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BountyQuest Announces First Winners for Prior Art
tessd writes "BountyQuest has been bragging for a few days that it was going to announce some winners -- looks like it wasn't kidding. Four winners -- $10k each -- with prior art that could bust patents held by Cisco, Walker Digital, InTouch and Oracle. Them's some big names. Check out the guy from Oregon who won $10k because he held onto an out-of-print copy of Snow Country magazine"
I am only asking the questions. Do patents really protect the small guy. The big monopolies have huge legal budgets. How could a small guy enforce his patent. Just because you have one does not mean your idea is protected. Lots of people have thought of great ideas, only to have them solen because someone patentened part/whole of the idea.
-Angreal
You do have a valid point. I am just wondering if their are differing opinions on the subject.
the ownership of rdb is not completely irrelevant. as the original publisher, rdb has the right to later apply for a patent on the material they published. and oracle, as the owner of the company, would presumably have a right to do so "on their behalf".
if i publish something new today, and five other people publish the same thing two weeks from now, i can still apply for the patent six months from now, even though other people have already published 'prior art'.
in this case however, i would expect this to be a non-issue. the time window to do such a thing is reasnbly short (i believe a year or so) and the prior art in question was published in 1991. oracle, whether they owned rdb or not, did not file for the patent until 1998
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I think this is a bad idea, at least as it's clothed now. I think that a lot more thought is going to have to go into it. Certainly, the fine should not be equal to the royalties. The fine should be equal to the legal costs spent invalidating the patent, plus a percentage of the royalties. You can't ask for it all back, really. If you really deserved it, you'd have developed it yourself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Those guys aren't offering bounties on the Internet. But BailJumpers.Net is.
I very much suggest that in some fields, the USPTO examiners certainly do know more about technology than the slashdot readership.
If you'd like a suggested experiment, find someone who actually knows something about the technology behind biotech. (A bona fide molecular biologist would be a good choice.) Ask them to read /. comments on a biotech story, and tell you what they think. Even many of the comments upmoderated as "Informative" are full of misinformation.
Too often, moderators see a post that looks like it's full of facts and upmoderate it as informative, without doing the least bit of checking to see whether the facts are accurate or not. Since computers are not my field of expertise, I cannot gauge how often this occurs in computer tech articles, but I know enough not to accept anything printed in a /. comment as gospel truth without any outside confirmation, even if it's moderated up to (5, Informative).
Im pretty confident in my understanding of Computer Tech - maybe a USPTO examiner will have equal understanding, but you cannot suggest the total knowledge of that USPTO couldnt be 'aided' by the input of the "Slashdot" Readership...
I don't deny there are many intelligent, knowledgeable people here on /. If there weren't, I wouldn't be reading. But it seems to me the problem is separating the wheat from the chaff--it's a waste of the patent examiner's time to look through hundreds of things that are claimed to be prior art to find the two that actually are.
I don't have a good answer to this issue. If I did, I would propose it as a replacement to the current moderation system. I do know that the current moderation system does not adequately resolve this issue.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Of course, the PTO doesn't define 'obvious' the way you and I do, so they have thrown out any tests that a normal person would use to determine obviousness. Instead, they reason that if an idea or invention is truly obvious, it would have been mentioned in public already. To them, this means that the idea would have been published in a relevant professional journal or mentioned in a previous patent application. The problem with this logic is that professional journals don't generally accept obvious ideas for publication and most people who come up with obvious ideas don't file for patents on them. Here's an example: it seems obvious to me that I have to turn my PC on before I can use the compiler, but I challenge anyone to find a paper in a professional journal that discusses this as a method for improving programmer efficiency. The PTO, on the other hand, would reason that since this fact has never been published before, it must have been original and difficult to conceive.
Exactly. Prior art is what this site is about, and that's great.
But the biggest problem with patents today is the "obvious" factor. Apparently, patent examiners think everything is non-obvious. And there's no really good way to prove something was obvious years after the fact.
For example, web searching - sure, it's obvious. But how could you, in 2001, prove to a judge that the concept of a search engine was obvious whenever that patent was granted? Well, it was obvious as soon as the web existed, because archie was doing the a similar thing for FTP sites, and veronica was doing exactly the same thing for gopher sites.
Prior art is just the easiest way to get patents invalidated, even if they should never have been granted in the first place.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
USPTO should run a website - maybe even slashcode that requests prior art from the public.
The USPTO see's issuing a Patent as revenue. More patents == more Revenue. If you read the USPTO 'newsletter' you will see that they consider their 'growth' a sign of success... completely opposite as most of us think. If they would simply make the prior-art search in a more public manner they would be awarding MUCH fewer patents. But if you read their website/newsletter they believe that the USPTO is a business - and its products are patents.. they feel they are doing an increasingly good job.
If they ran all potential patents through a Slash powered site you'd see 1% of the patents you see today.
The "government takes your money at gunpoint" is a bit melodramatic, I admit, but fundamentally, it is true
I disagree - that's not what the government does. The government is more analagous to a armed landlord saying "you pay the rent or you move out. If you don't pay the rent and don't move out, I'll shoot you." which, I don't think can be said to be taking your money at gunpoint, because you have the choice to not pay and not get shot by choosing to leave.
