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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

Two good things that would prevent cases like this from wasting people's time:

1. Patent reform.
2. Loser pays.

Patent reform only works if unfair cases are being brought to court, argued, and won in a way that is contrary to the intent of the system. It is premature to say that this suit is anything more than a paper tiger. Bring up the patent on the Patent Application Information Retrieval system. Look at the rejections, amendments, and arguments. Significant changes were made to the patent claims, gutting much of their scope. The company bringing these suits is delusional if they think they have a case that can settle for anything more than nuisance tribute, especially from such high profile veterans of more balanced legal battles. What kind of patent reform would keep someone from trying to enforce a weak and narrow patent? Would they be less likely to try to enforce it if it was even weaker and narrower? Should we only allow patents that are strong and broad? Should it matter that many patent applicants only want very narrow patents, and many dont' really care if they would have much valuable in litigation?

As for loser pays...what makes you think that is such a good idea? Record companies use the threat of attorney fees to press defendants into early settlements. Would it be alright for Google or Microsoft to sue smaller companies, or individuals, based on flimsy patent claims, but win because their potential attorneys fees could be astronomical...perhaps significantly more than any reasonable royalty for the patent? How about if they faced smaller companies with strong patents and potentially good cases, but those smaller companies decided not to try to enforce their rights because of the possibility of being bankrupted if the suits failed?

There are advocates of loser-pay, but loser-pay skeptics seem to be well-versed in the pros and cons of loser-pay systems. While loser-pay could have a positive effect on the American legal system, it is by no means a common-sense no-brainer.

If you search here for the term "Netbook", 18 entries come up, one of which is a live trademark assigned to Psion. It's interesting that neither Intel nor the various manufacturers and retailers marketing computers under the term "netbook" took the trouble to do this simple web search.

Here's the skinny on EEStor, so far as I can read.

Their new patent is a clean-up version of their old patent. Unfortunately, it's still a piece of marketing BS. Look at claim 1. It has 15 steps! If you avoid any one of them, you do not infringe. The rest of the patent is similar - not designed to protect, but designed to market an idea.

The physics of EEStor seems to have been replicated by half a dozen other companies, so we can probably begin to believe that the EEStore ultra-capacitors are possible in principle. However, a fully charged EEStor capacitor will explode on impact with about the force of 100 sticks of dynamite. I've thought about this problem for two years, without any solution. Hopefully the guys at EEStor are wiser, but no one else on the Internet has a solution either.

In short, don't bother believing this until you see it.

Looking at the article, (and having skimmed but not read all of the patent), isn't AntiSniff (released by DilDog of L0pht in 1999) using this technique? (Slashdot article, Aug '99)

Original tech paper was on l0pht.com (now defunct) - looks like archive.org doesn't have a mirror, here's the best copy I could find in Google: http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/l0pht/antisniff/tech-paper.html

The patent (PDF) is a highly information-rich document that offers remarkable insight into the device.

Well of course it is. If you can't actually build a working device from the information disclosed in the patent, the patent isn't valid:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100_2164.htm

Well knock me down and mod me flamebait! Oh, never mnd, somebody else already took care of that. If novelty is not a requirement for patentability, I'm moving my flag to the patents should be outlawed camp. Seems like a constitutional amendment would do it.

Somebody should clue the USPTO about that though, so that they can take down or appropriately modify this page. Maybe just a footnote that says "the requirement for novelty shall not be used to keep well-connected parasites from getting a free ride for the rest of their lives." Yeah, that should do it.

Can a post be modded lower than -1 Flamebait or -1 Troll? Anxiously awaiting the answer. Burn Karma, Burn!

That appears to be an error in the HTML. If you view the no where in it does it state anything about font.

If you mean this patent then don't worry too much. Apple didn't invent multi-touch (these guys did), nor did they patent the way it's currently used. They patented extensions, such as performing cut and paste with gestures. Why the G1 has no multi-touch is a mystery to me.

If you mean this patent then don't worry too much. Apple didn't invent multi-touch (these guys did), nor did they patent the way it's currently used. They patented extensions, such as performing cut and paste with gestures. Why the G1 has no multi-touch is a mystery to me.

No, I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of the claim and the likelihood that they really developped anything. This patent is taking the classic shotgun approach. Their core idea appears to be (if one can even be said to interpret patent writings)converting HTML to XML for the purpose of navigation by quadrants. They then of course extrapolate that to all possible uses, even speech recognition software. Had this patent been filed 5 or 10 years prior, there may possibly be a case for it. It's only been 2 and a half years however. This should not, and can not be allowed to stand.

