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Go read the patent. This isn't a design patent. It's a patent on how to reinforce or fold the edges of a paper bag to make it strong enough to have 60% or more of recycled material. Using more recycled material makes the bag weaker, so they've strengthened the corners and edges by folding down a flap of paper or gluing on a flap of paper (I don't understand how that isn't obvious). Look at the image. I've seen bags that look exactly like that, except they probably weren't 60% recycled. This is Apple about to publicly advertise that since they care so much about the environment, their bags will be more environmentally friendly than every one else's, while quietly suing everyone else behind the scenes to keep them from making 'greener' products. Look at how environmentally friendly we are by preventing companies from using recycled materials unless they pay us! All hail the innovative Apple. Good PR, better marketing, and another revenue stream!

Look at this claim:

[0058] It will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that many modifications and variations are possible in view of the above teachings, and that by applying knowledge within the skill of the art, one may readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments, without undue experimentation, without departing from the general concept of the present invention. For example, in some embodiments, instead of or in addition to reinforcement inserts to strengthen the bag container having high (e.g., greater than 50%, 60%, greater than 60%) post-consumer-content, a matte plastic film may be applied to bag container 200, the matte plastic film having a higher resistance to tearing than the other material of bag container 200. Such film could be applied to one or both of the entirety of the interior surface or exterior surface of bag container 200, or to discrete areas thereof (e.g., the areas corresponding to those reinforced by reinforcement inserts as described in above embodiments).

The patent.

The part in bold that you are mentioning will be ignored (and subsequently removed) by any sane examiner in the later stages of the process. Such parts of the /description/ commonly try to enlarge the scope of protection beyond that of the claimed subject-matter and hence are not allowed due to lack of clarity (of scope). What matters are the claims. If the description is broader than the claims, it either becomes a clarity problem and will be removed, or the claims have to be amended to bring claims and description in unison, before the patent is granted. Ideally. In the USPTO, vague formulations like 'spirit of the invention' is often use to cover more than it should. This way there is a grey area what is and what is not in the 'spirit' of the invention, in case someone opposes the patent or comes up with derived (but different) products which do not fall in the scope of the claims. Since lately 'spirit of the invention' is searched for directly they came up with the 'general concept' formulation, which is less vague, but still not desired. Btw, it's not a patent yet.

Anything sounds absurd if worded the right way.

Are you that tragic a fanboy, direct from the patent applicaiton, so Apple's words, not mine:

1. A retail paper bag, comprising: a bag container formed of white paper with at least 60% post-consumer content.

US Patent application 20160264304

Here's a picture

Tell me that's not Apple patenting a paper bag and how the evil "Hateurs" are twisting it out of proportion.

Also your knowledge of history sucks.

Henry Ford builds a mechanical horse.

Henry Ford did not patent the automobile. That would be George B Selden and he held it hostage until Ford challenged him in court. Selden was a lot like Apple, making patents and threatening others with them to extort licensing fees. Probably not the first patent troll, but one of the pioneers in the field. Same as Ford didn't invent the car, but was instrumental in making the car what it is today (Ford's major contributions were in the manufacturing process, the Model T was actually a terrible car but it was affordable and easily built which was a first for cars).

Basically, your entire post is so horribly, horribly wrong.

Anything sounds absurd if worded the right way.

Are you that tragic a fanboy, direct from the patent applicaiton, so Apple's words, not mine:

1. A retail paper bag, comprising: a bag container formed of white paper with at least 60% post-consumer content.

US Patent application 20160264304

Here's a picture

Tell me that's not Apple patenting a paper bag and how the evil "Hateurs" are twisting it out of proportion.

Also your knowledge of history sucks.

Henry Ford builds a mechanical horse.

Henry Ford did not patent the automobile. That would be George B Selden and he held it hostage until Ford challenged him in court. Selden was a lot like Apple, making patents and threatening others with them to extort licensing fees. Probably not the first patent troll, but one of the pioneers in the field. Same as Ford didn't invent the car, but was instrumental in making the car what it is today (Ford's major contributions were in the manufacturing process, the Model T was actually a terrible car but it was affordable and easily built which was a first for cars).

