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Patent 7,479,949:

Abstract:
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

First off, IANAPL (I am not a patent lawyer).

I know, looking at the abstract isn't particularly helpful as it's horrible patent legal speak. All you really need to notice is the repeated use of the word "heuristics". This is a software patent. They're patenting the heuristic (READ: software) used to determine what a user means by multiple figured gesture on a touch screen. The claims in the patent just go on to clarify what heuristics they're covering.

To answer your second question, I'm not really sure. In any case, it's my hope that when the Supreme Court reviews the "machine-or-transformation" test with the In re Bilski case that this and other software patents will be invalidated.

... like a writer who launches into an article about the "App Store" without specifying which app store or whose app store. After all, there's only one App Store in the world, right?

Right.

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220090010962%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20090010962&RS=DN/20090010962

Kodak is not a company that is widely known for frivolous lawsuits.

Well, let it be known then...

I didn't find the actual 'preview' patent we're discussing, but here is another one by Kodak and that one is a doozy. Take a look at its claims especially.

Capturing digital images to be transferred to an e-mail address -- US Patent no 7,453,605

While you may be correct in certain circumstances, your wording gives a false impression that this always works. You must disclose the best mode when filing a patent application.

The specification . . . shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.

"The best mode requirement creates a statutory bargained-for-exchange by which a patentee obtains the right to exclude others from practicing the claimed invention for a certain time period, and the public receives knowledge of the preferred embodiments for practicing the claimed invention." Eli Lilly & Co. v. Barr Laboratories Inc., 251 F.3d 955, 963, 58 USPQ2d 1865, 1874 (Fed. Cir. 2001).

The best mode requirement is a safeguard against the desire on the part of some people to obtain patent protection without making a full disclosure as required by the statute. The requirement does not permit inventors to disclose only what they know to be their second-best embodiment, while retaining the best for themselves. In re Nelson, 280 F.2d 172, 126 USPQ 242 (CCPA 1960).

As you hint at, there's nothing wrong with combining one invention with another, one protected by patent law and the other by trade secret.

A title is a mark, which is used in trade to associate a product with a commercial entity

It can be, but often is not.

A trademark must indicate that all so-marked goods share a common source; it cannot merely describe the good itself. The title of a particular work is merely descriptive, and doesn't indicate the source. It is only when the title describes a series of books, all sharing the same source, that the title can be protected as a mark. So if you had a book 'Foo,' you couldn't trademark the title; but if you had something like 'Foo, vol. 1 of the Quux trilogy,' along with similarly titled books 'Bar' and 'Baz,' then you could probably get protection for QUUX.

Check out section 1202.08 of the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedures which gets into what titles are eligible for federal registration, and what are not.

Even if we were to look at unregistered trademarks, single-work titles are at best merely descriptive of their works. Even a very fanciful name for a book is ultimately still merely descriptive because those titles refer to the specific works entitled, rather than indicating a particular source for that book, out of the many that might produce it. Even if it doesn't describe the contents of the book, it still merely describes the book itself.

Copyright policy would also prevent trademarks in the title from surviving the expiration of the book's copyright, but that's going further than we're probably interested in.

I read about this almost a month ago in the New York Times blogs and must point out one very important detail (to me at least) about this case that was not present in The Wall Street Journal article: Google applied for a trademark on "NEXUS ONE". Now it's not even assigned to an examining attorney yet but come on. You can 'borrow' something from a novel but if you're going to be making money, hand over fist, with it you should probably get permission. And then on top of that you go after the trademark since Dick never did?

Even Motorola had the wherewithal to kindly ask Lucas before using Droid as a name for their phone because 'droid' is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. You would think the least amount of courtesy Google could do is not apply for a trademark out of respect of where they borrowed 'nexus one' from. And if Google's afraid that someone will just use that name to profit off of their device then they should just find another name instead of borrowing from a novel (deflating the argument of "they have no choice, they have to trademark everything they do"). I'm hoping that this is some Google executive not realizing that 'nexus one' is a reference to a Philip K. Dick android but now it looks more like them toeing the line of what they could use and then completely running off with it.

If they were just using the name, I'd consider this a nice homage or nod to the late great Philip K. Dick. But since they're applying for a trademark it's just a dick move.

I am wondering if Apple has some sort of patent on using multitouch in a UI which is preventing other phones from implementing it without getting a license from them.

Yup.

Also, they're trying to trademark the word multitouch.

And they won't let it go without a fight. COO Tim Cook has been quoted as saying, "We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don't know that I could be more clear than that." That makes it pretty obvious that Apple fully intends to sue the pants off anyone who even thinks of using more than one finger or object to interact with a screen.

