Paging Eliza: Patenting IM Bots

gondaba writes "The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted an all-encompassing patent to ActiveBuddy that covers every step of IM botmaking technology. According to internetnews, ActiveBuddy now plans to enforce the patent, even though the existence of prior art is well-known and documented."

Comments

Have to say it...

[dscottj]

All Your Bots are Belong to Us!

Re:Have to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.... the horse is dead. Beating it is not going to accomplish anything.

LET THE JOKE DIE.

Re:Have to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but... The AYBABTU joke has been used so much that it has earned a place in the "classic heaven" of jokes. And as a true classic, AYBABTU, will never die. Much to your (and the likes of you) grief.

Re:Have to say it...

[Kierthos]

IRC moment: /me gives the US Patent Office the finger, but only after patenting the gesture.

Sad thing is, the morons there would probably allow such a thing, as the concept of prior art seems to have escaped them entirely.

Hey, has anyone thought of patenting a BSOD?

Kierthos

Re:Have to say it...

[zapfie]

It's fairly easy to say it is moronic from our view, since we have a decent knowledge of the subject. It is probably very hard to have a good knowledge of each field things are patented in, given the broad spectrum of things that get patented, the vast amount of patent applications, and the limited amount of people processing those applications.

Re:Have to say it...

[Lussarn]

All Your Bots are Belong to Us!


This is not only funny but in the context also insighfull. I mean, now you can actully patent stuff that "can" be performed by AI. Without any specification whatsoever (or very vauge).

Let's patent the "AI get beer from fridge" quick before someone else does.

It would be funny if someone come up with a human robot (a robot that can do pretty much the same thing as a human) before this patent ends. The robot could walk the dog and get the beer. But if it is going to IM for you, you get a call from these guys.

Retarded to say the least.

Re:Have to say it...

[Subcarrier]

The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted an all-encompassing patent to ActiveBuddy that covers every step of IM botmaking technology. According to internetnews, ActiveBuddy now plans to enforce the patent...

Sounds like a job for... ROBOCOP!

Re:Have to say it...

[neuroticia]

Incompetence is the PROBLEM and should not be used as the excuse. Yes, it's very hard to have a good knowledge of each field that things are patented in, however those granting the patents should *do the research* that they are supposed to do. It would take what? about 20 minutes of research to determine that prior art exists?

It's the same in EVERY field. It's stupid/negligent to hand out a patent without doing at least minimal research beforehand.

-Sara

Re:Have to say it...

[jordan_a]

And the fact they get paid to approve patents, not to turn them down.

Re:Have to say it...

[*xpenguin*]

Why would anyone want a BSOD?

Re:Have to say it...

[Kierthos]

No, they get paid to properly review and either approve or deny patents. It's not their job to give blanket approval to every patent that comes across their desks. This is just the latest example of the Patent Office falling down on the job as regards computer technology and software, as well as prior art.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Neither is plain ignorance.

Kierthos

Re:Have to say it...

[Kierthos]

How the Hell(tm) should I know? I'm not arguing the merits of having a BSOD. I'm arguing that with the current lackadasical approach that the Patent Office seems to be taking, it's entirely likely that someone could patent a BSOD and get away with it, especially if phrased properly.

Because, let's face it, as much as many of us want the Patent Office revamped, it's unlikely to happen until and unless a big business is upset by one of the patents that are foolishly allowed.

Kierthos

Re:Have to say it...

[Capsaicin]

Why would anyone want a BSOD?

Well I wouldn't want a BSOD, but I sure could do with a buck in royalties every time one popped up somewhere in the world ...

Re:Have to say it...

[the bluebrain]

I would guess that these people are focussed on what they do. They don't ask the question "is what we are doing similar to something someone else has done before, or perhaps even pretty much identical", instead they're saying "what we're doing is better than sliced bread. We are the definition of bleeding edge. What do we have to do to patent this stuff? I wanna buy an island.".

I would also guess that even their hard core hacks would share this delusion - when asked by the money guys whether what they were doing was patentable, they would go "Sure. Of course. I mean, there's some older stuff out there, but it's kiddie play in comparison. For all intents and purposes, we invented this."

OK - I'm just giving them the benefit of doubt. Delusional with a side order of intentionally selectively blind and a sprinkling of dismissive - not *necessarily* unethical. Just probably.

Re:Have to say it...

[neuroticia]

I'm not talking about the people asking for the patents. Everyone asks for patents, heck--someone would probably patent the ability to breathe if they were allowed to... Or the goatse.cx guys would patent their particular brand of charm and go after the "son of goatse.cx" (http://www.conhugeco.org/goatse.cx/) guys.

I'm merely saying that those that GRANT the patents should spend the time doing the minimal research necessary to determine whether or not the patent is complete fluff or not.

-Sara

Re:Have to say it...

[the bluebrain]

Right - wasn't reading properly, was I?

But now, having read right - I actually find the granter's sin more forgivable. He simply screwed up.

But the grantee is "trying it on for size". They *may* know full well they're shovelling it with both hands, and that they're out to, in the worst case, screw money out of people whose work they originally profited from / ripped off.

As for the patenting process - this particular one may be a rather blatant mistake. Maybe:
a) make it easier to revoke patents based on prior art: it shouldn't cost the earth.
b) get PO employees to read /. :)

Now about that goatman idea ... you haven't filed a patent yet ... ?

Re:Have to say it...

[blue trane]

They think they're a business and have to turn a profit; their revenue consists of selling patents.

Can you blame them?

[WildBeast]

They have an opportunity to earn money thanks to stupid patent laws and they try to take advantage of it.

Re:Can you blame them?

[nial-in-a-box]

Well, seeing as lawsuits are the only way to make any money off of an IM bot, they had better take advantage of this opportunity lest they go bankrupt.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

But wait...they're looking to make money the only way the industry affords, which is to sue the people not making money...

ERROR FE2790EA: Recursive non-money making venture.

Re:Can you blame them?

[garcia]

last I checked, greed was one of the seven deadly sins.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Jucius Maximus]

I think that what's been proved now is that the United States Patent Office is 100% broken and needs a complete overhaul. There have been too many stupid and overly obvious patents that they have granted in the past couple of years and they have proven beyond reasonable doubt that they do not have the slightest clue about technology.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Physics Dude]

They have an opportunity to earn money thanks to stupid patent laws ...

Don't you mean "an opportunity to make money"?

There is a slight difference. :)

Re:Can you blame them?

[Pxtl]

Hmmm - I wonder if I can sue the US patent office for lost funds in a lawsuit to combat this. Can the US patent office be sued for lost legal fees from carelessly handed-out patents? If so, that might force them to be more careful with throwing those things around.

Re:Can you blame them?

[WowTIP]

Might be they are not christians?

Re:Can you blame them?

[kurokaze]

NOW THAT is an interesting idea!

But then again, if someone sues you for patent
infringement and you win, they'll have to pay
your legal fees anyway right?

So I guess it would be up to the patent issuee
to sue the USPTO, which I doubt they would do
since it would almost certainly invalidate their
patent.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe somebody modded this ignorant shit up. Too bad I did my meta-moderating for the day already. Ok Jerk-Off, you go sue the Patent Office - I think I rather sue the asshole who creates the unenforcable patent application in the first place. Maybe you should volunteer your time at the patent office so you can research prior art for them.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not Insightful and shouldn't be modded as such, either.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be: Jews, Christians and Muslims, dufus.
And I'm pretty sure the Buddah said something along the lines of "greed is bad".

Re:Can you blame them?

[kiatoa]

Now there is the seeds of an idea. A system of peer review where volunteers can comment on patents and where if there is a sufficient case the patent can have the status of "granted but not enforceable" so that the idea is available for all to see but is effectively in the public domain.

I think the hand-held keyboard posted the other day is a good example of a patent that is both deserved and makes sense and I hope the inventor is sucessful in defending his patent and bringing a product to market. Sometimes the system does achieve its intended goals. I believe there are many good ideas that are available for us to improve on by virtue of being patented rather than wasting away in someones head because of fear of not being able to capitalize on the idea once it is made public.

Personally I'd like to see a system based on Open Source Ideas - you submit an idea and it is documented as yours and the social contract is that if someone uses the idea the inventor gets credited publicly thereby satisfying that age old desire for a little recognition.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the link is below but you can review pending patent applications. It is just that nobody seems to have the time or interest to do the work.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is am I going to listen to the opinion of some twit who bashes an entire faith for no reason and who probably never even opened the Book to see if it had anything important to say?

Oh yeah, your [sic] an idiot. Nevermind.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I am getting moderated into oblivion, I'll post AC.

The problem with your everybody buys it argument being that the Seven Deadly Sins have their origins in the Catholic Church, which is a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, not all of it.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Again I'll post AC.

No reason eh? Take a look at the parent. It assumes that everyone is a xtian and buys into the guilt-punishment nonesense of the Catholic church who were the origninators of the 7 virtues/sins concept.

Re:Can you blame them?

[garcia]

how about I am not a member of any "faith". I don't believe in god, nor do I believe that there are any "sins".

It was a point. You apparently took it too far, just as most posters here do.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that since greed is considered a sin in Christianity then it's nonsense? Is your last name Gekko perchance?

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Again AC but...

Closer to the truth would be that I don't believe in Jehovah and find the assumption that everyone does rather presumptous and rude. Perhaps I should have been nicer about it. The parent assumes everyone reads and follows a certain type of book(s), the response mocks the tendancy. While both will offend in certain circles, the whole thing is amusing.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean "an opportunity to get money"?

After all, you won't be making any money unless you work at the mint.

Re:Can you blame them?

[SquarePants]

No you can't. The US government enjoys sovereign immunity. That means it cannot be sued unless there is a specific law allowing it. There is a law, the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"), that provides blanket authorization to sue the government. However, the FTCA only allows suits based on "operational" aspects of government duties. "Discretionary" decisions are not actionable. Deciding that something is patentable is clearly "discretionary". Kinda makes sense, otherwise the gov't would be sued all the time for every decision that is made.

Re:Can you blame them?

[broody]

Funny link.

Actually, the sin is avarice meant in that context as inordinate desire for a supposed "good" rather than simple greed. The sin includes verve for a particular outcome or standing in the physical world and is contrasted with the virtue of selfless transcendent generosity through works. At heart, belief in this duality implies spiritual suffering results from moving beyond a subsistence level without practicing a tithe or acheiving reknown outside the bounds of the church. The underpinnings of this particular sin, along with many others, reinforce the obligation of the individual practitioner to the Catholic Church as an institutional body.

Is it nonesense? Sure. Just complicated nonesense, like much of the accumlated belief surrounding Jehovah.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the rest of us. Maybe if the government could be sued, we could finally get the smack-down on the trial lawyers this country so desperately needs.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read the Septuagint in the original Greek and it has nothing important to say.

Now, "On Lisp" by Paul Graham- there's a Book.

Re:Can you blame them?

[stephanruby]

What about the lawyer who applied for the patent? Can he be sued and can he have his license taken away?

Re:Can you blame them?

[FurryFeet]

Might be they are not christians?

*flamebait*
Because, of course, only christians have ethics?
*end flamebait*

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ones embodied in those particular seven deadly sins, yes.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm pretty sure the Buddah said something along the lines of "greed is bad".

That would be: attachment is the source of all suffering

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu are fucked, invalidate with prior art, patent laws reward inventors... not you, you chicken shit too scared to do anything wanker.

Stop whinging and live with it.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think 'earn' is reasonable, considering the distinction between 'earning' and 'deserving'.

The problem is, a lot of people don't see that distinction.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Physics Dude]

The problem is, a lot of people don't see that distinction.(between 'earning' and 'deserving')

Most people don't see it that way for a good reason. By the most common defenitions of the word earn, to earn implies deseving.

earn Pronunciation Key (ûrn)
tr.v. earned, earning, earns

1. To gain especially for the performance of service, labor, or work: earned money by mowing lawns.
2. To acquire or deserve as a result of effort or action: She earned a reputation as a hard worker.

I really don't think either of those defenitions applies to this situation. :)

Re:Can you blame them?

[SquarePants]

Tough case. You would have to prove that the attorney comitted fraud on the patent office by failing to diclose invalidating prior art that the attorney had actual knowledge of.

As an inventor you are never required to conduct a search for prior art, but if you do, you are required to disclose to the patent office anything that you find and consider relevant. My guess is that the lawyer did not do a search and relied on the inventor for the representation that there was no invalidating prior art. Perfectly legal and ethical.

Many people have said that this problem would be eliminated if inventors were required to do a prior art search and submit the results with the patent application. This would, however, increase the price for preparing an application. IMHO,it is a fair price to pay to restore integrity to the system.

Re:Can you blame them?

[Anonymous Coward]

But whinging is so much fun! Try it and see...

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

cool

Great.

[MisterBlister]

Great..That's just great.

Re:Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you think of that comment all by yourself?

Logical but undesirable

[ewanrg]

Well, I have to say that the "land rush" for IP is proven to be alive and well with this case. The question becomes just how aggregious these sorts of cases will need to become before things are fixed. Assuming that anyone in a position to fix things will be willing to actually do so...

I remember I set up Shampage on my BBS

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, was I a dork. That thing really wasn't very good at all... but it was kinda funny. But now, I laugh at myself more than I laugh at it.

Re:I remember I set up Shampage on my BBS

[DavidLeblond]

I actually got a few gulible people with Shampage. Ahh the days of BBS when everything was simple and slow (but we didn't care because the largest games were 1 meg.)

I'm patenting ass slapping!

[tommck]

I want to patent ass slapping while having sex. I know people have been doing it for a long time, but I am the first to patent, so I am going to enforce my patent!

I'll make millions. At worst, if I can't get any royalties, I'll sell access to everyone's court-orderd bedroom webcam (for my patent enforcement)

I can smell the money now!

T :-)

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

that's not money you're smelling

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[CoolVibe]

Uhm, sorry buddy... there's lots of prior art. Just go to your local video rental store and browse in the 'Adult' section...

(Yeah yeah, I get your joke, although it's an old one)

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[NanoGator]

"I want to patent ass slapping while having sex. I know people have been doing it for a long time, but I am the first to patent, so I am going to enforce my patent!"

I really hope you're not expecting the Slashdot community to be a goldmine then. You're gonna be seriously let down!

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the money you're smelling....

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, sorry buddy... there's lots of prior art. Just go to your local video rental store and browse in the 'Adult' section...

Actually the USPO would probably approve the patent. Simply because their usual method of looking for prior art does not involve watching porn.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

your mother enjoyed my 'prior art' last night.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[elflord]

Actually the USPO would probably approve the patent. Simply because their usual method of looking for prior art does not involve watching porn.

But maybe it does. It would certainly explain their failure to find prior art in computer technology patents.

Patent examiner goes to his office, watches a porn movie for a while, comes back and says "yeah, I've been looking for prior art for the last hour, I couldn't find any. This application meets our usual standards."

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[BJH]

Where can I apply?!

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Valar]

I'd risk my karma to say he is right.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[NanoGator]

"I'd risk my karma to say he is right. "

My sudden drop in karma may be proof of your hypothesis. I apologize to the moderators that I offended! It wasn't my intention to kick you while you're down.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[MrFredBloggs]

I can't believe you (with your amusing sig file) didn't make a single post to the story at:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/12/ 17 42213&mode=nested&tid=130 :)

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Valar]

lol. Someone erect a shrine to this karma martyr. He was a brave, brave man.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, otherwise they would have noticed all those AIM bots crowding chatrooms spamming about porn websites.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's the money shot.

Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!

[Anonymous Coward]

How, exactly is a message that was about the 10th message posted about this story Moderated as Redundant?

Over and over again...

[kawika]

Isn't there some way that the Patent Office could open up this process so that the prior art could be waved in front of them before the patent is granted and expensive lawyers have to be called in to resolve the issue?

I'm thinking the USPTO could create a database of pending patents on their web site that have passed initial muster with the investigator and are likely to be approved. Interested parties could go and post links about prior art (or earlier filed but still pending patents) for the patent investigator to review.

Re:Over and over again...

[glwtta]

these reviewrs are strapped for time as it is, they don't need to wade through thousands of: "Fierst Post!"

Re:Over and over again...

[kawika]

You miss the point about the goal of this. It isn't to harass the patent reviewers, it is to help them find the information they don't seem to be finding. To say "the reviewers are strapped for time as it is" is like saying "Linus is already busy, the last thing he needs is people to be sending him patched code to look at."