Basically, your entire post is so horribly, horribly wrong.

Go read the patent. This isn't a design patent. It's a patent on how to reinforce or fold the edges of a paper bag to make it strong enough to have 60% or more of recycled material. Using more recycled material makes the bag weaker, so they've strengthened the corners and edges by folding down a flap of paper or gluing on a flap of paper (I don't understand how that isn't obvious). Look at the image. I've seen bags that look exactly like that, except they probably weren't 60% recycled. This is Apple about to publicly advertise that since they care so much about the environment, their bags will be more environmentally friendly than every one else's, while quietly suing everyone else behind the scenes to keep them from making 'greener' products. Look at how environmentally friendly we are by preventing companies from using recycled materials unless they pay us! All hail the innovative Apple. Good PR, better marketing, and another revenue stream!

Look at this claim:

[0058] It will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that many modifications and variations are possible in view of the above teachings, and that by applying knowledge within the skill of the art, one may readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments, without undue experimentation, without departing from the general concept of the present invention. For example, in some embodiments, instead of or in addition to reinforcement inserts to strengthen the bag container having high (e.g., greater than 50%, 60%, greater than 60%) post-consumer-content, a matte plastic film may be applied to bag container 200, the matte plastic film having a higher resistance to tearing than the other material of bag container 200. Such film could be applied to one or both of the entirety of the interior surface or exterior surface of bag container 200, or to discrete areas thereof (e.g., the areas corresponding to those reinforced by reinforcement inserts as described in above embodiments).

The patent.

Then you have no idea of differences between trademark, copyright, and patents... You can't trademark sound or lyric

Before correcting me on this, you might want to get an education, because you obviously lack one. Seriously. You can in fact trademark sounds. Want proof? How about a link directly to the government office that grants exactly those kinds of trademarks:

http://www.uspto.gov/trademark...

Seriously haven't you ever seen the beginning of MGM movies with the roaring lion, with the words "Trademark" written on it? Lo and behold, the roaring lion sound is trademarked. And, much more relevant to TFA, an example of a trademarked ringtone is the Nokia jingle. You'd have to be living under a rock to miss either of these, and both can be found on that page I just linked, including their relevant trademark case numbers just for the sound and nothing else.

Furthermore, look at what Monster cable has sued for. It goes WELL beyond the domain of any marks that they currently own, and I even provided examples, such as suing a miniature golf company.

http://gizmodo.com/393365/mons...

I am completely aware of the differences, however it seems that you are not aware of (and thus are uneducated about) what all a trademark covers, nor are you aware of what people have sued for outside of their trademarked domain. Yet somehow I got modded troll and you got modded insightful in spite of the fact that I'm very clearly right and you're very clearly wrong, with proof to back that statement up. Slashdot's wonderful moderation at work. And yes, I'm irked at that, hence the tone of my post.

You can't trademark sound or lyric because they belong to copyright category.

Trademark and copyright are two distinct aspects that have nothing to do with each other so there's nothing to prevent a thing to be both a trademark and under copyright protection (Mickey Mouse is a very prominent example of such).

And of course you can trademark sound - even the USPTO website displays a collection of trademarked sounds.

Their mistake was trying to trademark it in the EU. They should have done it here in the states; you can trademark just about anything here. Hell, there's a company that successfully claims ownership of the word "monster", a very common word that they claim trademark infringement on everything and anything from minigolf to movies.

Then you have no idea of differences between trademark, copyright, and patents... You can't trademark sound or lyric because they belong to copyright category. Also, protections are different too. If you really want to understand what they are, I suggested you to visit USPTO Trademark page, so that you wouldn't spread your misunderstanding/misinformation to others.

PS: yes, you can trademark the word "monster" but it has to be tied to certain conditions.

This is news to me. Just about anyone in the US has heard one of these commercials (relevant part):

AAMCO

I know their logo is trademarked in the EU, but cannot find anything about the sound.

Not only do they wiretap your Skype calls, they patented it: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacg....

All inventing is done by people, but those inventions are owned by the companies they work for in most cases.

