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#5715314 - The second most long-winded description of every online store ever.
#5909492 - The most long-winded description of every online store ever, much of it seems to be copied & pasted straight from the top link.
#7272639 - Describes what a session is.

Soverain Software is just another patent troll that never should have had them assigned in the first place.

#5715314 - The second most long-winded description of every online store ever.
#5909492 - The most long-winded description of every online store ever, much of it seems to be copied & pasted straight from the top link.
#7272639 - Describes what a session is.

Soverain Software is just another patent troll that never should have had them assigned in the first place.

#5715314 - The second most long-winded description of every online store ever.
#5909492 - The most long-winded description of every online store ever, much of it seems to be copied & pasted straight from the top link.
#7272639 - Describes what a session is.

Soverain Software is just another patent troll that never should have had them assigned in the first place.

I don't think it makes sense to allow patents on good ergonomic design for the same reason we don't allow patents on food recipes or fashion designs, or board game rules.

Actually, board games, food recipes, and fashion designs are all patentable.

Board Games: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/12/22/patenting-board-games-101/id=21356/
Recipes: http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/independent/eye/201306/ADVICE.jsp
Fashion: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2008/10/16/nike-sues-walmart-on-design-patents/id=217/

Being obsolete doesn't mean that the patent isn't useful. If you manage to dupe the USPTO into granting you are patent on a necessary piece (or one that has become so commonplace to be necessary for interoperability reasons), you can ambush most anybody in the field.

Yes, but the conclusion that the USPTO makes the majority of their fees post-grant relies on the premise that the majority of these patents have maintenance fees paid. And, as you note, that relies on a premise that a majority are "commonplace" that are used to "ambush" people. However, the premise is false.

You also don't seem to be understanding the criticism. The USPTO gets paid as much or more for accepting a patent than they do for rejecting it.

No, I understand the criticism. I'm merely pointing out that it's based on a false conclusion from an erroneous premise. In reality, not only are the majority of patents abandoned during their lifetime, before many of those maintenance fees are paid, the original argument disregarded all of the other fees paid to the USPTO, including fees for Requests for Continued Examination (which increase drastically after the first one), appeal fees, petition fees, etc., and those are all fees that are only paid when the USPTO rejects an application.

Now, what is the actual average cost to obtain a patent in fees to the USPTO vs. what is the actual average cost paid for issuance and maintenance? I don't know, and it would take a lot of data mining to find out (albeit from publicly available information), but I can tell you that if you start by ignoring the majority of the fees, your conclusion is based on fluff and dreams.

Furthermore, the evidence points to your conclusion being wrong. From here, the allowance rate is 49.2% including RCEs, or 68.5% not including them, depending on whether you consider an RCE to be a new application or not (for our purposes, discussing fees, it's somewhat irrelevant). If the USPTO had such great incentives to allow these cases, wouldn't that be 90% or higher?
In fact, to maximize their fees, wouldn't the USPTO want to allow all cases immediately? But instead (from the same page, scroll down), you find that 87.2% of applications are initially rejected. It's almost the opposite of the rubber stamp that your argument would suggest.

First, Kappos was head counsel at IBM before coming to the PTO, and he worked out very well. Second, there is a Silicon Valley Office; it is currently staffed by Board judges: http://www.uspto.gov/blog/director/entry/an_update_on_our_dallas Third, the point of the branch offices was to attempt to recruit Patent Examiners from these areas. It has been very difficult for the PTO to convince qualified engineers in California to come to the Alexandria campus for training. Examiners are required to work on-site for at least the first two years, and even eligible Examiners do not all work from home. Applicants have a right to have in-person interviews with Examiners. So not everything is done online.

This is rather like Monsanto, Tyson, Smithfield, etc people working for the USDA. There needs to be serious enforcement of the conflict of interest prevention.

Right. She's only temporary, though. She's been appointed deputy director, and the director slot is vacant. There's a power vacuum at the top of the USPTO; in the last few months, the director (Kappos, who was a good guy), the deputy director, and the general counsel quit.

"Head of the Silicon Valley office of the USPTO" - not. There is no Silicon Valley office of the USPTO. It was killed by budget cuts. So the USPTO had a spare manager around. There's a power vacuum at the top of the USPTO; in the last few months, the director, the deputy director, and the general counsel quit.

The whole "USPTO branch office" thing was a pork program for Detroit; a Congressman stuck a provision for a Detroit office in a bill two years ago, which also provided for a few other branches at locations to be determined. The Detroit office was opened, but none of the others were. The USPTO is completely on-line now; no user has to go to a USPTO office to do anything. There was a time when people had to go to a USPTO location to search patents on paper or microfilm, but that era, thankfully, is over.