The government does not force you to stay in a society and incur the rent (taxes) that said society requires of you for the priviledges you gain from being a part of the society. (Unless you've committed a crime or something. (Which can of course, include previous attempts to use the priviledges without paying for them)).
You benefit immensely from being a part of a society, and if that society decides that some of the costs of those benefits should be met by taxation, (and furthermore, as a part of that society you have the right to try to change that decision) I can't see how claims of duress can be made. It kind of sounds like people want to have their cake and eat it too. Which is quite natural I guess, but hardly a challenge to justice.
Anyway I just had an interesting idea for a way to discourage bad patents. What about imposing a fine on companies who patent things that are subsequently invalidated due to prior art (or any other reason)? The amount of the fine should be equal to the amount of royalties collected on the patent and should be paid to the person (or group) who provided the proof needed to invalidate the patent? I think something like this would go a long way to discouraging the market for stupid and unethical patent measures...
"What we find here is that people are deliberately trying to upset the applecart and punish these companies, and those who work for them, for doing what is natural, and trying to secure their futures."
The companies are sercuring their futures by destroying the futures of their competitors and open-source programming. Patents are inherently hostile.
"Why are they attacking the companies, when the companies have done nothing wrong?"
The companies in question have done plenty wrong. Nobody blames them for trying to secure their futures. These companies are laying minefields in legally uncharted waters. That is what they are being blamed for. This is not punishment. This is minesweeping.
"It is the patent system they should be attacking, and the government, through protest and through the ballot box."
Here I agree with you completely.
However, I don't see why anti-patent actions should be limited to the measures you suggest. The only legal way to fight the patent system within the patent system, is with prior art. If there was prior art, the company was wrong to apply for the patent, and the patent office was wrong to grant it.
I appreciate what you're saying, and I agree that the people working for the hostile companies should not be punished in any way. However, I don't see how this prior art competition is punishing those people. The offending patents are the target, not the people.
Does any of the patent "reform" that people are proposing really help inventors like him?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Just a couple questions. Why is implementing or expanding on someone else's idea/invention called stealing? Why do some people think it is somehow wrong?
Scientific innovation has been going on for a long time, with and without the use or even existance of patents on "intellectual property"...
Imagine cavemen patenting fire, or the "club-on-head" method of choosing a wife...
What if the Wright brothers had patented their flying machine?
Hell, the guys from the University of Pennsylvania who made the ENIAC tried to patent their idea of a "digital computer", and extract royalties from Honeywell, IBM, RAND, etc. back in the 1950's. The lawsuit was struck down in court, of course, partly because their patent was "too broad."
What if there was only one computer manufacturer today?
Do you really think you or I or the IT industry would be better off???
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
With VC money now thin on the ground, and investors looking for real business plan's will the Prior Art movement now stop this stupidity by forcing VC's to question the tactics of companies that seek to ringfence revenue streams through the courts?
The real issue was not that One Click Buying was obvious to anyone who understood cookies (Think of the "One Click" way you can order your slashboxes on the /. homepage, etc.), it was that it was *too* obvious, and most people went and invented more complex schemes that had better security and lower return rates. But, with the Patent Office, "too obvious" is just as good as "non-obvious" -- I know someone who has patented a device that should have been thought of 100 years ago - it's just a light bulb and pieces of glass and plastic. But that's fair game, and software isn't an exception.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, it's a nice dream...
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Lets see:
a. Company X pays BountyQuest money to put this up
b. BountyQuest advertises $10,000 for finding prior art
c. you get 10,000, bountyquest gets whats left(prob more than 10,000), and company X gets a chance at invalidating some patent.
So, whats wrong with some company noticing that lots of companys want certain patents somehow done away with, some people want the entire patent system reformed, and just connecting the two for a piece of the pie? Seems like a decent hting to me . . .
Stuff like that scares big corporations. They invest a lot of money securing and enforcing their patents. I sometimes wonder if the world be better of if we followed some more opensource principles. Where as all information is available for the good of society. I think most of slashdot readers would agree that the opensource movement is a step in that direction. People still make money on the ideas, but their enhancements and the evolution of an concept(idea) is not left to stagnat because of a stupid patent.
I wonder what of world would be like if their was not such thing as patents? Your thoughts.
-Angreal
Companies feeling their profit margins slipping see collecting royalties on their patents as a way to make up for lost revenue, particularly with the US economy slowing down.
Besides all the patent lawsuits coming up out of nowhere, companies will increasingly see patenting everything they can think of as valid strategy for staying afloat.
It's up to us to stop them from trampling our rights. We are not microserfs; We should be able to use technology without having to pay tribute to the corporate lords.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
I am absolutely speechless. Perhaps certain affiliations of individuals really can overcome corporate hegemony. Sure puts a dent in my cynicism. Thanks Mr. O'Reilly for a great idea, and a truly heartwarming experience. As for that Bezos guy, well, we're not finished with you yet... =) Prior art on 1-click has to be lurking around here somewhere. BTW here's my implementation of a technology that innovates way past 1-click, I call it 0-click shopping: <img href="buyme.jpg" onMouseOver="document.basket.submit(); ">
cat
The award for the database copy should be thrown out. Oracle bought Rdb (I cant remember if it was from digital or Compaq) a few years ago and with it got all of their technology
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure - Fortune Cookie from an long lunch
only big corporations can afford it now! It usually takes at least one exchange where the patent office sends the patent back, usually with trivial complaints (ignoring the major problems completely). To get this done in a reasonable amount of time, you need a decent lawyer, and when all is said and done, you've paid a minimum of $15,000 for the whole process. Now if someone infringes on your patent, you're looking at a $100,000+ lawsuit to enforce it.
patents haven't protected small inventors for many years; long before software patents were legalized by judicial fiat.