Also statistically you're way off. The patent office in the US tracks these things:
In 2015:
U.S. CORPORATION 133434
U.S. GOVERNMENT 991
U.S. INDIVIDUAL 13643

That's an order of magnitude more patents submitted by corporations than by individuals FYI.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offic...

http://www.uspto.gov/web/paten...

There is her patent. If you feel it copies a preexisting item, perhaps you should contact the US PTO and have her patent invalidated.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/paten...

There is the patent (the number is in the first picture of her listing on Amazon). The Chinese versions don't use the squeeze tightener, so may be getting around a direct copy of the patent by missing that piece, in which case this woman is wrong and they aren't copying her patented item.

I agree with the other posters that these videos are likely to cause confusion to the average viewer, and are probably in violation of trademark law. That said, the way to handle that is in the courts.

DCMA takedown requests only apply to copyright infringement, not trademark law. It is a violation of the law to use the DCMA this way, both according to the USPTOs guidelines(See B.4), and existing case law.

From the article, it is unknown whether their lawyers sent a DCMA request or a some other sort of cease and desist letter. But either way, Digitalocean had no legal obligation to take down the content, or any legal liability if they didn't take it down. The fact that they shutdown an entire service over a toothless complaint about one page on that service is unacceptable, and people should seriously reconsider doing business with them in the future.

What are you babbling about?

I agree with the other posters that these videos are likely to cause confusion to the average viewer, and are probably in violation of trademark law. That said, the way to handle that is in the courts.

DCMA takedown requests only apply to copyright infringement, not trademark law. It is a violation of the law to use the DCMA this way, both according to the USPTOs guidelines(See B.4), and existing case law.

From the article, it is unknown whether their lawyers sent a DCMA request or a some other sort of cease and desist letter. But either way, Digitalocean had no legal obligation to take down the content, or any legal liability if they didn't take it down. The fact that they shutdown an entire service over a toothless complaint about one page on that service is unacceptable, and people should seriously reconsider doing business with them in the future.

Copyright law is written to be intentionally vague, and covers "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." Why do you think that creating a character wouldn't fit in the category of an "original work of authorship?" Authorship is not limited to the written word here.

btw, although single words cannot be copyrighted, paramount owns the trademark for Klingon, too.

It took some minor Googling, but I found the patent that Uniloc is claiming Austin Meyer violated.

According to this post by Meyer, they first claimed he violated one claim on the patent:

107. Computer code executable on an electronic device to prevent unauthorized access to electronic data stored on the electronic device, the computer code comprising: code for storing license data on a portable licensing medium configured to communicate with the electronic device; code for determining whether to allow access to the electronic data based on the license data; code for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium by communicating with a registration authority having verification data; and code for providing updated license data received from the registration authority to the licensing medium.

Now, is it just me or could that describe any authorization system? For example, you install some software product, get a license key from the company, and use it to prove to the software that you actually bought it and should be allowed to run it.

So Meyer fought for three years and finally got this claim overturned. The patent office admitted this claim shouldn't have been approved. Victory, right? Nope. Uniloc is now claiming that he's violating:

21. A system according to claim 1, wherein the licensing medium comprises a memory installed in a cellular telephone.
22. A system according to claim 21, wherein the licensing medium is not removable from the cellular telephone.

This patent has 113 claims. Even if he took them out five at a time, at the current rate it would take him 68 YEARS for the patent to be tossed out entirely. Meanwhile, he'll rack up tons of legal fees (not to mention time/stress/life disruption) and Uniloc will just keep playing patent whack-a-mole.

BTW, that "claim 1" that #21 references?

1. A system for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data on an electronic device, the system comprising: a portable licensing medium configured to communicate with the electronic device and to store license data, the license data configured to be used by the electronic device to determine whether to allow access to the electronic data; and a registration authority configured to communicate with the electronic device, the registration authority having verification data for verifying the license data stored on the licensing medium, wherein the registration authority provides updated license data for the licensing medium.

This looks suspiciously like #107. It's like they built in redundancy in their patent trolling. "Take out a couple of our claims. No problem. We've got five more like them in the same patent and ten other patents just like this one waiting in the wings."

We have been fooled into thinking that patents are innovation. But, the current rate of patent creation is anti-innovation and anti-productive.