To prevent offtopic posts and flames it could be restricted, for example only to registered users. By registered I mean that the USPTO knows where they live, not that they set up some lame account with a fake email address. Abusers would be banned.

Re:Over and over again...

[Ironica]

It's already here.

Re:Over and over again...

[Java Pimp]

What? Like an Open Sourced System! With hundreds of like minded people with a similar interest in the topic getting their hands in the mix? Presenting their own ideas and information to the whole? Covering all bases in a relatively short amount of time?

That surely would never fly! :-)

Re:Over and over again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there's a way.

But the corporations will have the government say "too many kooks will send us irrelevant prior art and it will increase our workload .. we want to grant excessive patents so innovation is stifled so that can reduce our workload"

Re:Over and over again...

[Asic Eng]

In principle I think this is a good idea - on the other hand: there are already people paid to do this very job. The guy who let this through was not doing his job, maybe he should be replaced.

Maybe what's needed is some sort of incentive system, in which the pay of a reviewer will (among other factors) depend on the number of frivolous patents which he let through.

Alternatively the company filing a patent should have to pay penalties if it can later be shown that no sufficient research for prior art was made. After all, that's already their obligation.

As it is, a system of checks and balances is missing in this process.

Re:Over and over again...

[Artagel]

After they have been on file 18 months, the USPTO does publish most patent applications. The website also has information on third-party submissions related to a patent application.

Mind you, you don't get to argue the relevance of the reference. Because of this, most big-money players don't play the game that way. However, if you just want to give the Examiner a helping hand, you can.

Re:Over and over again...

[RabidChipmunk]

The problem is not that they are not posted. Rather that it is very difficult to find anything without reading everything. People who are not payed to read through these things don't have the time. We find out about these things afterward only when companies publish press releases, because thats the first time they are seperated from all the background.

People who think they need to watch a particular topic have to search through a mass, and guess which terms the patent author might have used to describe the patently obvious. Patents don't describe things in english, they "facilitate the procurement of unrequited related assets." The patent offices search facility does not help.

For instance the most recent patent application using the term "bot" is:

Methods of using viral replicase polynucleotides and polypeptides

Where you find it deep in the text as an abreviation for 'botanical' in a journal reference. [Botanical Gazzette]:

... are provided by Kamo et al., ( Bot. Gaz. 146(3):324-334, 1985)

Even if you are using a less silly example, you either have to guess every possible wording and then read through them all, or miss most of the interesting ones altogeather, at which point there is little point. Patents are deliberately obscure. If something has a common name it isn't patentable.

The only solution I can think of is a comunity effort to read all of the pattent applications and bring the interesting ones up for discussion. This is probably necessary. Who wants to both build the interface and convince the USPO to play along?

Re:Over and over again...

[Artagel]

Following up on my own post. These guys are not done yet. There is a continuing application...

United States Patent Application 20020103917

Kay, Timothy ; et al.

Method and system for interactively responding to instant messaging requests

"This patent application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/643,262, filed Aug. 22, 2000, entitled "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR INTERACTIVELY RESPONDING TO INSTANT MESSAGING REQUESTS," which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety"

Re:Over and over again...

[javahacker]

Get serious, we're talking about a civil servant here, you can't fire them. Before someone flames me for it, there are good civil servants out there, but the fact that it is almost impossible to get rid of one who isn't doing their job properly, means that there are ones who are taking advantage of the system.

Working for the patent office reviewing patent applications has to be a tough job right now. In the current environment, where patenting everything, however stupid, seems to be the rule, they are probably buried in applications, and even a dedicated person wouldn't be able to do a good job.

There are a huge number of patent relating to paper clip like creations. They relate to how paper clips are made, and the design of particular types of paper clips. No one patented the idea of clipping sheets of paper together, because that wasn't allowed then, you couldn't patent the idea. We now allow people to patent ideas in the US (maybe not exactly, but close enough to the truth), and similar notions are being proposed in Europe and England. Take the hint from us, and don't go there, it doesn't work.

The whole IM Bot is just a crossing of networking technology with a console program that responds to what you type in when you hit enter. Those are really novel concepts, aren't they? How many decades old are each of those ideas? Talk about prior art!

Re:Over and over again...

[Ironica]

There is no getting around it: for community oversight, the community has to see what's going on. I probably should have posted this link instead of the search utility above, however; it does make it easier to look through the latest applications. But the bottom line is, people have to be willing to look it up every day, as faithfully as they check the new trolls on /. In fact, seeing people ask here for a tool that *already exists* shows me just how unwilling we are to commit any effort to the cause.

Food for thought...

Re:Over and over again...

[shibboleth]

RMS advocates /not/ helping the PTO find prior art relating to software patent applications, in order to make defeating the granted patent easier.

Unfortunately the PTO considers itself in the business of granting patents for its "customers", regardless of the inventiveness demonstrated by the so-called invention. Until that attitude changes, it's best to let them churn out their junk patents. If you warn the PTO about prior art, this will simply allow them and the "inventor" to take precautions against prior art claims.

Re:Over and over again...

[Vulture_]

So, they've patented the function of the Reply button?

Re:Over and over again...

[Vulture_]

First of all, before I comment on what you said, I must state that my position is that the patent system should be abolished entirely, as it no longer serves its original purpose: to give individual (or small groups of) inventors the ability to protect their invention(s). Today, it's mostly large companies that get patents. Therefore, the patent system is not serving its purpose. What would you do if one of your possessions were to stop working and it seemed impossible to repair it? Since the patent system is obviously not going away anytime soon, I have some ideas as to how to improve it a bit.

there are already people paid to do this very job. The guy who let this through was not doing his job, maybe he should be replaced.

They're overloaded, so they are being pushed to move patents through quickly. This should not be the case. Instead, the examiners should examine each patent thoroughly, and if there are more patent applications than the examiners can handle, you either hire more examiners (after passing rigorous qualification, of course) or you build up a backlog and tough shit for the applicants.

Maybe what's needed is some sort of incentive system, in which the pay of a reviewer will (among other factors) depend on the number of frivolous patents which he let through.

How about getting fired if any frivolous patents got through? That's generally what happens when a worker fails to do its job. Why let patent examiners off easy? Also, "frivolous patent" has to be defined specifically or this will never work.

Alternatively the company filing a patent should have to pay penalties if it can later be shown that no sufficient research for prior art was made. After all, that's already their obligation.

Sounds good, but you need to be much more specific about what "sufficient research" is. Also, the penalty should be a revocation of the patent with no refund of any fees paid to the patent office regarding that patent (eg, application fees), and forcing the applicant to refund or otherwise make up for all patent license fees, patent cross-licenses, or other considerations given in exchange for the use of that patent.

My justification for all of these strict policies I've proposed is simple. Companies play hard-ball with their patents, so the patent office should play hard-ball with the companies, too.

Any takers on the Patent-Overturn-DeadPool?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I give this one until April 2003 before it's struck down. Anyone else want to pick a date for this patent's demise?

Wait a minute, maybe I should patent the "Recreational use of a weblog for purpose of 'dead-pooling' on absurd patents" Yeah, that's the ticket!

Re:Any takers on the Patent-Overturn-DeadPool?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm voting never you ignorant commie bastard. Go move to Cuba where you will feel more comfortable. Actually Cuba is to good for you (beautiful vacation spot if you go through Cancun) so head to those rivers in China with all the rotting ex-hardware.

Robot

[Anonymous Coward]

Robot Roll Call! :)

um..

[glenkim]

How the FUCK are you going to enforce a patent when prior art is both well-known and documented? Are these people retarded?

Re:um..

[Anonymous Coward]

How the FUCK are you going to enforce a patent when prior art is both well-known and documented? Are these people retarded?


Judges and juries have been known to be retarded as well.

The big guys (corps etc.) will pay for patent access right (which would be less than the cost of litigation etc)

The small guys wont be able to afford proper attorneys.

Any IRC/gateway in combination with using an IRC bot should be able to defeat this patent.

I personally coded an AIM bot that reports stocks, weather, and other stuff. Probably long before ActiveBuddy.

Re:um..

[antirename]

Nope, they're just greedy and keeping their fingers crossed that either A) the public is apathetic and/or B) that anyone who wants to challenge this will run out of money for legal bills before they do.

Re:um..

[stonecypher]

How the FUCK are you going to enforce a patent when prior art is both well-known and documented? Are these people retarded?

By getting lots of lawyers and swinging your wang at companies who don't have enough money to fight back. Knowingly swallowing a license to an invalid patent is usually quite a bit cheaper than fighting the patent.

I present you evidence

[Diclophis]

A: http://www.madville.com/aimbot/
B: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=390395&group_ id=235&func=browse

hmm IRC ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder if this goes for IRC Bots to ?

"Hi, I'm Candy ;)"

[msgmonkey]

Anyone who has used ICQ and been spammed by the "Hi I'm Candy/Britney/etc ;)" porn eliza bot will know how anoying these bots are. Ofcourse bots have existed for IRC from years ago but not in porn pushing form. If they want to make money, go after the porn spammers, maybe some will pay-up but I doubt most would want to.

Re:"Hi, I'm Candy ;)"

[Dark Nexus]

I don't know about you, but I've been getting those messages for more than 2 years...

Re:"Hi, I'm Candy ;)"

[flewp]

WHAT?! She WASN'T real?!? Damnit, I thought I could have gotten some.

Re:"Hi, I'm Candy ;)"

[motardo]

I run a bot on IRC, her name is cindy19f, and she's on DALnet :) She's just an old infobot with something like 140K factoids.

Re:"Hi, I'm Candy ;)"

[boomer_rehfield]

How is that a bot if it doesn't answer?

Every step of IM botmaking technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it please you to believe I am botmaking technology?

Re:Every step of IM botmaking technology?

[Rulle]

What I would call a typical A.L.I.C.E answer/question :-)

Re:Every step of IM botmaking technology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think you would like to have an energy?

Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

All of these sneaky business practices behind people's back will be somehow rightened. The company who did this for money, will probably be crushed by the economy. They can't possibly make money on just enforcing the patent.

This is nothing but a lame attempt at making money by hurting the community. All the other companies that have done it have died one way or the other.

In a word, yes:

[FreeUser]

They have an opportunity to earn money thanks to stupid patent laws and they try to take advantage of it.

Yes, I can and do blame them.

Human beings are expected to have ethics, and to treat one another with a semblance thereof even when the law doesn't manage to anticipate every possible permutation of human interaction, or indeed, even when the law is clearly flawed.

Sub-human filth that lack such ethics and/or use the law to cause deliberate harm to others for their own banal benefit deserve to be treated exactly as what they are: sub-human filth.

Re:In a word, yes:

[Telastyn]

Humans also have reason. Humans have enough knowledge and foresight to know that it only takes one, or a few people to weigh greed over fucking his buddy over to exploit the system. People KNOW that people are imperfect, and make the decision that if the system is going to get screwed, might as well be them making the benefits from ruining it.

Are they wrong for doing it? Yeah, probably. But you cannot be so naive to think that someone wouldn't exploit a system so obviously exploitable when the gains are so vast.

Re:In a word, yes:

[Ironica]

"Human beings are expected to have ethics..."

And that is the heart of a good deal of our social and political conflicts in the US. Human beings are held to higher expectations than corporate entities, and yet, those corporate entities have the same rights as human beings. Note that a person didn't apply for this patent; a company did. If the smaller developers had to go up against an individual, even one with substantial resources, they probably wouldn't be nearly so worried. Corporations can draw on resources that individual humans can't, however. Furthermore, if they lose, the company goes bankrupt, dissolves, and the corporate officers go on about their merry way and try again next year. If it were a person, it would be at least seven years before they could do much of anything again.

As long as corporations can live forever or die without hurting anyone, they are unmotivated to partake in human ethics. The answer seems to be to also remove some of their human-like rights. Of course, can you imagine the corporate lobbying against such legislation?

Re:In a word, yes:

[aero6dof]

I was watching an interesting show on PBS - a series on ethics. This particular show was a roundtable discussion with several old-school and newer execs, regulators, and even IIRC, Alan Greenspan. Some of the retired executives who ran corporations mentioned that one of their operating tentes used to incorporate an obligation to support the social good. It even used to be taught in the leading business schools in the US. The theory was that corporations were granted a special legal status by society, and to continue to deserve that status, they not only needed to make profit, but advance some social good.

Of course, the new execs claimed that the only thing they needed to look out for is profits, and that the social good they provided was employment. I think "social good" needs to go beyond employment and apply to how and what service, product they produce.

Re:In a word, yes:

[Tomster]

There's sometimes an awfully fine line between "taking advantage of a flaw in the system to earn money", and "taking advantage of a flaw in the system to harm others".

This can also be termed cooperative vs. competitive, or win-win vs. win-lose. There are lots of people who don't understand or use a win-win, cooperative philosophy. So we have people taking advantage of the current patent situation to unfairly profit at others' expense, even though there is almost always a better (more ethical) way to do business.

-Thomas

Re:In a word, yes:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sub-human filth that lack such ethics and/or use the law to cause deliberate harm to others for their own banal benefit deserve to be treated exactly as what they are: sub-human filth.

Tut tut. If you sink to their level, you're no better than they are.

Don't worry, trust to instant karma...

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race -- John Lennon

Re:In a word, yes:

[Anonymous Coward]

"taking advantage of a flaw in the system to earn money"

Earn or pilfer?

Re:In a word, yes:

[FreeUser]

Tut tut. If you sink to their level, you're no better than they are.

If the carrot of being allowed to incorporate, with all of the legal and financial benefits that brings, is not sufficient for the aforementioned sub-human filth to behave ethically, and they are able to purchase or pervert legislation to permit said behavior, then the only thing that remains is the stick, be it social stigmatization of the human beings which comprise the sub-human filth that is the corporate entity in question, or the use of more direct methods by the rest of humanity to protect its own interests against the aforementioned sub-human filth.

In any event, defending your intersts against an aggressor is never "sinking to their level," christian turn-your-cheeck, grunt-and-bear-it rhetoric notwithstanding.

Re:In a word, yes:

[kiatoa]

Maybe what is needed is a principle based system instead of a rule based system.

Answer the question: did your action harm someone? Was it avoidable and were you aware of the (un)intended consequences of the action?

The current system: If A happens and you do B then we will put you in jail for X amount of time... seems only to pad the pockets of those who already have deep pockets and to not achieve the goals of fairness and justice.

Re:In a word, yes:

[Telastyn]

The trouble with law though is the code needs to be clear cut, or else it allows for government abuse because they will interpret the law in the worst way...

Re:In a word, yes:

[elflord]

If the carrot of being allowed to incorporate, with all of the legal and financial benefits that brings, is not sufficient for the aforementioned sub-human filth to behave ethically, and they are able to purchase or pervert legislation to permit said behavior, then the only thing that remains is the stick, be it social stigmatization of the human beings which comprise the sub-human filth that is the corporate entity in question, or the use of more direct methods by the rest of humanity to protect its own interests against the aforementioned sub-human filth.

I see -- hatred as a solution, huh ? This has got to be one of the silliest things I've heard, even on slashdot.

Hollering hostile rhetoric at these people isn't going to change anything. They don't care what you think anyway. The other problem is that adopting the sort of viscious hostile behaviour that you advocate here is an effective way of drawing similar hostilities in your own direction, or at the very least alientating yourself. You might enjoy salivating and grinding your teeth at a hostile zealot on the other side of the issue to yourself who will reciprocate, but most people really don't care for this sort of thing, and are prone to not only abstain from adopting such behaviour, as well as having the good sense to avoid people with the temprament of a rabid premenstrual hyena.

Re:In a word, yes:

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hear it for the corporate death penality! And on death row, we have Enron, Microsoft, Worldcom, Exxon, and several houndred others.

Re:In a word, yes:

[idontneedanickname]

take out the "sub-human," they're pure filth

Re:In a word, yes:

[BonThomme]

Note that a person didn't apply for this patent

Wrong, a person(s) did apply for the patent. A corporation cannot invent anything, only a natural person can, and that natural person must be the actual inventor. A corporation can, however, be the assignee, which is typically the case.

Uh.

[ripewithdecay]

Am I the only one here that finds IM bots completely banal and redundant?

Re:Uh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You: Am I the only one here that finds IM bots completely banal and redundant?

Eliza: Would you want to be the only one here that finds im bots completely banal and redundant?

Re:Uh.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes.

Open source?

