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Here is the full fee schedule. Fees of note: filing fee is $770. Issue fee is $1,330. Maintenance fees are $990, $2,090, and $3,220. There are also fees for publication ($300), filing an assignment ($40), for filing excess claims (more than 20), filing late responses to the patent office, and many more. In general, "small entities" pay half of the amount listed above, though there are exceptions.

I got a reply from the owner of the Japanese Lunchpack Research Lab site (http://metro.fw.cx/lunch/lindex.html) which has 39 recent examples with photos of similar stuffed crimped sandwiches sold by Yamazaki Bread Co. in Japanese convenience stores. They are massively popular. The reply confirmed that Yamazaki has been selling these since around the early 1980s, though more information can be gotten from the company itself.

I wondered if I should tell the USPO or Yamazaki about this lousy patent and get rid of it. It doesn't sound like it was intentionally made frivolously, and it seems to me the less dumb patents the better.

That's related to the 'loser pays' ideas floating around. The problem is that patents are intended to protect small individual inventors, as the big companies are already able to defend themselves. Loser pays systems tend to discourage small inventors.

I agree that "loser pays" systems do generally have this issue. However, I do not think that this is an serious problem in this case, for several reasons:

1) The cost is bounded, and *relatively* small. The increase in worst-case cost is less than order-of-magnitude. This is not like exposing someone to legal liability, where insane judgements can be made. Furthermore, I would expect that if demand for reexamination increases (relative to initial examination), improvements in
processing efficiency may be made. Remember that capital had to come from somewhere to patent the thing in the first place.

2) Small inventors are unlikely to have patent portfolios of thousands of patents, and thus have limited risk.

3) Since there are also associated legal costs (unless it is made *much* easier to produce and send in properly-formatted reexamination requests, and corporate lawyers will be the ones sending in such complaints, it is likely that companies will find it easier to simply send an unofficial "we believe we have prior art, and we intend to request a reexamination of your patent" with a reference to the prior art letter to the patent holder. This gives the patent holder the opportunity to give up his patent rights to the public domain, and does not impose legal fees on the company.

1. Make it easier to get patents. Right now, patents are reviewed and issued as if the US PTO was the final arbiter of all truth in the universe. This is of course absurd. A patent should be nothing more than a claim that an idea was developed at a certain date.

The USPTO isn't always right -- that's why they have the reexamination and litigation approaches to change a USPTO decision.

2. Make it easier to cancel patents. Patent office arbitration and the legal system are fine for determining the legitimacy of a claim.

If you're talking about from the patent claimant, I agree absolutely. Patent cancellation should be free.

When a patent expires, it's stamped "public property."

All patents (current and expired) are held forever in an absurdly large database that helps inventors and investigators determine the value of future patents.

This is already the case. In addition to the modern computerized database, there have been numerous patent library depositories around the country to do patent searches through.

Amazingly someone has already has. It's a patent relating to controlling the rate of photosynthesis in tuber plants. They even include the DNA sequence of the genes responsible - it's hard to believe the patent actually includes 10 pages of CTAGGGTAGGCCAC... Is the patent invalidated if one of these sequences misspelled?

Here's a comment I posted earlier today where I mention the patent reexamination process and suggest a modification. I'll re-print a summary of the data here

It is currently possible to request that a patent be reviewed by the USPTO. This does not require a lawsuit (or technically even a lawyer, though there is a need for a properly-formatted request).

There are two types of re-examination. They differ in several respects. One, inter partes, allows you to basically provide rebuttals to the filer's explanations, and the other ex parte, does not.

My thanks to Thalia for locating the associated fees on the USPTO website: inter partes costs $8800 and ex parte $2500. Both of these costs do not include legal fees, which Thalia estimated (for inter partes) at about $12,000.

The problem is that getting a patent runs about $1,000 (again, not including any legal fees). This tends to slant things towards people acquiring patents, as it is still more expensive to get a patent revoked.

The modification that I'd like to see made would involve *patent owners* having to pay ex parte or inter partes fees if it is determined that their patent was improperly approved. This means that groups like the EFF (and, with some work to make the process particularly easy, perhaps anyone) can initate re-examination requests while supplying prior art examples.