Patents are not Innovation. Patents are not Progress. Patents are simply grounds to file a lawsuit against an industry. More Patents are simply more grounds for more lawsuits. Patents don't guarantee production or innovation. They only enable lawsuits.

An occasional lawsuit might possibly spur innovation. BUT LAWSUITS DO NOT PRODUCE. Lawsuits are parasitic on innovation and production. The current patent industry is responsible for enormous numbers of lawsuits every year. This legal deathtrap has captured marketplaces, destroyed production and stagnated innovation.

My idea has been to create an intellectual property tax that grows exponentially.

This already exists, in the form of patent maintenance fees. In addition to the fees one pays to get the patent to issue, to keep a patent in force one must pay fees at the 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 year point. If any one of the fees is not paid, the patented material enters the public domain.

For large entities, the fees are $1600, $3600, and $7400, respectively.
For small entities, the fees are halved.
For "micro" entities, the fees are halved again.

As a side note, one of IBM's corporate strategies has been to patent early and often, but vigorously and mercilessly prune their portfolio at these points, when they have a better idea of the value of the invention to the company. Many, if not most, of their patents do not make even the first cut and so are allowed to enter the public domain at year 3.5.

http://patft.uspto.gov/ Patents cover a wide swath of things (bio to math to physics). As for tech patents, some of them are hardware stuff (e.g., some assholes currently own all of the 802.11 patents for silicon fabrication; like methods of reducing SNR or power consumption, etc which is, partially, why IoT chips are so expensive) and some are software (e.g., Amazon.com really has a patent on "a process of one-click checkout" and Apple really does pay them patent royalties for enabling one-click purchasing in iTunes).

Patent lawsuits are over wrongful profiting: you stole an idea, made something with it, and then sold it for $$$. Hire a lawyer before step 2.

I do believe patent do have a maintenance fee, or something that has to be repaid or the protection lapses

. The grant confers “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” and its territories and possessions for which the term of the patent shall be generally 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, if the application contains a specific reference to an earlier filed application under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121 or 365(c), from the date of the earliest such application was filed, and subject to the payment of maintenance fees as provided by law. General Information Concerning Patents, Maintenance Fees

If you have enough confidence in reputation and the utility of your product, you might acquire a patent to preclude someone else from interfering with your production, and then let it lapse.

Chirp is software to program Ham Radios.

It is registered to 68 companies. I'm sure many of those predate the Chirp program used to setup radios.

When will these oversized companies with their own army of lawyers actually CHECK to make sure they aren't stepping on someone else's toes?

Why in the world would you think they don't. It is you who seems to have no understanding of trademark law.

I'm sure Google will sue the programmer of the other software.... even though he had it first.

I'm sure you're wrong.

If they put it on a tshirt, do charitable fundraising or provide grants?
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/...

TFA expressed shock that someone might have their natural lens removed. This is a routine operation, usually done because of cataracts.

My wife has had this done. She developed cataracts at a relatively young age, and they got bad enough that the insurance company signed off on the cataract surgery.

Noteworthy in my wife's case: we paid the extra money to get a vision-correcting lens in each eye. The usual replacement lens is a neutral lens, but her eyes are now correcting her vision from the inside. Before she had this procedure, she needed glasses all the time for everything. (Or contact lenses of course.) After the procedure, she only needs glasses for reading; they had to pick a distance for the correction to work at, and the default is to leave you able to walk around and drive and such without glasses, but need glasses to read. (Makes sense to me!)

She now has the best vision she has ever had in her life. She grumbles about needing reading glasses but I remind her she used to need glasses all the time for everything; this is a win.

I am seriously considering having this done myself as an elective procedure. I have some presbyopia and I now need glasses to read fine print. There are artificial lenses available that are flexible and restore the ability to focus on near things; these are called accommodating intra-ocular lenses (IOLs). It would be nice to get my close-up vision back. In the USA the available accommodating IOL is called the Crystalens.

I have been calling my wife a "cyborg" as she now has technological lenses rather than natural ones.

