR is great for software companies because it means less money spent on nonproductive legal expenses.

The language in the KSR ruling should be understood, embraced, marshaled, and extended by the forces who support limiting software patents because this is were ultimate victory lies. The key word in the ruling is "predictable". And here is the key: In the industry of software, software features are very commonly "predictable" because the context (customer demand, prior features, competitive challenges) often stimulates the idea and the implementation techniques are standardized and well understood. The opportunities for extraordinary innovation are limited. The software industry needs to drive an understanding of this or rules will be made based on different concepts that judges and lawyers are comfortable with (which explains why the TSM standard became definitive).

Unfortunately though, patent lawyers will have the most influence on how t

The Patent Hawk (rate for patent consultation: $140/hr) is already heaping scorn on the review.

From here:

A reader contacted me to point out that Thomas Jefferson did not write the US Constitution, so he did not in fact write the langauge enabling copyrights and patents "for limited times". He was in France at the time, and James Madison is the one who is primarily credited with the language in the Constitution. Jefferson was, however, quite opinionated about this subject and several others embodied in the Constitution, and he wrote several commentaries on it. It's probably also safe to say that he was quite influential on the ideas that went into the Constitution.

- David Stein

The PTO is on a hiring binge. They are hiring 1,000 new examiners for the next 5 years. That's a lot of examiners :) .

http://www.patenthawk.com/blog/archives/2006/01/ba cklash_to_usp.html

I can't find anything about Lucent ever trying to sue over the original XBox, but Lucent has tried to sue Gateway/Dell before over the same patent, and Microsoft was forced to step in and defend them. It seems that Windows Media Player itself is infringing which means that the XBox1 possibly never infringed on this patent.

On this odd blog entry about Google, all of his trackback links are spam. ha ha.

Well, I don't think they even read their own website.

From "Profiting from Patents":

Having a patent granted provides little assurance that the patent is valid. Patent examiners are time-pressured production line workers; quality control suffers sometimes. Patents are commonly invalidated during litigation. Patent Hawk has personally invalidated well over a dozen patents through prior art search.

From THESE SAME PEOPLE'S response to the editorial:

"Too many patents are issued for "innovations" that are obvious, vague or already in wide use." - On what authority or statistical basis? This ignorant assertion is hoary, with no basis other than anecdotal evidence of patents occasionally being found invalid.

"On what authority"? On their OWN authority! Patents cannot be both "commonly" and "occasionally" invalidated, depending which one's convenient for them at the time!