I am wondering if Apple has some sort of patent on using multitouch in a UI which is preventing other phones from implementing it without getting a license from them.

Yup.

Also, they're trying to trademark the word multitouch.

And they won't let it go without a fight. COO Tim Cook has been quoted as saying, "We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal. I don't know that I could be more clear than that." That makes it pretty obvious that Apple fully intends to sue the pants off anyone who even thinks of using more than one finger or object to interact with a screen.

The patent application was filed on June 30th 2008. Google released Latitude February 4th, 2009. This would seem to indicate Apple was first, but there's a key difference between the products. The Apple patent specifically deals with sharing location information by text message and only by text message, Google Latitude makes use of mobile internet connections. There's no patent dispute here, merely Apple acting like Apple and rejecting apps which may compete with current or planned functionality that Apple wants to deliver over their platform.

I am by no means a big fan of Apple or Apple products in general, but for those screaming "anti-trust" Apple is entirely within their right to do this (although whether its the "right" thing to do is questionable) considering A) Apple has nothing near a monopoly over the smartphone market B) A monopoly over one's own product is hardly a monopoly and C) Even if Apple were able to completely supplant Google Latitude among iPhone users, they're not going to be selling their software on the other 90% of smartphones out there anytime soon.

What are you talking about, the patent system is broke and has been for a number of years. It's what Big name company has the most $$ gets their patents no matter IP or not. With the recent incident that IBM patented the Resolution of abbreviated text in an electronic communications system . WTF is that all about? Really?

but leaving out search terms silently is just insane

If you're referring to "stop words" ("the", "of", etc.), while Google used to leave those out unless you gave just the right directions to include them Google no longer does that as of early last year.

http://www.seofaststart.com/blog/stop-words-are-dead explains that Google (and what was then MSN, presumably Bing followed in MSN's footsteps on this) are now (mostly) paying attention to "stop words".

There's been some speculation that the change may have been a results of Google implementing this http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,319,994.PN.&OS=pn/7,319,994&RS=PN/7,319,994 patented document compression scheme.

(NO, I don't fiddle around with Search Engine Optimization. I am working to setup a search engine for a government organization so "well, how would that search behave in Google" is often a helpful point of comparison)

The "iSlate" trademark belongs to Slate Computing: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4010:tovtfs.2.1

Various "iPad" trademarks belong to various companies that are not Apple and "iTablet" belongs to some company out of Taiwan.

If you want to guess what Apple will call it, search the US trademark database to see what trademarks Apple holds...

I just poked through the patent and AFAICT---an acronym all us non-lawyers seem to be falling back on---here's what they patented:

1. You make one file in an unstructured/poorly-structured format.

2. You make an overlay of that file that indicates where markup would have gone, if the format weren't totally braindead.

3. But it is braindead, so you can't get the markup from the file, or leave it there. Instead, you create a map file, which maps content from the separate document file into a markup file.

Because XML is itself processed to create a visual layout (via XSLT)---rather than having the visual layout created separately and then just linked with the XML---this process doesn't cover that. I'm guessing that all the "custom xml" stuff in office was stored in a separate file or in a separate portion of the file, and that's why it infringed.

What's disturbing is that, although this doesn't seem to cover anything widely in use by anybody, it is extremely general. What is patented is basically just any mapped (vs. inline) text structure, and a way to transform mapped structure to inline structure. One might say that this is something like if someone had patented reverse-polish notation. Sure, everybody uses the normal algebraic notation, but what happens when a stack-based machine is invented, and reverse-polish notation suddenly makes a lot of sense?

i4i's patent is basically XML (yes it really is, read the patent claims).

I think you're wrong. From the coverage I've read, it's a method of processing and manipulating XML documents, and they designed an piece of XML editing software around it which they showed to Microsoft and Microsoft then stole the ideas from.

It does not predate XML, and has nothing to do with XML-based standards. For instance, i4i have stated that they do not believe OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Symphony etc. infringe their patent.

I'm sure some kind person will come along and back me up on this one.

This is stupid because Microsoft was moving here to open XML standards from their propriety .doc format. It's a common thing to blame MS for their locked in, own formats since Open Office and others couldn't open them.

i4i's patent is basically XML (yes it really is, read the patent claims). They're not a patent troll in that way that they did actually come up with the same system before everyone else, but afterwards W3C created what is called XML. But i4i was silent for years, everyone started using XML and to improve intercompatibility with Word documents, MS started using it too.

i4i got its big hit. But unless MS takes this to supreme court, it basically means they can sue everyone and every software that uses XML. And there's tons of them, even games and mobile phones too.

