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Filing a Statutory Invention registration costs $920, with no discount for small entity. It's much cheaper to file an application and abandon it. Filing costs $330 or $165 for small entity (you are almost certainly a small entity). The filing fee can be higher if your application has a rather large number of claims or a complicated claim dependency structure. Here is the current fee schedule at the US PTO: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2009january01_2009jan12.htm

Either way, you must conform to the required format for the filing. Special attention must be given to drawings, so that labels and textual descriptions in drawings match the associated descriptions in the text specification (and all drawings must have descriptions). Drawings may NOT be in colour, or employ shading to distinguish areas - only cross-hatching or other fill patterns are allowed. The application must be accompanied by copies of any references or prior art cited. This is to ensure that your disclosure will be interpreted in the correct way later, even if you abandon it. Before it is printed, there may be requests for formal changes.

I recommend you become familiar with the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/index.htm

Exactly, so publish the invention in detail in as many places as possible, the internet, etc, so that it is easy to prove that it is a published prior work.

If your invention is used successfully by someone, get in touch with industry publications, and see if they can pick up an article. The more places your invention is described in, the more clear it would be that a patent application for it is fraudulent.

Plus, you need publications, whether online or offline, in order for people in the industry to learn about the invention...

And also, possibly file for a statutory registration.

Don't just publish the details of the invention itself, publish lots of ways the invention can be used, as many use cases as possible, including obvious uses, but especially important ones that might not be immediately apparent.

You don't just need to worry about people patenting the invention itself: you may need to be concerned about people patenting certain uses of the invention with something else or in certain situations, that they claim might be novel.

An example would be patenting the concept of "a card catalog system, but on a computer" (at a time when card catalogs have been around for centuries, and computers have been around for decades)

Of course if you describe as many of those use cases as possible ahead of time, and use language fully expressing the versatility of the invention, and making it clear that there are a lot of obvious uses, you might be able to reduce that possibility slightly...

If the patent was some innovative, creative discovery. But it's not. It rehashes technology that was a decade old before the ink hit the paper. Somebody's going to figure out that their claims (Thanks, Tick-tock-atona) are derived from prior art based on cellular packet radio technologies from the late 1970's and then this will be over. Just because you get the clerks at the patent office to sign off on your patent doesn't mean that you've won the golden ticket to jerking everybody around. The whole world knows those clerks have been clueless ever since the best of them invented global thermonuclear war. To think that the average patent clerk is qualified to judge the originality of the concepts presented to him is the pinnacle of the absurd. No thousand of them could know all of the prior art in every field, and there aren't a thousand of them.

Somebody in this group dipped from the well of common knowledge and bottled it as a new beverage. If he's just selling the drink I don't have a problem with that, but that's not the case here. He's trying to claim now that the effort of dipping entitles him to ownership of the concept of wells in general, and assume the power to tell others not to dip and that's not ok. Once an idea is in the commons it cannot be made proprietary again - that's not progress, it's regress. It's not going to hold up in court.

HP paid. That's sad but they probably got a good deal - considerably less than the cost of defending this nonsense. They got that deal because they were the first to settle and the second will have to pay much more and these settlement monies will be what pays the lawyers to pursue the case until they're ultimately defeated. Defeated, though, they must be, because their claims are crap and they're up against some big guns who can afford to fight and dig up the folks with prior art.

So really this whole thing is about wasting the court's time (taxpayer money - that's me!) and earning billable hours for lawyers on both sides, to no useful purpose. That's not the purpose of the section of Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution which says: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; " That part of the Constitution is for ensuring progress. Progress is the goal. There's nothing in that paragraph about supporting the barratry industry.

Look, I get that you have some nationalistic interest, but I don't care. I don't often side with the big corporations on anything, nationalism be damned most of the time they suck. I didn't even know the patent troll was Non-US. It doesn't matter. It's bad in and of itself, and the nationality of its stupidness is irrelevant. By now though you probably get that I don't approve of abuses of the patent system, no matter what flag the patent filer flies.