Huh, I didn't realize that. Looks like, for large companies at least (there are some discounts for individual inventors), the fees break down roughly like this:

• Filing/search/examination fees: $1600
• Issuance of an approved patent: $1780
• Maintenance of an approved patent over its full lifespan: $12,600

So basically the USPTO gets $1600 if the patent is rejected, or $15,980 if it's approved.

... the latter of which are over the course of 12 years. Plus, that's only if the patent is maintained for its full term, and not many are, particularly in the computing industry. Why pay $16k in maintenance fees on a patent on a technology that's obsolete?

Huh, I didn't realize that. Looks like, for large companies at least (there are some discounts for individual inventors), the fees break down roughly like this:

• Filing/search/examination fees: $1600
• Issuance of an approved patent: $1780
• Maintenance of an approved patent over its full lifespan: $12,600

So basically the USPTO gets $1600 if the patent is rejected, or $15,980 if it's approved.

You're slighyly right, because of the ignorance of our reporters, people on the internet, and even our lawyers on the subject, it all is seen as something to laugh at. But ELINT does have quite a few satellites, and there are patents and devices used for mind reading. Since the nineties, computer software using EEG and other BCI tech has been capable of decoding human emotions and other commands for computer control. Remote Neural Monitoring is just a version of this technology that works using a satellite, telescope, or long range dense array antenna to read brainwave emissions.

Look at all those ELINT/SIGINT and other satellites the NRO has launched: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches

Look at the remote mind reading patent from 1998: 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=6011991.PN.&OS=PN/6011991&RS=PN/6011991

The NSA already has disclosed or is understood to have remote sensing technologies for nearly every other type of emission. Why is it so hard for people to believe their brains aren't also being tapped, considering the intelligence information that the government could get from it? Literally, the human mind is the greatest electromagnetic recording and storage device in existence, and what you see snd hear, think, feel, dream, and store is what they really want, not your fucking emails and Facebook posts (but they get those too, through RNM/EBL, and PRISM/ECHELON/Signals Intelligence).

Btw, tinfoil is useless shit for blocking radiation emissions, and it doesn't protect your brain or nervous system from remote access. MIT found it actually amplified signals sometime ago, and I'm sure that based on my experience, their technology cannot be blocked by any object, let alone some flimsey tinfoil.

There was no patent issued in the 1999 case. It wasn't successful.

The text of the patent lists other patents and applications dating back that far, but that doesn't mean you can bolt on new functionality to an old patent (let alone a failed application) and thereby extend your priority date into the past. It doesn't work that way.

They are simply stating that they relied on and are incorporating patents they already hold into this application ALONG WITH totally new functionality. That doesn't mean this new functionality always existed back to 1999. It doesn't mean that they can ignore more recent prior art.

A preliminary amendment filed on the filing date along with the application can avoid excess claims fees. In other words, they filed a continuation that included claims 1-154 (because a continuation is supposed to have all the same stuff that the parent has, and this ensures that there is written description support for the parent's original claims in the child case), but then they amended the claims on the same day to cancel those claims and only present claims 155-175 (21 claims). So they owed us $80 for one excess dependent claim, which they paid.

Also, there are ways to submit third party prior art submissions into an application. You would have until 5/28/2014 (six months after publication) to submit such prior art. There's even a fee exemption if you file only one such submission and it has three or fewer documents listed. This is a much better idea than trying to contact the examiner directly, since they are forbidden from discussing the application with an unauthorized party.

The original application on which this is based is dated May 3, 1999. So this predates Bitcoin. Only prior art earlier than the priority date is relevant.

The life of the patent counts from the priority date, so this patent, if issued, will run out in 2019. The USPTO doesn't consider this patent to contain patentable subject matter; they've issued a 101 Non Final Rejection. (You have to look up the patent application in USPTO Public PAIR to see this. Public PAIR has the status info for all patents as they go through examination, and images of all the actual documents. All the letters and forms back and forth between the applicant and the USPTO are in there. PAIR is kind of slow, and there's a CAPTCHA to prevent it from being scraped in bulk, so the data in PAIR isn't indexed by search engines.)

citation?