Such a change would encourage patent filers to ensure that their patents really are legitimate when filing (reducing the number of bogus patents), and would not financially penalize someone who knows of prior art and wants to fix the USPTO database (if anything, I'd like to see someone who successfully brings up an example of prior art and gets a patent revoked *paid* a small fee by the patent filer for their time).

This change would involve minimal changes to the system, and not much cost. There might be the issue of collecting from the patent owner, who might be unwilling to pay. I think that an eight-thousand dollar deposit per patent would probably be too weighty, so I'm not sure how to approach that detail yet. However, even if the USPTO needs additional funding to help cover costs of employees needing to review patents where the USPTO cannot collect from the patent filer, I think that we woudl be better off (furthermore, that individual could be barred from being issued future patents until they have paid off their existing dues).

Problem: this change would *have* to grandfather old patents, as companies and individuals would otherwise be liable for masses of money for bogus patents. Irritating as it is that those people were able to get away with such behavior, the system permitted bogus patents, and charging them fees for said patents now is not reasonable (nor would it be acceptable to many people).

I think that this is the only feasible approach to the problem. Trying to ensure that the USPTO never grants invalid patents would require that they maintain a huge staff of PhDs that are up on the bleeding edge in every area of research (and honestly, woudl be better off doing research instead of reviewing patents).

Thoughts?

Ok.. reading the patent application is a tough one. Talking about a time interval between successive mouse clicks activating a 2nd application.. woooooo..

I see the application seems to be an extension of something started in 1999.. still I was double clicking before that..

Most interesting though is their choice of capitalization in the application. Look at this:

...One such palm-type computer is Microsoft's Palm-size PC. The Palm-size PC has a touch screen display... (exact quote)

When you see 'palm-type', fine.. an adjective modifying the word computer to define the type. But reading on you see '.. Microsoft's Palm-size PC'. That looks like a product name. But wait, isn't Palm a trademark of someone we all know and love

Before the deluge... (well, actually after the deluge), may I suggest that the average SlashDotter take a moment to learn how to read a patent.

The key things to look at are the claims. These are generally read in the context of the rest of the patent, but it's the claims that are the most important bit, since it's on these that the patentee claims a monopoly. Let's examine the claims of US6,727,830 (read along here).

Start with claim 1. It has four elements, a, b, c and d. A claim applies in whole, not in part, so for something to infringe, it would have to do all of a, b, c and d. Just doing a, b and c would not infringe. Take a look at the difference between c and d; the key point is that if the button is released after the time limit, the behaviour is different (the previous state is displayed). That's important and (as far as I know) novel. In particular, it's not the same as a double-click.

Similarly, claim 2 is like claim 1, only if the button is released after the time limit, the application starts with a new blank document. Claim 3 is a further variant, etc, etc.

I haven't proceeded to look at every single one of the other claims, but the key point to remember is to read them carefully and exactly, rather than jump to ludicrous conclusions such as "Microsoft Patent Doubleclick". You have eyes to read, and brains to think. Use them.

Let's say I patent making a peanut-butter and jam sandwich.

Too late!

The cost of filing an inter partes reexamination is $8,800. However, it requires a full request, including prior art references, written in proper format. The prior art references must *address the claims* unlike most of the ranting on Slashdot. And the "real party of interest" must also be named.

Actual cost, if you use a lawyer will probably be in the range of $20K.

Thalia

Amazing...
clicky

And a mouse button isn't a hardware button how? Having read the referenced patents to this one (ok, I didn't I scanned all the abstracts) it would seem to me that this one seems to be prior art in itself! I cannot see what this is all about, but then again IANAPL. I did read the MS patent, and I cannot see anything innovative about it (application has different actions based on duration of button press including couting presses within a set period, hmm lets go patent using morse code and variations thereof on buttons, oh wait, that's what this is!).

Yep, to me morse code is the prior art, short or long presses, with an amount of time from the start (morse would be end I think) of each press to register the next, and a different response (letter) depending on the total pattern of button presses (they just go for . - and ..). What's next, patent key combinations on limited computing devices be they serial or parrallel (:wq or ^C)?

Before I take my life into my hands and play devil's advocate here:

<disclaimer>I think this is a stupid patent and is not sufficiently original to truly deserve protection</disclaimer>

That being said, those who read the patent application very carefully will notice that this patent isn't for the general idea of double-clicking, but rather covers a much smaller range. Specifically, Microsoft has been granted a patent on a PDA-type device ("limited resource computing device") that has physical buttons on the outside of the device (i.e. "Mail", "Calendar", "Contacts" etc) that cause different actions to occur based on how long or in which sequence they are pressed.