And yes, I did RTFA. I have personal first hand direct experience that's at odds with the reportage. When you're faced with that problem, "Who are you going to believe? ABC, or your lying eyes?"

Here's the patent. And it's pretty damn comprehensive. The patent was filed for in 1993, and granted in 1996.

As in the report here (2000), CSIRO attempted to license the tech and recieve royalties but then in 2005, big tech companies didn't want to play ball anymore.

I say, good work CSIRO - screw these guys for every penny and keep on conducting your groundbreaking research.

Please see the Patent Cooperation Treaty which covers this situation; China acceded in 1993, India in 1998.

From 2007, the modular data center patent (where the bottommost image of the article comes from). There's no lack of patents revealing piece by piece how their power management setup works.

Ah, the catch--22 of the patent--being forced to reveal your hand in order to protect it while underpaid workers at Baidu figure out how to integrate your ideas into their hardware.

From 2007, the modular data center patent (where the bottommost image of the article comes from). There's no lack of patents revealing piece by piece how their power management setup works.

Ah, the catch--22 of the patent--being forced to reveal your hand in order to protect it while underpaid workers at Baidu figure out how to integrate your ideas into their hardware.

No, this is real. You can search for patent application 20090083107 directly from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO isn't known for their sense of humor.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

It's a good idea to at least file a provisional patent on your concept before you discuss it with vendors. Write up your ideas and sketches as completely as you can, and send it in to the USPTO with a check for $110 using form SB16, available at: http://www.uspto.gov/web/forms/sb0016_fill.pdf

Positive points: extensive search functions (e.g. search on all different fields), ability to save searches, ability to download search results as spreadsheets (not figured out how yet).

I must be jaded by the search functionality we have at work. The big thing that Google and various other search sites lack is proximity operators.

While the USPTO external website doesn't provide proximity operators, it does let you search on all fields in the advanced search. You can use the same search tools that examiners use if you visit the public search room at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and I think at least some of the examiner search tools are also available at the various Patent and Trademark Depository Library locations around the country.

Positive points: extensive search functions (e.g. search on all different fields), ability to save searches, ability to download search results as spreadsheets (not figured out how yet).

I must be jaded by the search functionality we have at work. The big thing that Google and various other search sites lack is proximity operators.

While the USPTO external website doesn't provide proximity operators, it does let you search on all fields in the advanced search. You can use the same search tools that examiners use if you visit the public search room at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and I think at least some of the examiner search tools are also available at the various Patent and Trademark Depository Library locations around the country.

It's been going on for a while, it is just that the last few years, Slashdot made it front page news for geeks everywhere.

I'd intended to disagree with you, and I dug up some numbers:

The number of patents granted each year spiked dramatically in the US (be sure you're looking at the second row) in 1998, and again in 2006.

Congress' statistics office determined that "the number of U.S. patent lawsuits as a percentage of total patents have not changed significantly over the passed two decades".

This site claims that suits by number of claims rose way up in '04, but the source of the data is not clear.

Likely the '98 jump was the big technology boom following the popularization of the Web.

The anomaly in '06 may well be attributable to a rise of patent trolling, but this isn't clear. The number of patents issued peaked during the NASDAQ crash and held steady for a couple years. In '05, it dropped tremendously, then spiked high in '06, and dropped down somewhat in '07.

If the numbers from the patent blog are true, we're seeing a lot more claims per suit. Given the other numbers, this must represent a shift in IP litigation strategy, but I don't know what it means in any broader sense.

So... yeah. Business as usual. Mind you, that doesn't mean it's a good thing. Just because it's the status-type quo doesn't mean we should settle for it. IP law, in all its guises, needs reform badly. I'm not sure I've seen a good solution proposed anywhere, although there are a number of suggestions out there superior to the current mess. I'll keep my pie-hole shut about which I favor, since I don't want to derail my own point too far.

