Slashdot Mirror

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.

Overrated, because it wasn't distributed in a plurality of different file formats
http://www.rarose.com/

We are pleased to resolve this litigation on terms that make business sense for all parties

That's not a crazy patent.
This is a crazy patent!

Only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked
Only about 3,750,000 actually could have been reviewed. This is the number of patents since 1964 (1981 was first year they could be reviewed and so anything before 64 would have expired).
Also, how many actual disputes are there?
There are many really crazy patents so these never get challenged.
There are patents that are too ahead of their time so they expire before anybody needs them.
Then you have the "my patent stack is bigger than yours" where its easier to threaten counterclaim than to invalidate a patent
Even when prior art is presented, re-exams are rare. The patent office held only 6,136 between the time the agency was authorized to do so in July 1981 and the end of March 2004,
The important question is how many times prior art has been presented vs how many times was there an overturn. I think that would give us a better indication of how well the review process works. If people/companies think its too expensive to find prior art, thats a business decision not a problem with the patent system.

Only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked
Only about 3,750,000 actually could have been reviewed. This is the number of patents since 1964 (1981 was first year they could be reviewed and so anything before 64 would have expired).
Also, how many actual disputes are there?
There are many really crazy patents so these never get challenged.
There are patents that are too ahead of their time so they expire before anybody needs them.
Then you have the "my patent stack is bigger than yours" where its easier to threaten counterclaim than to invalidate a patent
Even when prior art is presented, re-exams are rare. The patent office held only 6,136 between the time the agency was authorized to do so in July 1981 and the end of March 2004,
The important question is how many times prior art has been presented vs how many times was there an overturn. I think that would give us a better indication of how well the review process works. If people/companies think its too expensive to find prior art, thats a business decision not a problem with the patent system.

People who perceive that Dell does nothing in terms of R&D are naiive[sic].

If you search the US Patent and Trademark Office database for patents with an assignee name of "Dell Products", you get 222 patents. A search for just "Dell" yields 1089 patents, at least one of which is for "Dell U.S.A." rather than "Dell Products" but is still Dell (Round Rock, Texas, and a patent on "Apparatus and method for a combination personal digital assistant and network portable device"). Searching for "Dell Computer" or "Dell Products" or "Dell USA" or "Dell U.S.A"[sic] in the "Advanced Search" page (that's an/(dell andnot ("dell computer" or "dell products" or "dell usa" or "dell u.s.a")) - there's no "not" operator, as far as I can tell, but there is "andnot", and if you try to search for "dell u.s.a." it "helpfully" removes the final ".")) found 61 patents, some of which are, alas, for "Dell U.S.A.". About 11 of those appear to be computer-related, so I'll be lazy and assume they're for some other part of Dell, leaving 50 non-Dell patents, for a grand total of 1039 Dell Computer patents.

Some of them are mechanical and electrical patents (for the parts of their equipment that don't come out of the box from Intel or Microsoft or {fill in a BIOS vendor} or {fill in your favorite Linux distribution vendor}, some are manufacturing patents (for example, 6,714,937, "System and method for virtual setup and configuration for a build-to-order computer") - i.e., the sort of stuff that their component makers wouldn't necessarily do.

A search for patents with "Apple" in the assignee name found 1813 patents, but at least one of them (6,723,044, "Abdominal retractor") isn't assigned to Apple Computer (it's Apple Medical Corporation, Marlboro, MA, USA). If you search for "Apple Computer", you get 1777 patents; if you search for "Apple" and not "Apple Computer" in the "Advanced Search" section you get 36 patents, at least one of which has Apple as one of the assignees (5,996,057, "Data processing system and method of permutation with replication within a vector register file", which is a PowerPC patent with the other two assignees being the obvious, i.e. IBM and Motorola). About 5 of those look as if they'd be Apple Computer patents, so make that a grand total of 1782 Apple Computer (or Apple+IBM+Motorola) patents.

Of course, Apple's been around longer than Dell, so let's restrict the search to, say, patents issued in 2002, 2003, or 2004, by adding "and ISD/1/1/2002->12/31/2004". Unfortunately, doing so causes the patent search engine to take Too Damn Long to search (Safari times out the request), so let's just look for patents assigned to something with "Apple" in its name in that range - oops, that times out, too. Sigh.

OK, let's try 2004 patents, with an/"apple computer" and ISD/$/$/2004 - 70 patents. an/dell and ISD/$/$/2004 yields 78 patents, most of which look Dell Computerish.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether the number of "major" patents from Apple or Dell is higher - patents can range anywhere from a patent for a new I/O bus to a patent for a minor tweak on a hinge.

