Liquid Audio Sues In Pitiful Attempt to Appear Relevant

Emily writes: "Another case of patent abuse similar to the PanIP nonsense previously reported in Slashdot. This time, it's Liquid Audio suing geotargeting company Infosplit over patent infringement. I read their patent, it's hilarious! Liquid Audio basically received a patent for saying that a domain ending by "co.uk" is in the UK. More seriously, these lawsuits represent a serious threat to innovation in this country."

Comments

Before you wail on the patent office too much....

[dfenstrate]

Their problems aren't entirely their own fault. Read all about it here

Basically, it seems that congress has been using the patent office as a source of income, draining off millions of dollars that would be spend reviewing applications- seems like a good 15-20% of the fees that companies pay aren't used for reviewing applications at all.

I'm not completely relieving the PO of blame, but it's something to think about anyway.

Re:I've said it before, and I'll say it again

[troc]

Heh, we have a whole book, called the "guidelines" it's a public publication which you can download from our website (convention, guidelines). Essentially, a novelty destroying document is one which discloses all the features of a claim (or invention) in a single embodiment or example. This can be another patent or any prior publication from anywhere - as long it was public knowledge at some point ;) Usually we have to challenge inventive step - in this we argue that something isn't inventive because someone skilled in the art (but with no inventive ability) WOULD combine the knowledge of two different documents to arrive at the concept. I know its dry and boring (as are all legal texts) but iy you get a chance, our guidelines and the European Patent Convention do have some info ;) Personally I feel a little cheated if (and this is rare) I don't find a set of prejudicial documents during a search ;) Then I don't work in computing and crap like that....... Troc