All of the various "free patents" sites are pure spam. The USPTO, like many other patent offices around the world, lets you view patents online for free - including free from ads.

In this particular case, you can read the patent here, straight from the horse's mouth.

Actually, Halliburton has the patent on patent trolling.

What exactly does trademark protection have to do with patents?

Same department. You know, like... Birth, Marriage, and Death Records.

Why don't you then?

US2007/0201702

But make sure you look up the whole file wrapper on PAIR to put everything in context. Also in particular take a look at the long listed of cited references and how they are used in the examiners reports.

http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair

... I know there is more than one kind of patent.

* Defensive Publication (DEF)- Issued instead of a regular utility, design, or plant patent, it offers limited protection, defensive in nature, to prevent others from patenting an invention, design, or plant. The Defensive Publication was replaced by the Statutory Invention Registration in 1985-86.

* Statutory Invention Registration (SIR)- This document replaced the Defensive Publication in 1985-86 and offers similar protection.

From http://www.uspto.gov/go/taf/patdesc.htm

Already been done.
United States Patent Application - 20080270152 - October 30, 2008
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080270152&OS=20080270152&RS=20080270152

Patent Acquisition and Assertion by a (Non-Inventor) First Party Against a Second Party

Abstract

Methods for a first party to acquire and assert a patent property against a second party are disclosed. The methods include obtaining an equity interest in the patent property. The methods further include writing a claim within the scope of the patent property. The claim is written to cover a product of the second party where the product includes a secret aspect. The methods further include filing the claim with a patent office. The methods sometimes include offering a license of the patent property to the second party after the patent property issues as a patent with the claim. The methods sometimes include asserting infringement of the claim by the second party after the patent property issues as a patent with the claim. The methods sometimes include negotiating a cross-license with the second party based on the assertion of infringement of the claim, where under the cross-license the first party obtains a license to an intellectual property right from the second party. The methods sometime include attempting to obtain a monetary settlement from the second party based on the assertion of infringement of the claim.

As I said, you still have to register your invention to be eligible for the prize.

See: http://www.uspto.gov/go/fees/

Lotteries and bookies are familiar with the concept. They manage somehow, some even make money in the process.

And some companies might even sponsor an endowment or even the prizes every year.

Sure inventors or the companies they work for won't get billions of dollars in prize money. But should they need or get that in the first place?

The marketing budget for US drug companies tends to be bigger than their R&D budget. So I'm sure they and other companies will manage somehow. I also doubt Intel will stop investing in R&D if AMD et all can copy what they do (it's not so trivial to copy Intel even if you can read their inventions and patents - you can't reproduce their entire fab).

Whatever it is, we will need something else assuming an increasing rate of invention - the current patent system won't scale well. As the number of specialized fields increases it'll be harder and harder for an examiner to work out whether a patent should be granted or not.

Of course if we are assuming the rate of invention stagnates or even declines, then that's different. I hope that's not what we're planning for.

About your sig..

Did you actually look at the patent description?
US Patent #5425497 is about an invention of a new type of cup-holder that takes up less volume.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5425497.PN.&OS=PN/5425497&RS=PN/5425497

The sig would be funny had it actually been true.

If you need a list of silly patents to come up with a better sig, go here: http://www.patentlysilly.com/archives.php

It doesn't have to cost ridiculous amounts of money to obtain a patent. Despite what patent lawyers may tell you, if you have sufficient time and effort you can obtain a patent all by yourself. The filing fees are more than some can afford, but are not outside the realm of reasonableness given the amount of patent examiner time needed to evaluate the application.

The most difficult part of a patent application is writing concise claims and properly citing any prior art.

Current USPTO fee list. Note, you even get a 50% discount for being a small entity if you are a person or small business.

I've been writing custom data access layers since 2001, and they all have components that vaguely resemble this: http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week15/OG/html/1329-2/US06163776-20080408.html. There needs to be a test that goes beyond "prior art" for software patents. Namely, if a software solution is obvious given the problem and the tools, then it should not be patentable. Otherwise, patent law does not advance the common good, it merely makes programming more expensive/less productive.