The actions of BountyQuest and Alan Emtage will, perhaps, interrupt the revenue flow from these spurious patents enough to get the government to realize just what kind of prostitutes they all are, and start working for the people again.
Do not touch -Willie
Doesn't the first key investor have a problem with putting a bounty on this kind of thing?
Probably not. A lot of people acknowledge that Amazon was the first to implement one click shopping, but that doesn't mean it isn't an obvious idea. Some day when man colonizes Mars, people will set up shops on Mars, and there will be a shop which becomes the first to sell peanut butter. Although this shop was the first to sell peanut butter on Mars, this should not be patentable because it is obvious, it's only that it was not feasable until recent technology. The same holds true of the Amazon one click patent, it was not until cookies came around that they could implement it, but that does not mean it was non obvious, it doesn't even mean other people didn't think of before time they did, it just means they were the first to finish it. It's not the possibility of prior art which makes the One click patent a bad one, it's the obviousness of it.
Needless to say, this is rather common in filing patents: grab more than you want, including possible cases that might infringe, as then you'll probably end up with at least as much as you wanted if not a bit more, as opposed to getting too little.
Now, of course, something like the Orcale database snapshot sounds like it's completely dead in the water, since the prior art completely nullifies the case.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
EverQuest what now?
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
They have the patent, so they do have the legal right (IANAL), at least for the time being. What they don't have is the moral right.
What they're doing doesn't exactly qualify as 'dishonest', either, since they are not (necessarily) aware that their patents might be invalid.
I'm not saying they did nothing wrong, but it's more akin to innocent misrepresentation than it is to fraud.
Whether intentionally or not, I will own your mind because its my Manifest Destiny to do so under the corporate system. In other words, even if i come up with an idea you had last year, I can lay claims to it, because in my opinion you are not entitled to your own thoughts as long as I have more money than you, and I don't give a fuck if you think your mind should be free or not. Giving you your rights wouldn't make my wallet any fatter. As long as its legal for me to strip you of your thoughts, thinking for myself would only be half-assed and should not be supported.
IMO, if you read the comments following his, its pretty obvious that he's wrong. Prior art does render it invalid if it shows that what the patent holds is Obvious.
If prior art is A+B+C and the Patent is A+B+C+D, then the patent is invalid in my opinion (to a certain degree I must admit.) Depending on the situation +D can mean absolutely nothing, could be a slight variation not worth patenting or can make the whole difference in the world (the missing link to the Ultimate answer about the meaning of life, the universe and Everything).
So I think looking at prior art IS very important, and yes, prior art might not always mean an invalid patent, but it could!
p.s. The answer is 42!
Speaking of deadwood, it shouldn't be too expensive to ship the I-don't-know-how-to-vote morons from Florida to California and burn them as fuel.
For example, Kahin sagely points out:
"In-house legal counsel advise against routine reading of issued patents because of the risk of treble damages for willful infringement."
In my opinion, such idiosyncracies in the U.S. Patent system only reinforce the probability of the U.S. government handing out specious monopolies.
I spoke to a former patent examiner a few weeks ago. He informed me that (based on his observations working for the USPTO) patent examiners typically spend about 7-8 hours examining individual patents, plus another 7-8 hours doing "other things." Additionally, he confirmed my suspicion that the USPTO rewards its examiners for approving as many patents as possible -- quantity over quality.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
Really strange thinking ! have thought about companies which are being sued ! it's the other face of the coin !
Funny... The whole cease-and-desist orders, and extorting money thing reminded me of government. What cracks me up is the mindset that a corporation doing this is bad, but the government taking your money (at gunpoint mind you), and giving it to people who don't make an honest living (e.g. Welfare) is good. Both are bad! I should point out that the problem isn't patents and corporations getting patents. Its the superflous patents that shouldn't have been granted in the first place, and the "looters" who think they can get away with trying to enforce those patents. Oh well, who is John Galt?
Excuse me? Did i read that correctly? Are you saying that it is wrong for us to "punish" these companies / people by taking away their "livelyhood"?
Please realize that with the proof of prior art, these same companies that you are defending have done exactly that to someone else. By filing a patent and getting the Good Old USPO to accept, these companies are building their "livelyhood" on somebody else's hard work and ideas and have effectively taken away their livelyhood.
Why should we not take away something that was never rightfully theirs? While I may not have the most positive views about patents, I do believe that they have uses. Using patents to steal somebody elses work is most definately not one of them. If prior art to a patent exists and is signifigant (it should be pretty much the same as the patent), then in my view that patent is a tool of theft and should be treated as such.
maybe I'm ranting, but that's my thoughts...