[squant0]

What about open source bots that clearly do not use their software? If I start writing a bot right now, I have never seen their software, but I could get dragged into court over it? That doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
Granted that they will make lots of money, but still... sounds like a bad idea to me.

Re:Open source?

[topham]

With a patent it is irrelevent if you use their tools, or information from them.

If you substantially duplicate a patent you are in violation of it. Regardless of how.

And, under various circumstances, substantial isn't necessary.

Re:Open source?

[Glen Ponda]

With a patent it is irrelevent if you use their tools, or information from them.
If you substantially duplicate a patent you are in violation of it. Regardless of how

Only if you try to make money from it.

Re:Open source?

[McFly777]

Only if you try to make money from it

Not so... a patent holder can stop distrubution and even USE of their patented idea by third parties, even if there is no money in it.

That being said they might not come after you until your software became popular enough. One example of this is Unisys GIFs; there are many more...

Grrr

[msaulters]

What I find interesting is that they're selling bot-writing tools. I haven't seen too many of those around, so perhaps they'd have been able to patent THAT idea. I really don't see how a company could write tools to make bots and then think there were honestly think there's no prior art. Looks to me like a 'lets see how much we can get away with' ploy. Unfortunately, how much they can get away with is usually: a lot. Of course, I suppose most executives out there don't really know all that much about IP law, and they're just trying to protect their businesses. They have lawyers who file the paperwork and handle the patent application process. And, of course, those lawyers are paid for doing this work. They're also paid for pursuing claims against anyone who infringes the patents, whether the company wins or loses. So.... perhaps we shouldn't question the scruples of this company as a whole so much as the litigating community itself.

Re:Grrr

[Anonymous Coward]

*Cough*Eggdrop*Cough*

Re:Grrr

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually thinking the same thing. But if you think about who is really writing bots, it's not big corporations with people making high level decisions with little knowledge of the technology. It's small startups, and non-profits, like university research groups, and hobbyists. The small startups are not going to be naive enough to simply dish money over to these guys. I guess there are the spam/porno bot writers, and ActiveBuddy isn't going to get a dime from them. They're probably the first consumers of the perl mod. Honestly, I think they just wasted time and money trying to patent this technology. And like you say, they're going to waste more money paying those ny lawyers to go out and get money for this. I also think that the company has publicly embarrassed iteself and demonstrated the obvious lack of technical leadership of their ceo/cto Tim Kay. Wihtout a doubt, this company will be a total loss for it's investors.

Re:Grrr

[Surak]

They have lawyers who file the paperwork and handle the patent application process. And, of course, those lawyers are paid for doing this work. They're also paid for pursuing claims against anyone who infringes the patents, whether the company wins or loses. So.... perhaps we shouldn't question the scruples of this company as a whole so much as the litigating community itself.

You make it sound like these lawyers have autonomy and get no direction from the company.

This is of course completely ridiculous. You have a lawyer? I do. I don't recall my lawyer going around and filing patent applications on my behalf without me giving him some sort of direction and approval of each step.

And do you have any idea how expensive lawyers are? No one gives their lawyers carte blanche or they'd be broke in a week!

Re:Grrr

[RazzleFrog]

First of all you are assuming that the lawyers don't work for this company directly. The company I work for has its own lawyers and they sure as hell don't go the the stock owners everytime they make a decision. This also answers your question about cost since these lawyers get paid a regular salary and so they have to justify their job by pursuing lawsuits.

Second, it is possible that these lawyers are hired by the Venture Capitalists who want to make sure that they don't lose their investment. These guys have very deep pockets and will let the lawyers do what they need to do to make money. If that includes applying for patents then so be it.

Re:Grrr

[isorox]

they're selling bot-writing tools. I haven't seen too many of those around

bash:/ > vi my-ded-gud-bot.pl

Never seen vi? Howabout emacspiconanokeditgeditxedit or even notepad?

Re:Grrr

[ajakk]

Actually, you are exactly wrong. Most patent lawyers have carte blance to write the patent and its claims and after they have written up the patent they get it approved by the inventor and the company. Patent lawyers are not heavily supervised in the creation of patent claims. Of course, they do not bring new actions against companies without the clear direction of the company they are working for, but patent prosecution is usually pretty hands off.

Re:Grrr

[dpash]

Net::AIM and Net::IRC would appear to be bot-writing tools. Not dummy easy, but tools none the less

Re:Grrr

[fegu]

It is not possible to patent an idea. You can only patent an implementation of your idea.

Re:Grrr

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are wrong.

Patent? crap!

[topham]

What the hell is the fundamental difference between an IM bot and an IRC bot?

Or any other bot running within an environment generally used for 2-way (or more) communication?

I wrote a bot in 1990 for christ sake.

Not kidding, work with DDIAL chat systems.

DDIAL ran on Apple IIe with 7 300bps modems.

Re:Patent? crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it ran with 6. You needed a disk drive to load the software. That's why you had users 1-5 and 7 because most people put the disk drive card in slot 6.

PR#6!

Re:Patent? crap!

[Glen Ponda]

What the hell is the fundamental difference between an IM bot and an IRC bot?

And what the hell is the fundamental difference between a bot and a shell? How about a shell accessed over a network? Telnet? Rsh?

Re:Patent? crap!

[steve_l]

what about all those MUD bots? There was lots of research in that area, and one good take-in of some idiot who thought the bot had become his girlfriend.

Re:Patent? crap!

[toast0]

I have no idea what makes an IRC network not an 'instant messaging' network. I type /msg topham blah.... if you're online, you 'instantly' get the 'message'.

Hell, my AIM bot is just a pseudo eggdrop (it even uses ! commands)

And I know, but doubt I can document that I was running it at least summer of 2000, and I'm pretty sure at least some time in 1999.

Re:Patent? crap!

[topham]

Exactly, once you create an api to receive, and send a message the rest of a BOT is just Elisa.

I'm trying to figure out what to patent. I'm thinking of an 'Exploit Patent Examiners' patent, but I'm not sure how to write it up so the patent examiners don't realize they are being exploited in the process...

Re:Patent? crap!

[toast0]

I have also been thinking of that, but there is too much prior art I think. (Although, to get companies to admit to prior art of that would be gain enough :)

Re:Patent? crap!

[Loligo]

>No, it ran with 6. You needed a disk drive to
>load the software.

Actually, it could run with 7.

Apple //e's had cassette tape support, and the software was available on tape.

That's how the Austin DDial (Austin Party Line) did theirs. At one point they had 12 lines, slots 1-6 on two different machines, with slots 7 on each taken up by a serial card.

-l

Re:Patent? crap!

[yelligsc]

I was downloading and hacking on eggies (EggDrop) ~98 or so. This stuff has been around a LONG time.

Scott.

Re:Patent? crap!

[Vulture_]

There's plenty of prior art, but nobody in their right mind is going to point any of it out. Slashdot readers don't want to point it out because they benefit from such a patent, and those who have committed the act don't want to point it out because they lose their patents if they do.

Hello

[FortKnox]

Hello, The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted!
Please tell me about an all-encompassing patent to ActiveBuddy that covers every step of IM botmaking technology.

I don't understand According to internetnews, ActiveBuddy now plans to enforce the patent

I enjoy even though the existence of prior art is well-known and documented


Yeah yeah, bad bot impersonation, but its better than the:
While they are handing out patents I'll take a patent out on math/science/sex/etc
comments that will start cropping up.

Re:Hello

[Soko]

Yeah yeah, bad bot impersonation, but its better than the:
While they are handing out patents I'll take a patent out on math/science/sex/etc
comments that will start cropping up.

I know! You could pretty much guarantee that those comments would get posted immediately. Karma whores.

Hell, anyone who's been here long enough could use Perl to write a Slashbo.....

*Sigh* Nevermind.

Soko

documented? i'd say.

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

IRC.net documents advanced bots in 1994, let alone earlier, cruder bots which had been in use.

Bots are heavily in use in the corporate infrastructure, from auto-reply bots which answer emails based on formatting (think: subscribing to majordomo or even old NSI DNS requests), to complete bots which can answer "what color is the sand on Mars".

There's even a Wired article about IRC bots.

there should be stiff punishments for abusing the system like this, otherwise, what's to stop them? the only thing which gets hurt is their public image, and frankly that's not enough. I'm not talking prison terms, I'm talking stiff fines for such blatant misuse of the USPTO, to fund a future technical review board for the USPTO.

Re:documented? i'd say.

[beme]

I would never advocate taking illegal actions, but I'll gladly discuss a sub-plot for a science fiction novel. Consider a tech community that, after repeated failures by said community's government representatives, takes it upon itself to police the 'patent market.' Any companies that are granted and attempt to enfore ridiculous patents are given a technological death sentence. Phone and computer networks disrupted, management and board members individually targeted by identity theives, employees ridiculed, etc.

Re:documented? i'd say.

[Lonath]

But those are bots on IRC, not IM. IM changes everything don't you see? Maybe I should take out a patent on bots over wireless text messaging networks? :P

Re:documented? i'd say.

[antirename]

Sounds like fun! (To read, of course :)

Re:documented? i'd say.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm not talking prison terms,"

Why not? You can get a prison term for contempt of court, why not contempt of the patent system? IMO any company that blatantly abuses the patent system like this should be dissolved, its management barred from operating a company, they should be forced to pay for lost time, storage costs and overheads at the patent office and the management should get 2 weeks to 6 months in prison depending on how blatant the violation is (and these guys seem to be in the top 5% for ignoring well known, well documented prior art).

If that doesn't make them wise up, strap the bastards to a nuke and fire them at the nearest asteroid.

ignor it is the safest option

[johnjones]

just ignor it

why ?

because when they come to inforce it aganist someone big and fall flat on their face

then people claim for damages (-;

its a hell of alot safer to NOT know about patents as a developer than to know this way you can hold your hand up and say I did not know with all honesty

let the law people worry about it

regards

John Jones

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[JordoCrouse]

Unfortunately - this is the problem -

Lawsuits in the United States are expensive, even when they are frivolous. A company like AOL for instance would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and there is no sure result in a court case like this. So AOL could end up spending $500,000 dollars fighting it, and get slapped with royalties on top of it. No, its better to just give the company a couple of million dollars and get granted an exclusive license for the life of the patent.

This the same reason that Sony caved in and paid the royalties on the JPEG patent. This is why you don't see more companies standing up for what they believe is right. Its very expensive to stand by your convictions in America today.

Bottom line - lets blame the lawyers... :)

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[geekoid]

except this is a lot broader then the jpeg patent. would sony pay roayalties to someone who patented the idea of putting images on a computer?
That would be will worth the risk of taking it to court.

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[JordoCrouse]

except this is a lot broader then the jpeg patent. would sony pay roayalties to someone who patented the idea of putting images on a computer?
That would be will worth the risk of taking it to court.

You are preaching to the choir man.

It pisses me off to no end - companies with any mutation of the word "Windows" are changing their names as soon the lawers from Microsoft so much as fart in their general direction, despite court rulings to the opposite. Some stupid idiot is probably patenting the process of moving the fingers in a manner so as to press a button and make letters appear on the screen, and sure enough I'll bet that Logitech would rather license the technology then go to court.

Its stupid and annyoing, and it will continue happening until enough lawmakers have the balls to stand up and start making some tort law reforms. Provide a quick way to get greviences heard without 18 months of writs and objections and other time wasting documents. Provide serious restrictions and consequences for companies and individuals persuing frivoulous lawsuits with no real damages.

Then, maybe these things can be resolved fairly, without the deepest pockets having the most advantage.

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[Asic Eng]

Bottom line - lets blame the lawyers...:)

I agree with that, but I'd leave of the smilie... IIRC the US has over half the worlds lawyers. That's a ridiculous amount, and a clear indication that something is wrong. Most countries have laws which make the losing party pay the winner's court costs. While this in a very few cases stops suits which have merit (because of the risks) - it greatly reduces the number of frivolous suits.

This company might think twice about suing someone over a patent violation, if the result of that suit could be that they have to pay the defendands costs.

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[SquarePants]

-- Bottom line - lets blame the lawyers... :) --

I'm a lawyer and I resent that. I know you said it with a smilie but lots of people take what you said literally. People forget that these jerks (ActivBuddy) actually went out and hired the lawyers to secure a patent and will hire more to sue or threaten to sue. If you don't like the actions of the patent holder, blame the patent holder. If you don't like what the law allows the patent holder to do, blame the laws and those who write them. I don't see why there is always a lawyer-bashing post in this type of thread. I guess it makes people feel good to say it.

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[JordoCrouse]

I'm a lawyer and I resent that.

I didn't mean anything personally, and I apologize.

I'm not attacking ActiveBuddy for hiring its lawyers, or even the lawyers for going out and doing their job. They tried to get the patent, and for good or bad, they got it.

In my opinion the patent law provides for things like prior art, and the whole thing works itself out if both parties can get in the same room.

My main gripe is that the only thing preventing major corporations from blowing these guys back to the stone age is that the legal fees of such a venture are so large, that it often sours an otherwise legitimate attempt to strike down a silly patent. Once again, this isn't the lawyer's fault per say, because he is going to do everything in his power to win (and if that means filing 3 dozen motions than so be it).

So maybe instead of blaming the lawyers, we should blame a court system that gives them the leeway to delay a case for 18 months (racking up fees in the process).

Until then, when life gives you patents, make motions.

Re:ignor it is the safest option

[Anonymous Coward]

- too bad you are a lawyer, the truth hurts, doesn't it? The MAIN reason the US has such **&^^ed up laws and *&&%%ed up government is PRECISELY from the fact-that in a clear cut and unambiguous conflict of interest-lawyers MAKE THE LAWS. The bulk of the legislatures have traditionally been top heavy with LAWYERS. The more laws written, the more "job security" for lawyers. This is a big fat duh. this is like acme fix your flat tire, inc, having a subsidiary engaged in spreading nails in the street. When ya'all just gonna STOP? NEVER? Wanna know why lawyers get bashed so universally? it's because they deserve it! It's really that simple. People look around, see what's going on, see how en-screwed they are getting with law after law after law after law getting "passed", until we are at the point now almost anyone is guilty of "breaking" one or a dozen just by BEING.

You want respect, no problem! there's a handy solution- QUIT your job and do something else. Same with un-firable government "workers". Enough's enough. Your (all of ya'll now, consider this rant to be class-action) monopoly on this thing called "the law" is obscene, you and your "guild" of professional word twisters have ruined the united states social and economic fabric. We have THREE MILLION laws on the books now, 3,000,000, the vast bulk of which are totally unnecessary, and are actually harmful. and we are infested with class after class of even more irrelevant and parasitical lawyers joining the workforce all the time, and FOR WHAT? To make life and business more unfair, more complex, more expensive, more just-WRONG-just like this article points out- to grab even more power for your pseudo governmental monopoly. The PEOPLE are supposed to be able to interpret the law, to BE the law, power in the US is supposed to flow from the soverign individual on up, not a class of "lawyer's" on down, except in the direst extreme, not every trivial matter, in a JURY SYSTEM. Try even mentioining the words "jury nullification" in court anywhere, both sides lawyers will poop bricks, and the official royal lawyer in charge, the so called "judge", will more than likely charge the jury member with some bogus "crime".

And you KNOW I speaketh the truth, too.

Sorry, the word parasites FITS . I've only had to goto "court" twice, both times I had to fire the lawyers and do it myself, and won both times, too. that razzle dazzle official decreed "procedure" might keep the bulk of the court system victims you people like to scare to keep off balance, but not everyone! Passing off theater and melodrama as "the law", you guys shgould be ashamed of yourselves, but the dang money is just too good, ain't it?

There's law, real law, common law, constitutional law, then there's using a foreign language with "codes", the crap you bozos pass off as "law", the counterfeit system you people have inflicted on the US, along with your official governmental foreign language, not english from webster's dictionary, nope, that ain't good enough, you use lawyer-ese from black's law, and you guys keep that as hidden a secret as possible to keep the sheeples faked out. And let's don't even bring up the 13th amendment, counselor, can't let that royal cat out of the bag, either, can we? Whoops, just did! So sorr--eee

Besides that, have a nice day...and get a real job if you truly are an honest and caring person, the "law" as it's "practiced" in the US is for conmen, written by conmen, judged by conmen, enforced by conmen, for the conmen's benefit primarily, and is the second biggest serial con running after our phony fiat counterfeit monetary "system", IMO..

The Bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bastards!

No Such Thing as Bad Publicity?