6,163,776

Link to US PTO United States Patent: 6,163,776

I'm sorry, but isn't this practically identical to the patent application to use javascript to treat browsers as distributed clients to perform a job like a distributed super computer? The patent application is at http://appft1.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=%2220020198932%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20020198932&RS=DN/20020198932

They did register it in the US, way back in '96; see http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75215401 for details. Off course, that won't stop a couple of other companies trying to take the trademark away from Psion... Psion also have an interesting statement at http://www.psionteklogix.com/documents/com/specSheets/Psion_Netbook%20_Trademark_%20Statement.pdf

IBM can do what it wants with Linux, safe in the knowledge they are one of the companies with a patent portfolio.

Nice understatement. They are in the top 10 in terms of number of patents filed every year. In every year from 1994 - 2005 they top the list. They have been doing this since the 60's.

In my book that is not a patent portfolio anymore, that is now one of the largest patent war chests that any company has ever amassed.

http://www.uspto.gov/go/taf/reports_top10.htm

Not quite. Under some circumstances, a US patent application can remain unpublished for up to eighteen months after filing. See here.

So it's possible for someone to file a patent application, then choose not to disclose the application for a period of time. I am not sure if this happened in the RAMBUS case - I am just pointing out that patent applications are not always immediately made public.

Source, if the link evaporates, search TESS for Netbook, its serial number 75215401

PROTIP: TESS links expire, but each TESS result has a persistent link under the "TARR Status" button. See TARR: Serial #75215401

Netbook is a sufficiently unique way to describe a "IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: LAPTOP COMPUTERS" Source, if the link evaporates, search TESS for Netbook, its serial number 75215401

Well, its as unique as iPhone or powerbook. And back then, in 1996, (November 6, 1996 to be exact), I remember notebook computers browsing the net, but not a notebook designed for internet connectivity as its primary purpose.

Why cure the symptom when you can cure the disease? The cure isn't an addition. It's a deletion. The section is Article 1, Section 8.

US Patent #6469

(you will need a TIFF viewer or plugin)

But patents are awesome! More fun to abuse than tor.

But patents are awesome! More fun to abuse than tor.

But patents are awesome! More fun to abuse than tor.

Here's one that covers ADO.NET and parts of ASP.NET:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6920461.PN.&OS=PN/6920461%3Cbr%20/%3E&RS=PN/6920461

Is that good enough for you? Because there are more. Lots more. Search the US Patent Office site for them.

Basically, Microsoft could enforce its patents to make Mono drop support for ADO.NET, ASP.NET and WinForms. Sure, they aren't part of the CLR, but Mono would be useless without them (especially in the eyes of Windows developers who the Mono team thought would flock to Linux if it had .NET support). It would basically kill Mono (although it seems pretty much dead now anyhow).

You cannot patent the invention *and* release it under GPL.

From the US Patent office: The patent grant excludes others from making, using, or selling the invention in the United States. You cannot enjoy that protection and allow others to use it for free.

If you do not defend your market exclusivity, a competitor can apply to have your patent overturned/revoked. It would be a slam-dunk.

U.S. Patent No. 6,411,941

Any opinions on whether this is bogus or obvious?

IMHO he did a stupid thing by taking that job. He had to sign employment agreements and contracts and they most likely invalidated his claims. And he certainly copied documents he was not allowed to copy as an employee.

[citation needed]

A simple Google search leads to this:

http://appft1.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=%2220090009628%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20090009628&RS=DN/20090009628

You could get the data directly from the USPTO here. They support full boolean searches on a large number of fields. For example, a search for "international business machines" as the assignee in the patent database shows that IBM has 52,781 patents (some of which are expired). Narrowing the search to those issued in the last year shows 4166 patents issued in 2008. The exact query I used was (an/"international business machines" and isd/20080101->20081231) without the parens. You can search patents and published applications -- IBM currently shows 27685 applications pending (and that's just those that have published since 2001).

