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• Who's e-mailbox should we all slam with requests for reasonable IPR laws

How about webmaster@uspto.gov, informing her that she is in breach of IBM's patent on using templates to generate a web site.

My god. I was joking when I started typing that, but it's accurate. The USPTO web site is almost certainly put together using "a plurality of templates". And they granted a patent to IBM on that. Farcical, absolutely farcical.

On the bright side, as the USPTO funds itself from granting (mostly frivilous) patents, it's nice to see them finally hoist on their own petard.

The US Patent & Trademark Office web site looks template based. Lets credit them with prior art. Snake eating its own tail?

• Inventions: (a) The term "invention" means invention or
  discovery.
  
• Processes: (b) The term "process" means process, art, or
  method, and includes a new use of a known process,
  machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or
  material.
  

So if they patented the process of the Auto-generation of HTML, then they'd be patenting a process, not the tool to complete the process.

Punks. This whole patenting of software is ridiculous. I have a friend who works for a med-tech company, and they're always looking for things to patent... he's filled out so many of those damn forms he could do it in his sleep. Is the company doing well? Is the company valuable? Nah... that'd make sense ;-).

Uh... not a bad idea, I hope writing Christmas lists online hasn't been patented yet.

I think they would have a pretty easy case considering they have already patented their own technology the "Multimedia time warping system". I wonder, have patents ever been thrown out after they have already awarded?

U.S. Patent 6,233,389. The abstract is here

Here is the USPTO record.

• Determine the type of patent that is appropriate (design, utility, plant). For technologic innovations, it is typically this is design.
• Fill out the ten sections of the patent app., paying special attention to the claims section as this is all you get legal credit for. You have to have to have a working implementation of whatever you claim, and what you claim cannot be the same as what is already out there or obvious based on what is out there (at the time of the application...not ten years later)
• Pay your money and hope some of your claims are accepted
• Receive rejected application with notes on rejected claims
• Revise and resubmit application (and $$$)

  My take on this is that Mr. Logan and Goessling had a good idea, but too soon. The fact that it cost too much for them to implement the thing in 1996 does not invalidate the patent! And for those whining about needing a limitation on the time to bring a product to market, there is one. It is 16 years, the duration of the patent. It takes time to get the funding to bring a product to market.

...including this one from 1999. It looks remarkably similar to the one that Pause Technology is trying to concoct, except more thorough and clearly with a physical implementation in mind.

Simultaneous recording and playback apparatus

A keyboard equipped audiovisial recording and playback device is provided having an input and an output adapted for connection between a users signal source and display device, respectively, and a memory unit with a storage medium enabling random access to programming information stored therein. A keyboard responsive control circuit enables manipulation and transfer of programming information between the input, output and memory. Because of the relative high speed of the control circuitry and memory access, substantially simultaneous recording and playback of television type signals is achieved, thus enabling user controlled programming delay.

Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)

more patents by the same guy

my favorites:

Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)

System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)

Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)

Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)

Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)

Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)

more patents by the same guy

my favorites:

Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)

System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)

Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)

Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)

Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)

Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)

more patents by the same guy

my favorites:

Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)

System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)

Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)

Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)

Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)

Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)

more patents by the same guy

my favorites:

Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)

System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)

Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)

Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)

Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)

Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)

more patents by the same guy

my favorites:

Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)

System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)

Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)

Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)

Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)

Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)

more patents by the same guy

my favorites:

Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)

System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)

Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)

Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)

Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)

can be found here

Wow... reminds me of the Aussie guy who patented the wheel...