Returning to the news story: TFA is absolutely terrible, just awful. It fails to answer the most basic question: what is the purpose of this invention? The link given in TFS shows what seems to be a one-page PDF, but if you use the crude-looking navigation controls on the left you can browse forward and backward through the patent.

http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?docid=20160113760

Pub. No.: US 2016/0113760 A1
Pub. Date: Apr. 28, 2016
Filed: Oct. 24, 2014

Here's the abstract. The PDF appears to be all image, no selectable text, so I just typed all this in.

An intra-ocular device includes an electronic lens that can be controlled to control the overall optical power of the device. The device can be installed within a flexible polymeric material shaped to conform to the inside surface of a lens capsule of an eye. Accommodation forces applied to the device and/or polymeric material via the lens capsule can cause a change in the optical power of the device and/or polymeric material. Further, such accommodation forces can be detected by an accommodation sensor of the device and the optical power of the electronic lens can be controlled based on the detected accommodation forces. Operated in this way, the device and polymeric material can restore a degree of accommodation to the eye that is related to existing mechanisms for controlling such accommodation, i.e., forces exerted by the eye via the lens capsule.

If I'm understanding that correctly, this is a very complicated way to get a lens that adjusts its focus in response to the normal movements of muscles in the eye to adjust focus.

I don't know why someone would want this rather than a purely passive device like a CrystalLens. I guess this would be more fine-tunable, so might provide the ultimate in vision focus; but it's tremendously more complex and would seem to require an external power supply, rather than being a simple piece of flexible clear material (of just the right shape and implanted in just the right place).

Speculation: this m

The script shouldn't use while loop at all. Instead, it could be replaced with a simple for loop instead because the loop number is defined.

for (var i=0; i<(len-str.length); i++) { ... }

Back to the topic, I think the word kik is a trademark - http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/... - and it is still enforcible. If you look at the Good and Services, it may be the reason why the developer should not use the name or he could be sued...

17 years. Problem is determining when the clock started. You can also take a patent and improve upon it and get a new patent. http://www.uspto.gov/

Sounds like a rip-off of PC-104, i.e. they are a few decades late.

Microsoft's smiley face patent?
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacg...

"I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot, and probably would have chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet," http://www.zdnet.com/article/m...

It's even a bit worse than what you said. Microsoft didn't get a patent for a modular PC, they applied for a patent for a modular PC. Slashdot also frequently neglects to say whether the article is about a granted patent or a patent application. In this case, of course, TFA also leaves out this important bit of information.

TFA does link to the application on the USPTO web site, though. You can get more information by going to PAIR and searching for the application number, 14/792992.

It's even a bit worse than what you said. Microsoft didn't get a patent for a modular PC, they applied for a patent for a modular PC. Slashdot also frequently neglects to say whether the article is about a granted patent or a patent application. In this case, of course, TFA also leaves out this important bit of information.

TFA does link to the application on the USPTO web site, though. You can get more information by going to PAIR and searching for the application number, 14/792992.

This is a Patent application, not a patent
Modular Computing Device
United States Patent Application 20160041582
Inventors: Kim; Young Soo; (Bellevue, WA) ; Escolin; Timothy G.; (Seattle, WA)
Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
Filed: July 7, 2015

link to United States Patent Application 20160041582

This application has a long way to go before it can be issued as a patent.
There is likely much prior art (some patented, and some published knowledge) which will make the scope of this patent very narrow.
I suspect it this patent application survives examination, it will be applicable to a small market. Expansion blocks for cellphones?

If not, then it's a different device than described in the patent, since Claim 1 specifies separate display & computing modules, with the display itself being connected by a hinge. Think "stackable Surface".

It's a patent; only the patent claims matter. Even if TFS has a clickbait headline.

FTA - "Feedback based on pressure-sensitive interactions with the touch screens."

The real question is, "Did "Immersion" actually invent anything novel, did they regurgitate an obvious concept, or did they describe something that they could not actually pull off?" IANAL, however upon examination of the three patents in question:

8,619,051 should be invalidated by prior art of a force feedback joystick.

8,773,356 is a meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.

8,659,571 is another meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.

If I were part of a patent trial jury, I would consider nullification of this and many other patent cases. If the patent system is broken, the courts are broken, and the legislature is broken, then it is our duty to make a train wreck out of patent trolls.