1. A method of managing image information utilizing a hand-held camera comprising the steps of: capturing raw image data representative of a subject of interest utilizing an imaging device of said hand-held camera; transmitting said raw image data to a host computer during a continuous session via a wireless link between said hand-held camera and said host computer; receiving, as an automated response by said host computer to said transmitting step, related image data at said hand-held camera during said continuous session via said wireless link; forming an image from said related image data on a display device of said hand-held camera, wherein enabling a display of said subject of interest on said display device is dependent upon operations at said host computer; and browsing stored image data that is stored in said host computer, where said browsing is controlled by operations at said hand-held camera.

but as you can see, it's very limiting - round trip of camera sending image to computer and computer processing it before sending it back for display on the camera. So an obvious workaround would be to just do half it (camera -> PC) and patent infringement avoided. This patent might have seemed useful back in '98 when processing power on a small device (like a handheld camera) was not thought of the way to go. So HP seemed to miss this important fact and could/should have realized that processors would get smaller, faster, less-power hungry. I have found this subtle but important miscalculation happens all the time. Call it a design flaw in the patent.

Here's the only Independent claim:

1. A wireless communication unit, comprising: an interface portion signally connectable to a main device, the interface portion including a connector portion having a shape that mimics a shape of a removable memory-medium-device, the connector portion being receivable by and connectable to a memory-medium-device-receiving-portion of the main device; a recording portion performing non-volatile recording; a wireless communication portion performing wireless communication; and a control portion transmitting information through the wireless communication portion to an external destination and generating a backup of the information in the recording portion, the information being inputted from the main device to the control portion through the interface portion, wherein the control portion automatically deletes the backup from the recording portion after transmission of the information in the wireless communication portion is normally terminated, when the control portion generates the backup of the information in the recording portion, wherein the wireless communication unit is a stand-alone unit.

I believe Nikon came out with wifi camera's before Cannon.

Wow, some fun, interesting, and smart goings-on here at Slashdot! Oh yeah, that's why I still come here... :)

As an aside to the debate, I don't see those two as utility-less. Bear in mind that utility is a really broad requirement, and "providing entertainment" or "reducing embarrassment" are perfectly legitimate uses.

Forgive me, I should have been more explicit. I don't consider the ideas claimed to be utility-less, but rather the patents themselves, w.r.t. any advancements -- both "inventions" have likely been around at least as long as swingsets and male pattern baldness, respectively. :) Any utility either patent would have would therefore lie not in expressing the claimed inventions to the public and thereby advancing public knowledge, given that neither "invention" really is one, but rather purely in the short-term monopoly granted to the patent holder, and since these two "inventions" were in all likelihood both fully extant prior to being patented, the granting of such monopolies constitutes little more than a power grab, should the grantee actually seek to exercise their exclusivity rights.

On the minus side, a lot of shiat gets found too...

< sigh. > Yes, this is indeed a problem with allowing public comment. Crowd-sourcing anything, be it prior art research or Wikipedia or even democracy, will produce crap from time to time, and possibly more often than not if there is no QA mechanism. I don't suppose you have any QA mechanism ideas for the Peer2Patent process? Specifically, QA that would vet prior art references before reaching the patent examiner's desk? I can't think of anything useful off the top of my head.

Theoretically, at least, the examiners are working with new inventions, stuff no one has thought of before - it's therefore impossible for them (or anyone else other than the inventor) to be an expert on the invention already.

