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Tariq.Hafiz@uspto.gov (703-305-9643)

Don't forget, I have a patent on working for exchange of money, goods or services.

> What sort of imbeciles is the patent office hiring these days?

Look at this and laugh, or weep, or both.

The link is from this article by James Gleick (of "Genius" fame) which has been discussed on Slashdot two years ago.

The statement was that we Slashdotters don't necessarily understand as much as the patent office. Apparently, they're not reading for comprehension when they approve patents...

And where exactly do you find these additional fees?

Actually the patent is more specific than just 'online job listings'. The innovation that the patent claims deals with connecting the applicant resume database to the employer joblistings database.

I'm not familiar with CompuServe's system so I don't know if this actually changes anything.

Interesting... while looking up the patents on USPTO.GOV I noticed that they have a shopping cart. I wonder if they'll get sued or if they've already paid the extortion, er, umm, license fee?

the patent has an effective filing date of 1988!

Eh? What patents are you looking at? Either you are a troll or you didn't check them yourself:

Patent 5,576,951:
Inventors: Lockwood; Lawrence B. (5935 Folsom Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037)
Appl. No.: 210301
Filed: March 16, 1994
Patent date November 19, 1996.

Patent 6,289,319:
Inventors: Lockwood; Lawrence B. (5935 Folsom Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037)
Appl. No.: 347270
Filed: November 30, 1994,
Patent date September 11, 2001.

Where did you get the 1988? I am wondering if you are referring to the parent case text with abandoned applications that were referenced there? If so, the dates go back to 1984 and 1986. However, I am not aware of the rule that prior art has to pre-date any of the abandoned patent applications!

the patent has an effective filing date of 1988!

Eh? What patents are you looking at? Either you are a troll or you didn't check them yourself:

Patent 5,576,951:
Inventors: Lockwood; Lawrence B. (5935 Folsom Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037)
Appl. No.: 210301
Filed: March 16, 1994
Patent date November 19, 1996.

Patent 6,289,319:
Inventors: Lockwood; Lawrence B. (5935 Folsom Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037)
Appl. No.: 347270
Filed: November 30, 1994,
Patent date September 11, 2001.

Where did you get the 1988? I am wondering if you are referring to the parent case text with abandoned applications that were referenced there? If so, the dates go back to 1984 and 1986. However, I am not aware of the rule that prior art has to pre-date any of the abandoned patent applications!

So let the users frantically taking notes charge the batteries for them (I wonder if I should file a follow-up patent to use the USB mouse movements to charge the USB bus). Of course Compaq (now HP) owns this patent, so it looks like you will have to change vendors for you laptops.

(mod -1 Troll)

This is an important patent. We really need this one:

Method of swinging on a swing

Abstract
A method of swing on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.

Full Patent here

businesses were doing web sales for a few years before these yokels said "hey that sales system is not patented..."

Even the article states:

DeBrand, literally a mom-and-pop shop in Fort Wayne, Ind., has been selling its homemade chocolates over the Web "practically from the beginning, probably seven, maybe eight years...

and several paragraphs later:

The patents PanIP bases its lawsuits on were granted-the first in 1996...

This makes no sense. The shop has been selling stuff online since 1994-95. USPTO, with its head buried in the dumpster, approves and hands the patent to PanIP in 1996 on the obvious prior art stuff that had been going on by thousands of companies/individuals for years before. PanIP turns around and sues small companies that can't afford to defend against patent infringement and would probably rather pay $5k.

Note the following:

1. To PanIP: the company that you are suing has prior art to your patent if your accusation is correct that they are infringing in the first place. They have been in business longer and actually *doing* what you patented couple of years later.

2. I hope the judge sees (a) the obviousness and numerous prior art of the patents, (b) the ill intent of PanIP, LLC, (c) the frivolous and wrongful lawsuit brought by PanIP, and dismisses the lawsuit, awards legal expenses plus punitive damanges to the defendants, and orders to close down PanIP, LLC, put all its patents in public domain, and orders its founders/owners and laywers to spend 3 months in community service and 9 months living with GNU/RMS at their own expense!