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
It's true, MIDI is very flexible and can be used to impliment many desired facilities. But as soon as it does that (i.e General MIDI) then it becomes something else, an extension. MIDI is a standard. Sending samples between samplers is nice (MIDI Sample Dump Standard), but plug your sampler into my DX7 and see if it can transfer samples. Actually thats a bad example, coz the DX7 screws around with MIDI, as Yamaha are prone to doing. This is especially true regarding this article which deals with the original MIDI standard. Hence, not dealing with audio. Directly ;-)
I'd just like to point out to those people intent on bringing up the Amazon One-Click patent, that One-Click was one of the bounties - posted 10.18.2000, expired 1.18.2001
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f prior art is A+B+C and the Patent is A+B+C+D, then the patent is invalid in my opinion (to a certain degree I must admit.
Were this true, most patents would be invalid. They are not. There are zillions of cases where patents meeting the criteria for "your opinion" have been held to be valid. In short, you don't seem to understand Section 103's requirements concerning unobviousness.
If so, you're a better (and richer) person than I am.
Patents are not an inherently bad idea. They exist to make it worth your while to do the research and create. The fact that patents are used for different reasons now is a good cause to revamp the system (as BountyQuest is doing), but not good enough cause to eliminate the system altogether.
IMHO, BountyQuest improves the patent system (by helping keep people honest), keeping it truer to its basically good function. If you throw out the patent system entirely, then you make R&D in many fields much less profitable, and thus much less R&D is likely to be done.
--The basis of all love is respect
This is true. Clearly bountyquest thinks so. All the prizewinners' prior art satisfied PRECISELY that criteria.
See http://www.bountyquest.com/arttutorial/arttutoria
Bountyquest only pays for prior art upon which the patent claims read completely. Earlier art which is read on by only some of the elements is ineligible.
Discussions on Slashdot about patent validity are mainly policy discussions by engineers. I view the constant harping on technicalities of specific legal challenges by some people merely as an attempt to sabotage such rational discussions of policy.
That's a shame. By ignoring seminal information and keeping yourself willfully ignorant of what you claim to be technicalities, you remain unable to discern what is relevant to the questions of policy and what is not. If the "technicalities" provide against that which you are criticizing, you will appear foolish when you try to make a change, and if the "technicalities" provide for loopholes, you will miss an opportunity to make real and useful change.
The actual parameters of the patent system are essential to these questions. If you don't understand them, you are out of the ball game, and will quickly find yourself marginalized and discounted.
Of course it isn't useful for purposes of demagoguery to confuse the issues with the facts -- its much easier just to wave your hands and whine. If I am being accused of calling irrelevant arguments irrelevant, I am guilty as charged. But there are good, strong arguments to be made, and the technical community (of which I am also a member) is best positioned to make them.
It would be a shame if those arguments were ignored because a few of us found it more politically expedient for us to remain in bliss.
How much research should an inventor do? Enough research. And if he/she doesn't find prior art, and somebody else does, well, tough luck. You don't get to have a patent on something somebody else has already invented. Sorry. (Yes, I know that's not the ways the corps do it, but that's the way it's supposed to work, dammit!)
Right now, inventors can only make money (like being able to live comfortably money) by selling their inventions to companies who will produce them. What's NOT right is corporations who hold patents on stupidly basic concepts and use them to beat one another about the head.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Although what you say sounds reasonable, there's something that doesn't work out: if there is prior art, then the alleged invention has already been invented! If you spend ten years in your isolated world inventing something revolutionary only to find out when you're done that it's been done before, then I'd be tempted to say that you didn't do your proper research (and here of course I'm not referring to research before filing a patent, but just plain research about what you're doing)!
Maan
This is just one form of protest.
Also, by over-turning bad patents you will allow more people to use the technology and thus more innovation.
The only patents that get busted are the ones that wouldn't have held up in court, at significantly less expense than taking them to court. The only livelihoods being damaged are those of lawyers. And that can't be causing all that much damage to society.
Of course, the Real Problem is that the Patent Office isn't doing its job, but that lot has pretty much come forward and said they see no reason that they should have to do their jobs, since they can just rubber stamp the patents and let the courts figure it out. Personally, I'd like to see the Patent Office fined for the cost of each bounty collected by this site, plus a fee for operating costs. Perhaps that would encourage them to reform their activities. One can dream.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't get it. A company is giving away money to people who find prior art for patents. How do they make money???
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Okay, I just realized there's no point arguing with someone who makes blanketing (and false) generalizations. Oh well.
This is great that a few people are made $10k for finding prior art. But, in my opinion, it still doesn't address the fundamental problem of the patent office trying to determine what is "obvious".
The AltaVista patent is a good example. Given a problem (i.e. how to search the web) AltaVista claims to have patented a solution. But, as has been mentioned before, it is also the "obvious" solution to any Software Engineer faced with the problem. Hopefully, this patent will be tossed out due to the prior art from the guys who wrote the "gopher" and "archie" search engines, but it should have ever been allowed to be a patent at all.
Remember, its more than just "original" that defines what can be granted a patent. The U.S. Patent Office seems to have forgotten this...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Griffis
That is the entire point of the Festo case cited in my posting earlier this week. Now, if you ask for too much, and amend a claim *AT ALL* to narrow it for reasons related to patentability, you lose ALL RIGHTS to equivalents for that element.
Festo is huge in this regard, and the former strategy of starting by claiming the world and negotiating downwards is now a quick ticket to a malpractice claim.
The prior art appears to satisfy the requirements of the bounty, and appears to be covered element-for-element by the broad claims of the patent.
