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Using the USPTO Against Itself
fidget42 writes: "This article in the LA Times tells of how a scientist went about using the patent office as a mechanism for trying to force a change in that office's rules. To quote from the article: 'Nearly 10 years ago, a friend called Stuart Newman with an intriguing challenge: Could he think up a new form of life that would be scientifically useful and possible to patent--yet so disturbing that the public would recoil?' Could the same be done with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) concerning software patents? I know some companies have used the rules of the USPTO to 'spoof' it, most notably Despair, Inc.'s trademarking of the frowney."
;-)
In NO way does Despair's trademark spoof the USPTO. It is a valid trademark for a valid company.
The fact that they applied for it and were granted it was SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). They then went on to joke about *patenting* the emoticon and charging people for every time it is used. This might have been the *spoof* part, but not the trademark itself. I wish that people would get this straight.
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
The real thing to ask, is can this be reverse engineered so that we can make the obese american public start running in whells all day?
Despair thought it would be funny to apply for a trademark of the :( smiley. Proving the utter stupidity of the system, it was granted. They had a gag page set up offering to sell one-use licenses for $5 a pop, but they got actual flame mail from *cough* certain high-caliber individuals *cough* who believed it to be true...
"A Method to Force the USPTO to Behave in a Dignified Manner" perhaps?
Would this "humouse" be an anthropomorphistic creature, like those featured here? Some people get off on furry humanoids...
For the biotechnology industry, the humouse case is serious business. Without strong patent protections, the industry says, investors will not risk money to develop new products. And Rifkin and Newman aim to narrow the scope of what elements of life can be patented.
I think with strong patent protections science can't develop well. Same in software development. If patent holders do not develop the product, no one can.
I'll go out on an unpopular limb and defend the frowny.
:( (tm) as their trademark. Unlike naming a game SimSuburbia*, there's no chance that anyone seeing a :( will mentally link it to another company or product. They may not know of Despair.com, but please - how many unheard-of trademarks are out there? For most people, the vast majority of them.
:( (tm) is a very distinct and very well fitting mark for the company.
Although it is a very common emoticon, it was completely neutral commercially. Despair claims the
(SimAnything is tm Maxis., IIRC.)
Look at their site.
... Now, those cease-and-desist letters are good satirical entertainment, but please realize that is a completely different issue. 8-]
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
The site www.uspto.gov is running Netscape-Enterprise/6.0 on HP-UX.
The US Patent Office doesn't run Leenux!!!
To arms, comrades! We must do our duty!
I would have been tempted to patent a non-human on the basis that "being non-human, it would be unprotected as a human under law and thus able to be exploited as a beast of burden or slave". And even then it might not be morally repugnant enough!
(Hmm, I think my anti-cynic meds are wearing off...)
It seems to me that what is needed is a new declaration on human rights vs technology. The current laws on patents, copyright etc. are being bent past their ability to cope with the new technologies. There are interpretations of judgments, taking into account opinions of what was originally intended by people for whom the current situation was unthinkable. Patches on patches on patches. It's a mess.
We need something new to work from.
Maybe we need to clone some of the thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment and have them draft something for us (that would probably make their cloning illegal).
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
The article is discussing what can be patented.
Can the USPTO give a patent on a human embryo? (whatever that entains).
Certainly they have allowed patents on:
- genes
- DNA (a person's DNA)
Is a person patentable?
Can someone's be "owned" by private hands?
And then an extention on that -- can life be patentable?
They were not until GE took a case to the supreme court on an oil eating bacterium (and won).
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
Could the same be done with the US Pantent and Trademark Office (USPTO) concerning software patents?
No, this case plays off the moral impication of patenting humans. There is very little morality associated with computer software.
Let's think this through for a second. To a non-scientist, making an organism that's part mouse, part human probably sounds like something out of a science-fiction nightmare. So they react with violent emotions, imagining something with a human head, intellect, and feelings, but a mouse body. "How *dare* they suggest something could be used for medical experimentation! The patent office *must* be changed!"
In reality, if they could even get it to work (human/mouse hybrid is a *far* cry from sheep/goat hybrid), a humouse would probably look and behave like a normal mouse. The only difference would be that some of its cells would be human cells. So before you get up in arms, think about the people that have had pig heart translants. They are humans that are not partially made of animal cells. But they don't make your heart leap in fear, do they?
