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I'd love to trademark any of the many domains I have, but they cost $335 per class (if I'm reading the site correctly)! So unless you're planning on using the trademark for business purposes, who the hell's going to shell out that kind of coin for a trademark for a personal website domainname?

I notice that you currently own the name "slashdot.org". Our research shows you never trademarked this name.

Last week, I applied for a trademark on the terms "slashdot", "slashdot.org" and "slashdot.com" and these have been granted.

I notice that you currently own the name "slashdot.org". Our research shows you never trademarked this name.

Last week, I applied for a trademark on the terms "slashdot", "slashdot.org" and "slashdot.com" and these have been granted.

"Or maybe you didn't realize that every published patent includes detailed information on how to reproduce the invention"

Have you ever actually READ one of these pattents? Most of them don't explain ANYTHING about how the idee is acheived, it only explains the idea itself.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220040145602%22.PGN R.&OS=DN/20040145602&RS=DN/20040145602 is just a little example.

Apparently, MS successfully patented the idea of developing an application that sort pictures by date!! I don't know about you, but I have been sorting my pictures by date for 15 years now.

Sure, nowadays you can get the actual date of a picture by reading file attributes or a variate of tags, but is that worth a patent? Scanning a picture for textual info to then recognize with OCR is a trivial and obvious idea. It's not worth a patent!

Sure, if you actually would develop the program you'd be entitled to a copyright... But not a patent.

When you say "LZW patent didn't stop a hundred variant dictionary compression utilities" I wonder if you realize the difference between patents and copyright. If Unisys would have held a patent on 'compressing a file trough compression algorithms that still need to be developed' RAR, ZIP, ARC would not have been developed. It is those type of general patents that scare the hell out of me.

Actually, I don't have to go diving for this. I was looking for a way to do different contextual searches and googling didn't turn up anything I liked. Searching the USPTO brought up ideas like this. Now, I didn't like this implementation (and it was a bit too web heavy, I don't subscribe to the "everything is a page" mentality), but I liked some of the ideas that were plainly described, and luckiy, not included in the claims. So I used them in my own search and merge.

This is from U.S. Patent Office:
Novelty And Non-Obviousness, Conditions For Obtaining A Patent

It seems to me that many of the patent applications are obvious to those in the informed community. Perhaps something is gained in the public eye in merely applying for the patents? As I recall, IBM used to publish statistics on how many patents they created each year as a sign to how progressive they were.

I would like to see a GNU or EFF project aimed at documenting prior art of 'obvious' inventions to aid the USPTO in expelling such claims. Perhaps a web crawler or blog format that gives a voice to the EFF community to prevent these outrageous claims.

That sounds like a red herring. We all know that software on a theoretical level is math, like lambda calculus for example, however using that type of math you are describing a procedure. Creating software is in essence creating a technical procedure that instructs a microprocessor to accomplish something. Procedures can be patented under United States Law. Below is an excerpt from the USPO FAQ that describes what qualifies to be patented.

"In the language of the statute, any person who "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," subject to the conditions and requirements of the law. The word "process" is defined by law as a process, act or method, and primarily includes industrial or technical processes. The term "machine" used in the statute needs no explanation. The term "manufacture" refers to articles that are made, and includes all manufactured articles. The term "composition of matter" relates to chemical compositions and may include mixtures of ingredients as well as new chemical compounds. These classes of subject matter taken together include practically everything that is made by man and the processes for making the products."

2+2=4 is not a program it is an equation not a procedure. It does not instruct how to add two and two together, it only shows that in fact they are added together. If you where to say that you can add two and two together by doing X Y and Z then you have a procedure that can be patented.

Sun is not "coming out with new chips without connectors". Sun has demonstrated a new kind of interconnect in a lab. They might use it in a DoD funded supercomputer project. Maybe.

You're not going to "stack chips like Scrabble tiles". The unpackaged chips have to be aligned within a few microns and held in position. That's going to be done in an IC packaging facility. The result will be a multi-chip module, a single package containing several chips.

Multi-chip modules have been around for a long time. The Pentium Pro, for example, was a multi-chip module. There's a multi-chip module Linux computer in a single package from ETRAX. Multi-chip modules are expensive and hard to manufacture, and they're generally used only when you need to combine chips that couldn't be manufactured on the same substrate, like a fast CPU and flash memory. They usually cost more than the chips packaged individually. That's why this isn't a mainstream technology.