And, in the "offtopic but interesting" department, note that one of the examples on the Advanced Search page is "in/newmar-julie". I was curious whether Julie Newmar actually had any patents - yup, two: 4,003,094, "Pantyhose with shaping band for cheeky derrier[sic] relief" and 3,935,864, "Brassiere". I suspect there might be a fan of the old Batman TV show hiding somewhere in the US Patent and Trademark Office's IT department.... (And, yes, I know about Hedy Lamarr and spread-spectrum communications. Unfortunately, patent 2,292,387 was issued in 1942 and is only available in scanned form.)

People who perceive that Dell does nothing in terms of R&D are naiive[sic].

If you search the US Patent and Trademark Office database for patents with an assignee name of "Dell Products", you get 222 patents. A search for just "Dell" yields 1089 patents, at least one of which is for "Dell U.S.A." rather than "Dell Products" but is still Dell (Round Rock, Texas, and a patent on "Apparatus and method for a combination personal digital assistant and network portable device"). Searching for "Dell Computer" or "Dell Products" or "Dell USA" or "Dell U.S.A"[sic] in the "Advanced Search" page (that's an/(dell andnot ("dell computer" or "dell products" or "dell usa" or "dell u.s.a")) - there's no "not" operator, as far as I can tell, but there is "andnot", and if you try to search for "dell u.s.a." it "helpfully" removes the final ".")) found 61 patents, some of which are, alas, for "Dell U.S.A.". About 11 of those appear to be computer-related, so I'll be lazy and assume they're for some other part of Dell, leaving 50 non-Dell patents, for a grand total of 1039 Dell Computer patents.

Some of them are mechanical and electrical patents (for the parts of their equipment that don't come out of the box from Intel or Microsoft or {fill in a BIOS vendor} or {fill in your favorite Linux distribution vendor}, some are manufacturing patents (for example, 6,714,937, "System and method for virtual setup and configuration for a build-to-order computer") - i.e., the sort of stuff that their component makers wouldn't necessarily do.

A search for patents with "Apple" in the assignee name found 1813 patents, but at least one of them (6,723,044, "Abdominal retractor") isn't assigned to Apple Computer (it's Apple Medical Corporation, Marlboro, MA, USA). If you search for "Apple Computer", you get 1777 patents; if you search for "Apple" and not "Apple Computer" in the "Advanced Search" section you get 36 patents, at least one of which has Apple as one of the assignees (5,996,057, "Data processing system and method of permutation with replication within a vector register file", which is a PowerPC patent with the other two assignees being the obvious, i.e. IBM and Motorola). About 5 of those look as if they'd be Apple Computer patents, so make that a grand total of 1782 Apple Computer (or Apple+IBM+Motorola) patents.

Of course, Apple's been around longer than Dell, so let's restrict the search to, say, patents issued in 2002, 2003, or 2004, by adding "and ISD/1/1/2002->12/31/2004". Unfortunately, doing so causes the patent search engine to take Too Damn Long to search (Safari times out the request), so let's just look for patents assigned to something with "Apple" in its name in that range - oops, that times out, too. Sigh.

OK, let's try 2004 patents, with an/"apple computer" and ISD/$/$/2004 - 70 patents. an/dell and ISD/$/$/2004 yields 78 patents, most of which look Dell Computerish.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether the number of "major" patents from Apple or Dell is higher - patents can range anywhere from a patent for a new I/O bus to a patent for a minor tweak on a hinge.

And, in the "offtopic but interesting" department, note that one of the examples on the Advanced Search page is "in/newmar-julie". I was curious whether Julie Newmar actually had any patents - yup, two: 4,003,094, "Pantyhose with shaping band for cheeky derrier[sic] relief" and 3,935,864, "Brassiere". I suspect there might be a fan of the old Batman TV show hiding somewhere in the US Patent and Trademark Office's IT department.... (And, yes, I know about Hedy Lamarr and spread-spectrum communications. Unfortunately, patent 2,292,387 was issued in 1942 and is only available in scanned form.)

They used to require you pass a captcha to get the information about the domain

And then one of the following probably happened: either somebody with less than perfect sight sued NSI under some sort of Americans with Disabilities Act, or Hewlett-Packard "gently reminded" NSI of U.S. Patent 6,195,698. (Read More...)

Can you imagine Microsoft trying to hide its double click patent?

You have been reading too much slashdot. These are pathological examples out of a system that produces hundreds of thousands of patents a year. If you want to tinker with the rules to eliminate business process patents and UI tweaks, go ahead. Making wholesale changes and you risk irreperable damage to the progress of technology. There is a reason that the industrial revolution immediately followed the institutionalization of the patent.

