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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"
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.
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...
Does any of the patent "reform" that people are proposing really help inventors like him?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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
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.
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:
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
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.
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?
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.
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?
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
this sounds a lot better than kicking in doors in trailor parks for $300 a pop.
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.
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...
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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'
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.