FTA - "Feedback based on pressure-sensitive interactions with the touch screens."

The real question is, "Did "Immersion" actually invent anything novel, did they regurgitate an obvious concept, or did they describe something that they could not actually pull off?" IANAL, however upon examination of the three patents in question:

8,619,051 should be invalidated by prior art of a force feedback joystick.

8,773,356 is a meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.

8,659,571 is another meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.

If I were part of a patent trial jury, I would consider nullification of this and many other patent cases. If the patent system is broken, the courts are broken, and the legislature is broken, then it is our duty to make a train wreck out of patent trolls.

FTA - "Feedback based on pressure-sensitive interactions with the touch screens."

The real question is, "Did "Immersion" actually invent anything novel, did they regurgitate an obvious concept, or did they describe something that they could not actually pull off?" IANAL, however upon examination of the three patents in question:

8,619,051 should be invalidated by prior art of a force feedback joystick.

8,773,356 is a meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.

8,659,571 is another meaningless over-broad software "method" patent.

If I were part of a patent trial jury, I would consider nullification of this and many other patent cases. If the patent system is broken, the courts are broken, and the legislature is broken, then it is our duty to make a train wreck out of patent trolls.

I think funding numbers can be deceptive about the engineering accomplishments of a tech because I'm sure that money gets returned if the ten people running Magic Leap blow through $1-2m without results. Here's the patent (490 pages...): http://pimg-faiw.uspto.gov/fdd... For $4.5b, I'd pirate the heck out of that patent.

It's time for another example of "Slashdot Totally Misunderstands Trademarks".

Trademarks (in this context, word marks) are not "universal exclusive rights to a word". They're exclusive rights within a certain context. For any given common word, there's generally a dozen or two different companies with trademarks on it in different contexts. There's already 342 trademarks for the word "React", 139 of which are currently active. Indian Industries has it for "paddles used in ball games", while Horizon Hobby has it for "remote controlled hobby vehicles", while Fine Brothers Properties has it for webisodes, while Dekka Technologies, LLC has it for weapons simulators... and so forth. There are no restrictions on anyone using the same word in a different context. You can even trademark the word for your usage of it in a different context.

I wouldn't make a big deal of this, but it seems like not just slashdot but literally 99,99% of the general population seems to think that a trademark is a context-free concept, that if, say, a cell phone manufacturer trademarks the word "jump" then that means that you can't use the word "jump" anymore in regular conversations, or something like that. What it actually means is that you can't make a cell phone called "jump", or anything other cell phone name that would be readily confused for it, or something in the same category as cell phones called "jump". But you can still make a car called jump or a refrigerator called jump or whatnot.

I posted a video reaction to this myself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Basically, it's tough to trademark a word that describes the thing you're selling. "React" describes the videos they create. Although this doesn't conflict with any valid trademarks the USPTO has registered, it shouldn't survive a challenge in court. Anyone who makes react videos themselves should have standing to oppose the mark.

Filing an opposition is not as simple as filling out an online form. I believe there's a trademark attorney willing to help for free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If you want to file an oppsition notice yourself: http://estta.uspto.gov/filing-...

A quick check at the US Patent and Trademark Office says it's a live application. The database search is here.

link to USPTO preissuance prior art submission by efiling. http://www.uspto.gov/patent/in...

Fuck PDFs of blurry pictures that you can't even copy the text out of.

So, for anybody who wants a link to the actually usable patent application text: Here's the actual text of the application.

The Patent application (publication) is three pages in total. That is incredibly short.

It also has (for now) only one claim, not a list of claims of various scope.

It also lacks a list Examples or Embodiments, which are the structure that support a Patent when contested or claimed in Court.

This is a design patent. It only has one claim because design patents are only allowed to have one claim. It is incredibly short because only the figures matter, and the description is mostly irrelevant. There aren't multiple embodiments, because the embodiment shown in the figures is the only embodiment claimed, by definition.

Last, the Figure shown on the front page looks very, very Mac-like. As if they are trying to get Patent coverage for a Design which already exist(ed) on the drawing boards of a competing firm.