How about a patent?. Look at the name of the inventor. Before inventing USB, Joe Decuir worked at Atari in the early 80s and designed the SIO bus for the Atari 800.

badBIOS, Facts, speculations, and misunderstandings

        First there was Stuxnet, then there was FLAME, the latest weapons grade malware is badBIOS accidentially discovered by Dragos Ruiu 3 years ago. More on the discovery in section 2

        http://learning.criticalwatch.com/badbios/
##

remotely monitoring and altering brain waves

        http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=16&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=3,951,134&OS=3,951,134&RS=3,951,134

        United States Patent 3,951,134

        Abstract

        Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.

####

The 'beasts' share the same scent - how to piss off an alien/human hybrid

the hybrids carrying filthy spawn (like in the days of Noah) are easy to SNIFF out, literally, they all smell the same when you're in the proper state of mind.

some of them have eyes which appear to be bugging out of their face.

even if you can't detect the scent of the hybrids, or 'beasts', inhale deeply whenever the hybrids are close, don't express any emotion, just keep inhaling deeply and make your facial expression be that of deep contemplation.

when you do this, they know that you know what their true reality is - it's like the movie THEY LIVE where Nada sees the truth through the glasses and confronts them.

don't confront, just inhale deeply. maybe shake your head and laugh, mumble about stupid aliens but nothing deep.

####

"The monster is out of the bottle."

The monster was never in the bottle, but above, below, and around us. Do you think this is really just a struggle between human beings? There is much more at work here.

Outcome #3: Your friends are here.
Aaron Cross: Yeah. Don't you think that strange? Wolves, they don't do that. They don't track people.
Outcome #3: Yeah, maybe they don't think you're human.

- Bourne Legacy

===

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

- Ephesians 6:12, The Bible

===

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

- William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)

===

badBIOS, Facts, speculations, and misunderstandings

        First there was Stuxnet, then there was FLAME, the latest weapons grade malware is badBIOS accidentially discovered by Dragos Ruiu 3 years ago. More on the discovery in section 2

        http://learning.criticalwatch.com/badbios/
##

remotely monitoring and altering brain waves

        http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=16&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=3,951,134&OS=3,951,134&RS=3,951,134

        United States Patent 3,951,134

        Abstract

        Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.

####

The 'beasts' share the same scent - how to piss off an alien/human hybrid

the hybrids carrying filthy spawn (like in the days of Noah) are easy to SNIFF out, literally, they all smell the same when you're in the proper state of mind.

some of them have eyes which appear to be bugging out of their face.

even if you can't detect the scent of the hybrids, or 'beasts', inhale deeply whenever the hybrids are close, don't express any emotion, just keep inhaling deeply and make your facial expression be that of deep contemplation.

when you do this, they know that you know what their true reality is - it's like the movie THEY LIVE where Nada sees the truth through the glasses and confronts them.

don't confront, just inhale deeply. maybe shake your head and laugh, mumble about stupid aliens but nothing deep.

####

"The monster is out of the bottle."

The monster was never in the bottle, but above, below, and around us. Do you think this is really just a struggle between human beings? There is much more at work here.

Outcome #3: Your friends are here.
Aaron Cross: Yeah. Don't you think that strange? Wolves, they don't do that. They don't track people.
Outcome #3: Yeah, maybe they don't think you're human.

- Bourne Legacy

===

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

- Ephesians 6:12, The Bible

===

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

- William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)

===

The 'beasts' share the same scent - how to piss off an alien/human hybrid

the hybrids carrying filthy spawn (like in the days of Noah) are easy to SNIFF out, literally, they all smell the same when you're in the proper state of mind.

some of them have eyes which appear to be bugging out of their face.

even if you can't detect the scent of the hybrids, or 'beasts', inhale deeply whenever the hybrids are close, don't express any emotion, just keep inhaling deeply and make your facial expression be that of deep contemplation.

when you do this, they know that you know what their true reality is - it's like the movie THEY LIVE where Nada sees the truth through the glasses and confronts them.

don't confront, just inhale deeply. maybe shake your head and laugh, mumble about stupid aliens but nothing deep.

==

badBIOS, Facts, speculations, and misunderstandings

        First there was Stuxnet, then there was FLAME, the latest weapons grade malware is badBIOS accidentially discovered by Dragos Ruiu 3 years ago. More on the discovery in section 2

        http://learning.criticalwatch.com/badbios/

##

remotely monitoring and altering brain waves

        http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=16&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=3,951,134&OS=3,951,134&RS=3,951,134

        United States Patent 3,951,134

        Abstract

        Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.

==

"The monster is out of the bottle."

The monster was never in the bottle, but above, below, and around us. Do you think this is really just a struggle between human beings? There is much more at work here.