This new approach might revive the multi-chip module market. Might. This has to become a cheap process before it will be used outside the supercomputer world. A whole generation of automated assembly machinery has to be developed to assemble and align chips in multi-chip modules before this is more than a demo technology. But this looks more promising than the way multi-chip modules are currently made. If it becomes cheaper to put two chips in one package than to put two chips in two packages, this is a significant development. Otherwise, not.

The US patent process is quite amusing in its own way. The main idea behind the US patent system is that "any" patent will be granted unless the Patent Office finds that there is prior art, or someone can claim prior art to the pending patent.

From the article:
"The overtaxed U.S. Patent and Trademark Office often grants absurdly broad patents that reflect little actual innovation. (For example, Microsoft owns a patent for activating a program on a handheld device by holding a button down for several seconds). And because it costs less to pay the toll than to hire lawyers and resist, smaller firms have no choice but to pony up."

As this is by all means a news-article rather than a factfinding mission into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office I will regard the "facts" in the article as is.

In a document describing the general information about U.S. patents you can read the following:
"The patent law specifies the general field of subject matter that can be patented and the conditions under which a patent may be obtained".

A patent in the U.S. may be granted to anyone whom; "invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof, may obtain a patent".

The following, from the same document describes the process of examination of an Patent application:
"The examination of the application consists of a study of the application for compliance with the legal requirements and a search through United States patents, prior foreign patent documents which are available in the Patent and Trademark Office, and available literature, to see if the claimed invention is new and unobvious. A decision is reached by the examiner in the light of the study and the result of the search".

In most cases when it comes to technology and patents the patents are granted and the burden of getting them revoked or stopped from being used falls on anyone who has prior art that the Patent Office did not discover in their work.

The Reference to a non disclosure contract was towards the Linux-kernel developers who may be given internal information from the findings of the OSRM. It was not intended to come out as if a U.S. patent can be put under a NDA, as it can not, since it is, like you put it, a public document.

Sorry for the bad wording, I've had a bussy day at work, and my english grade is not what I would want it to be :)

Sources and reference for this posting can be found at: USPTO, US Patent and Trademark Office General Information Concerning Patents.

RCU was patented by Sequent. As I understand it this is not a problem because Sequent was acquired by IBM, and IBM contributed the code implementing RCU to Linux, and one of the conditions the GPL puts on distribution is that the distributor grants royalty-free licenses for any relevant patents to anyone receiving the code.

Most of the responses have missed the point of the question. The mere act of publishing an idea somewhere will not prevent someone else from patenting it; publishing just gives the original inventor an opportunity to challenge a patent. The poster wants to prevent an offending panent from ever being issued.

The best way to prevent someone else from patenting the idea is to make sure that the invention has been disclosed in a way that any reputable patent attorney will find it during a prior art search. Most patent attorneys will not be searching the archives of the ACM, SlashDot, or Usenet. Instead, they will be searching for existing patents.

So the best way to disclose an invention is to file a patent application, and request that the patent office immediately publish the patent application. Yes, there are some fees involved, but this is the only wat to make sure that patent attornesy can find your disclosure. You can then abandon the application if you don't pay any additional fees.

Go to the US Patent and Trademark Office web site for more specific information about the process, fees, etc.

Not sure what article you were reading, but I pulled that quote from the /. linked story.

The NY Times/IHT reports that four inventors working for Toyota in Japan have won a patent

which can preceed the date of filing by many years.

On the other hand, after prior art, there is only a one year period before the date of filing deadline.

"If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained."

Still, if you're right ... that's stupid. :-(

This was approved in 2002, but filed in 1999...that would make prior art difficult to find. It is quite specific, and mentions real-time shadows in a time before they were really around - certainly Doom 3 hadn't been acnnounced.

Don't get me wrong, I still hate Creative's tactics, and I wrote them an email telling them so. Why the hell does Creative have this patent, of all companies? I mean, nVidia, ATI, Intel even I could see, but Creative??

We need to banish software patents, or come up with something that works better than this mess.

Just in case you RTFA and were confused, the link to the patent on the gamedev.net posting is wrong. The actual patent in question is here...

There was some "lysdeksia" in the IHT story regarding the patent number. It was listed as 6,575,593 which is a "USB powered computer light" erroneously. The correct number is 6,757,593 if you'd like to have a look-see.

There was some "lysdeksia" in the IHT story regarding the patent number. It was listed as 6,575,593 which is a "USB powered computer light" erroneously. The correct number is 6,757,593 if you'd like to have a look-see.