I'm pretty sure they've got prior art.

Intellectual Property? He has no patent, no contract, a trademark that apparently is not going to be used, and he says himself that everything is open sourced. What's preventing the manufacturer from continuing without him? Or him, proceeding without that particular manufacturer? In fact, what's preventing any manufacturer from taking the open source designs (after the first device is sold) and just running with it -- without either of them?

I know not many people actual bother to RTFA around here, but I read the patent application link provided. I noticed something odd down in the references section:

Moseley et al, Mastering Microsoft Office 97 professional edition, 1997, SYBEX Inc., 2nd edition, p. 811-816.* .

Can anyone explain what a spam-propagation method has to do with MS office 97?

Well, you could not have spam and particularly the widespread, massive botnets that provide most of our spam if not for Microsoft products and the clueless n00bs who keep using them.

Moseley et al, Mastering Microsoft Office 97 professional edition, 1997, SYBEX Inc., 2nd edition, p. 811-816.* .

Can anyone explain what a spam-propagation method has to do with MS office 97?

The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention.

All a patent does is gives the holder the right to stop people from using the invention. There is no mechanism to promote an invention's use. There is also no mechanism to force the inventor to share the invention. If I need a left handed, transparent ball hinge, and George has it patented and refuses to let me use it, then what recourse do I have? My ability to innovate is stifled.

Facebook says it will adopt a new power distribution design that shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the cabinet by adding a 12-volt battery to each server power supply, an approach pioneered by Google.

I hope facebook's lawyers know that Google has a patent application for this very idea. TFA didn't mention whether or not they are actually licensing these and other Google-patented techniques.

This is one of those issues I'd love to hear a real patent attorney weigh in on: If someone files a patent on something you can prove you demonstrated publicly at an earlier date, what are your options? Can you file an opposition to the patent? How does it work?

With the preface that this is not legal advice, I don't represent you, and you should not rely on this as a legal opinion for any reason whatsoever, this post is for entertainment purposes only, and anybody who relies on a random post on Slashdot as legal advice deserves whatever they get, you have several options actually. (Also, note that this isn't the case here. Microsoft is claiming an improvement on sparklines. It may or may not be an allowable patent, but it is not Tufte's invention they are claiming).

The easiest and cheapest thing to do is to send a copy of your prior art to the patent attorney prosecuting the application. That attorney is now aware of the prior art and is obligated to share it with the examiner. Make sure that you get a return receipt on your mail, so that you can prove you sent it. If the attorney fails to submit the art, and it's later determined to be material, the patent is invalid. 9+ out of 10 attorneys will just send it in, since there is rarely a reason not to (there was one time when we had already gotten a notice of allowance and the relevance of the art was extremely questionable where we considered not sending it in, but in the end we did anyway). In the case of this Microsoft application, I would imagine that the attorneys have already submitted articles, patents, or other materials that identify sparklines as prior art. If you're REALLY interested, you could even go look at it in PAIR and check the electronic file wrapper. Look for "Information Disclosure Statements." Then you'll know what Microsoft has shared with the Patent Office.

Next cheapest option is to file a Protest if you're within the protest period. Chapter 1900 of the MPEP has all the procedures. Feel free to go look it up.

You could wait for the patent to issue, and then if it still has claims that read on your art, you could file a request ex parte or inter partes reexamination.

If there's no bar date, you could file an application, naming yourself as inventor, to provoke an interference. In your hypothetical, there probably is a bar date, so no dice.

Then there are all the options that involve hiring a lawyer and giving him a big pile of money. This is the option I recommend. That lawyer will then tell you what options are available in your specific case.

This is one of those issues I'd love to hear a real patent attorney weigh in on: If someone files a patent on something you can prove you demonstrated publicly at an earlier date, what are your options? Can you file an opposition to the patent? How does it work?

With the preface that this is not legal advice, I don't represent you, and you should not rely on this as a legal opinion for any reason whatsoever, this post is for entertainment purposes only, and anybody who relies on a random post on Slashdot as legal advice deserves whatever they get, you have several options actually. (Also, note that this isn't the case here. Microsoft is claiming an improvement on sparklines. It may or may not be an allowable patent, but it is not Tufte's invention they are claiming).