I definitely agree that there should be limits on what can and can't be patented (as well as what should and shouldn't be attempted). But I don't think the humouse falls into this category. To make such a creature would take YEARS and YEARS of careful research and testing. Why shouldn't someone that figures out how to do it receive a patent? Remember, we're not talking about patenting a slave-person, here. We're talking about patenting a mouse who might have half of its cells of human origin.
The guy has a great point...that there are problems in the system. But seeing someone that *knows* how these things really work purposefully leading the public astray through incredible exaggeration just gets my goat.
4-star general in a one-man army.
Patent stem cell processes. There's allready many different people working on it, and I'm sure they're all ready to find patents wherever possible.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
It might be possible to get a patent on some silly peace of software (hyperlinks, databases), and then sue the USPTO for violating your patent.
Especially if they can make one with a mouse body and a tiny human head, preferably resembling Don Knots.
Don't they realize that they can't patent the Humouse? The creators of Stuart Little have prior works...
.derf
Governments (not just the U.S.) need to step up and ban patents on all DNA.
There are a few things I could think of that would make the absolute stupidity and danger of software patents obvious to the USPTO. But, I don't have the money to get them yet. Oh well. :P Maybe someday.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
She has cat dna mixed in with her human. She goes into heat. She's too sexy. She has a barcode on the back of her neck.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
A patent for a patent office.
Have the patent office approve it and then sue the patent office into oblivion for infringement.
Just visited Dispair.com and low and behold the Classic Frowny is free to license, for a limited time. No pushing, no shoving, there are plenty to go a round.
Patents such as #6,293,874 ("User-operated amusement apparatus for kicking the user's buttocks...a user-operated and controlled apparatus for self-infliction of repetitive blows to the user's buttocks by a plurality of elongated arms bearing flexible extensions that rotate under the user's control.") and #6,368,227 ("Method of swinging on a swing," discussed recently in Slashdot) certainly sound as if SOMEONE is trying to prove SOMETHING.
I'm strongly tempted to mail copies of these patents to my congressman with a letter saying, simply, "The patent office is broken. Fix it."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I tried to patent your Mom...but some many others had already come up in that one that they wouldn't let me.
Somebody should patent the "Patent Office!"
This would be even better than the Humouse.
I'd say that the underlying issues as far as patents are concerned are pretty much identical. The question is not: do we want Roundup(tm) resistent crops, humice or hyperlinks in the first place? Regardless of your stance towards them, chances are you'll answer that question differently depending on what the subject is. I for one am abhorred by the humouse idea, but I'd be equally abhorred if the humouse was in the public domain.
The real moral question is: do we want to allow individuals (or as the case may be, legal entities) controlling said creations based on patent law alone?
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
A mouse with one human gene to produce cheap insulin might be quite acceptable to the public. Frankly a goat that makes spider silk in its milk seems more twisted. But granting an application for a human with one mouse gene would be patently ridiculous. pun intended
Finally, the patent dispute is part of a political struggle to define the legal and moral status of the human embryo
In fact, he and his patent partner, technology critic Jeremy Rifkin, have deep moral objections to manipulating human life and oppose patenting any living organisms. They believe that federal law does not sufficiently limit scientific work with human embryos and human life, and their humouse is intended to change just that.
I know we all have different political/social philosophies, but being a 'liberal', I find this part most disturbing. What if this stupid humouse thing brings about more restrictions on stem-cell research and abortion? I figured a place like /. would be a bit more left-wing on these sort of issues.
Aren't they currently suing in ISP in the US over their claimed hyperlink patent ? If they win, or if the ISP relents and agrees to settle an out-of-court deal, this might make a wider range of people think again about the stupidity of software patents.
And don't just think it can't be changed because all the big tech companies love making money from patents. Just wait until loads of tin-pot little companies start screwing the big boys with some of the same ridiculous patents they've started using on others. Once they realise that they're just tying themselves up in stupid, expensive legal knots, they might decide that the whole idea was stupid in the first place, and we're all better off without them.
Who holds the patent on patents? I think they should sue.
For such an organization to grant a patent on swinging sideways only goes to prove that it's strength as an organization to deal out property rights is to be questioned and certainly having lessor weight of respect.