An example of the patented method in action would be if you created a device on which pressing the mail button once would open a list view of recent emails, pressing and holding it for 2 seconds might initiated a POP3 session to the server, "double-clicking" the button might bring you to a "new email" form, and pressing and holding the button longer than 3 secs would be assume to be accidental and would do nothing.

This does NOT appear to be relevant to any non-PDA device, nor does it appear to apply to any kind of buttons that do not physically exist on the outside of the device. I still think it's pretty stupid and obvious, but it's nearly so stupid as it would appear at first glance.

That being said, does anyone have any specific prior art to overturn this with?

Hence general-purpose PCs and bigger embedded systems are safe from this, but small devices such as handhelds are vulnerable?

Abstract

A technique, specifically a method and apparatus that implements the method, which through a probabilistic classifier (370) and, for a given recipient, detects electronic mail (e-mail) messages, in an incoming message stream, which that recipient is likely to consider "junk". Specifically, the invention discriminates message content for that recipient, through a probabilistic classifier (e.g., a support vector machine) trained on prior content classifications. Through a resulting quantitative probability measure, i.e., an output confidence level, produced by the classifier for each message and subsequently compared against a predefined threshold, that message is classified as either, e.g., spam or legitimate mail, and, e.g., then stored in a corresponding folder (223, 227) for subsequent retrieval by and display to the recipient. Based on the probability measure, the message can alternatively be classified into one of a number of different folders, depicted in a pre-defined visually distinctive manner or simply discarded in its entirety.

1. POPFile was not designed for the sorting of spam from legitimate mail it is a general email classification system.

2. I believe the patent to be invalid because of the ifile system being prior art. ifile dates back to at least 1996 while the patent has the date June 23, 1998 on it. The patent does not acknowledge ifile's existence. Evidence of ifile being prior art can be found in the ifile change log http://www.nongnu.org/ifile/ChangeLog and the original README (http://www.nongnu.org/ifile/old/README-0.1A) which shows the date: Released Sat Aug 3 20:49:01 EDT 1996

3. If Microsoft were to sue me and win I would be happy to pay them every penny that I have made from POPFile ($0.00) :-)

6,732,157... for those who want to see the primary source of this discussion

Actually, you're probably *capable* of doing this. How many guys like me putting up fifty bucks a pop would it take to get this done?

It currently costs $2520 to file an ex partes reexamination request. And this is just a request. The examiner might deny it if (s)he thinks the prior art citation does not raise any new questions.

Given the price, I think it is more likely that one (or more) of McAfee's competitors would file such a request. They can probably afford that kind of money.

This patent is such BS that even the STORY SUBMITTER found prior art. It didn't even take a freakin' comment. I wonder if that EFF patent group will catch this.

What methods are available for challenging a patent, anyway?

The patent even refers to "Bayes rules", so it is implicitly accepting that there is prior art. As I read the patent, it is on the use of a specific set of multiple techniques to filter spam (one of which is Bayesian). This may not fail the prior art argument (they cite 32 older patents), but it sure fails the "obvious" test.

patent

Ummm... It is. Usually about 18 months after filing, the application is published on USPTO's website. The patent isn't issued for about another 18 months. I think (though I don't know) that you can file a comment on a published application.

They are refering to Bayes a lot, beside really simple stuff like "hashing an paragraph with MD5". That is like making an patent on the progress bar (that exits too!)

It is only for US anyway....

you know what ? patent system is a protectionnist system. now, extend that system, and watch your economy die under the assaults of countries that happen to:
1- have lower salary costs
2- have better education system
3- don't have any patent system, and therefore no barriers on knowledge
4- have or will soon have larger market than the US/EU. (actually, when that happens, the whole patent system will collapse, because its weight is too expensive anyway on the economy already under attack because of the three first points)

this goes for any patents, actually, it justs happens to be even worse for software patents, because for software everything is only knowledge.