The easiest and cheapest thing to do is to send a copy of your prior art to the patent attorney prosecuting the application. That attorney is now aware of the prior art and is obligated to share it with the examiner. Make sure that you get a return receipt on your mail, so that you can prove you sent it. If the attorney fails to submit the art, and it's later determined to be material, the patent is invalid. 9+ out of 10 attorneys will just send it in, since there is rarely a reason not to (there was one time when we had already gotten a notice of allowance and the relevance of the art was extremely questionable where we considered not sending it in, but in the end we did anyway). In the case of this Microsoft application, I would imagine that the attorneys have already submitted articles, patents, or other materials that identify sparklines as prior art. If you're REALLY interested, you could even go look at it in PAIR and check the electronic file wrapper. Look for "Information Disclosure Statements." Then you'll know what Microsoft has shared with the Patent Office.

Next cheapest option is to file a Protest if you're within the protest period. Chapter 1900 of the MPEP has all the procedures. Feel free to go look it up.

You could wait for the patent to issue, and then if it still has claims that read on your art, you could file a request ex parte or inter partes reexamination.

If there's no bar date, you could file an application, naming yourself as inventor, to provoke an interference. In your hypothetical, there probably is a bar date, so no dice.

Then there are all the options that involve hiring a lawyer and giving him a big pile of money. This is the option I recommend. That lawyer will then tell you what options are available in your specific case.

First, the actual claims are considerably narrower than just 'any and all uses of sparklines.' The broadest claim is about the use of sparklines in a dynamically updated electronic document. Most of the narrower claims have to do visual effects, the handling of null values in the spreadsheet, etc. This is pretty tame stuff.

Second, this is a newly filed application. The examiner will almost certainly come back with multiple rejections based on obviousness, and the claims will likely be narrowed in response. Like most negotiations, the parties start off with extreme positions and work towards compromise.

Third, the patent application already cites Tufte (along with a dozen other pieces of prior art) in the Information Disclosure Statement. In other words: Microsoft gave the patent examiner many important pieces of prior art. The examiner will no doubt find many more. This is all publicly available through the Patent Office's Patent Application Information Retrieval system.

Fourth, there is no need for Microsoft to acknowledge Tufte as an inventor on the patent application. Inventorship in the patent context is a legal term of art with a specific meaning. The fact that Microsoft said that Tufte invented sparklines is not the damning piece of evidence many are assuming it is (and recall from point three, above, that Microsoft acknowledged Tufte in its IDS). First, Tufte invented sparklines more than a year before the filing date, so any patentable claims must be a non-obvious improvement upon or use of sparklines, not sparklines themselves. Second, Tufte clearly did not work with the Microsoft inventors, so he cannot be a co-inventor of anything claimed in this application.

Once again non-experts hear hoofbeats and scream 'Zebra Stampede!' The comments on Tufte's site, for example, are a joke, an absolute mess of uninformed speculation. Given the wealth of publicly available information on patents and patent application, the Slashdot editors should do more to fact check these stories before publishing them.

Finally, I'll just tack on that if sparklines are so great and this is all so obvious, then surely there's an open source version that predates this application. Remember, though, that this application was filed on May 7, 2008, so the open source version would need to predate that, preferably (but not necessarily) by a year or more. That would actually be an important piece of prior art.

This sounds awfully familiar. Oh yeah! They already patented this back in 2004.

They're trying to patent what sudo does with a GUI interface.

Systems and/or methods are described that enable a user to elevate his or her rights. My 2 plus year old Mac did that when I got it. "Sudo was first conceived and implemented by Bob Coggeshall and Cliff Spencer around 1980 at the Department of Computer Science at SUNY/Buffalo."

Falcon

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=196&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&s1=20091020.PD.&p=4&OS=isd/10/20/2009&RS=ISD/20091020

to view patent text u have to install plugger

There's a huge difference between "patent-pending" and "we actually have an enforceable patent."

Just curious. What leads a person like you to spread inaccurate information with such fervor?

Just curious - why do you disagree with both me and the USPTO wrt the term "patent pending"?

Patents are like any other legal stuff. Just as anyone can sue anybody for anything, anyone can apply for a patent by filling in some forms and sending money.

"Patent pending" means you don't have a patent. Otherwise, you'd say "patented".

Even the USPTO agrees that "patent pending" gives zero protection:

A patentee who makes or sells patented articles, or a person who does so for or under the patentee is required to mark the articles with the word "Patent" and the number of the patent. The penalty for failure to mark is that the patentee may not recover damages from an infringer unless the infringer was duly notified of the infringement and continued to infringe after the notice.