Indeed, although it's actually 112 second paragraph.

(For those not in the know, that refers to the second paragraph of 35 USC 112, which requires the applicant to particularly point out and distinctly claim the invention in the claims.)

If /. wants to publish EVERY bad patent application, it's going to get crowded here pretty quick. There's a lot of chaff out there.

Well, I'd just like to get the ball rolling, then.

The PTO may still be accepting them, but I imagine the first time one goes to court they will be overruled. The decision is very specific: to be patentable, the subject of the patent must either "[be] tied to a particular machine" or "transform[...] an article". A storage medium is not a machine itself, and is not as far as I can see tied to a particular machine; nore does it transform an article. I note that the article you link to cites a federal court decision that such items are patentable, which obviously means that until such decisions are overruled explicitly by a court of appeals or the supreme court the PTO should continue as if it were still valid, but I would think that such an appeal court would, in light of the recent decision, look again and see that such claims are invalid.

In re Bilski only deals with the patentability of certain process claims. Patents can be granted to "[w]hoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter." 35 U.S.C. Sec. 101. Beauregard claims do not really claim a process, they claim an article of manufacture. They really do not fit within In re Bilski at all.

The scope of In re Bilski is very important. Lower courts are limited in how far they can stretch the decision. Even the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the appeals court that decided In re Bilski) is limited in what they can do with this decision. Individual three-judge panels on U.S. appeals courts are bound by precedents established by any panel of the given appeals court. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has to hear a case en banc (all the judges at one time) to overturn its own precedents. Since the Federal Circuit has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over patent cases, they are the ones who would need to hear an appeal.

This means that any precedents that were in place before In re Bilski, and were not affected by the decision, are still binding on everyone except the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sitting en banc or the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit noted that:

It is undisputed that Applicants' claims are not directed to a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. Thus, the issue before us involves what the term "process" in 101 means, and how to determine whether a given claim...is a "new and useful process."

This suggests that the holding of In re Bilski is limited to process claims and that many other types of claims that are used in software patents are unaffected.

For the interested

I read somewhere it costs $10,000 or so to file a patent.

I think the costs (depending on if you qualify as a "small entity") vary on filing fees ... you should really point out that the $10k figure comes from patent lawyers you hire to make sure your patent comes through in a timely fashion. If you don't have an army of those, the smallest slip of forgetting to cross reference another patent could cost you decades. Yes, refiling and additional services listed on that page will drive the price up but a timely patent is probably worth much more than what you would save if you didn't have a patent lawyer. If it's a one time thing, I would suggest finding a firm.

This is chump change to Microsoft.

If you're applying for 10 or 20 patents a week then this isn't "chump change." It's more than likely several million dollars a year for an entity like Microsoft. I think it's still important to Microsoft because of what investors see a patent portfolio as: pure assets.

Worked on?
More like he was hired to sit in an office and be their "star" power.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Out of the five major components of the Crusoe firmware -- the dynamic translator, interpreter, nucleus (mini-OS), virtual I/O, and out-of-line handlers ("microcode"), Linus was the driving force, designer and primary implementor of one (the interpreter.) He eventually transitioned into an "advanced research" role, working on more "far out" projects.

You might find this link interesting.

It's called trademark, not copyright and someone already did it: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=jemidk.2.1

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the patent examiner's job is to check for prior art. Scanning the entire patent library for prior art is a non-trivial task which cannot be automated or done properly in a hurry.

The patent examiner's job is to check for prior art. They use keyword searches over multiple databases. They also identify related classes of invention and do a quick check (e.g., checking out the abstracts and drawings) of dozens, if not hundreds, of patents, to try to find relevant prior art. They actually do a decent job in most cases, which is why virtually all issues patents were initially rejected.

That being said, prior art can be in any language, any time before invention, and just about anywhere "public" (e.g., a German masters thesis in a school library, a brochure distributed at a trade show, or source code in a public CVS repository). No patent examiner is capable of doing an exhaustive prior art search, especially since patent examiners, like everyone else, have limited time.

It is possible for the patent prosecution process to be more exhaustive. Just hire more examiners and give them more time to search. Of course, when you hire more examiners, you need to pay more to attract talent. You also have to pay the additional workforce. Thus, a more in-depth patent prosecution process costs more, which means fees would need to be higher (discouraging small businesses and independent inventors from securing rights in their inventions) or the patent office would need to be subsidized by public funds (costing taxpayers money).

It's actually the responsibility of the person submitting the patent, and if they're wrong, they're vulnerable to expensive lawsuits from anyone who does hold prior art.