what is the reality of patents (any patent) nowadays:
1- they don't protect the individual inventor (they're FAR too expensive and complex to get and to defend)
2- industrial patents don't even protect big companies (there's always a way to find another process to reach the same goal). in that case it is, at best, a commercial argument, to have a patent
3- as no big invention happened since microcomputer revolution in 70's 80's, everything is merely "innovation", ie. rehash of old ideas. heck, i've even seen one company trying to apply for practically the same (industrial) patent that was granted to my great-grandfather almost one century ago (and tha fell into public domain long ago). and they'll probably be granted for it.
4- patent offices are run extremely extremely bad (that goes for USPTO as well a for EPO), and it'd be very very expensive to improve them. they are damn slow, too.
5- because of 4, even "innovation" is permantently under threat of "submarine patents".
6- a lot of companies start to spend more time (and money) to protect their "IP" than to actually do research and development.

Didn't you ask yourself why the US/EU have starting to go into that "IP" craze ? did you see the number of patents applications per year increase over and over again ? look there
till the mid-80's, there were AT MOST 100,000 applications/year, with a mean of about 70,000 per year, and variations. Since then, it's getting an exponential increase, and by the year 2001, it's more than 300,000 applications per year.
But the fact is that since the mid-80's, NOTHING really breakthrough has been invented. there was merely a computer networks spread, which did lead only to make information more fluent (this in fact being a small revolution, but not a technical one, since computer networks were technically long known. it is rather a small revolution in human organization).
what does this means ? it means patents are the direct consequence of the fact that, since information and knowledge have reach an improvment stage in broadcasting (as before when printing was invented, and then radio, telephone, and...), some guys go out of the wood, and try to get monopoly on that knowledge, as it happened before. was it of any benefit when it happened before ? NO. Monopolies are powers, and tend to influence or be influenced governments (sometimes so close that it's impossible to dinsitnguish them). And this system has proven in the past to be bad.

Face it, "IP" craze, and patent system overheat is NOT a consequence of more invention or "innovation". It is a consequence of the new "information age". It does not foster "innovation", and there were never less real inventions than in the past ten years when patent system reached such a high (especially in countries with the most advanced patent systems). Moreover, most big companies cut credits in R&D fields to fund their "IP" divisions. great.
Patents and especially the current patent system were just deprecated by the new "information age", and they need to be suppressed or deeply reworked before it is too late.

No, they've patented the system that does it

If the patent is broad enough to read on all systems that could possibly do it, then they've patented doing it.

I've just read the patent, and it appears that the first claim covers breaking a live recording into tracks (.cue file anyone?) and then sending the audio to digital media recorders.

Read the friendly patent:
1. An event recording system, comprising:
(i) an event-capture module to capture an event signal and transform it into a primary event file that is accessible as it is being formed;
(ii) an editing module communicatively connected to the event capture module, wherein the editing module accesses and parses the primary event file into one or more digital track files that can be recorded onto a recording media; and
(iii) a media recording module communicatively linked to the editing module for receiving the one or more digital track files, the media recording module having a plurality of media recorders for simultaneously recording the one or more digital track files onto a plurality of recording media.

An earlier patent (6108005) sited in the DDD's patent seems to encapsulate DDD's technique and based on some checking, I believe DDD does not have rights to use patent 6108005's technique in the USA because of this.

The website blurs the line between discussing the automatic conversion of 2D movies (like the ones I have sitting by my DVD player right now) and 3D movies recorded in a standard 2D format DVD. I have no problem believing that a 3D movie encoded into a standard DVD can be viewed in full 3D. However, I was curious about the 'patented technology', so I went to the USPTO site and read the patent. It appears from the patent that the result of conversion from 2D to 3D is that it will take various 'objects' in the 2D image, outline them, and raise them off the screen. I have a strong feeling that you will get a Duke Nuk'em 3D image out of it, not the 3D you'd expect for the price of the 3D monitor and their converter system. I can't see that catching on.

To their credit, Monsanto DID voluntarily declare they wouldn't use the terminator genes. For an undeclared period. But they've have been granted the patents on them, so it's an ace they can still play.

Patents expire, you know.

This algorithm is neither dumb nor obvious.

The Unistroke patent was filed as a continuation of an application from 1993 and thus inherited the earlier filing date.