The marking of an article as patented when it is not in fact patented is against the law and subjects the offender to a penalty. Some persons mark articles sold with the terms "Patent Applied For" or "Patent Pending." These phrases have no legal effect, but only give information that an application for patent has been filed in the Patent and Trademark Office. The protection afforded by a patent does not start until the actual grant of the patent. False use of these phrases or their equivalent is prohibited.

What part of "no legal effect" do you fail to understand?

Intelligence agencies have been doing this sort of thing for decades, giving slightly different versions of a sensitive document to suspected spies or places where possible spies might have access to it, with some subtle changes in the words, seeing which one gets leaked or appears elsewhere. Tom Clancy coined the term Canary trap for the technique. Patriot Games was published in 1987, but its real-world use for exposing information leaks most likely predates the novel.

But the classic Canary Trap requires someone to modify the document manually, which is hard to do on a large scale. Here it is being done automatically by an algorithm.

However, I am aware of published methods for this problem dating back to 2001 by Mikhail Atallah at Purdue. In fact Atallah received a patent for followup work in 2007, a year after the Amazon patent was filed.

Here are a few hundred papers on the subject, via Google Scholar. Some adjust whitespace, some modify images of the text, and some attempt fairly sophisticated syntactic analysis and restructuring of selected sentences.

I apologize that I haven't read the Amazon patent, or read the prior literature carefully, or gone to law school, so I can't comment on whether the patent seems valid or not.

You're an idiot.

CSIRO's patent which netted it 200 million is not a software patent. It's a hardware patent. Read the patent itself (from way back in 1993) if you don't believe me. The word "software" doesn't even appear in it.

This is exactly the way the patent system is supposed to work. It's supposed to encourage innovation and protect investment. What CSIRO is doing is improving the world. Can you imagine the world today if they hadn't done the research and developed the WIFI technology that everyone takes for granted?

It on the public record that they licensed the technology and expected to receive payments. As the court cases showed, the big tech companies just tried to weasel their way out of actually coughing up the cash after taking the technology and incorporating it into their products.

How can you be mad that this cash is going into cutting edge research projects rather than hookers and coke for some executive's next mediterranean cruise?

Not too surprising. I imagine they trademarked it back in 1977 or 1978, since droids were such a cornerstone of Star Wars, and especially the merchandising wave that followed with all the plastic Kenner crap in the 80s. (In fact, I found one from 1977 here. In case that link ceases to work, it's a now-dead trademark for "Droid" as it applies to toys. It's been superceded by other variations on the Droid mark.)

Of course, that would be my theory. Amazingly, there is a very recent application (Oct 9th, 2009 if that link expires or only works for me) from Lucasfilm specifically covering Droid in a cell-phone context. That makes me wonder if there were preemptive negotiations to prevent something like the iPhone trademark kerfluffle that happened back in 2007 between Cisco and Apple.

If you want to do your own searches (in particular if the links I provided don't work), go here, or if that fails, here.

Not too surprising. I imagine they trademarked it back in 1977 or 1978, since droids were such a cornerstone of Star Wars, and especially the merchandising wave that followed with all the plastic Kenner crap in the 80s. (In fact, I found one from 1977 here. In case that link ceases to work, it's a now-dead trademark for "Droid" as it applies to toys. It's been superceded by other variations on the Droid mark.)

Of course, that would be my theory. Amazingly, there is a very recent application (Oct 9th, 2009 if that link expires or only works for me) from Lucasfilm specifically covering Droid in a cell-phone context. That makes me wonder if there were preemptive negotiations to prevent something like the iPhone trademark kerfluffle that happened back in 2007 between Cisco and Apple.

If you want to do your own searches (in particular if the links I provided don't work), go here, or if that fails, here.

Not too surprising. I imagine they trademarked it back in 1977 or 1978, since droids were such a cornerstone of Star Wars, and especially the merchandising wave that followed with all the plastic Kenner crap in the 80s. (In fact, I found one from 1977 here. In case that link ceases to work, it's a now-dead trademark for "Droid" as it applies to toys. It's been superceded by other variations on the Droid mark.)

Of course, that would be my theory. Amazingly, there is a very recent application (Oct 9th, 2009 if that link expires or only works for me) from Lucasfilm specifically covering Droid in a cell-phone context. That makes me wonder if there were preemptive negotiations to prevent something like the iPhone trademark kerfluffle that happened back in 2007 between Cisco and Apple.

If you want to do your own searches (in particular if the links I provided don't work), go here, or if that fails, here.

Not too surprising. I imagine they trademarked it back in 1977 or 1978, since droids were such a cornerstone of Star Wars, and especially the merchandising wave that followed with all the plastic Kenner crap in the 80s. (In fact, I found one from 1977 here. In case that link ceases to work, it's a now-dead trademark for "Droid" as it applies to toys. It's been superceded by other variations on the Droid mark.)