A patent doesn't grant insured protection and as such it'd be interesting to see how they are losing their ability to grant paperwork having value.
What's the rate of challenging patents of worth challenging in court?
Seems to me the court system is where IP rights get enforced or not, not the patent offices of the world.
(included below for reference...)
Seriously! Patent God, and then sue the Republican Party, the Catholic Church, the Christian Coalition, and Jerry Falwell for infringement.
After all, all the major prophets and messiahs are centuries dead so they can't claim prior works.
Humix? Or would that be GNU/Humix?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Something more subtle could be amusing....
'A novel scheme for patenting software, together with an intended interpretation of its own patent number, such that the patent number can be interpreted in any court of law as "This is not a valid patent".'
This should result in an recursively infinite number of law suits (known to lawyers as the property of omega-illegality). Should bankrupt the PTO. The lawyers are happy; we're happy.
=googol=
In a world where everyone is a slave, only hackers are free.
In mundo, omnibus servibus, soli concidentes liberi.
One of these .
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
I haven't thought about this enough, but something is seriously wrong with the ground rules. The purpose of patent law is to motivate private industry to develop inventions for the public good. Patent law is created and maintained by we the public for our benefit, by definition. Here there is some notion that an invention can itself become part of the public, which sounds like someone (besides just me) is confused. That is, something that was not someone has become someone by human invention. !.
This is a collision of a several loaded issues in one place. The two most obvious to me are the "right to life vs. right to choose" issue, and the "capitalist vs. socialist" debate. The "capitalist vs. socialist" issue is not so obvious so I will address it first.
Suppose we succeeded in defining "life" and decided that life shall not be patentable. Then private industry would stop working on all life containing products, and the public would loose the benefit of oil eating bacteria and similar products. But these products may be so compelling that the public does not want to loose these benefits. So let the public develop them. Furthermore, let the public nationalize inventions surfaced by private industry that encompass "life." Practically speaking, this would mean an absorption by the government of most biotech talent, wherein all research and results would naturally be in the public domain. This may well be in the best interest of the public. There is a qualitative difference between the benefit of a light bulb or a hyperlink and that of a humouse.
Nationalizing biotech would also defuse the "ownership" issue and let people concentrate on the more pertinent issue of ethics.
Which brings me to the "right to life vs. right to choose" issue. If the public cannot decide on the entity status of a human embryo, how on earth is the patent office going to make decisions regarding the property ownership of modifications of the embryo? But then again, perhaps the current status of the law is that an embryo is not an entity. But apparently it is possible for an industry to invent it into an entity, though hopefully not a human entity? Addressing this in the context of patent law is fascinating and insane.
Actually, modifying the monkey genome to increase their intelligence a bit, then addict them to a drug for their survival, would make excellent workers. Just keep them looking like monkeys, and keep the IQ down, and keep the agression in check and you've got a patent worth billions.
What the world needs is international laws governing the rights of the consumer.
WIPO (World Intellectual Propert ORganisation) is a part of WTO (World Trade Organisation), which is part of the UN.
The UN promotes the rights of buisness through the WTO, the UN doesnt have an arm than protect consumers. (to my knowledge)
UN mandated consumer protection laws could restrict the evil deeds of the WTO, of wich IP is one.
Maybe we need to clone some of the thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment and have them draft something for us (that would probably make their cloning illegal).
I like your dose of irony, but beyond that, why ban cloning? Cloning is simply a new reproductive method, nothing more. One that is currently fraught with risk, quite probably unacceptable risks at this point in time, much as test-tube reproduction was 40 years ago. Making it illegal, and banning other bioengineering techniques that could be used to create non-human species as smart as ourselves, completely skirts the underlying issue which needs to be clarified: namely the rights of all beings, not merely those who happen to be defined as human, based on some reasonable metric (such as perhaps intelligence, or some broader definition of sapience that factors in degrees of self-awareness and thought, not an easy task I grant you).