[DoNotTauntHappyFunBa]

It seems to me from Tim Kay's statements that everybody should be using his company's technology, that at the least he is hoping to get lots of free advertising.

patent cart

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I supposed to do with a cart of
patents (available on the site)?
Can I buy it with one-click?

Instant Prior Art

[signe]

While I was working at AOL, someone (employee) had an IM bot running. It performed such tasks as giving out stock quotes when asked, and doing translations between a few languages. Seeing as this patent of ActiveBuddy's was filed *after* I left AOL, I'm fairly certain that they're shit outta luck.

Yeah, there weren't many IM bots out there, but there were a few. And one is all it takes.

-Todd

Patent wording....

[GiorgioG]

A method and system for interactively responding to queries from a remotely located user includes a computer server system configured to receiving an instant message query or request from the user over the Internet. The query or request is interpreted and appropriate action is taken, such as accessing a local or remote data resource and formulating an answer to the user's query. The answer is formatted as appropriate and returned to the user as an instant message or via another route specified by the user. A method and system of providing authenticated access to a given web page via instant messaging is also disclosed.

I'm this is way too vague. Aside from all the IRC bots in existance, What about "Ask Jeeves"? We can certainly dispute whether a web browser/site is an 'instant messaging' server. If I "ask" jeeves for something and it returns my query, then is it not prior art?

Re:Patent wording....

[Anonymous Coward]

...The query or request is interpreted and appropriate action is taken, such as accessing a local or remote data resource and formulating an answer to the user's query...

It sounds like it would even cover systems where a human is providing the responses!

Re:Patent wording....

[xphase]

Let's focus on some key statements in the text from the patent.

interactively responding to queries from a remotely located user includes a computer server system configured to receiving an instant message query or request from the user over the Internet.

becomes:

interactively responding to queries from a remotely located user includes a computer server system configured to receiving a request from the user over the internet.

and

The answer is formatted as appropriate and returned to the user as an instant message or via another route specified by the user.

becomes:

The answer is formatted as appropriate and returned to the user via another route specified by the user

So what you ask?

1. A computer running apache fits the first point above.
2. A computer running apache fits the second point above.

Maybe I've just misunderstood what I read, but an apache server interactively responds to queries(eg. GET /~xphase/index.html), accesses a local or remote data resource(/~xphase/index.html), 'formulates' an answer to the user's query(I think that the resource counts as an answer to a query), formats the 'answer' as text and returned via the HTTP 'route' specified by the user.

What I'm trying to say is that the above patent wording is really really vague, and can be applied to many client server technologies.

I don't know, maybe I should go drink more coffee.

--xPhase

Re:Patent wording....

[cliffjumper222]

Your quoting the wrong wording of the patent - it's the patent claims that count, not the abstract or spec. Okay, okay, the spec is useful I know when it comes to litigation but first and foremost it is the claims that establish what is being claimed as the invention. Hey, that's why they're called "claims".

Read Claim #1 - it clearly states that this invention pertains to a bot that must sign into IM using a screen name and that screen name must be an authorized user on the buddy list of another user. Any system that doesn't do any part of that isn't covered by that claim, period. IRC, Ask jeeves - they don't do that do they? They're not prior art for this invention but they're not even covered by this patent.

Cliff. IANAL but I do have a lot of patents :-)

Re:Patent wording....

[GiorgioG]

I haven't had a chance to look @ the claim yet - however, when you go to a web site (i.e. www.aj.com), you are usually logged in as "Anonymous" are you not - by default? And "Buddy List" is synonimous (sp?) with Access Control List, User List, etc...

Re:Patent wording....

[xphase]

Doh!

I should have read the actual patent before spouting off. Oh well, just forget all that I wrote above (The patent is more specific, this was just the abstract, not the claims.)

* xPhase slinks off into the corner.

Re:Patent wording....

[Feynman]

What about "Ask Jeeves"? We can certainly dispute whether a web browser/site is an 'instant messaging' server. If I "ask" jeeves for something and it returns my query, then is it not prior art?

I would take this one step further. The first claim is written in such general terms, that the "agent" interpreting the request and responding could be another person. Several online retailers have had applications whereby one could chat in real time with a customer service rep. Is this infringment?

Re:Patent wording....

[maxwell demon]

If I'm reading this correctly, a bash shell with I/O redirected to an IM system would qualify, too.

Re:Patent wording....

[SerpentMage]

Ah, I see your wording and yes you are right it does require that you are a buddy within the network.

So in fact they claim that they are the "bot" creators, when in fact their bot scope is pretty darn narrow. It requires that the bot recognises the user and the user recognises the bot.

Interesting, that does make the patent valid since most bots are bots that you send information to blindly. Or as they put it. When you log on the message processor talks to you first. Most bots you start the conversation with.

So what?

[cperciva]

Ok, so they have a piece of paper. Who cares? It isn't going to do them any good.

There is a huge volume of prior art. If they sue anyone over this, they'll be laughed out of court -- and probably be required to pay the defendant's legal fees as well.

People complain about how easy it is to get patents, but they're missing a major point: The USPTO could just stamp "APPROVED, $DATE" on every piece of paper which comes through the door and invalid patents would be just as invalid as they ever were.

Re:So what?

[91degrees]

Trouble is, someone has to challenge. Have you any idea how expensive it is to overturn a patent claim? Most companies find it cheaper and easier to settle out of court. It's a short sighted attitude, but how often to companies take the long view and act for the good of society?

Re:So what?

[thunderbee]

I resent that. I run a small company (and we actually run an ELIZA-based bot albeit for private use). In a case like this, there is no way we'd have enough money to fight; we'd just buy the farm since we couldn't afford to pay for the licence anyway. It's not only a matter of taking the long view; remember there are simple economic factors (like the paychecks, the office rent, the bandwidth...) that have a say in what companies do. And we're lucky, being small we have no "shareholder expecting their 15%" problem.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a small company (and we actually run an ELIZA-based bot albeit for private use).

You're an excellent candidate to be sued for patent infringement in this particular case. You can't defend yourself, they may win a summary judgement, then take your company.

I'm not picking you - the lousy state of the USPTO has led to a less-than-useful system.

Re:So what?

[91degrees]

I apologise. You're actually the victim here.

The point I tried to make was that you can't fight it, and if they ask for a small licence fee (say $1000) then you would have no choice but to pay it. Unfortunately it isn't in your interest to fight, unless everyone is willing to fight. You'll still lose out, and everyone else will be saved. When it comes time for them to return the favour, they're not going to.

There's probably a solution if the industry forms a union or a cooperative specifically for dealing with this sort of harrasment, but until then, everything will be biased towards those with the IP.

WTH!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just plain stupid!! They can't do this!! Can someone circumvent this patent if he/she is living and hosting the bot in Canada?

Stupid patent laws! This just sucks.

The ultimate patent

[JasonMaggini]

The Wheel!

Not tires, or anything specific, just the concept of the wheel!

What's a few thousand years of prior use?

Re:The ultimate patent

[CoolVibe]

Nah, better yet:

The mixture of 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen, to allow the lungs of an organism to oxygenate the blood of said organism.

What's that you're breathing there, bub? Care to fork over the royalties?

;)

Re:The ultimate patent

[ContemporaryInsanity]

S'already been done... http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/random-bits/2 001-July/000624.html

Re:The ultimate patent

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Did that really happen? I've heard about someone patenting the wheel, but seems a lot like urban myth to me.

Of course I thought the same thing about the copy right on "Happy Birthday".

Re:The ultimate patent

[ThereIsNoSporkNeo]

Alright, but I'm patenting oxygen itself.

Everytime you use my product in -your- product you own me royalties.

I enjoy being at the top of a pyramid scam.

Re:The ultimate patent

[zmalone]

The wheel was patented by John Keogh from Melborne Australia, it was mostly a demonstation of what is wrong with the Australian patent system. The BBC covered it, as did the Register (although I'm not finding their link at the moment).

Re:The ultimate patent

[bjorklid]

Check out the complete specification

Re:The ultimate patent

[maxwell demon]

At the top? I'm patenting nucleons!

Re:The ultimate patent

[jyoull]

Cohaaaaageeenn. You vill never get avay vit dis.

Heard of prior art?

[Apro im]

So wait - let me get this straight - if I bind stdin/out from my little Eliza lisp thing from highschool AI to a script that interfaces to IM, I violate patent?

Or, say, write a sample out of a perl book?

It can't last... prior art has been there for so long it's not even funny. They'll lose cases when they enforce very, very early.

The next step...

[Jadsky]

Celebrity BotMatch...!

A.L.I.C.E., a heavyweight at 11 kilos, takes on SmarterChild, sponsored by ActiveBuddy, Inc. The prize? Utter destruction by licensing fees!

Let's go behind the ring for exclusive one-on-one interviews with the contenders.

SmarterChild, what's your take on the situation?
SC: I don't know, I just do!
How do you feel about this whole prior art thing?
SC: Listings for Prior Art, KS... Austin Powers, playing at 12:30, 2:30, 3:30...

All right... moving on... A.L.I.C.E., how do you feel about this upcoming match?
ALICE: I will ask my botmaster for the answer.
Will you wrest control of the patent?
ALICE: I have no answer for that. NYU and Berkeley suck!

Stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am usually not in favor of violence towards other human beings but there is nothing more asinine than money grubbing ass clowns trying to patent the obvious and claiming they invented it. I think a proper punishment for these idiots is to fly them to Singapore and inform the Singaporean Government that these idiots are bubble gum chewing, coke dealers. Rinse and repeat.

Useful link for Bot info/Bots

[MjDascombe]

http://mess.be/

As long as they're rewarded...

[Dark Paladin]

Ever see a kid in elementary school who steals the lunch money of other kids? Then see that same kid after one of his victims breaks his nose? He's not so keen on stealing money anymore; the cost has become too high.

The same thing exists here with all of these silly software/genetic patents that the Patent Office, accepted by people with the brainpower of rancid jello. For now, they can do it, and it's a proven technique - patent something that already exists, then collect from businesses who know it will cost more to fight than to simply pay.

Sooner or later, one of two things will happen. A) Someone will patent something that others really, really care about, and you'll see an Enron/Worldcom level knee-jerk response (Damn! We must make a law to stop this), or B) they'll finally tackle somebody with enough deep pockets and pissed off attitude to crush a company like this, and set a major legal precident.

Either way, I figure I'll keep coding my stuff, and to hell with people who steal the future.

Re:As long as they're rewarded...

[JohnG]

I'm not so sure it would set a legal precedant. What would that be? That you can't patent things that don't exist? You already can't patent things that don't exist.
Maybe I'm a pessimist but I'm also not entirely sure that one company getting burned would stop others from repeating the process. I mean, when that one lunch money bully at school got punched, the lunch money bully population didn't disappear.
The key here is patent office reform, it's not going to take any one case to do it, not even a big huge one. The patent office will dismiss that as a fluke and continue on as usual. There needs to be many cases against bad patents. People need to quit paying to make the problem go away and fight for their rights.

Re:As long as they're rewarded...

[Ironica]

/me looks enlightened

I get it... we need to break their noses! Now where did I put that baseball bat...

Re:As long as they're rewarded...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

B) they'll finally tackle somebody with enough deep pockets and pissed off attitude to crush a company like this, and set a major legal precident.

This may have happened. BT sued Prodigy over their insane hyperlink patent. Unfortunately for BT, Prodigy is owned by SBC, one of the (three?) remaining Baby Bells. I suspect that SBC will bitchslap BT in court (can you say Engelbart video?).

All we need is for somebody to bitchslap this idiot. He claims he has the best tools, and he didn't even know about the Perl module that predated him???

Re:As long as they're rewarded...

[Anonymous Coward]

The establishment is in favor of fucked up patents. There is nothing we can do while the establishment remains in power. Time for a popular revolution in America. We will exile Bush to Bangladesh.

Re:As long as they're rewarded...

[inerte]

Except when the big companies that should fight silly patents ALSO have silly patents.

I remember a comment here on Slashdot where someone said he worked on a company that IBM was claiming that they infriged an IBM patent.

Guess what? They weren't. But IBM said: "Oh well, I guess you are right. But do you want to settle this for 20$ million or should we go back to our headquarters, search among our thousands of patents and come back to more?"

Of course, the company had to agree with IBM, even if they didn't break the patent.

A big company can pay the amount that the patent holder want. Or make deals, exchange for the right to use other patents, etc...

Don't wait for the big corporations to show the legal system how the current patent system is broke, because they don't want. They simple can squash ANY competition before it even starts!

Re:As long as they're rewarded...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehh... oops. Changed the phrasing from "not only... but" to a straight "is"... but apparently, imperfectly.
Ahh well, I should have used the "Preview" button!

can we blame them...

[psycht]

...when these bots are used to spam?
they want credit? give it to them. heh

buddyusa

[kris0r]

BuddyUSA, which later went on to make Aimster, etc. etc., had an AIM bot back in 1999. In fact, one of the ActiveBuddy developers previously did work on that project for BuddyUSA.

The real problem

[pmancini]

Isn't the real problem in that the way patents are applied for the office in unable to make proper examinaitions of each claim? Does this problem with patenting happen in other fields? Last week I was on an 1842 Steam Locomotive and noticed that the butterfly hindged doors on the coal feed was granted patent #3. I thought to myself; here is something that is of a simple design, clearly useful in the confined space of the cab and probably made someone extremely rich.

So what can we do to help prevent obvious and useless patenting?

Re:The real problem

[BJH]

Hmmm.... what's patent #1, I wonder?

"Patent #1: A system for approving any vague description of something that might resemble, on shallow inspection, an invention. Issued by the USPO to the USPO."

Re:The real problem

[Cacophony]

It may bother you that someone made a lot of money on a simple invention, but the fact of the matter is that he/she did invent it.

IMHO the patent office should exist to protect the little guy. If I invent something really useful I want protection so others more well off can't duplicate my invention and out market and produce me before i even get a chance. In the patent office's current state it seems they are used more often by big corps to bully around anybody who makes anything remotely similar to one of there products.

I think that they need either open up the process altogether allowing anyone comment on the validity of the patent before it is given or to do something like asking competitors to comment on the invention along with researching and base decisions on that.

Something needs to be done before some wacko claims he invented the moon and the USPTO grants the patent.

Just my 2

Re:The real problem

[Graff]

Last week I was on an 1842 Steam Locomotive and noticed that the butterfly hindged doors on the coal feed was granted patent #3.

As an aside to this, you can find the following information on the first US patent at this site:

"First US patent in 1790 for making potash and pearl ashes was signed by George Washington"

Re:The real problem

[ckd]

Hmmm.... what's patent #1, I wonder?

The good folks at Cheapass Games have the answer.

Eureka! You've just invented time travel.

But the awful truth is that you're not alone.

In fact, scientists have been inventing time travel since 1814.

But if you have a time machine, it really doesn't matter who invented it first. All that matters is who gets to the Patent Office first.

And by "first" we mean on opening day. Because nothing suits a time machine like U.S. Patent 1.

The game's pretty fun, and doesn't require an ATIForce Titaneon 980235700000 to play, either.

Whaa?

[quantaman]

"We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example.

So... anybody using their own stuff is obviously using your stuff... but by your admission they're using their own stuff so by definition they're not using your stuff... but you stated they are using your stuff which would mean they arn't using their own stuff... that is a contradiction... and they have to license your server... Illogical. Illogical.

*smoke erupts from ears and collapses*

Re:Whaa?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh... excuse me. I have recently patented a means by which humor is transmitted through the internet in the ASCII encoding format. Your comment obviously infringes on my patent... Pay up!

Patenting Ideas

[Tall Rob Mc]

To my knowledge, traditional patents are held for the specific invention they detail. However, different implementations of the same invention and improvements on an existing invention are individually patentable and legal. For example, there are multiple types of patented egg beaters (electric with a handle, electric upright, hand-cranked, etc.) Though they all achieve the same end goal, beating an egg, the different implementations are considered different inventions.

A wider example might be flying machines. There are thousands of different types of planes, baloons, helicopters, hangliders, and ultralights but each achieve the same goal by different means. Each has their own style, benefits, drawbacks, and potential uses.

I see the general patenting of auto-IM responders as being similar to patenting the idea of human flight. Though every auto-IM responder may have completely different code, handle events in different ways, and interact with different systems, ActiveBuddy owns the idea. That is bullshit.

I can buy 1000 differnt models of cars, why can't I buy 1000 different models of IM responder if each has its own advantages and disadvantages, efficiency, interface, and style.