Almost certainly competitors of the companies owning the patents they're trying to invalidate.
and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?
Probably too much.
I do this sort of thing for a living--I'm a patent searcher at a Fortune 500 company. I work with patent attorneys and do prior art searches--both for our own patent applications, and sometimes in the hopes of invalidating a competitor's patent.
I estimate the cost to my company for me to do a prior art search--including my own time, and the cost of database searching (we use proprietary, for-pay patent databases which have many features not available through the free-on-the-internet databases such as USPTO and Delphion)--is typically in the range of $2000-$4000.
Why some corporations are willing to pay in excess of $10000 for something that someone like me could do for much less, I don't know. OK, that's not quite true--I do know, in some cases. It might be well worthwhile for things like the guy who had the old product brochure--things like that are virtually impossible to search by conventional methods. But in some fields, for a lot of the "bounties" that are up, if prior art exists, it is almost certain to be either in patents or in the research literature, both of which can be searched quite thoroughly by someone like me.
(Why don't I go and look for prior art on these bounties then? Well, for those in my field, BountyQuest's client is probably a competitor of my company's, and doing so would violate my employment agreement. I might try it at some point for some of the bounties in other fields, but I wouldn't expect to be too successful since the field is not my area of expertise.)
Not that I'm complaining--if you can get a company to pay you $10000 for information that they should be able to get for under $5000, more power to you.
How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
Because if prior art exists and they're aware of it, they must report it in their patent application. If they don't, it's grounds for invalidating the patent. Normally, it's very difficult to prove that a company knew about any given piece of prior art, so invalidations on these grounds are rare. However, if the prior art had been delivered to them by an outside company (and presumably this information could be subpoenaed), then it could be proven.
Can I say for sure that companies still won't use the information for their own patent and deliberately fail to cite the prior art they know about? No. But they're taking a very big risk if they do.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
A few years later, somebody turns up with evidence of prior art that your patent search missed. Should you now be treated like some kind of thief? How long should you have continued the patent search? You say "enough" should be done, but what does that mean? Keep seaching until you find something?
It seems to me that once somebody has done a reasonable search for other pending patents, they should be allowed to go forward with their invention without fear of reprisal.
Software is another matter entirely... I don't think patents should apply to instruction language. That should be covered by copyright, exclusively. (IMHO, of course.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Of course, a rating of Redundant basically means 'we know' :)
The 'bots must think that the giver is cool....
What I really like is that they put a bounty on their own business methods patent -- and it's been closed (bounty paid)!http://www.bountyquest.com/bounties/displayB ounty.php?bountyName=1026
I just left the employ of Motorola, where I had a QUICC manual on my desk. If only I'd known it was worth $10,000...
"members of the PAN Network were a major force in the creation of the MIDI digital audio standard" Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Its about communication. S'got f'kall to do with audio.
Their "about" section is meaningless. All we know that is that they're a: a company, b: partly owned by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Besos. Of course we all know that Jeff Besos is responsible for one of the more ludicrous "business logic" patents.
If you look at their corporate identity, all they talk about is how they're trying to "Market Reform" the patent process. What does this mean?
It seems to me that
a: they're a for profit corporation.
b: they have clients.
c: these clients pay for their services.
My question is this: Who are their clients, and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?
How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
If we didn't have Patents, there would be no way of regulating someone elses invention. No one likes getting their ideas taken away from them. It's like that movie, Young Einstein, where he splits an atom to put bubbles into beer. That guy who runs the patent office steals his formula, which he was trying to patent. Then he uses his powers of rock and roll to save the day. Goodie. -Captain Nacho ------------ Stupid comments.
I'm nowhere near an expert in patent law, but it looks like these examples of prior art should be patent busters. After all, from my limited understanding, you can't patent something that has either been done before, or that has been 'released' to the public domain.
Eric Gearman
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Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
now, while it is true that allowing an application is useful in that you no longer have to deal with it, that doesn't really encourage examiners to allow everything they see.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Doesn't the first key investor have a problem with putting a bounty on this kind of thing?
Dancin Santa
Oracle bought Rdb from DEC in 1996. One would assume this also includes Rdb's snapshot technology.
Slashdot has had so many articles about patents and patent-law that I know this is a moot point, but I'll repeat it anyway.
Just because there is prior art does not mean that the patent will become invalidated.
Read this response by werdna to the article about Archie posted a few days ago, I think it's very clear on this point.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
...is that they're being challenged with their own IP. Oracle acquired RDB/VMS from Digital, so the prior art is (nowadays) their own.
You certainly CAN get a patent on a PCI slot with 12% green dye. It would be called a design patent. Furthermore, the USPTO doesn't make up the rules, congress does.
this sounds a lot better than kicking in doors in trailor parks for $300 a pop.
- the claims are a key part of the patent. the rest of the
disclosure is extremely important as supporting material, but the
claims form the structure of what is being patented. they initially
form a tree of ideas from which nodes can be deleted, pruning the
coverage into subgraphs (usually a forest) of the idea space.
- when it comes to software patents, there's no (business)
incentive to write narrow independent claims. your average patent
attorney seems to tell you, "write the claims as broadly as you
possibly can, making sure that your actual invention (the thing
you really understand to be your idea) is described in a dependent
claim somewhere." so if you think you're patenting a novel method of
toasting bread, you may wind up effectively patenting the concept of
toasting bread.