Such a regime would require:
1) a definition of sapience, probably one that (a) recognizes sapience and intelligence as a spectrum, and not a binary, condition, (b) uses the human norm as a starting reference, (c) explicitly states that any member of a species with average intelligence comparable to that of a human being or greater, enjoys full 'sapient rights' (what we now call human rights) even if their intelligence is significantly below the norm (e.g. retarded people have, and should have, all the rights of a normal person, even if the average chawowow can outthink them on a good day, but chawowows should not necessarily be considered equal to human), and (d) any unusually intelligent member of a species not normally expected to have human level intelligence or greater would enjoy full sapient rights if their unusually high intelligence is found to be such that, were they they norm, the species would be considered sapient.
2) The definition of species that enjoy full sapient rights (vs. those that do not, i.e. what we typically consider 'animals' or 'dumb machines') must be inclusive of any being demonstrating said level of sapients, regardless of whether they are human or nonhuman, bioengineered or naturally occuring, mineral (machine, crystaline, whatever), animal, or vegitable, or other.
We need a recognition of sapient rights that transcends humanity, not merely to deal with the inevitable results that bioengineering, and quite likley software engineering, is likely to create in the next century, but also to cover contingencies such as meeting alien life in our exploration of space, etc.
It is important, as life evolves and more intelligences arise (artificial or otherwise), that we have a foundation for interacting with that life in an ethical and kindly manner. Banning technologies and cowering behind our outdated religious myths does nothing to prepare us for these eventuality, and indeed increases the liklihood greatly that, if and when we meet intelligences that are other than ourselves, we will react in exactly the wrong way, with prejudice and ethno- or speciecentrism ('intelligent computers have no soul' claim theologens, for example, or 'we created the creature, we are its god, it can never be our equal', both of which are appallingly unethical and quite probably false assumptions to be making, but appear to be our default stance on such things).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Exactly what do emoticons have to do with SOP anyway?
Video Game cheats, hints a
A patent for taking human lives?
Then you can sue the US armed force.. Which would cause quite a stir if you get it into the right media channels. With the "War on Terror" and all.
Did anyone else notice that this bears a striking resemblance to Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man"?
Specifically, petitioning the system to get "partly not human" declared not human, with the hopes of losing, to set a precedent that "partly human" is legally human.
To me that is a pretty striking example of life imitating art.
I can never get over how ahead of his time that man was.
-Peter
retarded people have, and should have, all the rights of a normal person, even if the average chawowow can outthink them on a good day
1: They don't. Retarded people, legally, are not "full people" any more than a child is. Legally incompetent people are denied some pretty basic rights (ability to petition for redress of grievances) for a pretty good reason.
2: Why should they have *any* rights? Any system needs to have its basic assumptions laid out, and followed as closely as possible. (I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I disagree with faulty legal reasoning.)
Heck, move back to your original point. Why should humans give nonhumans *any* rights? (Especially before we meet any of them.) Sapient nonhumans who arise from us can petition for rights. Sapient nonhunmans who arise from outside us (another plannet, spontaneously evolving fish) can communicate with us and work out a matter of civilized decorum when it happens.
Banning technologies and cowering behind our outdated religious myths does nothing to prepare us for these eventuality
I don't know what part of that offends me more. We don't *know* that nonhuman intelligence is possible. It could be that, beyond a certain point, you need to have a soul to be intelligent, and only humans have souls. (Note the "could be", please.)
Our religious mythology serves to support and inspire us--and it's a natural state of our being to have such mythology. If you want to create a new religion, go right ahead, but don't be surprised if you've got an uphil battle finding wisdom after throwing the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years away out of spite.
we will react in exactly the wrong way, with prejudice and ethno- or speciecentrism
Both of those two -isms are exactly the natural reaction, and are *only* wrong when they harm other -isms of the same catagory. The Native Americans sure as heck weren't thinking "maybe these Eurpeans really do get it" any more than the settlers, and it's only once we started abusing them that our ethnocentrism becamse a bad thing.
Diplomacy should be practiced when meeting any new intelligence, human or not. We don't need to kill our natural -isms to achieve diploamcy.
('intelligent computers have no soul' claim theologens, for example, or 'we created the creature, we are its god, it can never be our equal', both of which are appallingly unethical and quite probably false assumptions to be making, but appear to be our default stance on such things)
First off, let me start by stating that a real genuine intelligent computer probably would have a soul--at least, if it couldnt' be easily copied it would. (One of the defining characteristics of a soul is its uniqueness. Intelligent beings that have little variant throughout their species have a spirit, not a soul.)