It might be a subtle distinction, but my concern in my previous post, and I guess in this thread in general, has more to do with patent examiners being experts in their respective fields, not necessarily being experts regarding the claimed inventions per se. Such an expert should be able to effectively evaluate any application for obviousness and prior art. While perhaps not the best example, an expert on swingsets, for instance, would realize offhand that swinging sideways is both an obvious and widely used means of deriving entertainment, and such an expert would therefore have rejected the application to patent a Method of swinging on a swing on both obviousness and prior art grounds. W.r.t. TFA itself, an expert in computer security systems should be aware of not just POSIX permissions (a red herring many others have brought up), but also capabilities (which sound much closer to what IPAT claims to do). Given that capabilities have been researched, written about, and implemented since at least around the late 1970s (KeyKOS, for example), even if IPAT's claims go beyond capabilities themselves, and would therefore not be subject to rejection on prior art grounds per se, in such a case they should be stringently evaluated for obviousness as a possibly inevitable outgrowth from or extension of capabilities. (Note that I'm not saying that such evaluation did not occur -- I have no way of knowing. I *am* saying that the existence of dubious patents such as the swingset and combover patents does raise suspicions that due diligence has not been fully carried out, for pretty much *any* patent.)

So, to restate my concerns here, I am worried that USPTO patent examiners appear to not have adequate expertise to p

Partially side-stepping the question of prior art, I'm wondering about the patentability of these claims on obviousness grounds. From Wikipedia:

One of the main requirements of patentability is that the invention being patented is not obvious, meaning that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism.

I'm certainly no patent lawyer, but an awful lot of the things we've seen coming out of the USPTO seem to fail the obviousness test on a prima facie basis, such as the infamous Method of swinging on a swing, or the Method of concealing partial baldness. It seems relatively clear that at least some of the patents being granted are failing the obviousness test. Given this background, is it reasonable to inquire whether "a person having ordinary skill in the art" of computer systems security might not find IPAT's claims to be, well, obvious as a natural extension of Unix's user-based security apparatus?

Cheers,

Partially side-stepping the question of prior art, I'm wondering about the patentability of these claims on obviousness grounds. From Wikipedia:

One of the main requirements of patentability is that the invention being patented is not obvious, meaning that a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would not know how to solve the problem at which the invention is directed by using exactly the same mechanism.

I'm certainly no patent lawyer, but an awful lot of the things we've seen coming out of the USPTO seem to fail the obviousness test on a prima facie basis, such as the infamous Method of swinging on a swing, or the Method of concealing partial baldness. It seems relatively clear that at least some of the patents being granted are failing the obviousness test. Given this background, is it reasonable to inquire whether "a person having ordinary skill in the art" of computer systems security might not find IPAT's claims to be, well, obvious as a natural extension of Unix's user-based security apparatus?

Cheers,

all fixed :-)

Start here.

Direct Link to the more recent patent. USPTO needs to look into tinyurl code for short link redirects to content. They're not alone.

It looks like your basic troll patent. They try to get all of the possible potential access control mechanisms for programs in the hope that in the future some of them are employed, without bothering to check that all of them are not already employed decades since. Shoddy work, as one would expect. Is it this easy to get a patent? Maybe I should field a few. What are they, $500?

Somebody will settle anyway. More and more I'm coming to the controversial point of view that asshats like this are doing us a service. They're illustrating that the copyright and patent system we have now works against its stated purpose: to promote progress of science and the useful arts. If only we could start over...

Nintendo has always played the legal card to the maximum extent possible, going all the way back to the days of draconian contracts that forbade you from making a game for anyone else if Nintendo published one of your games. They tried to control even how much you can advertise. It got ruled invalid eventually, but in the meantime, yes, they did try to put anyone out of business who no loner toes the Nintendo line.

Or here in Europe they tried to strong-arm the retailers into what they can and can't sell, and basically used the European market as an experiment in whether they can make more money with only a handful of games and restricting access to anything else. They actually got slapped with an anti-trust for that, and were found guilty. Worse yet, it turned out that they knew they're in violation of the law, and had planned to violate it, thinking they can make more money than the fine can possibly be. (Wrong guess.)