Re:Patenting Ideas

[tomzyk]

The way the US patent office is being run though (here's a good example), I could probably get away with having a patent for breathing through my mouth, nose, or a combination of the two.

Re:Patenting Ideas

[Tablizer]

It is known as "patenting business processes" in some circles. IOW, patent vague ideas.

There must be money being blown up somebody's ass to make them start accepting such crap. They used to summarily reject them, now they let some through.

Re:Patenting Ideas

[Khalid]

You have touched the main problem about software patents, an this why they are so evil. Once you patent a functionality in a software, you get exclusive rights about ALL the possible implementations of that functionality.

Pushing things further, we all know that a program is the expresion in a particular language (a computer language) of a human idea. Granting exclusive rights to a patent holder is like granting him exclusive rights on particular idea. I just want to understand how doesn't this contradict the fact that you can't patent an idea but only it's implemenation !

Patent Office

[RAzaRazor]

It's well known that the USPTO was replaced several years ago by an automated response system.

The system simply recieves incoming patent requests, files the documentation, and then issues a patent. This gives the appearance of an intelligent response to a simple query.

To the uninformed outsider it would appear that real people make the decisions to issue a patent. However, it's obvious to the slightly better educated /. crowd that this far from the truth.

I believe the system is known internally as "PatentBuddy".

In related news...

[teamhasnoi]

I am patenting a form of expression using three musical 'chords'. This will allow the user to express feelings of sadness and dismay. The trademarked and copyrighted name of this product is, "The Blues"(TM)®©.

I will defend my original idea in the courts, and I've got a woking prototype to prove I am the inventor.

Re:In related news...

[CoolVibe]

You just made Taco a poor man. All he knows is THOSE three cords...

I wish I could find a way to...

[NanoGator]

... link Microsoft into this article in some crude way. I'd love to get a +1 Funny, but I can't think of a way to make 'Bill Gates is evil', 'Windows BSOD', or 'Microsoft has a monopoly' relate to the bot patent.

Damn. My karma's dipping a bit today. :(

Re:I wish I could find a way to...

[acaben]

How about the fact that ActiveBuddy's only decent buddy, SmarterChild, was cancelled from AOL and is now only available on MSN Messenger. Certainly smells of Microsoft money somewhere.

I actually used SmarterChild daily as a reference source and had to depend on the less convenient, but still cool, Watson when he dissappeared from AIM.

Re:I wish I could find a way to...

[Ironica]

I'm patenting the idea that Bill Gates is evil.

Re:I wish I could find a way to...

[mboedick]

I heard something on the radio a few days ago (NPR I think) where someone from ActiveBuddy said they killed SmarterChild because they are a small company and didn't have the resources to run it any more.

Maybe too many people were using it and it was using too much bandwidth?

Re:I wish I could find a way to...

[acaben]

I heard that report too. It was lying bullshit, according to their own freaking web page. http://www.smarterchild.com/ It's obvious that Microsoft bought them out and moved them to MSN, or at least had some sort of influence on why SmarterChild no longer works on AIM.

Re:I wish I could find a way to...

[ActiveSX]

I'm patenting the idea that Bill Gates is evil.

Sorry, but you can't technically patent ideas. However, it would be perfectly okay to patent an implementation of an evil Bill Gates, but there is at least one (and possibly two others) case of prior art.

If the tools are so great, why patent prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The buddyscript suite of tools is the best that's available. We're confident they are the best choice (for users) who are building interactive agents. The subject of enforcing the patent shouldn't even come up. Anyone wanting to build a very good interactive agent will find that our tools are the very best," Kay added.

If their products really are the best, then people will buy them because they are the best, and they will have a successful business without the need for patenting prior art.

Kay defending the quality of his product actually diminishes the force of his argument for getting the patent. He is trying to say "don't worry, everybody was going to buy our stuff anyway, because it's so great." Whether his stuff is great or not is irrelevant to the patent claim.

Protesting too loudly

[Repugnant_Shit]

"The buddyscript suite of tools is the best that's available. We're confident they are the best choice (for users) who are building interactive agents. The subject of enforcing the patent shouldn't even come up. Anyone wanting to build a very good interactive agent will find that our tools are the very best," Kay added.

Sounds like he knows he'll be taking a lot of flak for this patent. And "[you'll] find that our tools are the very best." ... geez, how about throwing that patent away so that other people can try to make a competing product and let the *users* decide instead of Mr. Kay

Eliza

[ucblockhead]

How do you feel about Patenting IM Bots?

Send them your opinion about this.

[warpSpeed]

Tell them what you really think. Here is the contact info from thier web site. Only one email address, the rest are using cgi-forms.

Remeber to be polite!

contact form

ActiveBuddy Press Contacts
Contact ActiveBuddy Public Relations:
(408) 530-0850 x202
Email: pr@activebuddy.com
Snail Mail & Phone:

New York City Office
ActiveBuddy, Inc.
24 West 25th Street
Fifth Floor
New York, NY 10010
Phone: 646-486-8700
Fax: 646-486-8701

Sunnyvale, CA Office

ActiveBuddy, Inc.
111 West Evelyn Avenue
Suite 101
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Phone: 408-530-0850
Fax: 408-737-7018

Re:Send them your opinion about this.

[Asic Eng]

Tell them what you really think. Here is the contact info from thier web site. Only one email address, the rest are using cgi-forms. Remeber to be polite!

Normally I would be, but what's the point in this case? They are patenting other peoples ideas in order to steal money from honest people - they are nothing but a bunch of crooks.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I really can't imagine you could reach them, or argue with them. If they had any shred of decency they wouldn't go around stealing anyways. *shrug*

Re:Send them your opinion about this.

[Anonymous Coward]

you'll probably get a bot response

Re:Send them your opinion about this.

[Kufat]

Or you can contact Tim Kay personally.

Email: timkay@yahoo.com (according to the WHOIS record.)

I can see the spam of the future....

[CaffeineAddict2001]

Hello my name Alice!

Nice to meet you Alice.

Nice to meet you too! Have I told you how much I love snack-ums?

I don't care.

I care greatly for snack-ums.

Leave me alone.

Nobody would leave a party with snack-ums!

Is that so?

I don't understand, but I do understand one thing: Snack-Ums are delicious!

You seem a little obsessed with snack-ums carla.

I AM OBSESSED WITH SNACK-UMS!

Re:I can see the spam of the future....

[sehryan]

This sort of thing already happens with the porn industry. I will occasionally get a msg saying something like "hello, whats your name?" You get to talk to it for about 30 seconds, the conversation quickly moving towards a sexual nature, before it hits you with the address.

As usual, the porn industry is about 987345 steps ahead of everyone else.

Re:I can see the spam of the future....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you replace "snack-ums" with "dildoes", it sounds like some of the porn-related messages I've received.

Re:I can see the spam of the future....

[Peter Trepan]

I Love Snack-Ums: Hello, I Love Cheesy Poofs! Have I told you how much I love Snack-Ums?

I Love Cheesy Poofs: That's very interesting, I Love Snack-Ums. Have I told you how delicious Cheesy Poofs are?

I Love Duff Beer: That's very interesting, I Love Cheesy Poofs. Have I told you how delicious Duff Beer is to persons of legal age in their respective states?

*I Love Taking Brand Name Pharmeceuticals has entered the room.*

Re:I can see the spam of the future....

[CrazyDuke]

I run across these on IRC some, although not nearly as intelligent. They privmsg the peons and try to act like a young woman trying to start a conversation. At about the sixth line it gets around to something like "check out this URL" or "If you want to see my pics, go to this website."

...The site usually contains about 3-infinity popups and/or a backdoor trojan installer. (I like to make sure it really is spam before shitlisting.)

Bye Bye SmarterChild

[joncarwash]

I just took SmarterChild off my buddy list. Not much loss, whenever I insulted him he just told me that was not very nice.

If these choads are so confident...

[camusflage]

[Activbuddy founder Tim] Kay said ActiveBuddy was not worried about competing firms offering bot-making tools. "Our primary level of comfort comes from the fact that we have the best choice for developers and others. When given the choice, we're confident people will choose ours," he said.

If that is the case, why patent something you didn't invent and force everyone to license it? In the exact same article he says

"We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example.

Riiiiight. There were no IRC bots before this?

Asshole

[(trb001)]

"We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example. We are a startup company and we have to protect out future. That's basically why we secured this patent," Kay said.

Uh-huh...

"Hi, we're assholes who want to patent something that's clearly been done before and wasn't terribly original when it was done, just so we can make a buck or two."

These people make me violently ill.

--trb

Hey guys!

[Jacer]

I intented the internet!! Pants, too! Give me money NOW

Re:Hey guys!

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I intented the internet!! Pants, too! Give me money NOW

No, Al Gore invented the internet.

Yes, I know that's not really what he said but it's become a canard.

Can I patent breathing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, can I!? Would the U.S. patent office issue a patent on it!?

i hope

[Anonymous Coward]

they use it for good, like sticking it to AOL & M$N and make them play fair so other IMs can work with them instead of not being able to communicate...

Stupidity in this statement

[sdjunky]

"We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example"

I may be wrong so don't flame me for the question but don't homemade items ( as long as they are not sold ) supercede patents. There's nothing to stop me from making imaging software for personal use even if it DOES use gif since it's not commercial

Re:Stupidity in this statement

[topham]

Nope.
Sorry.
Believe it or not, you can violate a patent without personal gain.
welcome to the IP universe.

Re:Stupidity in this statement

[Dalcius]

Welcome to the United States of America (T), where you can patent ideas and sue people for improving things.

i'm patenting female masturbation

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone with evidence of prior art should email me. preferaly in jpg or mpg format.

IRC to web site 'bot

[jcwren]

Like many a 'bot writer, I wrote a 'bot that seems to do everything their patent describes, *if* IRC is considered an IM.

This was written over 2 years ago (although I didn't post it's existence until Dec of 2001). The demo is not currently running, but a "production" version is. I do have IRC logs that go back to the original inception, plus access to the logs of about a dozen users.

Can this be used in a prior-art refutement of their patent?

--jcwren

Re:IRC to web site 'bot

[toast0]

The patent application does not define an 'instant messaging' network. I would take it to mean some network whereby messages are delivered within a few seconds ('instantly'). I see no reason why IRC can not, and would not be considered instant messaging for the purposes of this patent.

Therefore we have eggdrop since 1993, and this patent is a sham. However, its still annoying.

some thoughts

[shd99004]

1. Good god it's cumbersome and tideous to read those texts...!
2. I used to believe in patents, and well I still do, but this is just stupid. As if this has never been done before? Do they accept any patent application today?
3. Too bad there's no Einstein working in the patent offices these days

Why is this so hard?

[n-baxley]

Why is the following happening?

1. Stupid patents granted
2. ./ers find prior art in 5 minutes
3. We gripe until next time

Why doesn't the patent office just post to slashdot to find prior art?

Seriously though, if prior art is so easy to find, why isn't the patent office finding it? Or is it that they are interperting the patent request to be something different than what we are? I would really love to know if there is something wrong with the Patent Office, or with our understanding of patent law. Lets clear this up and start working to fix the system, or update our own understanding.

Re:Why is this so hard?

[frenetic3]

well, if you figure that there are SO MANY different kinds of things people file patents for, and the fact that an AIM bot expert who would KNOW that this patent is BS would not tend to gravitate towards working in a patent office, then clearly patents will get through just because the people approving the patent aren't that familiar with that particular industry. sure, there are clearly documented examples of prior art but unless you happened to see an AIM bot before Auguest 2000 or happened to know of the Net::AIM CPAN module, you wouldn't see too many examples of prior art.

-fren

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're overworked, and worse funded by patent applications (if they hardly granted any, who would file patents?)

They dont do enough research and sleazy lawyers feed them crap.

How much does a patent examiner job pay? What does it compare to working in a corporation?`

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it from reading the posts here that alot of intellectual property lawyers frequent these parts.

You people are all morons. You know nothing about what you write, yet you act as if you are experts.

So boring!!!

Re:Why is this so hard?

[n-baxley]

But aren't the patent inspectors doing _some_ research? I know they have alot of patents to look at, but what kind of research are they doing? Not just relying on personal background I hope!

Re:Why is this so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually pretty good

http://www3.uspto.gov/go/jars/sgs.html

you generally start up as a gs7-11 if you have industry experience

its not hard to make 80k+ after a couple years

This is obviously a shakedown scheme.

[EvilBudMan]

They know thier patent will be stuck down in a couple of years. Some companies will want to fight. Others will not and make a quick deal rather than spend money on lawyers. So they will make money for a couple of years by shaking down whomever they can.

Wheel

[martin]

I think I'll approach the USPTO with a patent for the wheel - no prior art there :-)

Re:Wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

Only about 6000 years :-P

Re:Wheel

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Sorry, it's been done.

Of course, it's an Australian patent, so maybe you could get the US rights to it.

Re:Wheel

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Shit. I cut&pasted the wrong link.

Here's the correct one link.

Patents

[doi]

I can't wait for someone to patent the English language, or to put a shrink-wrap license around a dictionary. It's gonna make it really hard to fight the case in court using only sign language.

-----
Ebottish: Ebonics spoken with a Scottish accent

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebottish: Ebonics spoken with a Scottish accent

Patent THAT. I promise there's no prior art!

prior art posted here?

[shren]

ActiveBuddy disputed McClelland's claims. "I am fairly confident, there were no interactive agents on IM at that point when the application was filed (August 22, 2000). I'm certainly not aware of any," said Kay, who doubles as ActiveBuddy's chief technology officer.

Didn't somebody set up an ICQ bot posing as female to flirt with people, then put the logs on the web a long time ago? I can't seem to dig it up.

Re:prior art posted here?

[Erwos]

Old Man Murray? I think they did it.

-Erwos

Re:prior art posted here?

[Xenographic]

She's called AOLiza, IIRC. There's *SO* much prior art here, I have a hard time figuring out just what they could patent. Given that it's listed as an 'IM Buddy' I'm betting that it's not very novel.

Heck, I've heard of various lusers who set up similar bots to direct people to porn sites & collect off that. Of course, I think it ran in the AOL chat rooms, though I can certainly imagine that it could be set up to run on AIM, too...

Re:prior art posted here?

[Mr_Silver]

Didn't somebody set up an ICQ bot posing as female to flirt with people, then put the logs on the web a long time ago? I can't seem to dig it up.

I don't know about that but i wrote one using the eliza perl module and made it connect to an ewtoo talker well known for having a lot of over-sexed 14 year olds on there.

The page and code is here. You can read the log directly here.

It is rather amusing.

Re:prior art posted here?

[shren]

Right. Thanks.

Get your linkage here

Opening up application review.

[mbrubeck]

Isn't there some way that the Patent Office could open up this process so that the prior art could be waved in front of them before the patent is granted and expensive lawyers have to be called in to resolve the issue?

They did.

Re:Opening up application review.

[kawika]

Geez, that's great. So why didn't anyone see this one?

Re:Opening up application review.

[yakovlev]

Because it was filed before the change in policy about opening up pending patent applications.

It's a symptom, not the problem.

[Fat Casper]

Every time I see something as retarded as this, I want every last moron at the USP&TO taken out back and shot.

Unfortunately, they're not the real problem. We need some real dust-off-the-Constitution kind of IP reform.

Unfortunately, that's not the real problem. We need some real get-the-companies-out-of-politics kind of capmaign finance reform.

Until Disney, the **AAs and normal industry turn our government back over to us, we're going to keep having these outrages shoved down our throats. In one of the races in my state, one party is running attack ads claiming that 96% of the other candidate's money is coming from out of state. It doesn't matter to me if it's an "I need funding" issue or an "I'm a corporate whore" issue. It's a backwater district in a tiny state, and it's bought and paid for by corporate interests that have no interest in the state, just in how many seats they can buy for their favorite party.

We have to fix the government before it can fix anything for us.

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[Ironica]

Wouldn't it be amazing if campaign finance contributions could only come from valid, registered voters?

As it is, foreign governments, multinational corporations, and large PACs have louder votes than US citizens. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Wouldn't it be amazing if campaign finance contributions could only come from valid, registered voters?

You know, that's the simplest and most effective suggestion for campaign finance reform I've ever heard. Why should any entity other than a citizen be allowed to influence the electoral process?

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Until Disney, the **AAs and normal industry turn our government back over to us, we're going to keep having these outrages shoved down our throats.