Outcome #3: Your friends are here.
Aaron Cross: Yeah. Don't you think that strange? Wolves, they don't do that. They don't track people.
Outcome #3: Yeah, maybe they don't think you're human.

- Bourne Legacy

===

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

- Ephesians 6:12, The Bible

===

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

- William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)

badBIOS, Facts, speculations, and misunderstandings

        First there was Stuxnet, then there was FLAME, the latest weapons grade malware is badBIOS accidentially discovered by Dragos Ruiu 3 years ago. More on the discovery in section 2

        http://learning.criticalwatch.com/badbios/
##

remotely monitoring and altering brain waves

"Chilled monkey brains!" - IJ+ToD

        http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=16&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=3,951,134&OS=3,951,134&RS=3,951,134

        United States Patent 3,951,134

        Abstract

        Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.

Software companies cannot quickly/efficiently hire developers, which is the biggest impediment to their version(s) of world domination. This tool would eliminate the need for human recruiters (sourcers)- It could scan social networks, look for data that is relevant to a potential job search, determine if their automated response is likely to be well received (" determining that the online user post satisfies a threshold likelihood of being important") and then post the responses and notify HR when a candidate is now ready to engage. Combine it with Identifying Prospective Employee Candidates via Employee Connections and you have an engine to hire people.

Microsoft patented (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&p=1&S1=20110153809&OS=20110153809&RS=20110153809) listening in on Skype calls for the same reasons.

On it except for one very brief mention in the 2nd to last paragraph unlike The Register article calling it a Google patent... which since they own Motorola, it is. Slippery slopes indeed. From the article I'm linking, the patent filing .

"I don't think that word means what you think it means".
Since when is protecting your trademarked name bullying?

Ever since they claimed "scouts" was their trademark when in fact it is not.

Here is a listing of all of their actual real trademarks that begin with the letters "SC":
â Scoutfitter®
â Scout Gearâ
â Scouting®
â Scouting USA®
â Scoutmaster®
â Scoutnet®
â Scout Shop®
â Scout Stuff®

Here is a listing of all their trademarks beginning with the letter "H" (as in hack/hacking):

(Yes this list is empty, because they do not have any trademarks beginning with the letter "H" what so ever)

It's simply business.

OK, in that case I am now informing you I have a trademark on the word "David_Hart"
Since you agree it's only business, you agree I must defend that mark or lose it, and you agree I don't actually need to have that trademark in the first place... I guess you have no choice but to license it from me!

The law forces organizations to do this or they lose their right to their own name. Like the Boy Scouts or not, the problem here is the law.

Darn. I was going to license you my trademark of "David_Hart" for $0.0001 per year, and not require payment until the total is equal to or greater than a penny.
The law says I can do that and not have to worry about you making my mark generic
The law also says the only danger is the mark becoming Generic, or causing confusion within your business category.

Also quite worrying, the BSA does list the trademark:
â Boy Scoutâ

But the USPTO shows "boyscout" being registered to a completely different group (In Russia no less)
Neither "boy scout" (with the space) nor either form of "boy scoutS" (with the S on the end) show as registered.

Looking up one of the other trademarks the BSA does have registered, shows their business scope to be:
IC 036. US 100 101 102. G & S: Charitable fundraising services, namely, the solicitation and management of donations to benefit an organization for youth.

So yea...

I'm sure it could possibly be argued that "hacker scouts" solicits donations, possibly even for charitable services, and as long as one person under the age of 18 has ever shown up, you can throw in the whole "organization for youth" on them as well.
But I don't think it's quite that black and white.

But since they have no marks on "hacker scouts", "hacker", or "scouts", it's pretty moot.

The BSA self-claimed marks are at:
http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/Licensing/Protecting%20the%20Brand/Boy%20Scouts%20of%20America%20Trademark%20Listing.aspx

USPTO lookup is session based so I can't give a permlink, but
http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/
Go to "trademark search" on the left, then "basic word search" (first option)
"boyscout" is an interesting lookup, belonging to a Russian company.
"boy scout" with the space will pull up the BSA company record, and you can work backwards from there.

The first patent wasn't an object that could be copied. It was a technology. A process that could have been kept secret.

http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2001/01-33.jsp

Here's your reference. It's reading a plain old fingerprint.

"According to the government http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/patents.jsp, patents can be for an improvement to a process. "

There is no contradiction here. A significant improvement to a process, by definition, does something in a significantly different way.

Obviousness is supposed to be one of the attributes USPTO examiners use to determine acceptance. They just do a terrible job of applying that criteria, largely because of the conflict of interest with the USPTO being funded by application and continuation fees. It's also easier for an examiner to make his quota by putting up as few roadblocks as his supervisor will tolerate.