3. USPTO will approve any patent claim that contains the word "apparatus". It seems like this is one of the qualifying criteria for approval. I can probably get an approval for a patent for an "apparatus that hammers the nails in the wood", or an "apparatus that can roll in a circular motion on any surface". Hey! why not - check out the infamous method of swinging on a swing granted on April9, 2002?

4. This has got to stop! Write to your local corporate representatives in DC and tell them this is devastating for local small and medium size business!

5. USPTO database and website should be turned into a comedy and satire website and public entertainment source (Ok... done already), but remove most of their entries' legal implications. On a side note, when you are bored and have nothing to do try searching patents on your favorite activity. How about a tub for bathing granted on June 25, 2002 solely from the drawings?

businesses were doing web sales for a few years before these yokels said "hey that sales system is not patented..."

Even the article states:

DeBrand, literally a mom-and-pop shop in Fort Wayne, Ind., has been selling its homemade chocolates over the Web "practically from the beginning, probably seven, maybe eight years...

and several paragraphs later:

The patents PanIP bases its lawsuits on were granted-the first in 1996...

This makes no sense. The shop has been selling stuff online since 1994-95. USPTO, with its head buried in the dumpster, approves and hands the patent to PanIP in 1996 on the obvious prior art stuff that had been going on by thousands of companies/individuals for years before. PanIP turns around and sues small companies that can't afford to defend against patent infringement and would probably rather pay $5k.

Note the following:

1. To PanIP: the company that you are suing has prior art to your patent if your accusation is correct that they are infringing in the first place. They have been in business longer and actually *doing* what you patented couple of years later.

2. I hope the judge sees (a) the obviousness and numerous prior art of the patents, (b) the ill intent of PanIP, LLC, (c) the frivolous and wrongful lawsuit brought by PanIP, and dismisses the lawsuit, awards legal expenses plus punitive damanges to the defendants, and orders to close down PanIP, LLC, put all its patents in public domain, and orders its founders/owners and laywers to spend 3 months in community service and 9 months living with GNU/RMS at their own expense!

3. USPTO will approve any patent claim that contains the word "apparatus". It seems like this is one of the qualifying criteria for approval. I can probably get an approval for a patent for an "apparatus that hammers the nails in the wood", or an "apparatus that can roll in a circular motion on any surface". Hey! why not - check out the infamous method of swinging on a swing granted on April9, 2002?

4. This has got to stop! Write to your local corporate representatives in DC and tell them this is devastating for local small and medium size business!

5. USPTO database and website should be turned into a comedy and satire website and public entertainment source (Ok... done already), but remove most of their entries' legal implications. On a side note, when you are bored and have nothing to do try searching patents on your favorite activity. How about a tub for bathing granted on June 25, 2002 solely from the drawings?

Sorry. The same guy patented computerized vending machines too, back in 1986...

It goes to the original link.

This, however, seems to be clearly a patent on a gene, according to the claims section. It appears to be related to the patent linked originally.

It's a bit hard to tell what patents are related in what way, aside from the references section. Either way, it reads like Myriad's patenting general testing procedures, results, and genes, trying to gain a monopoly on breast cancer research.

It's worth noting the "Assignees" on both patents. If I understand correctly, "assignees" are the entities that actually own the patent, usually the organizations the inventors work for and have likely signed contracts with automatically assigning all products of their work:

Assignee: Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Salt Lake City, UT); University of Utah Research Foundation (Salt Lake City, UT); The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health (Washington, DC)

So it appears Myriad isn't the only owner of the patent, but perhaps the University of Utah has transferred their control to Myriad, and is it possible for the USA to hold patents, since it also gives them out through another body?

An excerpt from the patent:

What is claimed is:

1. An isolated DNA comprising an altered BRCA1 DNA having at least one of the alterations set forth in Tables 12A, 14, 18 or 19 with the proviso that the alteration is not a deletion of four nucleotides corresponding to base numbers 4184-4187 in SEQ. ID. NO:1.

Genes are patentable because when present in "isolated" form they are novel under the law, and they are non-obvious because one cannot predict their structure a priori. You or I may not like it, but that is the law in the U.S.