To get back to patents and to more recent times, they also patented or filed for patent:

- the XBox Live, basically

- emulation of its own consoles, again, to try to keep other people from doing it (and, yes, they tried to bully emulator developpers before)

- weird stuff, like comparing each other's avatars online, never mind that people have been holding costume contests in COH since the fucking launch in 2004

- something as broad as making a stage magician kinda game/sim

- a "wearable" controller to digitize body motions, never mind that motion capture has been done before like that for ages

- a rechargeable game controller never mind that chargers like that existed for mice, headsets, and everything for freaking ages before that

- just about anything you can put a motion detector into, from bikes to teddy bears

- horror games, or at least stuff like hallucinations or hearing voices in games, never mind that neither is new, and an insanity sim had even been made to train police in how to deal with dementia people

Etc.

Some of those seem to even exist just to keep others from doing it. E.g., they filed for a patent for console online gaming, at a time where they were publicly bashing it and saying they have no intention to do that.

Frankly, I don't get the hardon some people seem to get about Nintendo. While they do have a couple of talented designers, the management has an uninterrupted history of being evil fucks that make MS look good by comparison. They tried every possible way to lock competitors out, and developers in, some of which MS so far never even dreamed about. E.g., I don't remember MS suing anyone for developing for the Mac too. They too broke anti-trust laws. Etc.

And at least the previous management had no problem with even insulting its customers, especially if, god forbid, they're asking for a genre Nintendo isn't currently selling. Yamauchi publicly called RPG gamers "depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games", for example.

The only thing that changed that was the GameCube being the second dud in a row, which prompted a mellowing out of attitude. If they ever get back in a positio

Sounds very similar to the old .com, VIOS. While the patent was for "Systems, methods, and computer program products for accessing, leasing, relocating, constructing and modifying internet sites within a multi-dimensional virtual reality environment" the implementation was very similar to MMORPGs and it was granted in '99.

It was granted in February of '07

The patent was granted May 4th 2004 per the actual patent. Reading the patent, I would think that suing Second Life would be a better match than suing MMO games. The patent refers to shared experiences and browsing. The website for the company, worlds.com, claims they launched in 1994, which predates most, if not all, MMOs. IANAL but, like others have noted, if MMOs can be sued by this patent, then all games that are not strictly single player offline games can be sued as well.

In order for prior art to cover this, either one reference, showing that this was known before the patentee's invention, has to anticipate every one of the limitations in the claim; or, it must have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to combine multiple references which, when put together, cover every limitation in the claim.

INAL goes with saying.

Please see patent office http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7346850.PN.&OS=PN/7346850&RS=PN/7346850version for better information.

Can anyone tell me what the differences are between claims 1 and 16? Outside a rewording??? This patent describes a point and click filesystem interface. It provides a visual snapshot of the files, links applications to files based apon being able to manupulate them, and opens the application when that file is selected.

Claim 2/3 looks like screen capture to me.

Claim 4 is the loading of the application linkage with the icon into memory.

Claim 5/6 looks like focus follows mouse cursor.

Claim 7/8/9 is opening application when the icon is selected by unknown method, keyboard or mouse.

Claim 10 allows multiple invocations of the same application.

Claim 11 looks like autosave.

Claim 12 looks like it's trying to cover the bases by mentioning paths and handles for each file. MacOS anybody?

Claim 13 again looks like base covering by covering automatic printing instead of application invocation when selected.

Cliam 14 is copying the file instead of invocation of an application.

Claim 15 is bogus (like the rest). Instead of creating an icon of a "real" file, it a template file instead.

Claim 16 is claim 1 reworded as far as I can tell.

Claim 17 is claim 16's version of claim 4.

The weird part of this patent is the requirement that an application be manuplating the files in question when the snapshot is made. Most likely a restriction required by the examiner.

Now for a REAL laugh, they filed an another http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=09097283&OS=09097283&RS=09097283application for a NEW patent as a continuation-in-part of the granted application. I can't belive they spent the money. And BTW, it almost looks like the filed lawsuit assumes that THIS application has granted instead of 09/878,009 from which patent 7,346,850 was granted.

And remember that it is the language of the claims that matter, NOT the abstract or desciption.

BWP