Patents are only supposed to be awarded to things that do something new, or that do things that are not new, but in significantly different way. The pencil + eraser example does neither.

Where do you get that idea from? According to the government http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/patents.jsp, patents can be for an improvement to a process. Adding an eraser to a pencil is definitely an improvement, and is something new. It was also something useful. I don't see anywhere saying that it is supposed to do something new that has never ever been done before.

Here's the relevant patent. It's measuring your fingerprint by capacitance. It's only "subdermal" in that the epidermis doesn't register on a capacitance sensor, but the dermis does.

The "subdermal patterns" are the same patterns as your ordinary fingerprint. I'm pretty sure that part is just thrown in to make the whole thing sound magical or futuristic.

Here's the relevant patent. It's measuring your fingerprint by capacitance. It's only "subdermal" in that the epidermis doesn't register on a capacitance sensor, but the dermis does.

The "subdermal patterns" are the same patterns as your ordinary fingerprint. I'm pretty sure that part is just thrown in to make the whole thing sound magical or futuristic.

I don't know what your "low frequency RF" stuff has to do with anything, though. More magic, I suppose.

Trying not to have an aneurysm...*why* in the world do courts continue to view software as patentable subject matter. The communications nodes are general-purpose computers with networking hardware attached. They have an operating system that allows for the switching of communications lines. Now there's a rash of lawsuits because the courts are too dimwitted to understand that software plus computer != invention/new machine.

No, the courts are following the law. A new and nonobvious use of a known machine is a patentable invention. Specifically, 35 USC 101 says "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." and 35 USC 100 defines a process as "The term “process” means process, art, or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material."

The law is quite clear - if you come up with a new and nonobvious use for a known machine, such as a computer, then you have invented a patent eligible process.

No, that patent is pretty clearly for Velcro, even if it is a crappy hard to produce kind. The figure is a cross-section, and in the text it makes it clear it is a 2D fabric, not something like a bra closure. A US trademark was even filled for the name in 1957. You can find evidence of it being used in a fashion show before it was used in space travel related uses, as the inventor struggled to make it fashionable.

OK, let's take a closer look.

The issued patent from the application linked above is US 8,446,248. The claims are quite narrow, because, over five years of rejections and reexaminations, the USPTO examiners found prior art and narrowed the patent coverage.

Back in 2003, Geoffery Landis at NASA (also a visiting professor of aeronautics at MIT and an SF writer with a Hugo) proposed something similar, and that was patented. The NASA patent says "The present inventive technique provides for wireless, charging power and/or primary power to electronic/electrical devices whereby microwave energy is employed. The microwave energy is focused by one or more adaptively-phased microwave array emitters in a power transmitter portion of the system onto a device to be charged. Rectennas within the device to be charged receive and rectify the microwave energy and use it for battery charging and/or for primary power. A locator signal generated by the device to be charged is analyzed by the system to determine the location of the device to be charged relative to the microwave array emitters, permitting the microwave energy to be directly specifically towards the device to be charged.". That's the basic idea here.

The Landis patent gives a much clearer idea of the concept. It's simply a steerable microwave beam aimed at the receiver. That's known to transmit power just fine. You could do that with a mechanically steered dish. There are some tricks; one is noticing backscatter from the beam, indicating that it's hitting something that isn't a receiver, so stop aiming there. Another is finding the receiver with low power, then upping the power once on target. Much of this is borrowed from the solar power satellite scheme of the 1980s, with ground based "rectennas", which is why this came out of NASA.

There's a safety issue. The US safety standard for microwave exposure is 10 mW/cm^2 for periods of 0.1-hour or more. To get 1 watt at the receiver, it's going to take maybe 10 watts of output at the transmitter. If the emitting area is about two square meters, as in his demo, the energy is spread out over 20,000 cm^2, so there's only about 0.5mW/cm^2 in front of the transmitter array. That's OK.

At the receiver end, all that power is supposed to be focused to a point, or at least down to the size of his little box. That should focus at least 1 or 2 watts onto his little box, with maybe 25cm^2 area. Now we're up to 40 to 80 mW/cm^2, which is well above the safe limit for prolonged exposure. Since you may be wearing or carrying that little box, and it's going to take a while to charge the battery, this isn't too good.

It's a nice demo, but a system which focuses microwave power beams on handheld devices probably isn't going to be acceptable. What it looks like he did here was to gang together a lot of off the shelf devices which individually can't emit enough power to be dangerous, but when combined into a phased array put too much power in one place.