You've messed up the patent number slightly. The article refers to patent # 6,757,593

In the case of a multibillion dollar search engine company with dozens, if not hundreds, of trademark applications worldwide, you would think they would perform a small federal trademark search (my firm charges $300).

Wow, I wish I could charge $300 for doing a quick search here

Is this a hoax???

The patent number referred to is 6,575,593, but a quick search for that patent number at the US Patent Office yields a patent entitled: IEEE 1394 or USB powered computer light.

Seriously, people. I think this might just be a hoax.

sev

The article cites incorrect patent no.

This patent is for a USB powered lamp...
6,575,593

... It was proprietary software, patents wouldn't have done a thing to it.

Back in the 70s, Bell Labs was required by an antitrust consent decree of January 1956 to reveal what patents it had applied for, supply information about them to competitors, and license them in anticipation of issuance to anyone for nominal fees. Any source code covered by such a Bell Labs patent also had to be licensed for a nominal fee. So about every computer science department on the planet was able to obtain the Unix source.

The patent in question was for the setuid bit, U.S. No. 4,135,240. If you look at it, you will see that it is apparently a hardware patent! This is the kicker paragraph:

... So far this Detailed Description has described the file access control information associated with each stored file, and the function of each piece of information in regulating access to the associated file. It remains now to complete this Detailed Description by illustrating an implementation giving concrete form to this functional description. To those skilled in the computer art it is obvious that such an implementation can be expressed either in terms of a computer program (software) implementation or a computer circuitry (hardware) implementation, the two being functional equivalents of one another. It will be understood that a functionally equivalent software embodiment is within the scope of the inventive contribution herein described. For some purposes a software embodiment may likely be preferrable in practice.

So, through the 1970s, Unix spread because it was covered by an unenforcable software patent! Doug McIlroy said, "AT&T distributed Unix with the understanding that a license fee would be collected if and when the setuid patent issued. When the event finally occurred, the logistical problems of retroactively collecting small fees from hundreds of licensees did not seem worth the effort, so the patent was placed in the public domain."

But it was, to the limit of patentability that was available at the time. This was before Diamond v. Diehrand the US patent office deemed software as "pure mathamatics" and unpatentable. The patent that was developed from Unix, the setuid patent was written in terms of the gates in memory that got flipped and read to check access control.

If Bell Labs hadn't assigned the patent to the public domain (supposedly over the cost of collecting license fees) Then development on Unix clones would have started much later.

Speaking of AOL patents, AOL holds a patent on running a tracker server used to contact users (basically, instant messaging). There are an insane 200 claims in this patent, but you don't need to read many ...

What utter nonsense.

Blade Runner is a trademark of...

The Gates Corporation" in the context of "G & S: POWER TRANSMISSION BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS; TIMING BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL"

Kobelco American Inc. in the context of "Construction machines, namely, excavators and bulldozers"

ROLLERBLADE, INC in the context of rollerblade helmets.

some other guy for fishing lures

and zillions of others in other contexts.

In the context of the movie (irrelevant for this conversation), you're thinking of The Blade Runner Partnership and/or "The Ladd Company" (the company of the fmr president of FOx) who owns the rights to the trademark in this case.

The construction machines guys are probably the most likely to have a problem.

What utter nonsense.

Blade Runner is a trademark of...

The Gates Corporation" in the context of "G & S: POWER TRANSMISSION BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS; TIMING BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL"

Kobelco American Inc. in the context of "Construction machines, namely, excavators and bulldozers"

ROLLERBLADE, INC in the context of rollerblade helmets.

some other guy for fishing lures

and zillions of others in other contexts.

In the context of the movie (irrelevant for this conversation), you're thinking of The Blade Runner Partnership and/or "The Ladd Company" (the company of the fmr president of FOx) who owns the rights to the trademark in this case.

The construction machines guys are probably the most likely to have a problem.

What utter nonsense.

Blade Runner is a trademark of...

The Gates Corporation" in the context of "G & S: POWER TRANSMISSION BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS; TIMING BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL"

Kobelco American Inc. in the context of "Construction machines, namely, excavators and bulldozers"

ROLLERBLADE, INC in the context of rollerblade helmets.

some other guy for fishing lures

and zillions of others in other contexts.

In the context of the movie (irrelevant for this conversation), you're thinking of The Blade Runner Partnership and/or "The Ladd Company" (the company of the fmr president of FOx) who owns the rights to the trademark in this case.

The construction machines guys are probably the most likely to have a problem.

What utter nonsense.

Blade Runner is a trademark of...

