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

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

[WCMI92]

Such abuse of the US patent system is going to continue until tough civil and criminal penalties (how bout fraud and raceteering?) are enacted to discourage this.

Also, the USPTO needs serious reform, training, and procedural improvement. They should be REVIEWING these things for relevance, prior art, etc, not just rubber stamping.

Left as it is, the US patent system is going to hurt innovation, DISCOURAGE invention, and make our economy fall behind.

The next great world power is going to be a country that has less stringent IP laws, and a reasonable patent system, one that encourages invention and improvement of invention. Not one like ours that has basically become a corporate blackmail and extortion tool.

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

[Zocalo]

Also, the USPTO needs serious reform, training, and procedural improvement. They should be REVIEWING these things for relevance, prior art, etc, not just rubber stamping.

I just don't see that working. The USPTO (or any patent office) are just a bunch of clerks when it comes to the crunch. There is simply no amount of training that will enable them to pick up an arbitrary patent application and say whether it's bogus or not. They *should* be able to check for basic prior art, obviously bogus filing and so on, but that's really all they can be expected to do without being omnipotent.

The only thing I can see working is that instead of simply rubber stamping it as "approved" at this point, it's stamped as "provisional". The patent can then go into a very public place on the PTO's site indexed under a variety of searchable keywords for peer review. That way the onus is on those who are going to be nailed by the patent to demonstrate applicable prior-art and expose wild claims for what they are. A failure to raise any suitable objections within a pre-defined period causes an automatic upgrading to "approved", while objections enter a pre-defined process of resolution.

You can't rush out and make your own filing, because it will, (unless you are patenting time travel), have to be submitted after the date of the provisionally approved patent. The filer of the patent can't complain about their information being exposed to the public, because patents are a matter of public record anyway. There are probably a few other safeguards an expert patent lawyer could devise too, but blaming the PTO is not the way to go.

Ever heard the saying "behind every sleazy lawyer is a sleazy client"? Clearly, behind every sleazy patent office is a sleazy patent applicant trying to abuse the system as well...

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

[troc]

I am sorry but I take that rather personally.

I am a patent examiner working for the European Patent Office and we operate somewhat differently from the USPTO. For a start, we spend MUCH more time researching a patent (2-3 times as much or more). Secondly we have a much bigger database and full external access to many more.

Then there's this *new* thing the USPTO has started to do - which everyone else has been doing for ever, which is to publish a PATENT APPLICATION before it's been examined or granted. Thish gives people the opportunity (and the right) to submit to us any information they think might be relevant, if they so wish.

So to recap.

1. Patent Applications are published before being granted.
2. That's PUBLICLY published (just try our website ;)
3. Most places (i.e. Europe, Japan etc) do actually spend a decent amount of time on a search and, in our case using the largest, fully indexed knowledge database available (The USPTO are trying to buy our system).
4. Please don't tar all of us with the USPTO brush. We all know they are crap - that's why most Americans ask the EPO to examine their internations patent applications.

hohum

Troc

PS I am happy to do some sort of question/answer thing about this if you want.

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

[troc]

Aha and how do you prove the stuff you find on Google is PRIOR art?

It's very dificult most of the time. Trust me. Quite a lot of us here at the EPO use Google.

Troc

Suggest legal reform

[smittyoneeach]

The only winners in these spurious suits are the lawyers.
Note similar detrimental effects on healthcare.
So we need reform. The real question: what political candidates have the required fortitude?
Daresay the political landscape of the US is not promising...

I don't think..

[iONiUM]

A lot of people actually understand technology. They sort of see something wrong and think "hey, everyone's making money off the internet and computers, why can't I?" and they press charges, sue, or generally become another nuisance to those with enough intelligence to see what's going on.
Reminds me of homer simpson, "they have the internet on computers now?"

Jus think...

[bahtama]

Just think if this silliness had always been around.

The United States of America claim, in the year, 1776, to patent a method for breaking ties with your mother country and establishing a new autonomous country. Methods include guns, cannons, and other secret strategies involving tea. Use of any of these methods require a NDA to be signed and notorized. Any other countries for the next 250 years must pay royalties and licensing fees if they wish to do the same. A list of basic human rights is also claimed, with the right to free speech only allowable with our low cost licensing scheme.

Re:patent abstract

[CantGetAUserName]

Perhaps somebody should just point to the RFC regarding domain names and tell them to take a hike. If that's not prior art, what is?

But how good is it?

[dilute]

Yes, this one may indeed be "obvious" (and therefore invalid). It would have be well known to anyone who knew anything in this field in 1998 (when this patent was filed) that some URLs contain at least nominal indicators of geographic origin (like, doh). And it would have been obvious, I would say, to take advantage of this in order to qualify people on the Web (to an approximation) based on their location.

On the other hand, how much clout does this patent have, anyway? On a (very) quick reading, the claims of the patent all seem to be limited to making a go/no go determination based on parsing the "custom" (domain) name or retrieving registrar data on it and making some sort of classification or probablistic determination based on the retrieved information. This seems like a pretty weak test to me - it would seem to me that one could do a little better, perhaps, by analyzing the network address itself, which this patent doesn't seem to cover (i.e., analyzing the network address based on IANA assignments and database info as opposed to retrieving and working with the "custom name").

Does anyone know what the state of the art is these days in determining the true geographic location for someone accessing information over the Web? It seems to me that companies like Oracle (which provides downloads of software having export control issues) must have figured out a more reliable means than what is in this patent in order to verify a recipient's geographic location.

It seems to me also that the probabilistic techniques disclosed here would be more suitable for analysis (e.g., marketing analysis) than for deciding who to allow to download content. But the patent seems only to cover the go/no go stuff. Maybe it would have been TOO brazen to have attempted to get a patent merely on reading one's logs!

Re:patent abstract

[WEFUNK]

Or, in a nutshell they've patented:

A method of determining the location of a computer by looking up the location of the computer in a database that lists the location of computers so that information can be sent to the computer that is relevant to that computer's listed location.

I don't think this is a case of looking for prior art, this is a matter of defining obviousness.

This is simply what databases are made for. PERIOD. END OF CASE.

Most of these frivolous cases revolve around the use of databases and other common computing technologies for precisely the purpose they were intended. This patent is like getting a copy of MS Word and then patenting the use of the spell checker for detecting spelling errors in documents - that's obviously what it was made for!!!

Rather than worrying about prior art, maybe we should begin an active education campaign to define basic computing terms along with extensive examples of usage that clearly show how obvious so many of these patent applications are. Something like the IBM technical briefs that are often used to provide prior art and to prevent this very sort of thing.

Also, while I understand the logic behind the esoteric language used to define patent claims, no patent should be granted unless the patent examiner can reword the claims into the simplest equivalent wording to prove that they understand them and that they are truly novel and unobvious.