OK, let's take a closer look.

The issued patent from the application linked above is US 8,446,248. The claims are quite narrow, because, over five years of rejections and reexaminations, the USPTO examiners found prior art and narrowed the patent coverage.

Back in 2003, Geoffery Landis at NASA (also a visiting professor of aeronautics at MIT and an SF writer with a Hugo) proposed something similar, and that was patented. The NASA patent says "The present inventive technique provides for wireless, charging power and/or primary power to electronic/electrical devices whereby microwave energy is employed. The microwave energy is focused by one or more adaptively-phased microwave array emitters in a power transmitter portion of the system onto a device to be charged. Rectennas within the device to be charged receive and rectify the microwave energy and use it for battery charging and/or for primary power. A locator signal generated by the device to be charged is analyzed by the system to determine the location of the device to be charged relative to the microwave array emitters, permitting the microwave energy to be directly specifically towards the device to be charged.". That's the basic idea here.

The Landis patent gives a much clearer idea of the concept. It's simply a steerable microwave beam aimed at the receiver. That's known to transmit power just fine. You could do that with a mechanically steered dish. There are some tricks; one is noticing backscatter from the beam, indicating that it's hitting something that isn't a receiver, so stop aiming there. Another is finding the receiver with low power, then upping the power once on target. Much of this is borrowed from the solar power satellite scheme of the 1980s, with ground based "rectennas", which is why this came out of NASA.

There's a safety issue. The US safety standard for microwave exposure is 10 mW/cm^2 for periods of 0.1-hour or more. To get 1 watt at the receiver, it's going to take maybe 10 watts of output at the transmitter. If the emitting area is about two square meters, as in his demo, the energy is spread out over 20,000 cm^2, so there's only about 0.5mW/cm^2 in front of the transmitter array. That's OK.

At the receiver end, all that power is supposed to be focused to a point, or at least down to the size of his little box. That should focus at least 1 or 2 watts onto his little box, with maybe 25cm^2 area. Now we're up to 40 to 80 mW/cm^2, which is well above the safe limit for prolonged exposure. Since you may be wearing or carrying that little box, and it's going to take a while to charge the battery, this isn't too good.

It's a nice demo, but a system which focuses microwave power beams on handheld devices probably isn't going to be acceptable. What it looks like he did here was to gang together a lot of off the shelf devices which individually can't emit enough power to be dangerous, but when combined into a phased array put too much power in one place.

Here are a couple of the patents Apple was found to have infringed. They actually look non-obvious to me. Basically they're about running a special DNS proxy server that catches non-standard requests, checks credentials in some fashion, and either sets up a just-in-time VPN, passes them through to a normal DNS server, or returns an error. They also don't seem to be a troll company; it looks like this work was done as a government contract.

I didn't look for any details on how Facetime peer-to-peer worked so I don't know if the ruling is correct and generally I consider software non-patentable (copyright and trade secret should be enough) but this is not what I'd call a meritless patent troll case.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6502135.PN.&OS=PN/6502135&RS=PN/6502135
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7418504.PN.&OS=PN/7418504&RS=PN/7418504

Here are a couple of the patents Apple was found to have infringed. They actually look non-obvious to me. Basically they're about running a special DNS proxy server that catches non-standard requests, checks credentials in some fashion, and either sets up a just-in-time VPN, passes them through to a normal DNS server, or returns an error. They also don't seem to be a troll company; it looks like this work was done as a government contract.

I didn't look for any details on how Facetime peer-to-peer worked so I don't know if the ruling is correct and generally I consider software non-patentable (copyright and trade secret should be enough) but this is not what I'd call a meritless patent troll case.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6502135.PN.&OS=PN/6502135&RS=PN/6502135
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7418504.PN.&OS=PN/7418504&RS=PN/7418504

Both Google and the USPTO are officially insane.

Especially given the prior art (Patent 20070157227, February 2006, Microsoft).

captcha: chafing

The one implying that MS-Access and Excel files pose security risks: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/23/218/085/18.pdf

The one that suggests alternatives to Access: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/23/218/085/19.pdf

The one implying that MS-Access and Excel files pose security risks: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/23/218/085/18.pdf

The one that suggests alternatives to Access: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/23/218/085/19.pdf

Yes, materials can matter.

"invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent.""

Start here:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.pdf

even the basics of what can be patented:
"invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent.""