The patent that was filed in 1999 is an approved and recognized patent for an "Apparatus and method for enhancing the performance of personal computers". It's basically an accelerator board that creates a "phase relationship" between the clock signals from the system board and accelerator board. In order for them to win the lawsuit, they have to prove that Intel did in fact use this exact method to achieve some sort of signal acceleration and sold it without license. The $500 million sum is probably a maximum amount, so that if they win the suit, the actual damages will fall within that amount. Seems to me it will be hard to prove that Intel crossed that fine line between patent infringement and the usage of common theory and practice.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/26/first_inte ger_patented/

That's a satire. Or do you have a patent number that's not secret?

(Note: the links above may or may not work, here is the TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) page where you can enter the search terms):
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=j 6biv.1.1

(Note: the links above may or may not work, here is the TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) page where you can enter the search terms):
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=j 6biv.1.1

(Note: the links above may or may not work, here is the TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) page where you can enter the search terms):
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=j 6biv.1.1

Yeah, Apple's patent on transparency is here, and we talked about it before.

Due to recent changes in the patent laws, patent applications are published before they are granted (usually 18 months after being filed, though various circumstance may result in an earlier publication, or no publication at all. But the default is 18 months after initial filing.)

Due to recent changes in the patent laws, patent applications are published before they are granted (usually 18 months after being filed, though various circumstance may result in an earlier publication, or no publication at all. But the default is 18 months after initial filing.)

Methods and systems for providing graphical user interfaces are described. overlaid, Information-bearing windows whose contents remain unchanged for a predetermined period of time become translucent. The translucency can be graduated so that, over time, if the window's contents remain unchanged, the window becomes more translucent. In addition to visual translucency, windows according to the present invention also have a manipulative translucent quality. <b>Upon reaching a certain level of visual translucency, user input in the region of the window is interpreted as an operation on the underlying objects rather than the contents of the overlaying window</b>.

Pseudo-interactive input processing in wireless environments
This appears to describe a hand held PC that can talk to a server now and then.

Method and system for providing a secure multimedia presentation
Seems to describe a secure file transfer system.

System and method for automated creation of personalized poster
This would appear to be an online poster ordering system.

There seem to be a lot of IT related patents being filed. I wonder if there is an easy way of challenging them before they are granted (perhaps some open source enthusiasts who are not so much into writing code could start a project to challenge as many patents as possible before they are granted.

Pseudo-interactive input processing in wireless environments
This appears to describe a hand held PC that can talk to a server now and then.

Method and system for providing a secure multimedia presentation
Seems to describe a secure file transfer system.

System and method for automated creation of personalized poster
This would appear to be an online poster ordering system.

There seem to be a lot of IT related patents being filed. I wonder if there is an easy way of challenging them before they are granted (perhaps some open source enthusiasts who are not so much into writing code could start a project to challenge as many patents as possible before they are granted.

Pseudo-interactive input processing in wireless environments
This appears to describe a hand held PC that can talk to a server now and then.

Method and system for providing a secure multimedia presentation
Seems to describe a secure file transfer system.

System and method for automated creation of personalized poster
This would appear to be an online poster ordering system.

There seem to be a lot of IT related patents being filed. I wonder if there is an easy way of challenging them before they are granted (perhaps some open source enthusiasts who are not so much into writing code could start a project to challenge as many patents as possible before they are granted.

jpkunst, I know you were in a hurry to get a story submitted to and accepted by slashdot. I can imagine the scene now; Palms moist, you rush to type a compelling, FUD-spreading (same thing, around these parts) story which will be sure to get your story accepted! And in your mad rush, you don't even bother to read the patent application. If you're going to link something, you should really read it in its entirety to find out if it contradicts your story.

If you want to complain about Apple patenting translucent windows, perhaps you should examine U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,432, entitled "Method and Apparatus for Providing Translucent Images on a Computer Display", which is referred in Patent application 20040090467 (your link.) This patent was granted September 7, 1999 (filed April 11, 1997.) That appears to be a patent on software transparency by blending layers done by the CPU, which is to say it does not compete with hardware transparency.

True laziness is a virtue. Your brand, however, leaves something to be desired.

I'm busy, posting AC because I don't have time, nor the inclination, to deal with government shills and disinfo agents, or luddite ridiculous trolls who never go outside, and who have no long term memory of what it used to look like some years ago in the sky.

You can also find out the government buys mega boat loads of aluminum oxide, and a lot of it disappears into a black hole. I spent weeks before every evening tracking this, it's REAL.