Not exactly (at least not in the United States). The person submitting the patent has to provide the patent office with a list of the prior art that the person is aware of. If the person is not aware of any prior art, then the list that gets sent is empty. If the person submitting the patent (or that person's representative patent practitioner) fails to disclose known prior art, or misrepresents submitted prior art, then the entire patent can be thrown out. This is actually a problem because it discourages patent practitioners from saying anything about why they believe the prior art they are submitting might be relevant, wasting the time of patent examiners.

It is actually a good idea to look for prior art when drafting the patent, even though there is no duty to conduct such a search. Drafting around prior art enables patent applicant to obtain broad scope without having to narrow their claims during patent prosecution (which, due to the Festo cases, can drastically narrow the claimed invention scope).

The third possibility, however, is that prior art exists but isn't patented -- meaning the patent examiner wouldn't be able to find it in their library anyway.

Patent examiners have access to many databases, but not all prior art can be found in their databases. Moreover, the patent databases are probably the only sources of prior art that are categorized at a fine enough granularity (400 classes further divided into 150,000 subclasses) to be useful to patent examiners trying to find prior art without relying on exact search terms (an issue given that terminology changes over time).

That means the patent submitter is not as likely to be charged with wrongdoing, but the patent will remain in force until someone takes the time to point it out.

If the patent submitter misses something, then the whole patent may not be lost if at least one of the claims is not anticipated by or obvious in light of the prior art. It is only if the patent submitter knew about the art, but withheld it from the patent office, that the whole patent would be lost due to wrongdoing.

To my knowledge, two companies have expressed an interest in creating a sequel to Star Control II - The Ur-Quan Masters: Toys for Bob (the creators of Star Control and Star Control II; warning: site is entirely Flash) and Stardock (better known for strategy games like Galactic Civilizations).

Toys for Bob holds the copyright to Star Control II and its characters, which allowed them to open source the game (or, to be exact, a crude attempt to get the enhanced 3DO CD version to run on Windows, which has since been cleaned up and gained additional features such as network play) as The Ur-Quan Masters a few years ago (code under GPL 2 or later, content under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5).

The reason for dropping the name "Star Control" and using the subtitle is simple: the Star Control trademark is owned by Atari (a.k.a. Infogrames, who bought Star Control's publisher Accolade).

In other words, TFB has all the rights to make a sequel except the name (in fact, with the open sourcing, anyone could create a sequel, albeit non-commercially). However, since TFB is owned by Activision, they can't work on whatever they like (without being fired). TFB have stated on their news page that they need help convincing Activision to finance a sequel to Star Control II; they have the will, the skill and the rights to do so (albeit not the name, but that's secondary).

- you may be able to read a formula on a label, but not the process describing the making of the medicine.

Have you looked at a patent for a medicine lately?
Here's the one for Xanax:

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=3,987,052.PN.&OS=PN/3,987,052&RS=PN/3,987,052

If that link fails, then search for patent #3,987,052 here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm

- you may be able to read a formula on a label, but not the process describing the making of the medicine.

Have you looked at a patent for a medicine lately?
Here's the one for Xanax:

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=3,987,052.PN.&OS=PN/3,987,052&RS=PN/3,987,052

If that link fails, then search for patent #3,987,052 here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm

Bruce Lehman was the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks under Bill Clinton. Clinton did form a working group but it didn't submit any laws until after WIPO. And yes, because of his positions in the Clinton administration, Lehman would have have direct input in the WIPO treaties, he did serve as the chair of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, and so on. The WGIPR did nothing but submit reports for revew within the group's parent structure.

Then in 96, the WIPO organization met and came away with two treaties requiring the DMCA to be corrected. These treaties were the "WIPO Copyright Treaty" and the "WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty," which were adopted by consensus by over 150 countries. A goof portion of the DMCA, especially title one and two, comes directly out of the WIPO treaties and over 150 countries are required to make the same laws.

You should look at the report they put forward. (PDF warning) In which they recomend a general structure and highlight points that should change. If you look at the recommendations portion, you will see that the terms of the WIPO as well as the DMCA are only similar in spirit but the real meaty portions of the DMCA aren't really there. By Meat, I mean the stiff penalties and so on.

Huh? Then why do we have an office of government dedicated to it?

If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it was known or used by others in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost. The inventor must file on the date of public use or disclosure, however, in order to preserve patent rights in many foreign countries.

Here is a link to the '361 patent the above poster mentioned,and reading it one could see why MSFT might covet it. That said,I always thought MSFT going after yahoo search was just to throw everyone off what they really wanted,which I think is Yahoo mail. While I personally think Yahoo search is a LOT better than Google,thanks to the "more" tab which will give you relevant queries connected to the original search,I just can't believe MSFT would pay that much for it. And they know that buying outright will probably get them smacked with antitrust.