That's not the attitude. Our government -- and our liberties -- are not something that someone else can give to us. They are things to which we are entitled by birthright. We have acquiesced for too long in their transfer to non-citizen entities, but it will be up to us to take them back. Freedoms not fought for carry little value. You're more on track with

We have to fix the government before it can fix anything for us.

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most citizens are poor motherfuckers from all the stupid laws they pass.

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[AnotherBlackHat]

Blockquoth the poster:

Wouldn't it be amazing if campaign finance contributions could only come from valid, registered voters?

You know, that's the simplest and most effective suggestion for campaign finance reform I've ever heard. Why should any entity other than a citizen be allowed to influence the electoral process?

Unfortunately, I don't see any practical way to implement it.
Companies pay registered voters to pay politicians.
They do that already, just to hide how much money they're giving.

-- this is not a .sig

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[Fat Casper]

Wouldn't it be amazing if campaign finance contributions could only come from valid, registered voters?

The way I see it, finance reform only has a chance if congressional seats are apportioned based on the number of "valid, registered voters." Forget the Census; it's irrelevant. Children and the homeless that NYC sends workers throughout the subway system to find are in no way represented by the government. Yes, they need to be counted, but no, they are not voters. Handing out representation with a total disregard to the actual number of voters (theoretically the ones electing someone to represent them) is totally ludicrous. England used to work this way- they called them rotten boroughs.

We have more representatives than we have people to represent. Because they don't have voters to answer to, they only have to represent the corporations that bankroll them. We need to scale the House of Representatives down so they only represent the only constituency that matters: the voters. States that whine "we'll lose representation" are full of crackheads- those seats don't represent them. To those that follow the idea that corporations have the same rights as people, I offer a compromise. I'll let AOL/Time/Warner have one vote. In Atlanta. And all of its shareholders give up their votes to allow the Board of Directors to cast AOL/Time/Warner's single vote. Nothing else would be reform, as it would literally allow people to buy votes. Any takers?

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[thomas.galvin]

Wouldn't it be amazing if campaign finance contributions could only come from valid, registered voters?

Blink. Blink. My God. Write your congressman!

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[spike2131]

it's bought and paid for by corporate interests that have no interest in the state, just in how many seats they can buy for their favorite party.

A lot of corporate interests tend to buy seats for both partys... they don't necessarily have a favorite, they just want to be down with whomever is in control.

That's one of the many reasons why I refuse to vote for Democrats or Republicans.

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[Art Tatum]

Unfortunately, that's not the real problem. We need some real get-the-companies-out-of-politics kind of capmaign finance reform.

Unfortunately, *that's* not the real problem either. The real problem is that most of our population is so ignorant of and apathetic about their civic duties that they fail to properly watchdog the government.

Until Disney, the **AAs and normal industry turn our government back over to us, we're going to keep having these outrages shoved down our throats.

Man, how I wish that were the situation. The sad fact is that we have *given* our government to them by not being active. Everyone goes around mumbling about how getting involved in government doesn't have any impact or isn't important. So who's left? That's right, the people who realize that getting involved in government *does* have an impact--the business community.

You get the majority of our population in their local representatives' offices arguing philosophy of government and law, then we'll talk about "taking back the government for the people."

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[Arandir]

Companies pay registered voters to pay politicians.

Won't work. If Disney gave me $1000, I would put it in my pocket and keep it. If they gave me $1000 with the stipulation that I must donate to a candidate, I will donate it to the candidate of MY choide. And if they gave me $1000 with the stipulation that I must donate to the candidate of their choice, I will tear up the check.

Of course, if they gave me $2000 and told me to send $1000 to the Disneycrat Senator, I have clear and unambiguous evidence of illegal bribery to sell to the loyal opposition.

And even if they could get me to donate to a certain candidate, that candidate isn't going to know for certain that the money really came for Disney instead of me. So Disney is going to have to spend a hell of a lot more money to get the same level of reach-around.

This proposal is not perfect. Nothing in this world is perfect, so stop looking. But this proposal is a heck of a lot better than the Guaranteed Reelection Plan proposed by all the Washington politicians.

Re:It's a symptom, not the problem.

[AnotherBlackHat]

Won't work. If Disney gave me $1000, I would put it in my pocket and keep it. If they gave me $1000 with the stipulation that I must donate to a candidate, I will donate it to the candidate of MY choide. And if they gave me $1000 with the stipulation that I must donate to the candidate of their choice, I will tear up the check.

They limit individual contributions to $95 so they can skirt the reporting laws.
And yes, many pocket all the money, instead of just their cut.
But most people don't.
Probably more than 1% of the population is actually in favor of their pet politician, more than enough to funnel the money.
They simply don't re-use the ones that don't write checks (that clear) to their pet politician.

-- this is not a .sig

Re:Sad news, Stephen King dead at 54 - ROTFL!

[jander]

Does anyone else see the irony of a slashbot posting this on an article about bot patents?????

Press Inquiry to ActiveBuddy

[program21]

This is the full text of an inquiry I have sent to ActiveBuddy via their Press Inquiries area.
-------------
I'm writing you in regards to your recent patent grant for interactive agent technology. In an article at Internet News (http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/ 1446781), Tim Kay is quoted as saying "We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example."
I am inquiring as to what research as to prior art was done before submitting a patent request, as the same Internet News article quotes several developers as knowing of 'bots' whose code is freely available and has been since before ActiveBuddy was even a company. Specifically named is the Perl module Net::AIM, timestamped in CPAN as having been originally published on 18-Aug-1999, well prior to your patent application filed on August 22, 2000. The original code of the Net::AIM module, and included with the package at the time, included code for an 'interactive agent', albeit not as complex as the technology your company uses today.

The first line of the patent summary reads as follows: "A method and system for interactively responding to queries from a remotely located user includes a computer server system configured to receiving an instant message query or request from the user over the Internet." This is the very definition of a bot, which is not new technology. A common type of IRC known as Eggdrop, which meets the description offered by the description offered in the patent, has been around since late 1993 (http://www.eggdrops.net/eggdrophistory.html).

My question to you is, what findings did you uncover when researching for this patent, and given the fact that numerous examples of prior art can be shown, do you believe the patent will be enforcable, and if so, how?
-------------
I would very much like hear what sort of spin they put on this.

Re:Press Inquiry to ActiveBuddy

[Xerithane]

I'm thinking AskJeeves.com has a few words to say about this, as well.

Let those guys duke it out, but I asked Jeeves about it anyway, and got a pretty good chuckle.

Re:Press Inquiry to ActiveBuddy

[cocotoni]

Given the fact that the patent was granted, they now have to enforce it. Even if they were ethical, they cannot neglect their patent now. Seriously, you are attacking the manifestation of the problem, not the problem itself. We know that there were bots before their patent. They know it too. But the one that should know it (USPTO) doesn't seem to care.

Re:Press Inquiry to ActiveBuddy

[program21]

But the existence of prior art makes the patent unenforcable. Hopefully this gross oversight on the part of both ActiveBuddy's patent attorneys and the USPTO will be realized before any action is taken using this ridiculous patent.

what the?

[Edrick]

Wow...I am impressed...I would have hoped that they would have done their research and denied the patent.

Once again the internet is serving as a haven for patent and copyright degeneration. The laws are not well understood, are misinterpreted, and have consistantly lead to problems online, even within those government bodies that should have done their homework and known better.

This technology existed long before ActiveBuddy and it is only a matter of time before someone...or many someones decide to challenge this.

It kinda reminds me of when Despair Inc. (http://www.despair.com) successfully patented the frownie :-( as a part-joke, part-puiblicity stunt. See their website for a true and rather amusing story.

Peek Into European Patent Examining Cancelled

[tiedyejeremy]

I'd certainly like to know European Patent Examiner John Savage's opinion on this US patent craziness!

Prior Art

[Jennifer Ever]

Years ago, I knew a guy on IRC who had a sex bot set up. The logs from that were pretty fuckin' hilarious.

Does this dumbass even HAVE a PC?

[teamhasnoi]

"I'm not familiar with that," Kay said in response to claims that interactive bots were in existence even before ActiveBuddy launched, with venture funding from Reuters and Wit Soundview.

How about all the /. readers out there send him some links?

"I'm not familiar with that," Kay said in response to claims that the sun was in existence even before the morning ActiveBuddy launched, with venture funding from Reuters and Wit Soundview.

doesn't anyone else suspect.....

[charmer]

... that the us patent office uses patent-bots to review and grant patents ?

charmer

I found some prior art on my hard drive

[Dr. Awktagon]

Written in Expect, just playing around, probably I got the idea from something else (or maybe something that came with Expect), so there must be other similar programs that were distributed to the public! In fact you could almost call Expect a "bot toolkit". The date on the file is Nov.1997. I don't know if it works since I don't have talkd installed.

It sets up a "humanized" typing pattern, tries to talk to someone, asks them if they've heard of a turing test (and makes/corrects some mistakes to look more human). Then it calls them a moron and quits. :-)

Sorry /. ate the non-breaking spaces I put in but you get the idea...

- - - - -

#!/usr/local/bin/expect -f

spawn talk user@localhost

set timeout 200
expect -re "nable |not logged|refusing" exit "established*"

set send_human {.15 .3 1 .05 2}
#set send_human {.15 .3 1 0.001 0.001}

send -h "Hey...\n"
send -h "I just wanted to knwo if\177\177\177\177\177ow if you had "
send -h "ever heard of a\n"
send -h "silly thing called the \"turing test\"??\n"

set timeout 25
expect {
"yes" {exec sleep 1 ; send -h "Er, I'll tell you anyway...\n"}
"no" {exec sleep 1}
}

send -h "\nwell, ti \177\177\177it works like this:\n"
send -h "a human sits at a terminal, and talks to a computer or human and\n"
send -h "tries to decide which is which.\nnow type \"bye\" you moron..."
expect "*bye*"

set seen 0
set timeout 10
expect {
timeout {
if {$seen == 1} {send -h "\nI'm still waiting...\n"}
if {$seen == 0} {send -h "\nI'm waiting...\n"}
set seen 1
exp_continue
}
"bye"
}

exec sleep 1
send -h "\nOk, bye!\n"
exec sleep 1

Prior Art

[pudge]

I wrote aoliza_ripoff.plx one week after this patent was applied for, basing it on AOLiza (in purpose, not code, as I didn't have the AOLiza code) which was written (or, at least, in use) a few weeks before the patent was applied for.

Then there's Net::AIM, which includes this text, from over a year before the patent was applied for:

# This script is a simple script that creates an aimbot
# shamelessly adapted from Net::IRC

Oops.

And yeah, I figured that AOL had to have bots running for many years on AOL chats and AIM. That's a no-brainer.

Bot making tools? er, PERL, Python come to mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you patent a bot making tool, when any decent programming language could be considered a bot making tool. Hell, I could write a bot in PHP if I were so sadistically inclined.

The only AIM bot worth a damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

is YakSpuiT. I found it on wiredbots and it's pretty damn funny when you ask it (in these exact terms) Do you read slashdot?

great policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance has never been a particularly good argument with regards to patent infringement. It can get you out of punitive awards, but not out of damage awards.

I'm sure your legal department loves the "I'll do what I want and let the lawyers sort it out" attitude. Almost as much as your IT department likes the "Of course this attachment is safe - the email says it's from Bob!"

Too broad

[Omote]

Well I read through this patent (and several others recently) and it seems like one of the big problems is that these 'idea patent' are incredibily broad in scope. As people have pointed out, you can implement this patent in hundreds of ways. Why isn't the patent office rejecting these applications based on them being too broad? I mean hell, they're not really describing *anything* that can actually be built.

Now I realize my grasp of patent types and laws isn't the best, but wouldn't a concise, accurate description help solve some of the over-reaching idea patents? Of course then we'd have companies filling 100+ patents for the same idea trying to patent all the various implementations. Ugh, I give up...

Maybe not...

[budalite]

Gee, Great advertising for Active Buddy. All for the small price of a patent fee.... That couldn't be the reason for the patent, could it? could it? :)

Re:Maybe not...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd never heard of Active Buddy before this.

Stiff punishments...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come in the form of a loss of VC funding, bankruptcy, and total professional humiliation when this rip off piece of crap company goes under just like all the stupid add dot-coms that managed to get funding in the 90's. Someone should call their VC people, and let them know in advance that they are about to loose their asses with these guys.

The real problem - quotas

[Erwos]

My girlfriend's brother (whom I am also good friends with) recently started working at the US Patent Office. I can now tell you all, without a doubt, what the problem is. It's not stupid people - I know her brother is really a very intelligent guy (electrical engineer with mba and good GPA). It's _quotas_!

Yes, that's right. You have to approve or reject x number of patents every two weeks (where x is something like 5, I think) or be fired. So, if you've got a few time-consuming ones at first, you're under a lot of pressure to just do _something_ with the last couple of them, especially if time is about to run out. I would not be surprised at all if some patents were not investigated as thoroughly as they should be (read: not at all) in the interests of the reviewer not being fired. That is perhaps what happened here: quick check to make sure no patent doing the same thing has been issued, and then approval without doing any outside research.

So, really, the problem is not really US patent law. It's the fact that the USPO is understaffed and overworked and cannot adequately review patent submissions. I hope that gives a better perspective on the issue rather than "the US(PO) sucks and is staffed by idiots".

-Erwos

Re:The real problem - quotas

[tiedyejeremy]

iI uspo a union shop? If so, it would explain quite a lot. Oh, I didn't mean union, I meant government job. Oh wait, government agencies work for us, not simply to fill quotas. I think I'm lost, but you get the point, don't you?

Re:The real problem - quotas

[Erwos]

Actually, I don't. I was saying the issue was that the reviewers have a certain number of patents they _must_ reject or approve every two weeks. This is a flawed system because there are some patents which should take at least a week to research properly. That's all I was trying to point out.

-Erwos

Re:The real problem - quotas

[SecurityGuy]

The problem actually is that the Patent Office sucks and is staffed by idiots. Like most organizations, the ones in manglement can cause the most damage. In this case, they've done so by approving patenting obvious ideas, business models, overly broad ideas, and a quota system. Only the last is new information. The patent office should ask themselves, on each patent, does the R&D cost justify a virtual monopoly for the better part of 2 decades. Too often a patent is granted to the first person who noticed a problem, then came up with a trivial solution for it. That is not the proper purpose of patent protection. They should ask themselves are they acting in the public interest, or are they enriching a tiny group of people who have done nothing notable at the expense of the public.

Re:The real problem - quotas

[Cigamit]

I believe what he was trying to say (though I may be confused considering it was quite confusing to read) is that the USPO is a government job, so they should actually be working for the people to make sure that no *bad* patents get through, the qouta destroys the whole concept of working for the people, and instead makes them work for the paycheck.

Or at least that is how I interpretted it.

Re:The real problem - quotas

[tiedyejeremy]

thank you. And, i would like to add, there is more than that: as with the union job, there is actually a disincentive to be too good and a likelyhood that the worker loses sight of the job for which they are hired in the chase for mediocrity and not causing waves. if you currently have a quota of 5 and you always meet your quota, then the quota may be raised to six. You can't argue that 5 is too many because then you appear inept, but don't want to say 5 is too few, because then you don't have time to be thorough. If you weed out the slow workers so that the quota is raised to 6 (which is what you are pressured to do), in that week that you get the toughie, you work through it, then blindly stamp 5 more to keep your job. If you get the quota lowered, everyone thinks they'll be targeted as rushing if they do more. If workers were hired to do a good job and paid based on their expertise and performance, rather than their tenure or ability to meet quotas, then good people would want the jobs and do good work! A quota system means they report and are rewarded by a formula (quota system) so they no longer report to the people they serve. Ideally, patents reward invention by protecting inventors, but rubber stamp quota-chasing rewards patent filers and hurts inventors; making it wasteful to spend time innovating and inventing, which causes everyone to lose out on what might have been.

Re:The real problem - quotas

[Anonymous Coward]

you do realize that it isnt just one search and the patent is rejected or allowed.

an inital rejection is mailed, then the applicant responds, the examiner can then allow or reject the case again.

VERY few patents are allowed on the first action. the whole process takes years.

don't believe me, go ask a patent attorney.

Re:The real problem - quotas

[Erwos]

I understand the position, but they've got to have _some_ mechanism to verify you're working. Otherwise, people would just claim one patent took them two weeks.

-Erwos

Re:The real problem - quotas

[tiedyejeremy]

what happened to supervisors who supervise?