Of course, that would be my theory. Amazingly, there is a very recent application (Oct 9th, 2009 if that link expires or only works for me) from Lucasfilm specifically covering Droid in a cell-phone context. That makes me wonder if there were preemptive negotiations to prevent something like the iPhone trademark kerfluffle that happened back in 2007 between Cisco and Apple.

If you want to do your own searches (in particular if the links I provided don't work), go here, or if that fails, here.

What does open access to laws have to do with operating systems or open source?

There's a reason why they call it a "legal code", and not just because of Dr. Lessig's book.

Sounds like an attempt to ride the Linux hype wave, and it seems to be succeeding so far.

"Law like a free software project" would at least require a patch to the patent code to make it more efficient at rejecting obvious inventions.

Presumably, you would be patenting as a small entity, for which the US PTO cuts most fees by 50%.

You also don't necessarily need an expensive attorney to file a US patent application - you can do it yourself, provided you conform to certain formal requirements. For an application which goes smoothly through the process, the small entity fees are less than $2000 http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september15.htm. If there are many office actions, this total could easily double or triple, however, so preparing the application carefully is essential. I'd recommend you peruse the documents at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/index.html, and get a copy of 37CFR part 1 (patent rules) and the MPEP http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/index.jsp.

FWIW, I've had a couple of patents which issued without any intervening office actions, but they were the exceptions. Most involved a few office actions, and a couple involved many office actions. Every office action involves a fee, even if the action was due to the PTO losing papers which they had officially acknowledged receiving (that case is still ongoing).

Also, publishing in some journal or on the web does not necessarily prevent someone else from filing a patent application on much the same thing. The US PTO does not and cannot search ALL possible publications when looking for prior art, and if a patent is wrongly issued, it would be up to you to challenge it in court (at much higher expense than actually getting a patent)). The PTO does search all US patents and US patent applications, however. So filing a patent application, and then abandoning it at the first office action, is a good and relatively cheap way of publishing your idea in a way that prevents everyone else from getting a patent on it. They'd have to make significant changes beyond anything clearly contemplated in your application to get their application through the PTO.

Presumably, you would be patenting as a small entity, for which the US PTO cuts most fees by 50%.

You also don't necessarily need an expensive attorney to file a US patent application - you can do it yourself, provided you conform to certain formal requirements. For an application which goes smoothly through the process, the small entity fees are less than $2000 http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september15.htm. If there are many office actions, this total could easily double or triple, however, so preparing the application carefully is essential. I'd recommend you peruse the documents at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/index.html, and get a copy of 37CFR part 1 (patent rules) and the MPEP http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/index.jsp.

FWIW, I've had a couple of patents which issued without any intervening office actions, but they were the exceptions. Most involved a few office actions, and a couple involved many office actions. Every office action involves a fee, even if the action was due to the PTO losing papers which they had officially acknowledged receiving (that case is still ongoing).

Also, publishing in some journal or on the web does not necessarily prevent someone else from filing a patent application on much the same thing. The US PTO does not and cannot search ALL possible publications when looking for prior art, and if a patent is wrongly issued, it would be up to you to challenge it in court (at much higher expense than actually getting a patent)). The PTO does search all US patents and US patent applications, however. So filing a patent application, and then abandoning it at the first office action, is a good and relatively cheap way of publishing your idea in a way that prevents everyone else from getting a patent on it. They'd have to make significant changes beyond anything clearly contemplated in your application to get their application through the PTO.

Presumably, you would be patenting as a small entity, for which the US PTO cuts most fees by 50%.

You also don't necessarily need an expensive attorney to file a US patent application - you can do it yourself, provided you conform to certain formal requirements. For an application which goes smoothly through the process, the small entity fees are less than $2000 http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009september15.htm. If there are many office actions, this total could easily double or triple, however, so preparing the application carefully is essential. I'd recommend you peruse the documents at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/index.html, and get a copy of 37CFR part 1 (patent rules) and the MPEP http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/index.jsp.

FWIW, I've had a couple of patents which issued without any intervening office actions, but they were the exceptions. Most involved a few office actions, and a couple involved many office actions. Every office action involves a fee, even if the action was due to the PTO losing papers which they had officially acknowledged receiving (that case is still ongoing).