Start here:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/general_info_concerning_patents.pdf

3Taps responds:

"3taps Statement Regarding craigslist’s Misuse of the CFAA
At craigslist’s urging, a federal court has recently interpreted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), known as the “worst law in technology,” to apply when an owner of a public website decides that it no longer wants an Internet user accessing its website. The court held that “the statute protects all information on any protected computer accessed ‘without authorization’ and nothing in that language prohibits a computer owner from selectively revoking authorization to access its website.” Order at 12. 3taps is obviously disappointed in the Judge’s ruling and believes that by making public information publicly available on the Internet, without a password, firewall, or other similar restriction, craigslist has authorized, and continues to authorize, everyone to access that information. 3taps believes that the CFAA was meant to protect private and confidential information and that it was never meant to be used to selectively criminalize accessing public websites and obtaining the public information found on those sites. Importantly, the Court noted that the “current broad reach of the CFAA may well have impacts on innovation, competition, and the general ‘openness’ of the internet . . . but it is for Congress to weigh the significance of those consequences and decide whether amendment would be prudent.” Order at 12. 3taps continues to urge Congress to clarify the scope of the CFAA so that companies like craigslist cannot use it as a tool to stifle competition, innovation, and access to public websites.
While we disagree with the Court’s interpretation of the CFAA, we of course respect the Court’s ruling. Accordingly, 3taps will adhere to the current interpretation of the law and will immediately cease all access to craigslist’s servers. (Significantly, 3taps only began accessing craigslist’s servers because, as alleged in 3taps’ antitrust counterclaim, craigslist interfered with 3taps’ ability to source content through general search engines.)
Although craigslist may use the CFAA as currently interpreted to prevent 3taps from accessing its servers, 3taps can continue to function because directly accessing these servers is only one of three ways in which the information in question can be obtained. The other two, crowdsourcing and public search results, require no such access to craigslist’s servers and thus obviate the need to engage in conduct that may implicate the CFAA.
Going forward, 3taps will operate based on its understanding that if it does not access craigslist’s servers, it has a right to collect public information originally posted on craigslist’s website. In particular, 3taps reasserts four fundamental points:
3taps does not now scrape craigslist’s servers, and therefore, cannot be in violation of the CFAA.
3taps' indexing and caching of exchange posting data reduces (rather than increases) the net computing resources expended by craigslist and other publishers to deliver complex search results to end users.
As the Court previously held, craigslist cannot rely on its current Terms of Use to claim the right to enforce copyrights associated with user-generated ads posted on its website.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently confirmed that craigslist cannot trademark a peace sign – even if that peace sign is purple. See http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-77956067-EXA-24.pdf. 3taps and others cannot be harassed for using the peace sign to indicate where information was sourced.
3taps will hold a public event to demonstrate to any interested party that it is possible (despite assertions to the contrary) to obtain public information on the Internet without reliance on accessing a particular source website. 3taps believes that, by no

But I couldn't find the address to which to send my comments, so maybe that was an oversight on their part.

You can find the comment form in the We Want to Hear from You article.

Use it.

If you look into the theory of chemtrails, one of the first thing you learn is that they are different from contrails. They last longer, disperse in unusual ways. It was these differences that made people look into them. There are attempts to read them using various forms of elemental analysis, with some interesting findings. .

No one is quite sure why the spraying is occurring (if it is at all). In your very unscientific approach to dismissal, you posit why not just have the government make the trails invisible. You say this because you have automatically assumed it is all unreal or imaginary, without looking into this yourself. Otherwise, you would understand the chemtrails people are not claiming they government is spraying the air with imaginarium or some Avengers made up compound, but real materials with known physical properties. It would not be invisible because nothing really is..

I have not investigated chemtrails first hand. I have not run a spectrograph of one. I do not KNOW if the results are real or not. That said, I can routinely find made up results in most scientific journals, so I have a healthy dose of much of the "science" that is in play today. (As a practicing bioengineer, what I see published at times alarms me). So, I am not as fast to dismiss what is made fun of as fringe science as fast as the average reader on this forum. I believe in experiment and results, no matter where it leads. I prejudge nothing.

More to the point, in an age where we find the NSA is spying on us all, which was just a few years ago laughed at as a fringe idea by many, you would think the intelligent people who read slashdot would get past the pejoratives and take a look at things for themselves with open mind. .

FYI: from the US patent office about HAARP:.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,686,605.PN.&OS=PN/4,686,605&RS=PN/4,686,605 .

The physics are interesting. Perhaps read? .

-TM

Look, matey, had you bothered to read the parent, and bothered to look up the two patents cited, you would have noted, that the USPTO fails miserably at following its own directives. Both patents clearly disclose a very old and very wrong assumption; that by rotating a magnet in an electric filed and switching the polarity, this magnet starts to spin from the rotated magnet field.