But if you look at the data you'll see that Yahoo is the largest webmail provider,followed by MSFT with Hotmail. Not only would buying Yahoo Mail give MSFT the lead in webmail,but all those emails are a goldmine for data mining,which I'm sure MSFT can capitalize on. That would also give them a lot more eyeballs for their ads,cross promotions,etc while giving MSFT a boost against Google at the same time in the search arena,sine I have noticed many users check their email and then begin searching for their topics from the searchbox at the top of the webmail page.

Personally I hope that MSFT buys it and has enough sense to leave the search and Webmail alone. Because Hotmail and Live search really REALLY suck and I'm quite happy with my Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Search,thank you very much. But knowing MSFT they'll turn it into "Super Live Search 2.0 with the new Vista Look!" and then I'll have to find a new webmail provider. Because as someone who often has to go to areas where there is only dialup I can say that IMHO Gmail sucks the big wet titty when you are on a low bandwidth connection. Their "loading the entire series of emails as one long chat session" really slows it to a crawl. And I like my email folders dammit!

See http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0506.roth.html for a nice summary of the issue I'm talking about. I believe 35 U.S.C. section 42 is the law in question re: USPTO self-funding.

From the article:

Then, in 1991, under pressure to reign in massive budget deficits, lawmakers passed (and President George H.W. Bush signed) a law that revolutionized the way the patent office does business. Borrowing ideas then in vogue among private sector consultants and CEOs to "reengineer" organizations to make them more "customer-driven," Congress instructed the patent office, which had always been funded from government revenues, to now pay its own way through fees charged to applicants, and to make the process of winning a patent easier on them.

In many ways, these changes worked exactly as planned. Partly because patents were easier to get and partly because the 1990s were a period of explosive technological innovation, the agency saw a rush of new business. Patent applications more than doubled from 178,083 in 1991 to 355,418 in 2003. The office became self-financing and flush with cash. Congress was even able to tap its surplus pool of user fees to help pay down the federal deficit. The patent office hired new examiners, and in 2003, moved into fancy new headquarters in a billboard property along the George Washington Parkway near the Pentagon.

The 1991 decision to make the PTO pay for itself, however, has created a series of perverse incentives that encourage the office to approve undeserving applications, and has made it easier for applicants to game the system.

Because each new application now brings in a $380 fee, the agency has an incentive to approve those patents sending a signal to the market to apply for more. Additionally, patent-holders pay annual maintenance fees for the first 12 years of a patent's life, meaning that each approved patent brings in a total of over $3,000 to the office. So every patent issued means a bigger budget for the patent office, and helps to guarantee that Congress will continue to look kindly on the office. "It's like telling the Treasury Department, go call the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and tell them that they're gonna get paid by how many twenties they print," says David Martin, who runs M-CAM, an intellectual-property consulting firm based in Charlottesville, Va., and has testified frequently before Congress about the patent system.

Liquid submersion cooling system:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=Attlesey.INNM.&OS=in/(Attlesey)&RS=IN/Attlesey

Circuit board assembly for a liquid submersion cooled electronic device:
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=Attlesey.INNM.&OS=in/(Attlesey)&RS=IN/Attlesey

From the first, a notable claim that relates to their "super high-tech secret oil":
8. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the dielectric cooling liquid is a soy-based dielectric liquid.

Liquid submersion cooling system:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=2&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=Attlesey.INNM.&OS=in/(Attlesey)&RS=IN/Attlesey

Circuit board assembly for a liquid submersion cooled electronic device:
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=Attlesey.INNM.&OS=in/(Attlesey)&RS=IN/Attlesey

From the first, a notable claim that relates to their "super high-tech secret oil":
8. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the dielectric cooling liquid is a soy-based dielectric liquid.

Funny you should smell a patent: MS actually has a very similar one(though, shockingly enough, MS's variant has a lot more centralized command and control, and a lot less local decisionmaking by devices, go figure). US Patent Application 20080125102

As pointed out already, they did patent it at NeXT. Just FYI.

Patent application #5146556 from 1992 is clearly the precursor to the Dock. Filed by Steve Jobs et al, while at NeXT.

They did?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=4,972,396

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiVo,_Inc.

Looks to me they were almost 10 years too late!

I just happened to be involved in the university project that produced this patent. The patent was filed before I got involved, so I can't comment on the perceived obviousness at the time of filing (or any other aspect of the filing). From personal experience, in 1995 most people I spoke to about what I was doing didn't "get" it and questioned why anyone would bother doing such a thing. It's hard to tell how much of that was due to the technology being non-obvious, or how much was due to applications being non-obvious.