The Gates Corporation" in the context of "G & S: POWER TRANSMISSION BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS; TIMING BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL"

Kobelco American Inc. in the context of "Construction machines, namely, excavators and bulldozers"

ROLLERBLADE, INC in the context of rollerblade helmets.

some other guy for fishing lures

and zillions of others in other contexts.

In the context of the movie (irrelevant for this conversation), you're thinking of The Blade Runner Partnership and/or "The Ladd Company" (the company of the fmr president of FOx) who owns the rights to the trademark in this case.

The construction machines guys are probably the most likely to have a problem.

What utter nonsense.

Blade Runner is a trademark of...

The Gates Corporation" in the context of "G & S: POWER TRANSMISSION BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS; TIMING BELTS FOR MACHINES, MOTORS AND ENGINES USED IN INDUSTRIAL"

Kobelco American Inc. in the context of "Construction machines, namely, excavators and bulldozers"

ROLLERBLADE, INC in the context of rollerblade helmets.

some other guy for fishing lures

and zillions of others in other contexts.

In the context of the movie (irrelevant for this conversation), you're thinking of The Blade Runner Partnership and/or "The Ladd Company" (the company of the fmr president of FOx) who owns the rights to the trademark in this case.

The construction machines guys are probably the most likely to have a problem.

I went to http://uspto.gov/ to read the Eolas patent.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F5838 906

That's # 5838906. Click on "Images" button on bottom, which tries to load a TIFF, which you can only see with the right plugin of course, and it uses the EMBED tag:

< embed src="/.DImg?Docid=US005838906&PageNum=1&IDKey=4EE2 3B121E7E&ImgFormat=tif"

Which may or may not be covered by the patent. I thought this was mildly amusing.

I went to http://uspto.gov/ to read the Eolas patent.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F5838 906

That's # 5838906. Click on "Images" button on bottom, which tries to load a TIFF, which you can only see with the right plugin of course, and it uses the EMBED tag:

< embed src="/.DImg?Docid=US005838906&PageNum=1&IDKey=4EE2 3B121E7E&ImgFormat=tif"

Which may or may not be covered by the patent. I thought this was mildly amusing.

Since it's a duplicate patent and should never have been issued in the first place, IBM would be idiotic to let it get anywhere near a courtroom.

LIST OF RELATED APPLICATIONS

This is a combined Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/641,010, filed on Apr. 29, 1996, and entitled "COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED TRANSPORT OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION OBJECTS," which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/251,824, filed on May 31, 1994, and entitled "SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC UNATTENDED ELECTRONIC INFORMATION TRANSPORT BETWEEN A SERVER AND A CLIENT BY A VENDOR PROVIDED TRANSPORT SOFTWARE WITH A MANIFEST LIST," which as U.S. Pat. No. 5,420,820 on May 30, 1995, and U.S. application Ser. No. 08/982,157, filed on Dec. 1, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,388 and entitled "COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED TRANSPORT OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION OBJECTS," which is a Continuation of the aforementioned Ser. No.08/251,724 filed May 31, 1994 (now U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,546). All of the above-identified applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

What does a patent by TI on a DRAM circuit have to do with this?

Ok. May not be the highest paid job but know that there are positions that can make a big big big difference in the lives of many. Actually there is a deputy CIO position that is open at the USPTO.

One of the patents referenced as Related Applications turns out to be a circuit patent from TI, and the name isn't found anywhere in the USPTO database. The other Related Application looks like it's describing FTP - pulling down something from a remote server and putting it into local storage.

This guy has a great history of taking the obvious and making it a patent.

One of the patents referenced as Related Applications turns out to be a circuit patent from TI, and the name isn't found anywhere in the USPTO database. The other Related Application looks like it's describing FTP - pulling down something from a remote server and putting it into local storage.

This guy has a great history of taking the obvious and making it a patent.

One of the patents referenced as Related Applications turns out to be a circuit patent from TI, and the name isn't found anywhere in the USPTO database. The other Related Application looks like it's describing FTP - pulling down something from a remote server and putting it into local storage.

This guy has a great history of taking the obvious and making it a patent.

It would seem that Symantec's LiveUpdate falls into the same category... see http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=liveupdate&OS=liveup date&RS=liveupdate. It would seem from Symantec was talking about this feature in 1996 http://www.symantec.com/press/1996/n960916b.html/, well before filing date of 4/20/2000 for the patent in question.