Like I said, I'm not judging whether they're scientifically sound. I'm just saying that they claim that the energy supply is exhaustable, so they're not perpetual motion machines. (And no, I didn't read them carefully. I just glanced over them and saw that they were claiming to mine energy stored in permanent magnets.) The USPTO will not necessarily reject your claim merely because it's pseudo-science (see MPEP 2107.01(II); "Incredible Utility"). It just needs to not be a flagrant violation of all known laws of physics (a FTL ship would probably fall in this same category).

I can only ask: how would one refute this application?

Why would you refute this application? Do you want to build one of these? Actually, if you do, you're probably okay, because it looks like they never paid the maintenance fee, so this one is dead.

The +5, Funny was well-deserved. But lest anybody get too worked up, those actually claim to work on exhaustable energy stored in permanent magnets (I'm not a material scientist, so I don't know if that's a real thing, but they don't pretend to be perpetual motion). In fact, the USPTO has specific regulations for rejecting perpetual motion machines. If you want to get a patent on one, you have to submit a working model. I am very grateful for this regulation, because it has been a handy way to show folks the door a couple of times. "I'm sorry. I can't file this for you. It's a perpetual motion machine. The USPTO will only grant it after you have a working model. So please come back after you've got that prototype built." (They will argue with you for hours about why it will work if you let them.)

On the other hand, I did successfully craft the argument that got this gem issued. It's not perpetual motion, but it does involve some rather "non-traditional" scientific theories.

I assume the ungodly ridiculous amounts of verbiage is not to be legally clear, but be legally obfuscating, wearing down patent examiners and causing days of study just to begin to get a handle on what they are claiming.

The one or two cool little tricks being patented, if any, are deliberately obfuscated.

Does anybody even know what little bit is supposedly infringed?

One of the "claims":

6. The computing device of claim 1, wherein, in one heuristic of the one or more heuristics, a contact comprising a finger swipe gesture that initially moves within a predetermined angle of being perfectly horizontal with respect to the touch screen display corresponds to a one-dimensional horizontal screen scrolling command rather than the two-dimensional screen translation command.

So if you drag left or right witihin some predefined angle, it shall be considered a horizontal swipe rather than a 2D arbitrary angle swipe. And nobody ever did this before?

Looks like the CEO has 3 patents, one for portable storage, one for non-volatile memory, and one for a memory controller. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=IN%2FMINASSIAN-GEORGE&d=PTXT So who knows, could be legit.

I am a registered patent attorney. I live and breathe patents every day. I know what the duty of disclosure is. You do not. You sound like a twelve-year-old telling Richard Stallman that he doesn't know what the Free Software Foundation is all about because he heard the term "free software" and thought it was about warez. It's nice that you have the Google skills to find a link to the MPEP, but perhaps you should also try reading your own links. And while you're at it, read chapter 700 of the MPEP. Or at least read this page (the one that instructs the examiner to perform a search). Then try reading some patent file wrappers, and look at the examiner's search strategy that he puts in the record before every office action. And while we're at it, your misdirected ad hominem attack and your misuse of prima facie make you look all the more foolish (and yes, I'm aware that you pulled that phrase from s. 2001, but you don't understand what it means).

In short, you are clueless about how patents work, as are most people on Slashdot, who think that patent prosecution is merely a ministerial act of rubber stamping an application. Patent prosecution is arduous and expensive. While there are occasional cases where examiners allow questionable claims, I have also had many, many opportunities to personally deal with examiners rejected claims on sorely strained arguments. Under W's appointee Jon Dudas (who was not even statutorily qualified for the post), the "Reject Everything" culture got so bad that the patent bar was practically in open revolt. You really have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm not saying its the patent offices job to search for prior art,

Yes it is. That is exactly their job.

Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art#Duty_of_disclosure
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2001.html

Finding all prior art is the responsibility of the patent seeker. Failure to do so establishes a prima facie case of unpatentability.
37 CFR 1.56.

If you are indeed a lawyer, please stick to writing wills.

"In the example of FIG. 1B, a user 16 has gestured by placing his fingertips on the display surface and moving them in an outwardly separating manner. As discussed in greater detail below, this particular gesture 17 is associated with a zoom-in command. When the computer 126 performs a zoom-in command, it directs the projector to provide 128 a closer, more detailed view of the displayed imagery. "


From the linked patent application 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=7,724,242.PN.&OS=PN/7,724,242&RS=PN/7,724,242