Genes are patentable because when present in "isolated" form they are novel under the law, and they are non-obvious because one cannot predict their structure a priori. You or I may not like it, but that is the law in the U.S.

You can view it here.

It sounds like it patents both a method and a gene... but being that I no nothing about modern genetics, I can even being to analyze if the more important part of the patents is a novel method, or just a bunch of chemical sequences (which are listed).

Well, you decide if it's a lot or a little. It sort of depends in the size of your wallet.

That is incorrect. When two parties apply for a patent on the same patentable invention, _within one year of one another_, then the Patent Office, either on its own or by prompting by either or both parties, will declare an "Interference" proceeding to determine which party was the first to invent. The Interference is adjudicated through an administrative process at the Patent Office Board of Appeals and Interferences. The "first filer" is designated the "senior party" in the proceeding, on account of having the earlier filing date, and is entitled to certain presumptions (e.g., first to invent). But the proceeding gathers evidence (witnessed documents, oral testimony, and such) to determine the actual first inventor. Prior art is, at best, only one aspect of the proceedings, and usually not introduced, as what is prior art to one applicant is likely prior art to the other.

The term patent pending has no legal property rights associated with it. It is usually used as a marketing ploy. You file a patent application of dubious merit for the "abdominiser", then claim patent pending on it. You then have a couple of years to sell your latest and greatest invention before the patent application is finally rejected.

For the curious, here is the drawing from the patent.

It's not like PopSci pulled the design from their article out of their ass, they just got the Switchblade project confused with the Bird of Prey.

Something you can think of off the top of your head just after a conference really ought not to be patentable. It's a weakness of the system if it is.

Abusing the patent system by obtaining ridiculous patents is one way of demonstrating how broken the system really is. My all-time favorite is Method of Swinging on a Swing I laughed so hard when I read it that I cried!

Now Dean is going to scoot round and slap down this; the patent on Lego.

Not so. See the patent law: 35 U.S.C. 271:

whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States, or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.

TESS expires URLs at the end of a user's session. Here's a permane nt link to the TETRIS trademark registration record.

Unless they got permission from The Tetris Company LLC to use the TETRIS mark, this mod may infringe on Elorg's registered trademark on TETRIS for video game software.

• Previous discussion of The Tetris Company's activities
• Discussion showing that TTC owns only the exclusive right to the name "TETRIS" and not to falling tetraminoes

Quote: A federal appeals panel has ruled that the operator of Bargainbeanies.com is not violating the trademark of Beanie Babies creator Ty by offering used dolls through the Web address. The case is significant because it supports the ability of second-hand resellers to market and hawk their wares over the Internet without running afoul of trademark laws.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961090.html?tag=cd_m h

Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with five trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). This could be any acronym or initialism - including the famous International Trade Centre (ITC) or International Monetary Fund (IMF).

You can legally use any word, words or initials to start a new business without registering a trademark - providing you are not passing off, of course. Take for example the word 'apple'. It is legally used by thousands of businesses - large and small all over the world. Indeed, it is impossible that they all register themselves as trademarks - they are bound to conflict with many others, being confusingly similar. In my local phone book alone, there are at least five using this word - two garages (seems not connected), a car centre, fruit growers and a decorating firm.

The authorities hide the simple solution to this conflict. From correspondence with them and their response, I believe them corrupt. Why? For a start, trademark holders do not own the vast majority of domains - it is obvious that something is needed to replace the registered trademark symbol - a new TLD of .reg would do that. This is for the same reasons, primarily to advise people that the mark is legally registered and protected by law. It is indisputable fact that the answer to domain and trademark problems was self-evident and is easier to use than the telephone. Honest lawyers have ratified the solution.

To see major findings please visit WIPO.org.uk - not associated with UN WIPO.org. Although I use the initials WIPO, it is obvious to even the 'crooks' in UN WIPO that this site not associated with them. Same as is obvious to those at AOL that pengaol.org is not associated with them.