Also, publishing in some journal or on the web does not necessarily prevent someone else from filing a patent application on much the same thing. The US PTO does not and cannot search ALL possible publications when looking for prior art, and if a patent is wrongly issued, it would be up to you to challenge it in court (at much higher expense than actually getting a patent)). The PTO does search all US patents and US patent applications, however. So filing a patent application, and then abandoning it at the first office action, is a good and relatively cheap way of publishing your idea in a way that prevents everyone else from getting a patent on it. They'd have to make significant changes beyond anything clearly contemplated in your application to get their application through the PTO.

If you patent, it'll be expensive.

In the US, you can apply for a provisional patent for $110. This is a simplified, essentially abstract patent application you can use to hold your place in the patent line while you go off and find someone to commercialize/help you commercialize your idea.

You've still got a year after publication to make a provisional filing, but you also get a year after the provisional filing before the full application.

lets not for get who is actually behind the MPAA - RIAA, these are the companies that need to be targeted and boycotted into changing their ways, purchase only 2nd hand media and do not purchase anything branded sony, why allow the fecktards to dictate Orwellian hardware DRM designed to take away rights not to stop piracy anymore.

Its not so simple... this is defiantly not just the *AAs that are behind the push to enforce Orwellian DRM, IP etc.. your also fighting the US Gov and associated traditional political power bases. See:The Political Economy of Intellectual Property For a little more on that, but the attitude was summed up by Alan Greenspan in his speech to congress back in 2004:

"Unlike physical property, which can be defended by armed enforcement, intellectual property can be stolen by an act 'as simple as broadcasting an idea without the permission of the originator.'" Alan Greenspan

You don't have to dig far to see that the US Gov considers IP to almost be a matter of National Security ("Safeguarding the Nation’s economic infrastructure") PTO is cognizant of its responsibility for providing effective management and stewardship of the Nation’s intellectual property resources by administering the laws related to patents and trademarks, and providing customers with the highest level of quality and services. In doing this, PTO emphasizes timeliness in processing applications and the quality of issued patents and registered trademarks. These high levels of quality and service can be provided only through enhancing our human resources, leveraging information technology, employing better processes and effectively managing resources

Going to have to boycott the two major political parties while your at it, it would seem... but there is no Pirate Party here and unlikely to ever be one.

The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued, the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO.

So, yes, the patent owner *can* exclude you from making his invention, but it's up to the inventor to excude you and the USPTO isn't going to help him.

Most large companies will just ignore the patents of a small inventor and wait to be sued. Most people can use the same technique. Unless you are selling the invention, it's unlikely the inventor will ever find you.

As usual on slashdot regarding patents, everyone forgets that they are quite explicit about the actual patent claims. Atleast these hit my eye:

13. The processing device of claim 8, wherein the memory further comprises instructions for changing a type of a license from a first type to a second type.

14. The processing device of claim 8, wherein the memory further comprises instructions for changing a time-based license to a perpetual license based on a number of activations of the time-based license.

15. A tangible machine-readable medium having instructions recorded thereon for at least one processor, the instructions comprising:instructions for validating and using a received time-based license of any one of a plurality of types, the time-based license having a plurality of configurable parameters defining properties of the time-based license; andinstructions for displaying, an amount of time before a valid time-based license expires.

16. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions for providing a user interface to permit a user to enter time-based license commands and to view information with respect to a time-based license.

17. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise instructions for displaying to a user a message warning of an impending license expiration at predetermined time periods before a time-based license expires.

18. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise:instructions for granting a right to use a fully enabled software product associated with the time-based license when the time-based license has remaining time, andinstructions for not granting the right to use the fully enabled software product when the time-based license has no remaining time.

19. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise:instructions for displaying information regarding a time-based license, andinstructions for executing the instructions for displaying an amount of time before a valid time-based license expires, at a predetermined time period before expiration of the valid time-based license.

20. The tangible machine-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise:instructions for providing an application program interface for an application to request activation of a time-based license.

And like is even stated in the patent description:

[0002]Some existing systems issue licenses for a predetermined period of time. However, the systems are not flexible enough to issue licenses suitable for a number of different licensing business models.

Read the whole thing before jumping into stupid conclusions.

Can't believe parent is only scored 1 but anyway ...

Toyota Patent Filed: October 2, 2002

Paice Patent Filed: May 8, 2006

Toyota wins.

Can't believe parent is only scored 1 but anyway ...

Toyota Patent Filed: October 2, 2002

Paice Patent Filed: May 8, 2006

Toyota wins.

It looks like this whole topic is littered with information, so here are some translations for you all.