- if the USPTO lets it slide (which they often do not,
but sometimes they do), you totally win. the fact that there's prior
art only helps someone who's really willing to fight in court instead
of (1) settling or (2) licensing or (3) entering into a
cross-licensing agreement.
- if they do catch you in the application
process, you just rejig the application or file a continuation in a
way that preserves the original filing date - no harm, no foul.
i think this is what happened to these oracle guys - they have (and describe as an embodiment) a very specific method but they let the attorney talk them into independent claims that would be completely obvious to anyone using a system that supports snapshots.does this mean the patent is invalid? no, it means that some of the claims (and therefore some of the applicability of the patent coverage) can be challenged. since the specific method is entirely defensible as non-obvious, they have certainly protected their actual invention. it's just this ridiculous top-level claim that gets hosed.
does this happen to everyone? no. for example, most IBM patents i've seen have perfectly reasonable and specific claims. it's only when you have crappy, unethical patent counsel that things like this occur.
Charters used to be revoked all the time. If a corporation wasn't advancing a public interest it was disbanded. If the charter were for a specific time period, at the end of that period the corporation was disbanded. Today's system is not inevitable. Remember from history class when Congress established a national bank? It acted in a way against the public interest, the time came to renew it's charter, and the charter was not renewed. Corporations that exist indefinitely are relatively new. They cause as many problems as copyrights that are extended indefinitely.
Patents held by a company on a product it didn't create and used only to sue people - this doesn't advance any public interest (basis of a corporation's right to exist), doesn't promote the progress of science (basis for patent law). So how did it come to be accepted?
Corporations didn't used to be viewed as 'people'. The basis of this holding is one throw away line in a Supreme Court case from the 1800's. They didn't used to be allowed to be involved in politics before this.
We are now seeing the effects of immortal corporations holding perpetual copyrights that are allowed to use the money they've made from the system to ensure more protection for the system. This has really never been seen before. The people who allowed it to happen didn't really know what the results would be. We do now. They suck. The laws need to be changed.
Corporations don't have a right to make a profit. Corporations don't have rights. They're a legal fiction. No entity created through laws can have 'inalienable rights'. That is reserved for humans in our unique ability to act as moral agents. Corporations are usually legally forbidden to have any goal other than profit. Certainly doesn't sound like any kind of moral agent to me.
We aren't consumers. We are citizens. We live in a representative republic, and we can make any damn laws we want. We can change the system. But the system doesn't want to change because those profiting from it funnel money to those in power. Really, allowing corporations to become involved in politics is the only critical flaw that makes the whole structure unworkable. Campaign finance reform, and lobbying reform, are not usually seen as political causes dear to geeks - but I feel that nothing geeks care about will be addressed honestly until those issues are dealt with. Many of you are frustrated because you clearly see what is right and what is wrong. Guess what? So do most of the politicians voting for evil shit. They just don't care, they're looking for the money. Take away the money, and you'll restore their ability to make judgements on the actual issues.
when it comes to software patents, there's no (business) incentive to write narrow independent claims. your average patent attorney seems to tell you, "write the claims as broadly as you possibly can, making sure that your actual invention (the thing you really understand to be your idea) is described in a dependent claim somewhere." so if you think you're patenting a novel method of toasting bread, you may wind up effectively patenting the concept of toasting bread.
if the USPTO lets it slide (which they often do not, but sometimes they do), you totally win. the fact that there's prior art only helps someone who's really willing to fight in court instead of (1) settling or (2) licensing or (3) entering into a cross-licensing agreement.
if they do catch you in the application process, you just rejig the application or file a continuation in a way that preserves the original filing date - no harm, no foul.
While that used to work, it will no longer. I cannot emphasize enough how enormously, incredibly, utterly huge the Festo case is in this regard. Any strategy that began with a few broad claims that were amended to make hay is destined to yield a meaningless patent -- the doctrine of equivalents now has absolutely no application to any element that was the subject of an amendment related to patentability.
Having actually tried a number of these cases, I can tell you that when literal infringement is all that is on the table, patents are easily --often trivially-- engineered around; you simply substitute any known equivalent for something in the claim and you are out of court on Summary Judgment.
And, the neatest thing is this: Festo applies retroactively!!! All those cruddy patents with six-year prosecution histories are suddenly toothless.
Read the case. It will make you smile.
Well, I don't know how old your girlfriend or spouse is, but I believe your mom can counter with her own prior art that pre-dates your 1969 Playboy. And you'd better not tell your girlfriend or spouse that your prior art is better than hers.
No. You shouldn't be treated like a thief...thieves should get thrown in jail. You should lose your patent. You may still manufacture and sell your widget (unless you're REALLY stupid/irresponsible and are trying to sell something that somebody else has patented...) you simply lose the government granted monopoly on that particular widget.
The problem here is that the system is being abused by corporations. They DON'T do a reasonable search, because if they had, they'd find prior art. They go forward without fear of reprisal regardless of what they find in their "patent search". They don't CARE, since they can use influence/money/political pressure to move their patents through despite the "law". Remember..."law" is what you enforce on other people. When you're in power, you don't have to worry about such petty matters.
