Online Greeting Cards Patented

Trailer Trash writes "According to this story at bizreport.com, Hallmark has given in and licensed Tumbleweed Communication Corp's patent for delivery of online documents with e-mail notification. Will the idiots at the patent office never stop? Jeff Smith of Tumbleweed claims to have been granted three patents last year."

Comments

So what you mean to say

[Safety Cap]

...is that someone can patent the process by which email can be generated which directs the recipient to click some link, which delivers a message on some dad-burn web page?

Yup, the whole world has gone insane. I'm going to go cry now.

Good!

[dangermouse]

I hope this patent stifles the shit out of the email-a-link industry.

Wait A second......

[rveno1]

Isn't Blue Mountain who started the greeting card email craze?

If they would patent spam

[Das Fink]

You know this might be the first _good_ stupid patent.

There are few things I dislike more than having some stupid piece of flash animation sent to me by email, or wore notification of said flash animation.
If this Patent stops webisites from getting my mom to send me anymore dancing hamsters, or singing chiefs I will be only too happy.

Next up I want someone to Patent SPAM

Re:If they would patent spam

[Ron Atkinson]

Naw, it still doesn't beat US Patent Number 5443036, "Method of exercising a cat".

Of course I don't mind Patent 5965809, "Method of bra size determination by direct measurement of the breast". I'm sure a lot of guys are trying to infringe on this one :)

OH YEAH!?

[Hatechall]

OK well tumbleweed put this in your ass and smoke it. I patented YOUR FACE! I not only patented the patenting process but I also patented the patent process and the patent for patenting patent is patent pending. Patenting the Patent pending patenting process is pathologically pathetic so ill leave that up to the RIAA. Permitting a patent pending processing pricky pears and a peter piper picking pickled patented pickled peppers patent patent patent patent patent......
If you are now desensitized to all meaning of that word you know how I feel after all those damn patending decisions. When will the madness end?
And not to be a flame, but is it really that important? What exactly is the real implications of this besides the obvious??

here's what to do.

[footility]

IAJAM (I Am Just A Monkey), but it just hit me that
I /must/ publish every thought I ever have to
protect myself from this slimy patent system we
have, and slimier patent applicants.

I suggest everyone else do the same. Document
everything you think, whether it seems significant
or not. Document the way you wipe your ass; the
way you lift food to your mouth; the way you pick
your nose. Document the method of transferring
thought to a transportable medium.

Fuck! I'm sick of the software /business/.

Ask and ye shall receive

[JohnA]

The company I helped found in 1995 started doing this in December 1995, with a launch in February 1996. It was an internet greeting card site, and included such AMAZING features as e-mail notification of a new card to a recipient, and an e-mail to the sender when the card was viewed. The Internet Archive has an archive of the page as it was in December 1996 at:

http://web.archive.org/web/19961226182315/http://w ww.cardclub.com/

Anyway, if anyone is challenged by this in court, let me know. I'm sure I can dig out all sorts of documentation that predates the filing dates of the patents in question.

Re:READ THE DAMN PATENT FOOLS

[Waffle Iron]

Hallmark wants their greeting cards (unlike those of Blue Mountain et. al.) to be SECURE.

Now, this is a significant innovation. I was sitting awake in bed all night worrying about a man-in-the-middle greeting card attack:

• Alice chooses a Hallmark condolence card, and emails it to Bob on an unsecure link.
• Mallory intercepts the condolence card message and substitutes a novelty insult card. Mallory forwards the message to Bob.
• Bob receives the card, and is tricked into believing that Alice is an insensitive bitch.
• Alice denies sending the card, but Bob doesn't believe her. Their friendship is never quite the same after this.

With a secure greeting card, this could never happen!

Just the facts ma'am...

[Thalia]

Let's try the intro to patent law again. The abstract is NOT the claim. The summary is also not the claim. In fact, there is a section, labelled "Claims" that are... well, the claims. The scope of the patent is defined solely by the language of the claims, as interpretted in light of any comments made during prosecution.

So, let's look at the broadest claim of the newest patent:

1. A document delivery system for delivering one or more documents between a sender and at least one recipient, said system comprising:

a server that temporarily stores said documents, wherein said server generates a URL for each intended recipient of said documents, the URL unique to each recipient, and sends each of the URLs to each respective intended recipient; and

a database which is associated with said server and which records log data describing which recipients accessed said documents;

wherein said server sends the log data to the sender of said documents.

What are the simple limitations in this claim that make it narrow enough to be uninteresting. Well, let's see:

1. The server must store "each of the documents" temporarily. So, dynamic URLs are pretty much out.

2. Log data must be "sent to the sender." This means that if you require the sender to log back on to your side (the traditional way of doing this) instead of sending them the log, you do not infringe this claim.

What do you want to bet that none of the prior art (from BlueMountain to standard email) meet all of these criteria? And this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that likely those limitations were discussed during the prosecution of the patent. If you really want to analyze the scope of the claims -- if for example you want to invalidate the patent -- order a copy of the file wrapper from the patent office, which includes every scrap of communication between the PTO and the company. Once you've reviewed that, we can get a real discussion going.

If you actually look at the patents, and in particular 6,192,407, you will find that they cited a huge number of references, including most of the references that you have discussed. This strongly implies that the patent office actually took a look at this patent, before allowing it. Now, whether patents should be permitted at all or not is a different discussion. But assuming that no prior art technology, articles, or patents were referenced is rather silly, when the patent is available for review.

I will agree that this claim is too broad in my (not-a-legal) opinion. However, it is not nearly as broad as /. seems to imply.

So... for future reference, read the bloody patent claims (not just the abstract) before starting to bitch.

Thank you,

Thalia

Please go to BountyQuest

[KjetilK]

Great stuff!

I think I have been infringing on this patent myself since 1995 :-), as I started telling my friends at that time: "don't send me heavy documents in the e-mail, dump it on the web with my name on, and send me the URL". This patent quite simply covers things that the web was specifically made for. But that isn't publicly available information so...

Make sure you to go to BountyQuest every now and than to check if a bounty is posted, so that these patents can be killed once and for all.

Hm, come to think of it, there should be a similar site that organizes prior art claims and challenge patents on the basis of it... Anybody know about anything like that?