(This comment did not pass the lameness filter)

Abuse and fraud has been widespread in the pre-registration period for so called trademark holders.
Use this search and compare
with the results found here.
The following domains have been registered fraudulently;

These don't even have trademark numbers in the registration;
space.info lunch.info toy.info
electronics.info system.info delivery.info
silver.info one.info computer.info
art.info two.info clothes.info

There is a huge amount of foreign registrations - perhaps because it is conviently impossible to double check the trademark status. But as you check common words (that can't be used as trademarks in the USA) certain registrants come up frequently and a pattern emerges. For instance, there are a lot of Korean registrants. There is a Korean supposedly accredited registrar called "Yesnic" that has registered radio.info, book.info, gift.info, land.info, food.info, photo.info, vote.info. There is a "Mr Woo" that has registered car.info, music.info, and sale.info. A " Mr. Stephen Rumney" has registered money.info, finance.info, electronics.info. A Mr. "David Singh" has registereed house.info, home.info, train.info. A Mr. "Tokio Matsumoto" in japan has registered "linux.info".

Most domains went to squatters rather than real trademark holders.

Large companies like Qualcomm are even part of the fraud. They registered "brew.info", but they
even haven't been granted a trademark for it.

Even Afilias is part of the massive squatting. They registered "phone.info" but they don't own the trademark for it either.

There are dozens more that I checked. In my cursory search, nine out of ten had invalid registrations

Shame on Afilias for letting this happen and not taking action immediately on these obviously bogus registrations. There is nothing "fair" about how they are handling registrations. If Afilias had a shred of integrity they would ban permanantly these squatters from the registry as punishment for fraudently registering names during the so-called "trademark registration".

Kodak's claiming that part of it infringes/overlaps on one of their recent imaging patents. (5,459,819)

Just a note on the .biz registration process:

I wanted to get a certain .biz domain. I pre-pre-submitted a request for the name WAY back when they first started talking about these new tlds. After a while, more people jumped on the bandwagon and it began to look like we were really going to see these come into circulation. I did some more research about the (pre) registration process and found that while you could pay your registrar to 'reserve' the name for you, they couldn't initially guarantee that you would get the name. In fact you just got an entry into an intial drawing (which is tomorrow, IIRC) when you might actually be awarded the name. Needless to say, I bought several more "entries" for my domain of choice (it's that good... really)

One critical loophole: the initial pre-registration period is also meant to allow those with trademark or "intellectual property" claims to a name to challenge your right to register it. While this sounds like a good way to protect legitimate rights, it just allowed people time to register all kinds of bogus claims with the USPTO. Last week I received a notice from Neuland (?) informing me that 15 or 20 people had "IP" claims to my domain. What should I do? Do I have any chance, as a non-corporate-lawyer-holding netizen of preserving my rights to the name even if I happen to be awarded it? I'd think that I should have just as much right to it as anybody else considering there's no "prior use" of the .biz tld.

Well, I was browsing through the new .info whois, and decided to check out sex.info. Of course, it's already registered, no surprise there. However, apparently, it wasn't registered under the "Open Registration" rules, but as a trademark. Yes, boys and girls, this is what the whois info shows:
Trademark Name: SEX
Trademark Date: 2000-01-04
Trademark Country: USA
Trademark Number: 2306348
As a search on The USPTO shows, a very specific rendering of "sex" is trademarked by a Jaime M Cerrato, to be used for "games, playthings and novelty items, namely, mechanical pull toys." This trademark was used by Hera Ventures and Investments, Ltd. to register sex.info. Somehow, I doubt the only thing that site is going to be doing is selling "mechinal pull toys". Dirty trick or outright fraud? I don't know, but it's obviously abuse.

You probably mean http://tess.uspto.gov/

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." (Revelation 13:16--18)

I don't see it here, so I thought I'd give a link to the U.S. Patent that has been awarded for this keyboard. A wealth on information there for anyone curious for more details on how it would word.

One of the odd details in the patent is that they also intend for it to function as a telephone dialing pad, so you can dial your phone without removing your hands from the keyboard. I guess they are interested in the secretary/telemarketer market here...

Well, it's not like Joseph Heller's would be suing you, what with him being dead and all that.

If a work was first published on or after January 1, 1923, the estate can sue you into the ground for infringing copyright. And nothing created on or after that date will ever expire into the public domain thanks in part to the actions of the late Sonny Bono.