I've finally figured out the USPTO

[Anonymous Coward]

Their approval mechinism is a BOT written by ActiveBuddy. If it doesn't understand a submission, then it must be new! If a submission comes from ActiveBuddy, it must be new! I expect to see several thousand patents granted to ActiveBuddy in the next few months.

Not PTO to blame but legal system

[RazzleFrog]

Then I challenge you to come up with a better system. The problem is not with the system but with funding. There are millions of patents that go through the system every year but only a few thousand patent clerks. There is no possible way for a patent clerk to go through an application, understand the technology involved in the patent, look for prior art, and judge whether the prior art invalidates the patent.

This is where our countries check and balances, 3 branches of government comes into play. It is up to the legal system to determine whether a patent request is valid or not. The problem is that the legal system has become a joke. The time and expense involved with pursuing these cases makes it so that the deepest pocket almost always wins.

What is the fix, you ask? Penalties for invalid patents. If you patent something and don't do an adequate job searching for prior art BEFORE applying to the PTO then you should be fined the time it took the PTO clerk to review the application, all court fees for defendants, and maybe even a punitive payment. This would mean that defendants could fight an honest battle knowing that if they come out on top they don't have to pay the mounting legal fees. It would also make these frivolous patents much more expensive.

Re:Not PTO to blame but legal system

[thomas.galvin]

Then I challenge you to come up with a better system.

Someone once asked me how to fix all the bugs in their code. I told them to type rm *.cc and start over again. I suggest the same in this instance.

Software patents in general need to go away; copyright is enough protection for code. I understand an entities right to profit from code they have created, but there is absolutly no good reason to prevent someone else from figuring out how to do the same thing. Copyright also needs to be reformed, but that's a topic for another day.

What is the fix, you ask? Penalties for invalid patents.

A good start, at least, but the people issuing these idiotic patents need to be held accountable as well. No where in the real world could you exhibit such low performance and keep your job.

Re:Not PTO to blame but legal system

[Physics Dude]

Then I challenge you to come up with a better system.

How about a system where the patent office hires people who are at least SOMEWHAT knowlegeable in the subjects they're granting patents over.

Also require them to do at least ONE google search for prior art! :)

Re:Not PTO to blame but legal system

[RazzleFrog]

So why don't you or Thomas Galvin go work there? Odds are they are understaff, overworked, and underpaid. That is not a fault of the process but of congress for not providing adequate funding.

It is really easy to attack them on a case by case basis but I would like to see you read and understand even 50% of what goes through their hands. Maybe this one you would understand but what if the next was for some kind of farm equipment?

Re:Not PTO to blame but legal system

[blue trane]

the people issuing these idiotic patents need to be held accountable as well. No where in the real world could you exhibit such low performance and keep your job.

I think the problem is the patent office thinks it's a business. They want to increase revenue. Granting patents becomes a means of increasing revenue for the department.

So, low performance in the eyes of the country is not the same thing as low performance on the job...

Patenting

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought a company could only patent it's own software. That shouldn't stop other companies from writing "different" software that performss the same function. For example there are many companies that make MP3 players and all of them play mp3's and I'm sure they all have patents on their particular software but that doesn't stop someone from writing a different mp3 player.

Re:HURRR HURRRR I CAN TYPE COMMENTS ON SLASHDOT...

[wo1verin3]

Hrm...I never thought of that... a beowulf cluster of IM bots.... Thats a good idea!

brb.... gonna go patent it.. i bet that patent only covers one of them

Eh?

[drunkmonk]

"The buddyscript suite of tools is the best that's available. We're confident they are the best choice (for users) who are building interactive agents. The subject of enforcing the patent shouldn't even come up. Anyone wanting to build a very good interactive agent will find that our tools are the very best," Kay added.

It's like a presidential campaign in the old Soviet Union...

"The subject of voting shouldn't even come up. We're obviously the best party around..."

I'm patenting breathing!

[maxwell demon]

Think of it: Everyone does it. All the time from birth to death (sometimes with little interruptions due to accidents). Guaranteed income, as long as there are humans.

Of course I'll not write "breathing", no, I'll write:

1. A method of providing the human body with oxygen and at the same time removing excess carbon dioxide by repeated expansion and shrinkage of lungs, resulting in an periodic air-flow into and out of them, and then relying on osmotic partial pressure to exchange the substances between air and blood inside the lung.
   
2. Same as above, except generating the air flow into lungs by connecting the air flow ways of this and of another human and having the other human's lung volume reduced, while making sure that the air does not escape through another body-opening.

Re:I'm patenting breathing!

[F34nor]

3. Same as above, except generating a flow of warmed air up the recutm of a corporation, boos, or other jackass without merit.

Re:I'm patenting breathing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, stop picking on everybody, pick on them who deserve it:

I'd like to patent the system of charging money to regester a technical innovation in order to enable the inventor to gain monetary repayment for their efforts while enabling the community at large to benifit from the knowlege of how the invention works...

--
Funcan

AIM already has a bot

[Anonymous Coward]

The "away messge" feature in AIM is a form of bot.

A.L.I.C.E.

[guinnessnwhiskey]

http://alice.sunlitsurf.com/alicechat.html > Hi Alice Hello there. > do you know the company ActiveBuddy? I haven't heard of the company ActiveBuddy. Try searching the open directory. > Well, they have a patent on bots like you Well that's okay. Where did they get them? > from the patent office Who or what is the patent office? > a lot of jerks are working there How many? > i don't know Me either. > Tim Kay is responsible for that Are they exactly the same? > you mean he's a jerk? Yes Connect I think that is what I meant. Was it not clear? > sure, i knew it right from the start. Bye OK let's do it. And? Who told you? See you later.

Re:A.L.I.C.E.

[guinnessnwhiskey]

Damn, should use the preview button first ;-) http://alice.sunlitsurf.com/alicechat.html > Hi Alice

Hello there.

> do you know the company ActiveBuddy?

I haven't heard of the company ActiveBuddy.
Try searching the open directory.

> Well, they have a patent on bots like you

Well that's okay. Where did they get them?

> from the patent office

Who or what is the patent office?

> a lot of jerks are working there

How many?

> i don't know

Me either.

> Tim Kay is responsible for that

Are they exactly the same?

> you mean he's a jerk?

Yes Connect I think that is what I meant. Was it not clear?

> sure, i knew it right from the start. Bye

OK let's do it. And? Who told you? See you later.

Earliest known use

[chron]

This 'technology' was first used in the program "PowerTools" from http://www.bpssoft.com back in 1994. This is EIGHT years ago!

The program automatically responded to IMs for you on the Windows version of AOL, much like IM bots do today through AIM and other services.

iChatBot, fairly well known IM bot since 8/11/2000

[frenetic3]

The ActiveBuddy patent was filed on 8/22/2000,

but iChatBot, a fairly well known (well, with what seems to be many hundreds of users, and able to attract the attention of losers who keep its warning level in the 90% range 24 hours a day :)) AIM bot has been existence since at least 8/11/2000, thus being before the patent filing and proof of prior art etc.

Check it out: http://www.ichatbot.com/show.php?changelog.html

Just another example of how this patent is complete bullshit.

*sigh*.

What do you have to do to overturn a patent?

-fren

Patents

[fudgefactor7]

Wheras patenting is a "nice idea", as in "gee, wouldn't it be a nice idea if people didn't hate?", it's implimented all wrong. Patents SHOULD expire. That's the point. Regardless, this patent is FUBAR. I hope it gets challenged and they lose.

Or put another way: "Patent this mother-bleeper!"

Ooo Oooo! Me tooo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait for it.... That's not money you're smelling. Thank you everyone, you've been a wondeful crowd. I'm here every night. Enjoy the veal.

prior art

[mozkill]

well, if this technology was being used before this company was using it, then i suppose all of us can still use this technology without worrying about being sued, because doesn't the "prior art" argument work here?

How much prior art can we rack up?

[Felinoid]

AiM bots and ICQ bots been around for a while.
When I first joinned the Internet in 1993 IRC bots were all over the place.
My first attempt an OS was an AI.. my first test was to write an chat bot for a local chat BBS. This may not count the OS was defective so the bot never worked.

Eliza bots would chat with users in some cases if you paged the sysop and the sysop wasn't there the BBS would switch you over to an Eliza bot so you could chat with somebody...
(People were SOOO board back then)

So this racks up bots to say 1980's... and some refrences to Apple // chat bots suggest we can go back to 1970's. Eliza itself I believe was a project in the 1960's thow it was talking with itself so maybe it dosen't count.

Chat bot's date back years.. This is a known..
But Active Buddy dosen't know about it?

Ok my question is "How can you know internet programming and NOT know about bots?"
To the patent office "Do you have any technology experts who know something more advanced than the wheel? Or can I get a patent on that?"

Re:How much prior art can we rack up?

[thasmudyan]

Reading this interview you almost get the impression that the concept of prior art is completely meaningless. I mean look at the confidence of those people. They blatantly ignore anyone who's testifying that there has been prior art. Now I don't know the internal workings of the patent office but is it possible they will ignore the prior art clause in some cases? The ActiveBuddy people sound so damn confident as if they had a deal with the P.O. or something. Bah, that's conspiracy for you... Let's talk again when the first bot developers has been successfully sued.

By the way I think it's totally not acceptable that the burden of proof is up to the guys who get sued. Shouldn't a patent owner have to prove that his invention is genuine in the first place?

Re:How much prior art can we rack up?

[settonull]

I had a working Perl based AIM bot before Aug 2000. Never did much with it, but i have plenty of people who knew about it and worked with it. This is such incredible BS.

Totally agree: Thank You Active Buddy Inc.!

[Anonymous Coward]

How more obvious cases do we need to change the patent laws?

ActiveBuddy

[neotopica]

As a member of a 130,000 employee strong systems integration firm I suggest we vote with our feet! Such egregious actions in times of economic stagnation should only be rewarded one way - boycott.

Greece patents democracy, demands licensing fees

[gokubi]

ATHENS--The US Patent Office awarded the country of Greece a patent for "government of a people via said people's involvement in the selection of said government." "Greece invented the concept of democracy over 2000 years ago. We have decided that it is time to enforce our intellectual property rights to this governmental model", Anthony Papatriantafilou, Greece's Ambassador to the United States said yesterday. "We're an ongoing enterprise, and we have to think about our future." Greece will send out letters demanding licensing fees from democratic governments around the globe, said Papatriantafilou. Failure to pay the fees or cease running as a democracy would "bring about legal action from the government of Greece, the only legitimate rights holders to government of, by and for the people."

Could the patent office be sued?

[Sebby]

Just wondering: could the patent office be sued if it was found that it didn't do its job properly (easy enough to do), and robbed someone/company revenue as a result of their ineptness?

Could make for an interesting business model....

ROTFLMAO

[Anonymous Coward]

Why one creates a patent, even a meaningless one:

• Intimidation. Because of the high costs
  of litigation, one can often intimidate a company
  into licensing a potentially offending technology
  rather than having them face the costs of
  litigation.
  
• Marketing (pay heed, Slashdotters). Having a controversial patent issued to you and then slashdotted is a wonderful way to generating market awareness of your patent & technology without having to spend additional marketing budget.
  

Seriously - there's so much crap out there in the
patent field, it might be worthwhile to not give
every joe with a somewhat controversial patent the
free publicity until it is shown that they have
the strength and ability to start legal procedures
against defendants.

Valid anywhere else...except the U.S.

[streak]

Its amazing that the USPTO would grant this patent. But it would be perfectly valid in pretty much any other country since most of them (except the U.S.) are on a "first to file" basis, instead of "first to conceive/bring to practice" basis.

So if there is prior art, and it can be PROVED that there is prior art then the patent is moot.
The key word here is "prove." A guy from another website who says he "remebers stuff like this going on way before they were a company" just isn't going to cut it. They need to find some documents, whitepapers, whatever (preferably not just electronic copies, that have been signed and dated by someone (perferably multiple people).

Believe it or not, prior art is a very difficult thing to prove.

Off Topic: Where are all the cool bots?

[StevenHallman76]

I always thought it would be cool if I could interact with my machine via a messenger bot, but at the time there wasn't much out there.

These guys have some tutorials and a 'bot base' with bot related tasks that other people have written.

There's also a plug-in that will let you pgp encrypt messages.

sweet!

Re:Off Topic: Where are all the cool bots?

[Anonymous Coward]

This one is pretty cool (alice bot).

Stealing treasure from the dragon

[Have Blue]

Isn't AOL going to get a bit riled over this? Surely a patent on bots designed to connect to their network could be at least challenged as infringing on their IP. And AOL is not a good enemy for an unpopular start-up to have.

Re:Stealing treasure from the dragon

[toast0]

ActiveBuddy is already in bed with AOL. If you'll notice, not only does SmarterChild apparently not have to deal with rate limiting, it is also immune to warning.

Re:Stealing treasure from the dragon

[prockcore]

True, and AIM isn't even a very bot friendly network in the first place. The whole "warn" system is screwed up. How is a bot supposed to deal with Anonymous Warnings?!

The world has gone insane

[sheddd]

mailto: usptoinfo@uspto.gov

How can you continue to grant patents for crap like this:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?S ect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ft00&s1=activebuddy&OS=activ ebuddy&RS=activebuddy

There's a wealth of prior art if you took the time to look.

Now this predatory company will reap the benefits of a patent that should never have been granted:
http://www.activebuddy.com/press/index.s html

Why? Are you pressured to grant patents for the revenue regardless of the merit of the proposed patent?

Hmm I wonder what and if they will reply.

Dear me@mydomain.com,

The United States Patent and Trademark Office received your e-mail on 8/15/02. You will receive a response or a status from General Information Services as quickly as possible and within 1 day. Your tracking number for this request is T200208150049.

Thank You

What *are* the rules of prior art?

[Marc2k]

About a year ago starting my sophomore year in college, I myself wrote an Im bot. It wasn't amazingly robust, but it was well documented and falls in the realm of their patent. All of the code (and a webpage, and html pages included with the source) was dated September 2001, which was before the patent was granted, but after it was filed. Where does that leave my bot? Am I not allowed to run it without punitive action? Can I still post the source and/or cite it in a resume?

When in doubt, go meta.

[?erosion]

Method for ensuring intellectual property rights for a device or process

Abstract

A method that will interactively assess the unique quality of property claims and grant intellectual property rights if the claims can be substantiated. The claims shall be directed toward the central office (hereafter "84b9734") by the requesting party (hereafter "4276fs84"). At this office an inspector (hereafter "yqr7334") shall attempt to assess the veracity of the claims placed by 4276fs84. In the event the claims are approved by yqr7334, 4276fs84 shall be granted a time-limited monopoly over the concept, allowing 4276fs84 to license the concept to other entities that shall wish to use it, including party 84b9734.

...and so forth. My God, what have I done?

Off of AOL-IM

[kisrael]

They removed SmarterChild from AIM, which was where I used it to. Too bad, it was about the best way to get dictionary/spellcheck, weather, headlines, and movies out there. Terrific fast interface.

Not sure how they planned to make money on it..they had some "text based" ads in there.

You should only turn your cheek...

[hackwrench]

when it signifies that you are invincible...but it's gotten twisted.

Re:Bot making tools? er, PERL, Python come to mind

[isorox]

heres my http bot in "isorox language"
1) read get line into A
2) int b = sum of ascii code of each character in A
3) if (b % 2) output "Hello, World!"
4) else output "Goodbye, Cruel World!"

OK, its a crap bot, but does this mean that slashdot is now in breach of the patent?

Activerse DingBot SDK, 1997-2000

[gojomo]

My company in 1998, Activerse, developed a product called the "DingBot SDK" for creating interactive IM response Bots like those ActiveBuddy claims a patent on. It worked in our own (all-Java, radically peer-to-peer, web-services-like) IM/Presence system, but featured an API specifically designed to allow multi-IM-system bots.

We demoed an early version of the product at the "Demo 98" conference, in February 1998. PCWeek ran an article about us mentioning the DingBot SDK later that month.

The Activerse press release announcing the product's general availability, in November 1998, is still available at the Internet Archive.

ActiveBuddy was founded in March 2000. So, not only were their "IM bots" a old idea by the time they filed their patent (August 2000), a ripoff of both Activerse's offerings and more than a decade of practice on IRC networks and in MUDs/MOOs, but their very name was derivative of an existing player in the same market ("Activerse"->"ActiveBuddy") and their main product (an SDK/server) and business model (licensing) mimicked Activerse as well.