As for creating the creature and always being lord and master--such ideas are the providence of science fiction nuts and the Church of Satan (read their website), not normal society. We've got a great system where people create new creatures that become better than them allready, and I suspect that we can successfully adapt it to new creatres as well.
On a theological note--any sin inherent in playing god is born by the creator, not the created.
Pinky,
I think they've dicovered our plan to take over the world.
On to plan B.
Brain
Some of these ideas are to morally outrage, some are just to have a litigious tool against others using them (to stop negative innovations)
- Torture Enhancement. A method of using software to aid in torture and other forceable information extraction.
- Virus Ads. A method of invasively forcing advertizing into people's computer systems against their will.
- HumanTaste. A method of taste simulation and stimulation to allow a person to feel what it would be like to be a cannibal.
- Virtual Prison. A method of implanting small memories to make a person believe they've spent a potentially indefinite number of years in prison, so that they may feel hopeless and ashamed of whatever they are accused of.
- iPermanant Record. A method of keeping an international public database based on all the bad acts a person has ever been accused of, along with all aliases that person has ever taken or been assigned.
- Virtual Indoctrination. A method of punishments and rewards provided through software to shape a persons total view of reality towards some new ideal.
- Opt-out Finantial Agreement E-Messages. A method of sending an electronic message to someone, whereby if they do not specifically reply otherwise, they implicitly agree to owning an arbitrary debt to the sending party. Great for the economy!
- Virtual Mutilations. A method of using images supplied by the purchaser to create a video of a random murder, sexual mutilation, and/or other similar reprehesible act, then post those videos publically online.
- Antisocial EncourageWare. A method of using software to partially simulate illegal actions in real-life scenarios, and to show positive results from all anti-social actions. With such software, a child could simply type in the name of their school, choose the type and layout of their school, and enter in a few friends and teachers names, then see a way to start a remarkably beautiful fire at the school, followed by moments of celebration with friends remarking how much they hated those teachers.
Any other ideas?
:^)
Ryan Fenton
Am I mistaken in thinking that the Patent Office deals with patents and some other agency deals with trademarks, registered marks, and copyrights?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Since it says US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) I'd guess you are.
This would be an abuse of process. The courts (rightly) take a dim view of people manufacturing a controversy and then coming to court aiming to lose. Imagine if the 2600 case over DeCSS had not happened. Instead suppose the MPAA had created a small company to host a copy of DeCSS and then sued that company. The front company would put up a lawyer who would make a very weak case, and the MPAA would have gotten a binding precedent set without giving the real opponents of the DMCA a day in court to argue their corner.
These guys are proposing exactly the same abuse. They want a broad precedent against organisms with human cells in, and they propose to get it by creating a court case that does not give the proponents of patenting such organisms a chance to argue against it.
Incidentally, check out Friday by Robert Heinlein for more on this subject.
Paul.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Don't allow patents on life. Instead, allow them on the processes that lead to that life. Patent a certain cloning process or method for creating a bacteria. If you patent a process, not individually, but the idea for a process to create something (ie. any and all processes to create this oil eating bacteria) it would prevent others from creating it, but would not involve a patent on the object itself. Its kludgy, but it'd work.
Many people find patenting living organisms offensive. Most people find the idea that a copmany can have a patent on a gene that is in their family repugnant. Nonetheless, there is commercial support for these ideas, and so they go ahead more repugnance be damned. The only result is a weakening of the public capacity to fell moral repugnance.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think 'Mankey' would be better.
Otherwise, i think of men dressed in cowls.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Here's an idea. Let's see how the shoe fits on the other foot.
1. Apply for a patent for: "A method for the promotion of the sciences and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
2. Sue the USPTO for infringing your patent.
-Graham
...but here's my take.
:
You can talk about "moral repugnance" all you want, but it's not going to affect anyone who wants to do this. The idea that something is "morally" wrong has been used throughout the ages to condemn practices such as homosexuality, and even mathematics. There are some religions that have strong beliefs against blood transfusions, and would rather let their child die than allow a transfusion.
So to take a different angle. Why is this patentable? I mean, the techniques are already there. They've done it with a sheep and a goat. Why is this so incredibly innovative about a humouse that it deserves protection for 20 years? I'd think that the idea would be quite obvious to any expert in the field who had a need of a human/mouse hybrid. While the "moral repugnance" angle works well for getting the attention of Congress, I think that a lot of the patenting of life is just another symptom of the problems with patents in general
(1) They're given out without too much examination/understanding by the patent clerk.