On the other hand, a short phrase like "Catch-22" cannot be copyrighted; it can, however, be trademarked (as restaurants, as board games, as computer games, as knit sweaters, as other clothing, etc).

Well, it's not like Joseph Heller's would be suing you, what with him being dead and all that.

If a work was first published on or after January 1, 1923, the estate can sue you into the ground for infringing copyright. And nothing created on or after that date will ever expire into the public domain thanks in part to the actions of the late Sonny Bono.

On the other hand, a short phrase like "Catch-22" cannot be copyrighted; it can, however, be trademarked (as restaurants, as board games, as computer games, as knit sweaters, as other clothing, etc).

Well, it's not like Joseph Heller's would be suing you, what with him being dead and all that.

If a work was first published on or after January 1, 1923, the estate can sue you into the ground for infringing copyright. And nothing created on or after that date will ever expire into the public domain thanks in part to the actions of the late Sonny Bono.

On the other hand, a short phrase like "Catch-22" cannot be copyrighted; it can, however, be trademarked (as restaurants, as board games, as computer games, as knit sweaters, as other clothing, etc).

Well, it's not like Joseph Heller's would be suing you, what with him being dead and all that.

If a work was first published on or after January 1, 1923, the estate can sue you into the ground for infringing copyright. And nothing created on or after that date will ever expire into the public domain thanks in part to the actions of the late Sonny Bono.

On the other hand, a short phrase like "Catch-22" cannot be copyrighted; it can, however, be trademarked (as restaurants, as board games, as computer games, as knit sweaters, as other clothing, etc).

Well, it's not like Joseph Heller's would be suing you, what with him being dead and all that.

If a work was first published on or after January 1, 1923, the estate can sue you into the ground for infringing copyright. And nothing created on or after that date will ever expire into the public domain thanks in part to the actions of the late Sonny Bono.

On the other hand, a short phrase like "Catch-22" cannot be copyrighted; it can, however, be trademarked (as restaurants, as board games, as computer games, as knit sweaters, as other clothing, etc).

Did you read the press release?

You said:

Here is a significant innovation which was created in hopes that it would be protectable and thus profitable.

They said:

The patent covers real-time interrupt handling using a software emulation layer for interrupt masking, so that interrupts can be prioritized. There is significant prior art for this.

(Emphasis mine). It is clear even to me that the patent, of which the abstract is:

A general purpose computer operating system is run using a real time operating system. A real time operating system is provided for running real time tasks. A general purpose operating system is provided as one of the real time tasks. The general purpose operating system is preempted as needed for the real time tasks and is prevented from blocking preemption of the non-real time tasks.

, and bearing in mind that the patent was granted on November 30, 1999, it seems that it is a 'one-click' patent.

IHBT, IHL, bla bla bla, I've had a horrible day and I'm going to bed.

Reality is that a patent takes two or three years to issue. Most of the time, these companies would file a patent application at the same time, or slightly before, joining the standards committee. While the standards were being set, the patent was in the PTO, being kept secret.

In fact, since the DEC case most standards committees have a specific disclosure requirement, for example the IEEE standard requires such disclosure. In order to participate, each company must provide the list of patents they hold in this area, as well as guarantee a "reasonable licensing arragement."

Do note that if you want to find patents, because you're writing a standard or for any other reason, go to the USPTO's database search, and go for it. It's easy, it's cheap, and you can get PDF's for $3.

Thalia

Courtesy of the US Patents and Trademarks office: all LEGO-reladed trademarks

Note that on its Office pages, Microsoft doesn't claim to have a trademark on the word Office. However, it has registered "MICROSOFT OFFICE XP" as a trademark. I can't give you a link to the USPTO's trademark database query results because its URIs refer to states and not queries.

Yes, Office XP can still save files in the Office 95 format, which most free software WYSIAYG editors can interpret well.