(or so they wish us to think...)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The fact of the matter is that these companies are doing something wrong. And the best way to fight the evils within the patent system is to showcase the companies and individuals who are exploiting those evils. Using the ballot box is not going to work. You have to go directly to the heart of the problem, which is the people who use the system incorrectly.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
If you just publish your idea, you don't get to sue anyone. You've got to apply for a patent, otherwise publishing (or going into production) just puts it into the public domain.
As for getting sued -- if you searched the existing patents properly, you'd know if someone already had a patent on it, and you wouldn't have gone into production unless (1) you are a thief, or (2) you think the patent is invalid. The one problem (at least in the US) is that you can't search the applications that are pending. So if someone got to the idea first and applied for a patent, and then you get the same idea and go into production before the patent office acted on the first patent, there is going to be a problem. You aren't liable for infringement before the patent issued, but once it is patented you do have to stop production or negotiate licensing, which might mean you are out of business. So I think at least part of patent applications need to be published...
Prior art only invalidates thge patent if the patent is for the prior art! It doesn't matter what your opinion is, your opinion isn't the law. If A+B+C is patented, you can most certainly patent A+B+C+D. There are specific sections of patent law that specify you can do just that! However, the person with the patent for A+C+B+D has no say in wether you use A+B+C.
Also, when a patent has been granted the USPTO has already decided that the idea was non-obvious, and the only way to get it invalidated is to show that exactly what is stated in the patent has already been done; I.E. The prior art must be exactly what the patent is for. (Or, in the case of a patent for A+B+C+D, proof of A+B+C+D+E would work too.)
Furthermore, most of the patents on this site are stupid anyway. There's one for a PCI/ISA riser card that's so specific that it's useless. It specifies that the card need be attached to the wall of the PC, so if you don't attach yours to the wall, you're all set! Some of the "rediculous" patents that people have aren't really that rediculous if you read them because they usually have one little specific condition that they were required to put in that makes it really easy to design around.
"I only read it for the articles"
This popular excuse of adolescents and adult males everywhere has long been a staple of the "Top 10 Things to Say When You Get Busted" (which also includes such favorites as "It wasn't me" and "I'm breaking it in for next season").
However, a new contender has arisen, recently coming to light after the sucessful BountyQuest hunts for prior art. In this patent office gone mad era, many analysts expect that in the near future, either the adult industry or the genetic industry will try to patent the breasts of female humans. However, be careful, you potential patenteers of perky postnatal pecks, for you must deal with a new generation of prior art purveyors.
In this increasing digital age where it is near impossible to accurately date something, the best prior art may come from those old Playboy and Penthouse magazines you have tucked away under the mattress. For if a challenger arrives, your copy of Playboy 1969 may be worth thousands!
So next time your mom/girlfriend/spouse busts your copy, don't reply with such an old-economy excuse that "I read it for the articles" - reply the dot com way "I'm saving it for prior art in case someone tries to patents boobs".
This was too stupid to be even funny.
Patents for which there is prior are are just plain invalid - they damage the overall economy, and it's the filer's own fault for not doing the reseach before filing.
God forbid we should try to prevent people from getting government-protected monopolies on the obvious! It will wreck the nation!
Sheesh.
The patent system will be effected. They are attacking the companies that took advantage of the weak system. By doing so they are forcing the patents to only be of value if the are actually for innovation. I applaud what they are doing and hope they keep it up.
-chaswell
If you can get decisive information that the patent you were going to apply for has prior art, it could save you a lot more than the $10k bounty.
If Mr. Bezos puts up $10k for some seemingly simple, obvious patent, and nobody can refute it or come up w/ prior art, he can feel pretty secure about going ahead with it, and saving court costs down the line...
---
Nothing wrong?!?! Excuse me, but they've patented something they had no right to. They've threatened people with lawsuits for 'infringement', when they themselves have either no right to make the claim, or are guilty of the same offense. There's nothing wrong with making an honest living ... threatening other people with cease-and-desist orders, and extorting money, when they have no legal right to do so, does not qualify as 'honest'
when it comes to software patents, there's no (business) incentive to write narrow independent claims. your average patent attorney seems to tell you, "write the claims as broadly as you possibly can, making sure that your actual invention (the thing you really understand to be your idea) is described in a dependent claim somewhere." so if you think you're patenting a novel method of toasting bread, you may wind up effectively patenting the concept of toasting bread.
if the USPTO lets it slide (which they often do not, but sometimes they do), you totally win. the fact that there's prior art only helps someone who's really willing to fight in court instead of (1) settling or (2) licensing or (3) entering into a cross-licensing agreement.
if they do catch you in the application process, you just rejig the application or file a continuation in a way that preserves the original filing date - no harm, no foul.
While that used to work, it will no longer. I cannot emphasize enough how enormously, incredibly, utterly huge the Festo case is in this regard. Any strategy that began with a few broad claims that were amended to make hay is destined to yield a meaningless patent -- the doctrine of equivalents now has absolutely no application to any element that was the subject of an amendment related to patentability.
Having actually tried a number of these cases, I can tell you that when literal infringement is all that is on the table, patents are easily --often trivially-- engineered around; you simply substitute any known equivalent for something in the claim and you are out of court on Summary Judgment.
And, the neatest thing is this: Festo applies retroactively!!! All those cruddy patents with six-year prosecution histories are suddenly toothless.
Read the case. It will make you smile.