Note that this was filed in 2006 or 2007 (I won't waste the seconds to check). Mac OS X Finder does indeed feature this exact type of magnification slider in the bottom-right of any Finder window, although I forget when the element was introduced.

I'm on a Mac right now and no, there is not "this exact type of magnification slider". There's this slider (from the last version - on the current, the central 'knob' is solid and flat), but it lacks the plus and minus at either end, and lacks the prominent trapezoidal arrow 'knob' in the patent.

While it is a "slider", it is not "this exact type of magnification slider" as you claimed, and would not infringe a design patent. This likely goes back to your confusion over design patents and utility patents - while it is a slider serving the same function or utility, such a functional feature is public domain and has been for decades, if not centuries. It is not what is claimed by this design patent.

(Note that the AIA did not go into effect until January 2014, making this stupid patent application part of the 'first-to-invent' era.)

And that's irrelevant. All the first-to-invent regime changed was interference proceedings, where two inventors filed applications on the exact same invention simultaneously. Out of half a million applications filed annually, there were 20 interference proceedings, and they were tremendously expensive and different from the procedures every other country in the world. It did not magically make prior art not applicable or existent, as some people who spout off about patents without actually knowing what they're talking about claim.

/I am a patent attorney, although I do not work for either Microsoft or Corel (or Apple, for that matter)

It looks like you can search US patent applications, and submit documents relevant to a patent application, for a fee.

To search patent applications:

• Go to Patent Full-Text Databases.
• Under Applications (right-hand side), click Advanced Search.
• Enter the Query: PD/20151126 AND (CPCL/G06F OR CPCL/H04L)
• Click Search.

This will give you the 1,247 applications relating to Electrical Digital Data Processing or Transmission of Digital Information that were published last week. (Applications are published on the Thursday of each week.)

To submit documents relevant to a patent application:

• Go to Third Party Preissuance Submissions
• Or Information Disclosure Statement

The submission process could no doubt be easier, but on the other hand, this might create more work for patent clerks, having to read through more low-quality submissions. I'm not really sure how much high-quality community involvement is likely here, because reading patent applications and searching for prior art just doesn't sound like a fun way to spend free time.

It looks like you can search US patent applications, and submit documents relevant to a patent application, for a fee.

To search patent applications:

• Go to Patent Full-Text Databases.
• Under Applications (right-hand side), click Advanced Search.
• Enter the Query: PD/20151126 AND (CPCL/G06F OR CPCL/H04L)
• Click Search.

This will give you the 1,247 applications relating to Electrical Digital Data Processing or Transmission of Digital Information that were published last week. (Applications are published on the Thursday of each week.)

To submit documents relevant to a patent application:

• Go to Third Party Preissuance Submissions
• Or Information Disclosure Statement

The submission process could no doubt be easier, but on the other hand, this might create more work for patent clerks, having to read through more low-quality submissions. I'm not really sure how much high-quality community involvement is likely here, because reading patent applications and searching for prior art just doesn't sound like a fun way to spend free time.

It looks like you can search US patent applications, and submit documents relevant to a patent application, for a fee.

To search patent applications:

• Go to Patent Full-Text Databases.
• Under Applications (right-hand side), click Advanced Search.
• Enter the Query: PD/20151126 AND (CPCL/G06F OR CPCL/H04L)
• Click Search.

This will give you the 1,247 applications relating to Electrical Digital Data Processing or Transmission of Digital Information that were published last week. (Applications are published on the Thursday of each week.)

To submit documents relevant to a patent application:

• Go to Third Party Preissuance Submissions
• Or Information Disclosure Statement

The submission process could no doubt be easier, but on the other hand, this might create more work for patent clerks, having to read through more low-quality submissions. I'm not really sure how much high-quality community involvement is likely here, because reading patent applications and searching for prior art just doesn't sound like a fun way to spend free time.

"the present invention provides a speculation decision circuit for use in a processor capable of executing program instructions in an execution order differing from the program order of the instructions"

Dynamically optimize the execution order of the instruction set depending on previous hits or misses.

Apple is the world famous patent troll, demanding billions for trivial recreation of bathroom slide lock on a phone screen. It's like patenting cat videos in the world full of cats.