Mostly correct.

GEOS pre-dated Windows by years. In fact, GEOS predated the Macintosh. It started on the Commodore 64.

Commodore GEOS pre-dated Windows. I'm not sure if it predated the Macintosh or not. However, the PC-based version didn't come out until 1990. The Commodore 64 version was pretty cool, though -- a graphical OS and app (one at a time) in 64 K .

The entire word processor was only a few hundred kb

The current version is 114K. It hasn't been updated significantly in a while, and so is lacking indexing and some other key features, but it's a pretty amazing little app.

Development was done in "Graphical Object C".

The OS itself was in 80x86 assembly, as were the initial apps (WP, drawing, spreadsheet). Later libraries and some apps were done in GEOS Object C.

It started on the Commodore 64, from Berkeley Software (the After Dark folks)

After Dark was from Berkeley Systems.

GEOS (Commodore and otherwise) was from Berkeley Softworks. The company was later renamed GeoWorks, then Geoworks.

Today, GeoWorks exists by owning a lot of patents on various obtuse concepts and pretending to have a case to file suit.

AFAIK, Geoworks only has one patent, the flexible UI. It's not particularly obtuse; it's a fairly cool concept (the reactions from people seeing a demo with apps running under Motif, OpenLook and a CUA interface all on the same screen was pretty funny). What's potentially obtuse is enforcing the patent against WAP. But IANAL, so I don't know if it's a stretch or not. Hmm...strike that. They got a second patent that looks a little more WAP/HTML specific.

Mostly correct.

GEOS pre-dated Windows by years. In fact, GEOS predated the Macintosh. It started on the Commodore 64.

Commodore GEOS pre-dated Windows. I'm not sure if it predated the Macintosh or not. However, the PC-based version didn't come out until 1990. The Commodore 64 version was pretty cool, though -- a graphical OS and app (one at a time) in 64 K .

The entire word processor was only a few hundred kb

The current version is 114K. It hasn't been updated significantly in a while, and so is lacking indexing and some other key features, but it's a pretty amazing little app.

Development was done in "Graphical Object C".

The OS itself was in 80x86 assembly, as were the initial apps (WP, drawing, spreadsheet). Later libraries and some apps were done in GEOS Object C.

It started on the Commodore 64, from Berkeley Software (the After Dark folks)

After Dark was from Berkeley Systems.

GEOS (Commodore and otherwise) was from Berkeley Softworks. The company was later renamed GeoWorks, then Geoworks.

Today, GeoWorks exists by owning a lot of patents on various obtuse concepts and pretending to have a case to file suit.

AFAIK, Geoworks only has one patent, the flexible UI. It's not particularly obtuse; it's a fairly cool concept (the reactions from people seeing a demo with apps running under Motif, OpenLook and a CUA interface all on the same screen was pretty funny). What's potentially obtuse is enforcing the patent against WAP. But IANAL, so I don't know if it's a stretch or not. Hmm...strike that. They got a second patent that looks a little more WAP/HTML specific.

Patents allow free access to their research! Patents are good things! Chill out people!
Speaking of which, check out this patent.

Offtopic: While I was looking for the MIT patents on this digital TV stuff I ran across this:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ft95&s1=Massachusetts&s2=Tec hnology&OS=Massachusetts+AND+Technology&RS=Massach usetts+AND+Technology

Apparently Apple holds a patent on Icons.

Maybe I can find some that are relevent to the story now.

I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but this is quoted from the first reply to bb(tm):

The trademark for Battlebots was not obtained by your client until October 24,
2000. Barrett registered the domain name "battlebots.org" in August, 2000

Also, this is what the TESS has to say about when the trademark was registered:

Registration Number
2397203
Registration Date
October 24, 2000

NSI records show that the bb.org domain record was created on "2000-08-28 06:52:41", as a previous user has already mentioned. It would seem that Barrett registered the domain about two months before bb(tm) had their (tm).

if I start a corporation by the name Slashdot tomorrow, then can I sue to get this site down?