Anyone who reads the actual patent can clearly see that it is a simple programming algorithm. Not that patents can't be applied on simple algorithms, but this algorithm in particular is just a common sense everyday occurance simulated on a computer. It's obvious that prior art has existed as long as the domestic bathroom has existed (and maybe even since people lined up for a tree). It's good that aiken_d doesn't work at the patent office, because he/she would not have seen the flaw in this patent either. Maybe the patent office needs better screening measures for employees.

I agree with this poster's views on the patent system, and that "broken" is an overkill word as quoted by the author of the CNet news story.

The patent system is broken, and the fact that they issued 187,882 patents in a single year is itself evidence of that. Patents are essentially like world records; there is no way so many new and nonobvious creations can be produced in a year.

The USPTO's procedure is to give the benefit of the doubt to the would-be patentee, and then let the courts sort it afterwards if its validity is questioned. This is based on their apparent philosophy that to mistakenly NOT grant a patent that has validity is more harmful than granting an invalid patent, so they prefer to err on the side of the patent applicant.

But reality works the other way. It is more harmful to grant a bad patent than to deny a good patent application. Denying a patent does not necessarily mean the product will not be produced. The rejected patentee can still go ahead and create the product, and the rest of the world is also free to create the product, although they would not have the benefit on the monopoly. On the other hand, granting a patent that should not have been granted prevents or hinders everybody else from producing it (and derivative products) even though they could have thought of it on their own. In addition, sometimes the patentee does not even produce any working models of the product, so the effect is that the patent has caused the product not to be produced at all. Caution should be exercised in favor of the rest of the world, not the patent applicant.

There should be a penalty for submitting a patent that gets rejected on the basis of prior art. If the fine is kept by the USPTO, they will have plenty incentive to search properly for prior art, and the applicants will also have added incentive to search for it. If the patent is actually granted and the applicant uses the patent to extract license fees, and prior art is discovered afterwards, the penalty should be based on the license fees which the patentee has extracted.

Sounds brutal, but by making a patent application you are making an extremely strong claim against the rest of the human race -- that none of the other 6 billion people has done what you have done -- and attempting to put a restriction on their behavior, that you better be damn well sure that your creation is so brilliant that nobody else has done it before. One of the main reason why the USPTO has so little time to review patents is the high volume of trivial patent applications. If you aren't just about 100% sure that no prior art exists, get out of the way and keep the system open for those who do have actual legitimate inventions.

To help enforce the nonobviousness aspect of it, when a patent application is submitted there should be a short description, of maybe 50 words or less that summarizes what the supposed invention does, with care taken not to reveal any of the claims or how it is actually done. Then that summary should be published, after which there is a set time period of maybe a month or two during which the public is allowed to submit documentation or even a working product that does the same thing. If somebody else can come up with a solution in a few weeks based on such a short description, it does not meet the novel and nonobvious criteria. If any the submitted documents or products are substantially similar to the patent application, the patent must be rejected. Some things would only need a short phrase like "online auction" or "one click shopping" or "swinging on a swing" for somebody else to come up with a solution in a few days or even hours. ("Substantially similar" can be defined as whether the submission would be likely to be guilty of patent infringement if the patent were actually granted and the submission created afterwards, and there can be a nominal fee for such submissions to discourage frivilous challenge submissions, if the volume is too high.)

SUMMARY

A need therefore exists for an apparatus, system, and method for providing reservations for restroom use in places such as on an airplane, a passenger train or boat where safety concerns exist.

Isn't this situation called "I can't wait any longer, I have to go now"??? And the apparatus in question would be to just stand-up and queue for the bathroom use?

And, from the USPTO itself: US 5794003 and US 5560028

And, for future reference: search the USPTO

And, from the USPTO itself: US 5794003 and US 5560028

And, for future reference: search the USPTO

And, from the USPTO itself: US 5794003 and US 5560028

And, for future reference: search the USPTO

Patents: Limited term, no extension, and it makes "trade secrets" a matter of the public record after 20 (or so) years.

Document everything. Mail it to yourself. The postmark is sufficient proof of the date.

That's a complete myth. Just think about how easy it would be to mail yourself an unsealed envelope and place your documents in later.