Actually, that's possible. Collect relevant prior art and petition the USPTO for a re-exam. Then once you win several re-exams, petition the Congress not to siphon off so much of the USPTO's revenue into the general treasury.

I found this awesome summary on this site called slashdot.org, if you're interested.

mark_wilkins writes "Microsoft and Apple have been sued by Teleshuttle Technologies, LLC, alleging that their online software updating technology infringes a patent on providing online updates to software with a menuing system to permit the user to pick the updates. Apparently the work on which the patent is based supposedly goes back to 1990."

How's that for informative?

Henry Ford had a patent on that little device

Except that the patent in question was filed in 2000 and cites a 1994 paper titled "Automatic Patch Retrieval & Installation."

"A method for distributing information to a plurality of uncoordinated user stations each of which is configured for communications with a multiplicity of independently-operated servers via a non-proprietary network includes steps for providing a distribution service that distributes updates for a plurality of different products, and providing a transporter software component to each of the plurality of uncoordinated user stations, wherein the transporter software component at each user station automatically effects communication sessions with the distribution service via the non-proprietary network for the purpose of obtaining updates for each of at least a subset of the plurality of different products that are installed on that user station."

It sounds awfully complicated, and that's only the first sentence. They could probably claim they own pretty much every updating technology with that...

Seriously though, providing "updates to software with a menuing system to permit the user to pick the updates" has been in every system I used, and I don't believe that adding the word "online" in front of it makes it a new super-innovative technology.

Even if it's Microsoft, if they were to lose on this one, it would be a shame.

... in case you are interested

2. File a patent, and submarine it.

Tibco's Rendezvous can be used to the do same task as Apple's Rendezvous, i.e. dynamic configuration. They both use multicast and don't require server endpoint configurations like addresses, etc. However Tibco's Rendezvous can also do generic, certified, and transactional messaging and hence Apple's product description does harm by implying Tibco's software has less capabilities, i.e. inferior, to what it really is.

To update the trademark links, Tibco was formally Teknekron:

• Teknekron's trademark - filed July 10, 1995
• Tibco's trademark - filed May 20, 2002
• Apple's trademark - filed May 6, 2002

Tibco's Rendezvous can be used to the do same task as Apple's Rendezvous, i.e. dynamic configuration. They both use multicast and don't require server endpoint configurations like addresses, etc. However Tibco's Rendezvous can also do generic, certified, and transactional messaging and hence Apple's product description does harm by implying Tibco's software has less capabilities, i.e. inferior, to what it really is.

To update the trademark links, Tibco was formally Teknekron:

• Teknekron's trademark - filed July 10, 1995
• Tibco's trademark - filed May 20, 2002
• Apple's trademark - filed May 6, 2002

Tibco's Rendezvous can be used to the do same task as Apple's Rendezvous, i.e. dynamic configuration. They both use multicast and don't require server endpoint configurations like addresses, etc. However Tibco's Rendezvous can also do generic, certified, and transactional messaging and hence Apple's product description does harm by implying Tibco's software has less capabilities, i.e. inferior, to what it really is.

To update the trademark links, Tibco was formally Teknekron:

• Teknekron's trademark - filed July 10, 1995
• Tibco's trademark - filed May 20, 2002
• Apple's trademark - filed May 6, 2002

You can patent the later!!!

Actually, no, you can't. See here. and here

In particular:

(c) Non-Statutory Process Claims

If the "acts" of a claimed process manipulate only numbers, abstract
concepts or ideas, or signals representing any of the foregoing, the
acts are not being applied to appropriate subject matter. Thus, a
process consisting solely of mathematical operations, i.e., converting
one set of numbers into another set of numbers, does not manipulate
appropriate subject matter and thus cannot constitute a statutory
process.

The fact is, you have no clue as to what you are talking about, and need to spend a little time doing some reading.

A computer based book manufacturing, distributing and retailing system for the high speed reproduction of a single copy of a book is disclosed. The system is especially adapted for direct consumer sales since the manufacture of a selected book can take place at the point of sale. A master module includes a computer having a database of books to be selected, the books preferably being stored in a digital book-description format. Upon selection of a particular book from the database, a single copy of the book (including the text and a color cover) is printed by means of high speed raster printing engines. The system includes a binder for binding the text pages and the cover into a book.

Which is just like downloading an TeX,Latex or DVI encoded file off a central ftp site and proccessing it though to a postscript file and printing and binding the result. Most Universities and tertiary institutions were providing this service by the late 80s. Harvey Ross patented not an invention but a description of an existing service.