No. SLASHDOT is a registered trademark of Blockstackers (CmdrTaco's former company and parent of Everything Development Company), licensed to OSDN.

Battlebots applied for their first US trademark in late 1999. They didn't receive it till October 2000, though. Check it out at http://www.uspto.gov.

Links:

IBM/Delphion

US Patent Office

Patent 6,274,978 patent looks likely. They seem to be saying they pass the electrons along a fiber.
Image 7b is the most useful; which isn't saying much.

Patent 6,274,978 patent looks likely. They seem to be saying they pass the electrons along a fiber.
Image 7b is the most useful; which isn't saying much.

Another real-world example - a trademarked software product I once worked on turned out to be type of adult diaper in Italy and a line of modular shelving in the UK - we didn't own the name any more than they did

You might find it usefull to check out the USPTO where they say To determine whether there is a conflict between two marks, the PTO determines whether there would be likelihood of confusion, that is, whether relevant consumers would be likely to associate the goods or services of one party with those of the other party as a result of the use of the marks at issue by both parties. The principal factors to be considered in reaching this decision are the similarity of the marks and the commercial relationship between the goods and services identified by the marks. To find a conflict, the marks need not be identical, and the goods and services do not have to be the same.

I wonder, if someone registers a domain name BEFORE a trademark is granted/filed/whatever, could the trademark holder take it? Or would the domain invalidate the trademark? Or neither?
For example, www.net is a test domain for Worldcom Canada. It also seems like it would infringe on MSFT's .NET trademark. But .NET wasn't trademarked until June, 2000, after www.net was registered.

This crosses another threshold in the patenting of living things. Up to now, patents have been on specific, identifiable species, cell lines, DNA sequences, or organisms, and even that has met with considerable resistance. But this patent is on any cell line that has desirable properties, whether found by these researchers or by anybody else. Another analogy is that if you discover the first apple tree, you claim a patent on any tree bearing sweet fruit.

I think society needs to think carefully about whether these kinds of patents are in the public interest. It might be defensible to let the university make claims on specific cell lines and on methods for creating those cell lines (and even that seems dubious to me), but I see no basis in patent law for the more general claims to all primate stem cell lines. If you do, maybe you can explain how you think this is justified by patent law and specifically how society benefits from such patents.

They've patented their line of stem cells (which seems quite odd in an of itself since they didn't actually invent them), and the method by which they obtained them. The patent can be viewed online at uspto.gov. Presumably there's nothing to prevent someone else from developing a line (and, in fact, if there are 60+ lines, this surely has happened) using a different process.

The patent

by the isolation of ES cell lines from two primate species, the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) and the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta).

-- the patent It looks like he might have been looking to patent embryonic stem cells of those species of primates, not human stem cells.

I'm not an expert on legal matters, but if prior art means that if someone has done it before, and has it documented, you can't patent it, then let's continue cranking out ideas for OSDN.

I figure they don't have to be well implemented, just thught up and documented. That way the OSDN sites can (if not already) be a source for prior art searches.

Actually, we could just have a Open Ideas Network that would allow other people (who maybe can't program well) just describe their ideas and have people volunteer to start or continue on software for that idea......just dreaming.

- - This space intentionally left blank.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Bijou Co. Ltd. really has a registration for that trademark in Japan.

Even in the US, Linus only holds the trademark Linux for operating systems, a Taiwanese company holds it for computer hardware and a Swiss company holds it for miscellaneous hygiene products.

Check it out yourself at the USPTO.

/J

Of course, that only applies to registered trademarks. That is, ®. There's lots of perfectly valid unregistered trademarks -- TM.

More importantly, someone *could* actually trademark "movie" -- it wouldn't be a good trademark for motion pictures since it's already a generic term in that since, but might be a perfectly legitimate trademark for cosmetics. In fact, it is. :)