It's interesting that there is only one name in common between the list of authors on the patent and the paper, and that person isn't the lead author on the paper. I guess that might be because the paper is about the second implementation. The first implementation, on which the patent is presumably based, was done in software in non-real time (burst mode). If judging obviousness, it would be worth comparing with the HiperLAN project and the work that went into it.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=6&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=trimble.ASNM.&s2=manning.INNM.&OS=AN/trimble+AND+IN/manning&RS=AN/trimble+AND+IN/manning

So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!

Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.

Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.

I know; I was hoping to buy licensed tiles, but I can't find a source. Drat. Has anybody got a patent on the square, then?

So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!

Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.
Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.

Go here and search for "wet". It's already trademarked :-) . There are also a very large number of trademarks containing or related to "wet".

Ask "T-Shirt International CORPORATION WEST VIRGINIA 2101 Grace Street Culloden WEST VIRGINIA 25510". They copyrighted "Land of the Brave" several years ago. The sky didn't fall. http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm

It all depends on whether they are trying to patent a software that achieves this, or the actual IDEA of searching for unpatented ideas. If you think I'm being paranoid here, behold Namco's US patent for the idea of putting minigames within loading screens: 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=5718632.PN.&OS=PN/5718632&RS=PN/5718632

old employer:

- cash bonus when your invention is accepted into the program
- cash bonus when your application is filed
- cash bonus and shiny plaque when your patent is granted

current employer:

- cash bonus and shiny plaque when your patent is granted

all employers, as far as I know

- general policy is cash payment, no royalty sharing
- if you have a big-deal patent, they may work out a deal with you
- you assign all rights to them
- if you leave the company during the process, you don't get any more payments

Here's
one of my patents so you can know I'm not making this up.

From the Kids' Pages of the USPTO:

Can you renew a patent after it expires?
No, you can't renew a patent after it expires. However, patents may be extended by a special act of Congress and under certain circumstances certain pharmaceutical patents may be extended to make up the time lost during the Food and Drug Administration's approval process. After the patent expires, the inventor loses exclusive rights to the invention. whenwherehowwhy

From the Kids' Pages of the USPTO:

Can you renew a patent after it expires?
No, you can't renew a patent after it expires. However, patents may be extended by a special act of Congress and under certain circumstances certain pharmaceutical patents may be extended to make up the time lost during the Food and Drug Administration's approval process. After the patent expires, the inventor loses exclusive rights to the invention. whenwherehowwhy

1. Patents cost WAY too much. It is virtually impossible for a middle class person to obtain a patent on anything.

Regarding patent fees, please look at the fee schedule. For a small entity filing an electronic application with = 20 claims and = 3 independent claims, the total fee examination fee is $435. If the application is allowed, the issue fee is $720. There are maintenance fees at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years that are $465, $1180, and $1955 respectively. By the time the third year arrives, the assignee would know if the patent should be maintained. This is affordable to a middle class person/small entity.

Here is the patent application in question.

You'll notice the June 28, 2007 filing date. The earliest reference I can find to Intelliscreen is that it was in early beta in May of 2008. Indeed, Intelliborn didn't apply for a trademark on "Intelliscreen" until May 23, 2008 (TM App. Serial No. 77482276). Also note that the product requires a jailbroken iPhone. The iPhone wasn't even first jailbroken until July, 2007!

Thus, it seems almost certain that Apple came up with the idea long before Intelliborn had a product on the market and very likely long before Intelliborn came up with the idea at all.

People should understand that patent applications are (generally) not published the moment they are filed. Instead, they are usually published 18 months after the filing date. Just because we are now seeing the application does not mean that it was only now filed. In fact, it usually means just the opposite.

Are you not rich enough Jobs?

It's against the law to list yourself as inventor on a patent application if you aren't really an inventor. So Jobs has some patents. So do many other Apple employees.

Can someone please link to the real application? Because this one doesn't mention anything about iPods - it's about a system for helping people with autism. Same app is linked in the original article.

Actually, I'll do it.

Yes, I replied near the top. Just goes to show how few people actually read the patent that was linked.

suck at your job

You mean get paid peanuts don't you? The patent application fees are low, as they should be otherwise inventors with little cash couldn't afford to patent things, and the patent office only runs on the fees it collects. There is no incentive for a patent examiner to take the tyme needed to verify if a patent is warranted if it's going to take a lot of tyme.

Falcon

The patent application does not cover issues like being outside the territorial limit or tax avoidance.