From http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/066sidebar.ht ml :

But don't mail your idea to yourself hoping that the postmark will prove the date you came up with the idea. This oft-tried strategy is filled with legal holes. Instead, file a $10 USPTO disclosure document (see www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/disdo.html).

From http://www.bpmlegal.com/patqa.html#10 :

Can I protect myself by sealing a description of my invention in an envelope and mailing it to myself?
The mythical "postmark patent" offers no protection whatsoever. Having someone sign your written description as a witness would accomplish the same thing - documenting your date of conception of the idea. You might find our Invention Disclosure Form to be helpful in preparing a detailed written description. It doesn't provide any protection, either, but it will help you get your thoughts in order when you contact a patent attorney (our firm, we hope), and you'll save the 37 cents it would cost to mail it to yourself.

There is also the new Provisional Patent application, which gives you a year to apply for a real patent. Ask a patent lawyer about this as well though, it is a new area of law in the US.

Establish your date of protection by filing a provisional patent application with the USPTO. This application carries with it an $80 filing fee and most attorneys will do the paperwork for less than $300. The paperwork required is very straightfoward (a one page application) so you can actually do it yourself if you want. Nevertheless, the important thing to do is establish a legal date of protection so you can weigh your options over time.

The provisional patent is granted by the USPTO without investigating the claims your application documentation makes. In fact, the documentation you file with the USPTO does not have to make any claims what so ever (nor does it have to be in any special format). It is purely a dump of what your invention does and how it does it. The two requirements are:

1. You must file a real patent application within a year otherwise you lose the date of invention established by filing the provisional.

2. Your real patent application must derive atleast one claim from the documentation filed with the provisional.

The provisionals are not made public so you can avoid anyone else sniffing around what you are doing until you get the real application prepared if that makes you feel better :).

You can get more information at the USPTO website. Look here for information on provisional applications.

Establish your date of protection by filing a provisional patent application with the USPTO. This application carries with it an $80 filing fee and most attorneys will do the paperwork for less than $300. The paperwork required is very straightfoward (a one page application) so you can actually do it yourself if you want. Nevertheless, the important thing to do is establish a legal date of protection so you can weigh your options over time.

The provisional patent is granted by the USPTO without investigating the claims your application documentation makes. In fact, the documentation you file with the USPTO does not have to make any claims what so ever (nor does it have to be in any special format). It is purely a dump of what your invention does and how it does it. The two requirements are:

1. You must file a real patent application within a year otherwise you lose the date of invention established by filing the provisional.

2. Your real patent application must derive atleast one claim from the documentation filed with the provisional.

The provisionals are not made public so you can avoid anyone else sniffing around what you are doing until you get the real application prepared if that makes you feel better :).

You can get more information at the USPTO website. Look here for information on provisional applications.

Actually, the first program to use gestures is Pointix in 1996. The method was patented in 1994, see the link right here. Pointix was an excellent program, and believe it or not, it still works today, provided you can find a copy. I love it. Of course, they called 'em Glicks instead of Gestures.

There are lots of fonts in this world, and SOMEONE who uses Linux could have designed a 'nice' one.

Then what is an office suite supposed to do when somebody sends you a .doc file that uses Helvetica and Times Roman?

The real reason fonts look shitty is because the font HANDLING is bad.

The good font HANDLING is patented. Without the hinting methods in Apple's patent, the FreeType software can't legibly render TrueType outline fonts at the small point sizes used for screen display. That is, unless FreeType 2's auto-hinter has improved dramatically since I last saw it.

Damn. U.S. Patent 5,664,080 is a patent on the dithering that paint programs have been doing for as long as I can remember. The first claim covers reserving some entries for the GUI, finding a set of colors that best represent the original image, and dithering the image using a repeating halftone pattern. Most paint programs that I have used use this algorithm.

Because otherwise Kodak's business would suck. With this magical message, they can make use of this (System and method for generating a universal palette) (and the other 13696 Kodak patents ?

Because otherwise Kodak's business would suck. With this magical message, they can make use of this (System and method for generating a universal palette) (and the other 13696 Kodak patents ?

IOW, Woolston is claiming priority all the way back to the original April 26, 1995 filing date. If that priority claim holds up, then there is no additional prior art against the second patent that is not also prior art against the first.