BountyQuest agrees, Werdna agrees, and I agree completely: for legal challenge, that's the strongest evidence you can find. My point is that creating a strong legal argument isn't the purpose of a Slashdot discussion.
Of course they only pay for that kind of information; I didn't say anything to the contrary. BountyQuest tries to find prior art for legal purposes. Slashdot is not a court of law; we discuss policy.
The actual parameters of the patent system are essential to these questions. If you don't understand them, you are out of the ball game, and will quickly find yourself marginalized and discounted.
I understand the legal issues just fine. The question underlying discussions on Slashdot, however, is what the policy ought to be and whether current legal practice expresses those policies.
I believe that in this case there is ample prior art that ought to be relevant. Based on what I know, it also appears that such an argument would be difficult to make in court, precisely for the reasons you keep restating.
So, current legal practice is very relevant to the current discussion. The very fact that the definitions of prior art for patent purposes are, as you keep pointing out, so narrow and that they are likely in disagreement with the intuitions of actual practitioners is an indication that the law and legal practice need to change.
Patent law is not divine, it is created by humans for utilitarian purposes. We need to figure out whether it serves those purposes and fix it if it doesn't.
"Wouldn't it be somewhat easier to just burn some of the Californians." Yes, and that would reduce the electricity demand, also -- which is the only thing that will actually help, other than building new plants...
As for the Florida morons -- I don't think that people who forbade increasing production capacity, fixed the retail price, took restrictions off the wholesale price, and called this "deregulation" should be commenting negatively on the intelligence of others.
Only in the literal sense. Look at it this way - if a mugger says "Give me your money or I'll get a gun out of my car and shoot you", is that or is that not, for all intents and purposes "at gunpoint" (presuming, of course, he actually has a gun in his car)?
The "government takes your money at gunpoint" is a bit melodramatic, I admit, but fundamentally, it is true.
The government says "give me your money, or I'll send somebody with a gun over to take it from you, and throw you in jail and/or shoot you."...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
So, current legal practice is very relevant to the current discussion. The very fact that the definitions of prior art for patent purposes are, as you keep pointing out, so narrow and that they are likely in disagreement with the intuitions of actual practitioners is an indication that the law and legal practice need to change.
Your claim is that the law is at variance from the uninformed intuition of what is the law. So what? This is true, to some extent, about almost EVERY substantive area of law. While it might seem nice if lawyers were not necessary to give sound legal advice through the mine fields of various areas of the law, there doesn't exist a developed nation that has figured out quite how to do that.
With respect to your suggestion about patent law, even if I were to grant your proposition, I seriously doubt that arguing that patent law is "counterintuitive" to some lay audiences would ever yield meaningful, or perhaps even positive, change by policymakers, who are far more concerned with far more practical issues.
At any rate, you are making an argument different from the original subject of this thread, which was the suggestion that a patent owned by Altavista somehow "covered" Archie -- by reference to the legal questions of validity and infringement. The article and responses made assertions about the legal validity of patents, and I responded to clarify the finer points of law.
You didn't find it relevant or interesting, but many others did. I agree that on Slashdot, we are free to argue what the law should be -- and to raise and debate questions of policy. Right on! However, it is silly to argue about what is the law, and to criticize what is the law, without knowing what is the law.
At any rate, it is long past time for us to simply agree to disagree, at least for this thread. Perhaps we can engage once more on the next substantive question.
I don't doubt that an informed discussion of policy is important. So is an informed discussion of the law supposedly supporting that policy.
Only a small part of our taxes goes to social security. The tax money is spent on all kinds of things that are good, a lot of stuff that is intended to benefit only a select group (state, lobby, etc.) at the expense of everyone else, and of course welfare. Welfare started off as a good idea, but it has since grown way out of hand, and way too many people abuse it. We need to keep welfare, but cut out the abuse. Unfortunately, anyone who proposes cracking down on the abusers will be made to look like a cold-hearted ass, and get run out of office, long before he would have any chance to prove those people are abusing it.
Edward Burr
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
The fact remains that one of the best bets for having a patent invalidated is published prior art that is not already cited in the patent. That is exactly the prior art BountyQuest is looking for.
The article you refer to doesn't even make this point. Werdna argues that for prior art to be useful in a legal challenge it needs to be compared point-by-point against the claims. That, too, is missing the point in finding prior art in the first place. You need to identify potential prior art before you can do the point-by-point comparison. In addition to prior art, there are challenges based on "obviousness". They are a lot harder, but they, too, require identifying related work.
But discussions of prior art and practice doesn't just serve specific legal challenges, it also helps us with applying political pressure on the patent system. A system that grants patents on techniques that were published decades ago in textbooks, and that entangles users of such techniques in long legal battles, is broken, and the more examples we can find for that, the better.
Discussions on Slashdot about patent validity are mainly policy discussions by engineers. I view the constant harping on technicalities of specific legal challenges by some people merely as an attempt to sabotage such rational discussions of policy. The lawyers that challenge these patents in court presumably know what they are doing and don't need our advice.
It all ammounts to a massive PR campaign to make one of the worst villians of patent law look like one of our best heroes. (cough *Bezos* cough)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Attacking companies like a barbarian? I think not my friend. All they are saying is, "Tou are not the first to do this and therefore you cannot have a patent for it." This is the way the patent system is designed. I don't see anything wrong with this. Do you?