(2) 20 years? A lot of inventions nowadays become obsolete after 10, if not 5 years of production. There should be some mechanism to set the time limit differently for different inventions (eg 2-5 years for software patents).
Last post!
how about?
I don't know who can claim prior art to the universe.
Process and or mechanism by which universal physical effects/phenomenons is created, controlled, explained or in anyway used or described.
Big bang is mine mine mine!! BaHahahaha! Now if only big bang is getting laid...
I think it's safe to say that little practice has been around for a loooooong time.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Life should be researchable, but not patentable.
Even research on human embryo's should be legal -- Roe v. Wade (and Casey) clearly state that embryo's are NOT PERSONS and have NO RIGHTS (at least not before the end of the first trimester). Thus, any research on human embryo's is clearly protected under Roe v. Wade (and Casey) at least until the embryo reaches the third trimester.
But research and patents are two different things. Research is about discovery, and using that discovery for progress. Patents are about ownership, more specifically invention. No one can claim ownership over any form of life; furthermore, no one can claim to have "invented a life". Claims that companies should be able to say patent "oil-eating bacteria" ignore the fact that such "inventions" are really modifications of things naturally evolved, which belong to us all (or to "God" or "mother nature" if you believe in that sort of nonsense). Furthermore, I oppose patents on life for becaues patents on life do not promote progress and in fact hinder it, by creating barriers for future researchers. Furthermore, patents on life deny the the public important treatments and cures, which would otherwise be provided in a competitive marketplace at lower costs.
I oppose patents in general, as they are completely unnecessary. Business patents and the like are pure bullshit -- successful business practices produce their own rewards. Furthermore, all patents are unnecessary because of "finders fees". See Lawrence Lessig and "The Future of Ideas".
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
How about patenting "A software system for remotely controlling mammals".
Think about the remote controlled rat experiments.
Highlight its the methods special applicatibility to humans. Workers who would rather work than eat. Make anyone into a remote controlled bomb. Assassins. More Senators from Disney.
Isn't there a requirement that lawsuits be genuine controversies and that the litigants are really adversaries? Seems to me that since 1) they don't really want the patent and 2) the patent office doesn't want to give the patent that 3) they shouldn't have the standing to sue since they're not really injured by the actions of the USPTO.
Maybe I should have read a bit more on that site.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Has anyone else noticed a spate of ads (TV) for Tropicana orange juice lately? I tend to think that they're embarking on a a massive PR campaign, since it was recently brought to light in a recent news story that Tropicana holds a patent on (if I remember correctly), the METHOD that a certain type of orange can be used (as in squeezing, to make juice). This is an issue with other OJ producers because (I think) there are only one or two varieties available on the off-season. Their hands are tied because of the patent. Who would have thought that squeezing oranges would be a patentable idea?
I have to confess - I've purchased Tropicana orange juice, but one thing is for certain - I never WILL.
Has anyone else noticed a spate of ads (TV) for Tropicana orange juice lately? I tend to think that they're embarking on a massive PR campaign, since it was recently brought to light in a recent news story that Tropicana holds a patent on (if I remember correctly), the METHOD by which a certain type of orange can be used (as in squeezing, to make juice). This is an issue with other OJ producers because there are only one or two varieties available in the off-season. Their hands are tied because of the patent. Who would have thought that squeezing oranges would be a patentable idea?
I have to confess - I've [never] purchased Tropicana orange juice, and now, one thing is certain - I never will.
I plan to patent a "method of inventing and/or creating something previously created and/or liscensed for public/private use," then sue anyone who infringes a patent.
Hate karma? Mod a coward!
What about copyrights? Do they let the patent office mess with them as well?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I might be mistaken, since I'm not from the US, but as far as I recall, copyright is something you have, not something you apply for. But I seem to recall something about being able to register ones works, possibly with the library of congress (somebody tell me if I'm on track).
But unless I'm wrong you have the copyright on anything you create, so it's just a matter for the courts when there are violations.
Btw, my comment was mostly due to the trademark part of the question, simply couldn't help myself.