Patents nowadays are simply monopolizing utterly obvious ideas.

Like Alzheimer's drugs? Anti-cancer statins? GCMR heads for high capacity disk drives? The Polymerase Chain Reaction? Utterly obvious stuff, I am sure.

Here are my patents. Quiz: Which are utterly obvious? EHL

If anyone is interested, here is a list of the Intermec's patents that contain the term "RFID". Posted anonymously to not seem to much like a karma whore. Enjoy.

Quite so, but even that field is not entirely clear of landmines. - though it's the only one I know of and I heard that Bracewell later regretted the patenting of this algorithm.

First, the root servers have different dns server software and OSes, not because Vixie thought of it, but because it is policy codified in the BCP RFC for root servers best practices. In fact, I think he was unhappy about other root servers using non-BIND software in the beginning.

Second, he is being disingenuous about his comments about patents, his company owns at least one patent related to the Verisign "Site Finder" service methodology. Nominum Patent I didn't see any statements by him disparaging his company when they applied for that patent. So it isn't that he doesn't like patents, it is that he doesn't like that Akamai is making money doing third party DNS without paying him money or homage. Note: His commercial, for profit dns server software company has a white paper enumerating the scalability and other problems with BIND, and they use an architecture more similar to DJBDNS than to BIND 9 - separate auth and resolving dns server packages, most modern dns server software uses this architecture to reduce code complexity and improve security and performance.

Third, if he wanted to be the pillar of dns server software that he supposedly is, he could have sent a few goons from Nominum over to Akamai and set up some boxes with his commercial, for profit, "scalable" dns server software and Akamai would have been able to see if his software was able to stand up to the ddos attack better than what they have. If it did, he probably could have gotten a sweet, lucrative contract out of it and been a hero for helping thwart the attack, rather than a hypocritical, self serving competitor hiding behind Open Source to appear credible.

Fourth, Akamai is a single point of failure because that is what they do - offload dns and content load from the biggest companies on the net life MS, google and ebay. No, I don't work there, but I would venture a guess that they carry more traffic than (maybe) any other company. So I am sure it is easy to armchair quarterback and say they should do this and that, but when the attacks are probably at 10's or 100's of GiB/s I am not sure what I would do.

Nominum is also involved in RFID stuff, so I will be interested to see what happens with him and his companies as that ramps up. And who knows what deals have already been made - "the future of DNS is right."

Some DNS software links:
nsd - high performance, uses BIND style files and authoritative only
They have an interesting testing procedure where they run nsd and BIND, have them build responses to the same queries and then analyze any differences: diff analysis
maradns
Powerdns, mysql and a pretty website
djbdns he's grouchy and the no license license thing freaks people out and pisses them off, but people become attached to the quirky but rock solid software.
nstx, ip over dns, yeah...

Incidentally, that search function is pretty icky, and could use a little of Dr. Nielsen's help. Ugh.

Incidentally, that search function is pretty icky, and could use a little of Dr. Nielsen's help. Ugh.

Mono definately has legal issues that need to be cleared up before it should be used. Microsoft can currently kill Mono anytime they wish.

• Microsoft HAS NOT put anything under a royalty-free licence by submitting the standard to the EMCA. The EMCA stipulates that the C# standard has to be released RAND (Reasonable & Non-Discriminatory) Licence. Microsoft can start charging fees at any time for implimenting a C# VM.
• Even if they never start charging money, they have pantented the Hell out of the standard and can sue Mono for infringment.

Take Expedia.com
Interestingly enough, MS owns the trademark for Expedia. Serial NO: 75085568 Reg NO: 2224559, in case this link doesn't work.

Darn, I wanted to be the first one in Holland to patent the grouped task bar buttons.

Why don't you take a look at this:

• Task bar with start menu
  Windows tabs
  Thumbnails
  

Between others.

Why don't you take a look at this:

• Task bar with start menu
  Windows tabs
  Thumbnails
  

Between others.

Why don't you take a look at this:

• Task bar with start menu
  Windows tabs
  Thumbnails
  

Between others.

is GOING TO?

Alternatively, recall the following: Patent for swinging sideways... registered by a father to teach his kid how patents work.

FWIW, MS has a patent (5,920,316) on the original taskbar too.

Maybe Be Inc. should have patented their improvement too.

They did: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,727,830.WKU.&OS=PN/6,727,830&RS =PN/6,727,830

The Sonny Bono extension act served only to bring US protection terms in line with those of Europe. See: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/annual/1998/a 98r-5.htm. Any relationship with Mickey was coincidence, unless you believe France, Germany, et al, were looking out for the Mouse's best interests...

btw... if you actually read the link, the patent is for an actual mouse wheel, not the shuttle on an iPod.