Some is used for abrasives, some in munitions, but a lot of it just slides into "you can't go there" government websites. It's used to spray with, using this technique, from tankers. some are reserve air force tankers, some are apaprently government contractors. One private name, that is really a front company, is easy to get to. If a tree isn't deciduous it's ..what? Guess the word, go look, you win.

Air samples have been taken all over the nation. The stuff is there, in huge quantities. And it's frequently sprayed directly in front of the cool weather side of approaching fronts. Look then and there, you might see it happening.

Note, I am NOT saying every single contrail you see is purposeful spraying,I want to be clear on that, but you can see when it happens, its quite different, and the persistance is usually a good give away. These sorts of persistant trails were extrmeley rare years ago, they were so rare you hardly saw them. Now, that isn't true.

Merely LOOKING in some government servers gets you noticed by various intel agencies when you are trying to research this. They become quite interested in getting inside your box. It's pretty useless now, they went on an extensive web clean up project to memory hole any easily found evidence. The bulk of the online official type smoking gun evidence has been moved or pulled, mostly by 99, because it really leaked hard in 98. Remnants remain, this being just one of them.

Anyone can just deal with it, it's real, it's been going on for several years now, the evidence is overwhelming. Normal contrails don't exist at low altitude, low humdity, high heat, and they certainly don't last for hours and hours. So no trolls with atmospheric contrails 101, we all know about that, this is quite different.

1. A computer readable medium comprising media player application code which implements the following procedures:
generating in a user interface an application window having a window frame and a plurality of stiles to define a plurality of panes within said frame;
displaying in a first one of said panes a user selectable index of a plurality of media files;
displaying in a second one of said panes first selected information for said media files; and
displaying in a third one of said panes second selected information for said media files
wherein said second and third panes are each initialized with a selection to view all of said user selectable index of the plurality of media files in said first pane.

After sleeping on it, I have a few more things:

Thank you, total fringe lunatic who obviously doesn't have children or even really remember what it was like to be a child.

I do babysit.

don't deny kids the chance to be kids

Denying them Disney(tm) products doesn't deny them the chance to be kids. There are lots of family films produced by studios outside of the MAFIAA.

Show me hard evidence that a Disney production-- ... an actual, released to the public (or not) work with the Disney name-- was harmful to the people at large and children in particular

Miramax is a Disney name. Wouldn't one claim that the Kill Bill films are harmful to children should children watch them?

You forget, this is /. People see "patent" and panic. People rarely read the article or patent application. I'm not sure, but it looks like this might be the application they're referencing. United States Patent Application 20040081154: Internal BGP downloader. I tend to think like you do, Cisco sees this as something that is essential to the future of TCP as a viable standard and will not charge an arm and a leg for a license.

We need a non-profit that will work with Open Source developers to file Statutory Invention Registrations (SIR) than can be used to prevent some of the patently silly behavior that's been going on recently.

I understand the process is cheaper than doing a full blown patent so it may not be as unreachable as it seems.

See:

Types of Patents

The USPTO only has one type of patent. The "I want a monopoly on this" patent. There should be defensive patents, patents issued saying "we figured out how to do this on our own, we don't want to stop other people form figuring out the same thing we just don't want to be prevented from using our inventions."

These already are available (in the US, anyway). They are called "Statutory Invention Registrations".

But they are not much used, probably because they don't create proprietary rights, only the right to prevent later inventors patenting a similar thing (not the same thing, be warned, as preventing risk of infringement of other rights).

Here is a starting point for further info: USPTO details for 35 USC 157

-wb-

Because NovaLogic have a patent on voxel technology as used by Comanche Maximum Overkill and Armored Fist. Patent no. 5,550,959 Since the 3D graphics pipeline is essentially in the public domain, it's much cheaper to hire an engineer to design a 3D polygon engine that to license the voxel engine.

Statutory Invention Registration already exists at the USPTO with fees somewhat less than for a full-fledged patent.

According to the FY2004 USPTO Fee Schedule it would cost $385 to file and then $665 at issuance assuming the patent issues. The filing and arguments could all be done pro se (i.e. without a lawyer) and the patent could be abandoned at the due date of the first issue fee. Grand total: $1050 per patent.

Defending against a lawsuit initiated by someone else would cost money no matter what, even if the OSS files for patents, but if they did it would give them more leverage. Defending your own patents is entirely optional.