Pixel pitch and dots per inch are different measures, camera pixels are used like display pixels; that is 100dpi monitor looks great, and a camera that can fill that 100dpi monitor 1:1 will also look great, both on screen and in a continuous tone print.

100 dpi binary printers would look pretty horrible. Most inkjet printers and most laser printers are binary, some are continuous tone to various degrees. The easy way to think about it is that each pixel on screen (typically) shows 8 bits of information, whereas each "dot" from a binary printer shows 1 bit (or 24bits per pixel vs. 3 bits per dot since each dot can be C/M/Y (black doesn't really add in this analysis, it's used to replace equal values of CMY which look grey, but should theoretically be black). A 400 dpi continuous tone laser printer makes vastly better looking prints than a 2400 dpi binary color laser printer.

Screen printing combines groups of dots into patterns called rosettes (because of the way they look, except random screening which looks smooth) with various complicated mathematical functions starting with what's known as a screen frequency. The screen frequency is far less than the resolution of the printer: typically a 2400dpi linotype machine can produce a 150lpi screen (but milage varies). Roughly you have a 150 pixel per inch printed color image (that's about what National Geographic uses, for example). One can trade off screen frequency (spatial resolution) for the screen detail (color resolution) in a fashion analogous to having to set a lower bit depth to get a larger frame buffer in a memory limited display card.

So if you want a good continuous tone print, 150 pixels per inch is a good number, meaning roughly 1500x1200 pixels for that 8x10... but wait! It ain't so simple.

The math to construct the screen craps out if the screen frequency is the same as the pixel density, it needs to be far more. The conventional wisdom is to use a pixel pitch between 1.33 and 1.5x higher than the screen frequency, or 3k X 2.4k for the 8x10 print to come out nice and sharp...

BUT that's not all - that's right there's more! Digital cameras (and consumer camcorders) have one detector pixel per output pixel (at best). But each detector pixel is EITHER R, G, or B (maybe a Y thrown in on some). That means that even the best digital camera (except the Foveon) is interpolating data at the very least in the color space, and depending on the image this can be painfully obvious. To eliminate the artifacts thus introduced, one must frequently downsample the image. If the RGB (or RGBY) pattern is approximately 2x2 (it's not usually, but close enough) this requires a 2x downsample to clean up the image.

So that means if you want a print that's (as far as spatial resolution goes) equivalent to ASA 64 Ektachrome shot in a really good camera and printed out at 8x10, you'd need roughly 6k x 5k starting pixels (the ektachrome has about 8k equivalent pixels, though that's debatable: it's definitely more than 4k and almost certainly less than 16k equivalent, the MTF of film decays gracefully without aliasing).

It's still not quite that simple because of the response curve of film vs. the response curve of solid state detectors. Silicon responds almost linearly from the first photo-electron until the detector well is filled to saturation - quite unlike the human eye. Whereas chemical film is more stoichiometric, and responds gradually to increasing light, with increasing response around the optimal reaction rate, and then slowly decreasing to a soft saturation. The result is that details are captured in the shadows, the properly exposed section has good contrast, and there are details captured in the highlights. With digital photography the shadows are filled with electron noise and the highlights are blown out.

So not only do you really want about a 6k+ camera to get good prints, you want it to capture at least 30 bits per pixel. The Kodak captures 36 bits per pixel, 4.6k pixels across, which (remember there's a trade off between color fidelity and spatial fidelity) means that it should print a very nice 8x10, to all but the most arbitrarily anal, as good as any 35mm film.

I just did a quick search on the USPTO and there are indeed a patent listed for "Woolston" (who was named as the inventor in the article). For those interested, the page is
Patent 5,845,265 - Consigment Nodes. It was filed back in 1995. I haven't looked at the claims etc.

While doing the search, I noticed some other auction patents, such as one titled "Distributed Live Auction" that is assigned to Amazon.

And exactly how would all this have prevented the sideways swinging patent #6368227? How much expertise and certification to you need to spot the prior art in THAT one?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ft00&s1=PacketShaper&OS=Pack etShaper&RS=PacketShaper