What I don't understand is that this patent was filed on February 7, 2002. I've been using a Microsoft mouse with a scroll wheel since 1999 I believe, so how is that not prior art?

Image Link

Mordred

For the record, the patent under discussion here is U.S. Patent 6,614,729.

From the EZTracker manual, it appears EZTracker's "Record 2" mode allows the user to segment the recording by pressing a button. This seems to read on at least claim 1 of the patent.

Still, I don't see a copyright notice in the manual or on the web page. The screenshots in the manual look like Windows 2000 default settings (gradient title bar, Tahoma instead of MS Sans Serif) rather than those of Windows 95 or 98. If you can find evidence that EZTracker was published and in use before September 26, 2001, when David and James Griner filed the patent application, then it would look like a job for the EFF Patent Busters.

This isn't for the GBA itself. Read the patent.

IANAL, but...

It apparently says "we own the idea of emulating a handheld on another handheld". Despite the abstract's claim that this is only for Gameboy systems, the patent itself seems to talk about any handheld emulated on any other handheld. That's not good. Oddly enough, the description section makes it sound like Nintendo wants only the highest quality GB emulation if/when it decides to write GB emulators itself for PDA's and cell phones.

I suppose it comes down to what they want to use this patent for. If it's just for going after companies like Crimson Fire and their "Firestorm gbaZ" (blech), I can't say I personally have a problem with that. I have doubts that they'll stop there, though.

This patent: 6,754,501 would help out a lot in 9-11 type disasters if the companies would just implement it.

I only had time for a quick check of the www.uspto.gov), but I found this: Patent 6,532,217

I second the Patenting the Obvious.

I think this is one of those patent cases that are obvious after you hear it. I think it's simple and elegant -- brilliant in fact. I wish I had thought of it.

This is not a case of simply launching something with compressed air, which has been done millions of times before. This is a specific application of replacing a normally explosive launch mechanism with a simpler and safer pneumatic system -- specifically in the area of pyrotechnics.

It's unlikely that you will be seeing consumer fireworks operating in this fashion anytime soon. Coordinating the launch with the fuse that detonates the device would be very difficult. It's a great system for Disney though, since they use a radio controlled system to precisely detonate the fireworks.

Also, this air-launch patent appears to have been around for ten years or so. (Not sure if the article is referring to a newer patent or not). So, I guess the news is the release of rights to a non-profit.

I second the Patenting the Obvious.

I think this is one of those patent cases that are obvious after you hear it. I think it's simple and elegant -- brilliant in fact. I wish I had thought of it.

This is not a case of simply launching something with compressed air, which has been done millions of times before. This is a specific application of replacing a normally explosive launch mechanism with a simpler and safer pneumatic system -- specifically in the area of pyrotechnics.

It's unlikely that you will be seeing consumer fireworks operating in this fashion anytime soon. Coordinating the launch with the fuse that detonates the device would be very difficult. It's a great system for Disney though, since they use a radio controlled system to precisely detonate the fireworks.

Also, this air-launch patent appears to have been around for ten years or so. (Not sure if the article is referring to a newer patent or not). So, I guess the news is the release of rights to a non-profit.

An artificial lung for humans and other mammals inserted within the body or placed externally. The artificial lung comprises an electrically actuated three-way valve, a casing containing parallel loops of oxygenator tubes for oxygenation of blood by an atmosphere of circulating air, and an air circulation driving fan powered by an energizing system. As a safety factor in the event of leakage in the casing, a check valve is inserted in an effluent blood duct from the casing to the aerated effluent blood. Two artificial lungs can be utilized internally as left and right lungs.

And here is the actual text of the patent.

Here, here, here, and here. Washington Mutual owns all of them.

Here, here, here, and here. Washington Mutual owns all of them.

Here, here, here, and here. Washington Mutual owns all of them.

Here, here, here, and here. Washington Mutual owns all of them.

One of the claims in their oldest patent, 5132992, is:

"1. A transmission system for providing information to be transmitted to remote locations, the transmission system comprising:
library means for storing items containing information; identification encoding means for retrieving the information in the items from the library means and for assigning a unique identification code to the retrieved information;
conversion means, coupled to the identification encoding means, for placing the retrieved information into a predetermined format as formatted data;
ordering means, coupled to the conversion means, for placing the formatted data into a sequence of addressable data blocks;
compression means, coupled to the ordering means, for compressing the formatted and sequenced data blocks;
compressed data storing means, coupled to the data compression means, for storing as files the compressed, sequenced data blocks received from the data compression means with the unique identification code assigned by the identification encoding means; and
transmitter means, coupled to the compressed data storing means, for sending at least a portion of one of the files to one of the remote locations."