We claim:
1. A method of growing a crystal of a 50S ribosomal subunit from Haloarcula marismortui comprising:
(a) isolating a 50S ribosomal subunit from Haloarcula marismortui;
(b) precipitating the 50S ribosomal subunit;
(c) back-extracting or resuspending the precipitated 50S ribosomal subunit to obtain a solution;
(d) seeding the back-extracted or resuspended solution of step (c);
(e) growing a crystal of the 50S ribosomal subunit from the seeded solution of step (d) by vapor diffusion at room temperature;
(f) harvesting the crystal from step (e);
(g) stabilizing the harvested crystal by gradual transfer of said crystal into a series of solution containing high salt concentration of from about 1.2 M to 1.7 M; and
(h) maintaining the crystal under high salt concentration, wherein the crystal (i) is untwinned, (ii) has an average thickness greater than about 15 .mu.m, and (iii) diffracts X-rays to a resolution of at least 2.7 .ANG..

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising: (i) flash freezing the crystal of step (h).

This is definitely a process patent, but not much of it is patentable.
Step (a) uses a centrifugation process that every biochemist knows, and they cite a 1985 paper.
Step (b) is another basic purification step based on selective precipitation, and again is a standard technique.
Step (c) means that they re-dissolved the protein, pretty special...
Steps (d,e) could be unique if they did anything really extraordinary. It's been too many years since I've been a practicing crystallographer, so I can't say if anything in those steps is very unusual. I doubt it: vapor diffusion etc is pretty typical as an overall technique.
Steps (f-h) and (2i) are also just basic crystallography procedures.

In this patent, there's just nothing but crystals and structures, period.

That's BS, and you should know it.

Here are two of the related patents: 1, 2.

They claim the structure itself, which is only possible due the legal loopholes which permit patenting biological information because it was in a "useful form", like purified DNA. By my count, the clock should have started running on that claim back in the 50s. They describe the use of the structure, to work with antibiotic modeling etc, as an embodiment of their invention, but that is not the real focus of the invention.

The patent itself should make it obvious that they aren't patenting a process or antibiotic: in the text check "D. Methods of Using the Atomic Coordinates of the 50S Ribosomal Subunit to Identify and Design Ligands of Interest". They cite tired old references such as "Molecular Modeling on the PC, 1998, John Wiley & Sons" (molecular modeling from 1998?!) and computer software packages like GRID (which could be used as part of an antibiotic design process). There is no specific example in the patent for actually using their structure to produce a particular antibiotic or drug. The text makes it blatantly clear that the processes they describe are nothing BUT prior art, and are only useful with the real focal point of the patent, which is the structure.

It's all just part of the game we play. Raw information is patented as "inventions" because we can, and it looks good on a resume and it's legal ammunition to throw around in this horribly broken system.

That's BS, and you should know it.

Here are two of the related patents: 1, 2.

They claim the structure itself, which is only possible due the legal loopholes which permit patenting biological information because it was in a "useful form", like purified DNA. By my count, the clock should have started running on that claim back in the 50s. They describe the use of the structure, to work with antibiotic modeling etc, as an embodiment of their invention, but that is not the real focus of the invention.

The patent itself should make it obvious that they aren't patenting a process or antibiotic: in the text check "D. Methods of Using the Atomic Coordinates of the 50S Ribosomal Subunit to Identify and Design Ligands of Interest". They cite tired old references such as "Molecular Modeling on the PC, 1998, John Wiley & Sons" (molecular modeling from 1998?!) and computer software packages like GRID (which could be used as part of an antibiotic design process). There is no specific example in the patent for actually using their structure to produce a particular antibiotic or drug. The text makes it blatantly clear that the processes they describe are nothing BUT prior art, and are only useful with the real focal point of the patent, which is the structure.

It's all just part of the game we play. Raw information is patented as "inventions" because we can, and it looks good on a resume and it's legal ammunition to throw around in this horribly broken system.

Can someone link this this "985 patent"? I can't find it linked in any article on this subject. Why do major media never link to anything?

Uh, looks like they did link it at the end, you just have to RTFA:

US Patent 7,599,985 for a "Distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document"

I agree that software shouldn't be patentable (either directly or through the various loopholes that applicants use to get around the fact that software, when claimed directly, is not a "process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter").

But in my opinion, this should be a matter of policy motivated by the fact that the rate of improvements in the software arts is far too fast to permit 20-year terms of patent protection, and such a policy has to come from Congress rather than the courts. Current law seems to support the idea of granting patent rights for programs in the context of a "general purpose computer programmed with software" or a "computer readable storage medium embodying software", and I seriously doubt that SCOTUS is going to change that.