This patent, on the other hand, appears to be a genuine, non-trivial invention. I hope they pay through their nose and get impacted enough to rethink what kind of IP laws they want to lobby for in future.

Companies patent stuff all the time, often as a defensive measure. Outrage should be reserved for what companies actually do. There is no indication that Apple is implementing this idea.

Also, the actual patent, does not mention your "bank account", only your available credit.

constantly enlarging member ship (come sail away 8======D~)

You may find yourself in violation of a Microsoft patent.

"Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received."
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacg...

Here is the actual patent:
http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?P...

It's almost gibberish. It's full of sentences like (and I'm quoting)
"Alternatively, when propellant 18c of FIG 4 is utilized in the embodiment of FIG 1, the laser system 22 of Fig. 1 may comprise one or more free-electron lasers for providing pulsed laser beams to vaporize, using pulsed laser beams, pellets each comprising the propellant 18c of Fig 4."

Fig 1 is basically the drawing from the Business Insider article with the parts numbered. Fig 4 is a circle.

Or, it suggests we can use "light-emitting diode (LED) driven Alexandrite lasers" instead of free-electron lasers.
Or maybe a flash lamp driven ruby laser. No kidding.

And then the patent says that the fast neutrons from the Deuterium-Tritium fusion will cause the U-238 to fission and explode.
Again, quoting from the patent:
"The secondary explosion recompresses more of the Deuterium and Tritium, causing more fusion energy to be released beyond the 'breakeven' level vaporizing the remaining pellet materials of the propellant 18c of FIG 4 and increasing the overall thrust and exhaust velocity. Use of this embodiment reduces exhaust molecular weight, and increases exhaust velocity and specific impulse."

I did not mistype that.

I'm wondering how large it will be.
AFAIK, this is what a laser fusion device looks like, except that this one isn't ready for prime-time.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/media/...
Nor this one:
http://www.washington.edu/news...
http://www.washington.edu/news...

I would go with the free-electron laser because this is clearly an attempt to make the largest possible engine for the least thrust.

Also, looking at the diagrams in the article, I don't see anything that suggests they've addressed the problem that hitting the pellet with a laser on one side simply causes the pellet be vaporized and driven away without fusion (somewhat like squeezing a watermelon seed). How can they grant patents from devices that cannot work as designed?

Here is Claim 1 from the patent application:

1. A system for aerial delivery of items to a destination location, comprising: a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, each of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles configured to aerially transport items; an unmanned aerial vehicle management system, including: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor and storing program instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processors to at least: receive a request to deliver an item to a destination location; and send to an unmanned aerial vehicle of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, delivery parameters identifying a source location that includes the item and a destination location; wherein the unmanned aerial vehicle, in response to receiving the delivery parameters, is further configured to at least: navigate to the source location; engage the item located at the source location; navigate a navigation route to the destination location; and disengage the item.

There is absolutely nothing there that hasn't been discussed thousands of times before and been a staple of science fiction for decades. But if this gets approved, no one but Amazon will be allowed to do this, just as it's becoming technologically feasible.

Remember, every claim in a patent is like a little patent in itself. Whatever else is contained in the patent, anything that matches all the features of any single claim is infringing. And there's nothing in that claim that's original or innovative in any way. Actually building a drone delivery network will require solving a lot of hard technological problems, and some of those solutions might legitimately be patentable. But this has nothing to do with that.

Actually, it's even worse than that. Here's the last paragraph of the application:

From the foregoing, it will be appreciated that, although specific implementations have been described herein for purposes of illustration, various modifications may be made without deviating from the spirit and scope of the appended claims and the elements recited therein. In addition, while certain aspects are presented below in certain claim forms, the inventors contemplate the various aspects in any available claim form. For example, while only some aspects may currently be recited as being embodied in a computer readable storage medium, other aspects may likewise be so embodied. Various modifications and changes may be made as would be obvious to a person skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure. It is intended to embrace all such modifications and changes and, accordingly, the above description to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.

So the incredibly general claims should be interpreted even more generally. They're basically claiming complete ownership of the concept of delivering things with drones, including "all such modifications and changes" that anyone might reasonably think of.

Exactly -- TFP says it claims priority to an application filed in 2003.