From this description, it sounds like web, ftp and gopher servers fall under the patent. However, I would think that, since the method that is described was first published in 1971 in RFC 114, 21 years BEFORE the this patent was filed, this patent would be disqualified via the prior art argument.

As for the other patents, you can find their IP list here and the USPTO patent search engine here. Have fun.

Here are the patents in question (from an ExtremeTech article -- December 16, 2002 -- Porn Kings Aflame Over Multimedia Patents)

Acacia's licensing efforts are based on five patents, all of which cover basically the same thing: patents #5,253,275, #5,550,863 and #6,002,720 are "open continuations" of patent #5,132,992, an "Audio and Video Receiving and Transmission System," which was issued in July 1992. The fifth patent, #6,144, 702, is described as a "division" of the '992 patent and was approved in November of 2000.

The '992 patent abstract reads as follows: "A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape."

Here are the patents in question (from an ExtremeTech article -- December 16, 2002 -- Porn Kings Aflame Over Multimedia Patents)

Acacia's licensing efforts are based on five patents, all of which cover basically the same thing: patents #5,253,275, #5,550,863 and #6,002,720 are "open continuations" of patent #5,132,992, an "Audio and Video Receiving and Transmission System," which was issued in July 1992. The fifth patent, #6,144, 702, is described as a "division" of the '992 patent and was approved in November of 2000.

The '992 patent abstract reads as follows: "A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape."

Here are the patents in question (from an ExtremeTech article -- December 16, 2002 -- Porn Kings Aflame Over Multimedia Patents)

Acacia's licensing efforts are based on five patents, all of which cover basically the same thing: patents #5,253,275, #5,550,863 and #6,002,720 are "open continuations" of patent #5,132,992, an "Audio and Video Receiving and Transmission System," which was issued in July 1992. The fifth patent, #6,144, 702, is described as a "division" of the '992 patent and was approved in November of 2000.

The '992 patent abstract reads as follows: "A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape."

Here are the patents in question (from an ExtremeTech article -- December 16, 2002 -- Porn Kings Aflame Over Multimedia Patents)

Acacia's licensing efforts are based on five patents, all of which cover basically the same thing: patents #5,253,275, #5,550,863 and #6,002,720 are "open continuations" of patent #5,132,992, an "Audio and Video Receiving and Transmission System," which was issued in July 1992. The fifth patent, #6,144, 702, is described as a "division" of the '992 patent and was approved in November of 2000.

The '992 patent abstract reads as follows: "A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape."

Here are the patents in question (from an ExtremeTech article -- December 16, 2002 -- Porn Kings Aflame Over Multimedia Patents)

Acacia's licensing efforts are based on five patents, all of which cover basically the same thing: patents #5,253,275, #5,550,863 and #6,002,720 are "open continuations" of patent #5,132,992, an "Audio and Video Receiving and Transmission System," which was issued in July 1992. The fifth patent, #6,144, 702, is described as a "division" of the '992 patent and was approved in November of 2000.

The '992 patent abstract reads as follows: "A system of distributing video and/or audio information employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression. The compressed and encoded audio and/or video information is sent over standard telephone, cable or satellite broadcast channels to a receiver specified by a subscriber of the service, preferably in less than real time, for later playback and optional recording on standard audio and/or video tape."

I think this is the link

You may be right. I'm not quite sure where the inventive step is though. I'm not good at reading patents, but it looks like they have simply patented the idea of transmitting stored compressed data.

FYI here is the patent which covers that work. My name is not on it. At the time, it was the concept of a wireless version of Ethernet that was seen to be novel. Others had low speed networks (packet radio). High speed wireless point-to-point links also existed. As far as we knew, noone had yet tried to build something that was a network AND high speed.

Anyway, that was my understanding at the time. As is usual, most parties were playing their cards close to their chest, so there could have been others. The only other one I knew of at the time was the Bereley InfoPad. I'll be as interested as anyone else to see of the patent survives the challenge.

I don't like the current patent mess, but the Cisco patent at least was real in that itwas not speculative. There was a serious R&D effort behind it (as shown by the fact that product was produced).

Liberty Software? I wonder if there are any trademarks on that.

here

well sort of

The MS patent actually references several other patents, including:

5796827 which is IBM's for the hand-shake data transfer.

6104913 IBM's PAN

and
6211799 MIT's on power/data transmission over the body.

Obviously they are building on previous patents, and have come up with an enhancement.

Or the patent office just rubber stamped it :-)