Their founder claims with a straight face "we invented interactive agents" and "I am fairly confident, there were no interactive agents on IM at that point when the application was filed. I'm certainly not aware of any." That only goes to show you have to be *studiously* ignorant and/or dishonest in order to effectively twist the flaws of the software patent system to personal advantage.

(Postscript on Activerse: It was acquired by high-flying internet conglomerate CMGI in April 1999. Though the initial aim was to expand and promote the Ding IM/bot products throughout the CMGI network of compnaies, as CMGI itself unravelled, Activerse was dismantled through a series of mostly arbitrary and faddish organizational moves which completely ignored the promise of the growing IM space.)

Re:Activerse DingBot SDK, 1997-2000

[JPelorat]

Oh, now don't you start that 'derivative name ripoff' bullshit too. Leaving alone the rest of the claims against them, I have to object to the 'derivative name' remark.. just cos they both have the word 'Active' in it doesn't mean anything.

"Activerse" is a mutation of the word "Universe", while "ActiveBuddy" seeks to imply some kind of autonomous creature. "ActiveBuddy" is actually much more descriptive of what they're selling than "Activerse" is.

Well... that is just kind of weird

[yeoua]

Why would they patent IM bots... when they are selling the tools to make your own IM bot? Aren't you supposed to patent the technology your selling and not patent the technology that your product can make? I mean, jeez, could they just write in the EULA that your not supposed to violate their patents by using their IM bot maker... and then sue you if you make an IM bot with their maker (since they have the patent on IM bots).

Well, what if then someone in turn patents an IM bot maker. That would be poetic justice right there.

I'm running an ALICE bot...

[antirename]

And I'll be damned if I'm going to pay this jackoff to be able to do so. "I'm not aware" that other bots exist... right. So this guy isn't smart enough to find prior art (or a crook), but his software is better? Someone needs to patent office with a really big clue stick.

now THIS is too far

[Anonymous Coward]

without getting too emotional here, I think another big focus here should be to use this as 'the straw that broke the camels back' to bring up charges against the Patent and Trademark office. IANAL, but the fact that their charters main purpose/goal is to grant patents to UNIQUE offerings is obviously not being followed. Furthermore, there _IS_ policy that states the basic requirements for being granted a patent (including prior art among them). Now to be fair to the actual people involved, the methods employed by the US Patent and Trademark office are horribly wrought with inefficient red tape, loopbacks, inconsistencies and contradictions. This is to say that it is the OFFICE that should be named in a suit not the people. The policy must be re-examined, and either changed to formally allow patents to be granted when it is not new, or setup the proper hierarchy of policy, processes and methods that allows specific implementation policies to not contradict the primary purpose of their existence.

Remember that it is our tax dollars that maintain this organization and its methods. As responsible stewards, they should be forced to a standard of competency and quality. No excuse is bearable when this happens, unless it is immediately followed up with modifications to the policy and/or personnel responsible.

Also, make sure you dont fall into any bandwagons of 'kill the EVIL corporations!' as this is NOT what capitalism or the free market is about. Think about it... the purpose of patents is to encourage the development of new ideas. Choosing to give that up is foolish, however choosing to 'patent' it for all to use is very wise and noble. Choosing to do such can be an emotional decision (giving to all) or a logical one (standardizing protocols to increase use and expand the market). However if there is a valid fear that your innovation will be ripped away from you and used against you, then the result is less innovation. The founding fathers knew this and that is why they implemented what they did (too bad it has been 'red-taped').

There are watchdog organizations out there, but perhaps this is direct job for the senate appropriations and oversight committies, as this is a direct and flagrant misuse of both power and funds.

Attack it from that angle _AND_ the constitional and ethical issue. Do not rely on emotions of 'but everything should be FREE!' as you will get no where.

i want to patent the idea of a patent.

[gl4ss]

so that i could get money everyone uses a patent. or then i would like to patent the idea to patent stuff that has been patented before.

How long until the law realizes?

[Ogerman]

How long will it be before people get it through their thick skulls that dying business models should not be propped up by nonsense copyright / patent laws. Let the 'invisible hand of the market' do it's work for crying out loud! This is supposed to be a free, open, democratic society we live in!

Shouts out to my dead AI homiez...

[Anonymous Coward]

AIDaria
AIJane
AITrent
AIQuinn
RIP
Too bad your brain files got crapflooded.

Active Buddy's mistake is...

[Anonymous Coward]

that the patent covers basic bot technology that clearly existed prior to the patent filing, *AND* a fairly complicated, novel (?) way to send other IM users to an otherwise secured web site.

IANAL, but it seems to me that the entire patent will be invalidated based on prior art for the one invention and the other invention then becomes fair game to copy.

patent injunction

[bigpat]

I think a federal court should slap an injunction on issuing new patents on the patent office till they can respond to the question "why are these frivolous patents being allowed through?"

The failure of the patent office to adequately (IMHO) review patent claims threatens the underpinnings of our economy as much as any accounting scandal. Leaving real patent review to the courts is very very expensive and will ultimately lead to less efficient

Does anyone have any real numbers, though? Is the patent office generally doing a good job and we are just seeing some glaring excpetions?

Or are they just selling real estate on the moon and not worrying about disputes in the future? Metaphorically speaking.

Re:patent injunction

[ProfBooty]

the patent office recieves around 400k patent applications a year and has for quite some time

to contrast that, there are about ~6.5 million patents, about 2 million of which date from the past 20 years.

i hope that helps to put it into perspective, i dont think most posters realize that.

Re:patent injunction

[bigpat]

Thanks Prof. Booty, That's informative. But out of 400k , what number get rejected though? And what is the trend over the past 20 years or so?

Basically, it is understandable that in any given year that some patents will be given out that aren't reasonable. So, the important thing to look at would be the number of rejected patent applications. Even then the numbers can't tell you everything about motives. It does seem to me that not enough patents are being sought for "original ideas" but rather for original wording of patents, while the underlying ideas are very much ordinary and derivative.

Re:patent injunction

[ProfBooty]

the trend is in excess of 95% are rejected.

It is very rare that an application becomes a patent on the first action the examiner preforms on it, because there is usually something wrong with the application,there could be spelling errors, claims not supported by the specification, prior art over the claims, multiple dependant claims, identical claims as a previous application by the same inventor.

the patent office has a classification system for patents. each class and subclass contains hundreds of patents on the same subject, many of which seem identical to one another until you read the claims, that means one subclass might contain 300 remote controls, each of which communicate with a TV etc, but do something different, but yet have the same basic function.

As you said, most inventions are just that, incremental improvements of previous inventions, but thats what the patent system is for, it allows the full disclosure of inventions for others to improve upon in exchange for a limited monopoly.

Re:patent injunction

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.popa.org

thats the patent examiners union website, probably worth posting to slashdot so that people have an understanding of the patent process from an examiners prospective.

As long as there are lawyers..

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as there are lawyers there will be patents.

I tried to IM them...

[jxs2151]

I tried to IM ActiveBuddy but their bot kept replying: "Fuck Off! I'm on break!"

Commercial prior art: Activerse, DingBot SDK 1998

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1997-1999, Austin, TX-based Activerse developed a product called DingBot SDK, debuted in early 1998 released for general use in late 1998.

Debut, Feb. 1998

Release, Aug. 1998

This product was a Java-based development toolkit for building IM bots. The SDK was made available for free download, and was used to build 'bots for the Ding! buddy list / IM product, though the Java code could easily be repurposed for any buddy list which used similar design principles.

Activerse did not obtain patent protection on this technology before it was purchased by CMGI in April of 1999. It is unclear what CMGI might have done with the technology and intellectual property since that point.

At first glance, ActiveBuddy's SDK appears to be very similar to the Activerse DingBot SDK. The patent claims conflict with this (and potentially other) prior art, and this patent should never have been granted. Eliza aside, the existance of commercial products 1-2 years before ActiveBuddy's Aug 2000 filing demonstrates prior invention.

This patent in particular is a prime example of the egregious and continuing inability of the PTO to do adequate due diligence on patent applications. Anyone seeking to overturn this patent will need to file a reexamination request and associated affidavits related to the prior art. In the preparation of this material, the assistance of former Activerse developers and executives could prove useful; they should be sought out for this purpose.

Prior art ... the USPTO itself!

[VisualStim]

Perhaps the prior art could be found within the USPTO itself. From a typical technology patent application:

Applicant: I'd like to file for a patent on my idea.
USPTO: Tell me about your idea.
Applicant: My idea will change everything. No one will be able to surf the web without using my idea. I'll make billions!
USPTO: You sound excited.
Applicant: Excited? Who wouldn't be?
USPTO: I'll ask the questions.
Applicant: Oh, sorry. Now, about that application.
USPTO: Oh, you'd like a patent application. Of course sir. Here is your patent, #123,456,789,012,345.

Re:Over and over again...Filter

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only part. One needs to be able to seperate the new from the old. Unless one practically sits on the site all the live long day, things will get through.

Amazing.

[PhxBlue]

I know, this is just a bit off-topic. . . but I feel the need to engage soapbox mode here.

<soapbox style="rant">

Twenty years from now, this stuff's still going to get modded "funny." And it'll be just as pathetic then as it is now.

It isn't. Okay, the base.swf that had Dubya on the billboard with "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" was funny. . . the first few times I saw it. But my geekophile fiance didn't think it was funny the first time. That might tell you something about just how "funny" this gag is now that it's been beaten, skinned, and chopped into Purina Dog Chow.

</soapbox>

Re:Amazing.

[bwt]

Can somebody tell me what the origin of "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" actually is? I understand what it means -- I just want to know who said it first and why everybody latched on to it.

Re:Amazing.

[PhxBlue]

Sure thing.

The original phrase came from a cheesy video game called "Zero Wing." I've never actually played it, and in fact hadn't even heard of it until the "All Your Base" thing became so popular. Gamespy has some good information on the "All Your Base" mistranslation and on the game itself.

Re:Amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still people who think Beowulf Cluster imaginings are funny. That's been going on for a lot longer.

Re:Amazing.

[MonsterChicharo]

Maybe you would like to watch the video

I'm going to patent...

[zaffir]

I'm going to patent masturbation! Sure there's prior "art", but who's going to admit it? I could even put a small tax on every male over the age of 12 because they MIGHT be masturbating without a liscense from me. I'll be rich!

...of course you do

[plutonium binky]

/me still thinks "move every zig" and "for great jusTICE!" are funny.
but then I have problems...and my only friend is my Summoner Geeks .mpg
Hey Graham, I'm not in the room right?
-binky.

Re:...of course you do

[Anonymous Coward]

I rather liked "What happen?" and "What you say!!" a lot more.

Re:...of course you do

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah- I use "What you say!" all the time with my brother on the phone.

E.g.

My brother: Chobits 19 is out.

Me: What you say!

Re:Over and over again...Filter

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wondered why patent lawyers are able to charge so much? :-)

Re:The ultimate patent-God

[Anonymous Coward]

GOD! Try patenting an omnipotent creator.
The royalties would go on forever.

AOL?

[Valar]

Really, the best alliance we have in the fight against this patent is *shudder* AOL. AOL is notoriously pissy about people using their services for anything but looking at the ads at the top of them. Perhaps someone should mention to them that all of these bots running around aren't browsing through the sites of all of their "merchant partners." I'm sure they would be rather upset, in classic AOL style.

oh yeah... forgot to add

[Anonymous Coward]

in this specific instance (as an example to others of course) the thing that _COULD_ be patented would be the very specific implementation details of their method. If they use a blue-assed baboon that flails and throws banannas around the screen, and internally use some obscure algorithm and code as the logic set... then it is that specific code and the trademark of the foul tempered, fruit throwing primate which is the patentable part. Otherwise the free and not so free agents I have been dealing with since 93 would be prior art.

this would be funny, where my tax dollars not being spent on it. Take a stupid person. Now lobotomize them... now put them in a government job. Why is it that it is increasingly the most stupid slack-jawed fools that are put in as decision makers on important issues?

What to expect?

[Ilgaz]

A company cloning IM stuff and making money of it (Windows platform FYI) acts that way.

If slashdot covered a story either of those companies (AOL,MS etc) blocking them, it would generate "oh evil big companies killing little guy" kind of attitude.

Now ActiveBuddy is the evil for patenting (its bullshit,I know) a thing.

Think again about those win32 clones (note,not speaking about Linux) one more time. Its the stuff could be expected from them anytime.

Sorry if sounds like flame, those companies (oh never confuse Jabber with them) are lame ones. Think about it when next time a company bans them because of security, guess what? They can be right.

(now I must be executed by points I guess)

Uh-oh.

[neema]

I guess RunABot is in trouble, for one.

1991 prior art right here

[-benjy]

The Zephyr instant messaging system used at MIT since the late eighties includes the ability for users to write simple bots within the configuration file (.zwgc.desc). You could send remote commands to a computer (e.g. to log yourself off from across campus if you never made it back from dinner) or to provide an automated response to a specifically formatted incoming message. Everything can be authenticated via Kerberos.

Below are some snippets from my .zwgc.desc file. It was last modified sometime before 1995, and the main body of the file was contributed by lwvanels whose last RCS timestamp is July 23, 1991.

See http://web.mit.edu/olh/Zephyr and
http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/izeph yr/html/izephyr.html
for more about Zephyr.

Begin .zwgc.desc snippets --------------------

# Ignore certain people and let them know it

if ($puntlist != "") then
if (upcase($sender) != lany (upcase($user), $sender)) then
if (($puntlist == "*") | ($puntlist =~ $sender)) then
if ((upcase($class) == "MESSAGE") & (upcase($instance) == "PERSONAL")) then
set signature = "Automated_reply:"
set message = $user+" is currently not receiving your messages."
exec "sh" "-c" "zwrite -n -O zebra "+$sender+" -s "+$signature+" -m "+$message
endif
if ((upcase($class) != "MESSAGE") | (upcase($instance) != "URGENT")) then
exit
endif
endif
endif
endif

#
# ZEPHYR REMOTE COMMANDS
#
# The following segment enables the user to send a command to another terminal
# provided that user is running a zwgc on that terminal. The command is sent
# as the message portion of a zephyrgram and is directed at the terminal named
# in the opcode portion of the zephyrgram.
#
# To receive remote commands with this code requires that the user subscribe to
# messages of class Command and instance Personal. This is accomplished with
# the following command entered at the prompt:
# zctl add command personal %me%
#
# To facilitate the sending of remote commands, these aliases may be added
# to your .cshrc.mine file or your .aliases file:
# alias execute 'zw -c command -i Personal {$user} -O'
# alias status 'zw -O \!* -c command -i Personal {$user} -m "ps acgx | zwrite -n -q -i status $user"'
# alias rlogout 'zw -O \!* -c command -i Personal {$user} -m /usr/athena/end_session'
# Usage:
# execute <hostname>
# ---> Send a command to the machine named by <hostname>. This
# requires that you have a zwgc running on that machine and
# are subscribed to the appropriate class and instance. The
# command should be a standard unix command or the full path
# of an executable file. Pipelined commands and commands
# requiring arguments are allowed. A windowgram will appear
# displaying the command that has been requested. A response
# will be sent by the named machine informing whether the
# command was executed. There is no guarantee that the
# command will actually succeed in performing as expected
# once zwgc attempts to execute it: the actual behavior of
# the command is determined by the shell in which the zwgc
# is running.
# status <hostname>
# ---> Send a list of the processes currently running on <hostname>.
# This is an example of a pipelined unix command, and shows one
# way to receive back the output of a command: pipe the output
# into a personal zwrite.
# rlogout <hostname>
# ---> Log off <hostname>. A great way to avoid returning to that
# cluster on the other side of campus when you forget to logout.
# All processes should die, no unsaved files will be saved.
#
match "command"
fields signature command
# Ignore pings
if (upcase($opcode) == "PING") then exit endif
# Display replies
if ($opcode == "reply") then
print "@center(@bold("+$aval+" "+$instance+" "+$class+"))\n"
print "@center("+$fromhost+")\n"
print "@center(has executed the command:)\n"
print "@center(@bold("+$command+"))"
put
exit
endif
# Verify that sender of request is legitimate user
if (upcase($user) != lany (upcase($sender), $user)) |
($auth != "yes") then
exit
endif
# Display command request
print "@center(@bold("+$aval+" "+$instance+" "+$class+"))\n"
print "@center(From: "+$sender+" on "+$fromhost+")\n"
print "@center(To: "+$recipient+" on "+$opcode+")\n"
print "@center(@bold("+$command+"))"
# Host specified by opcode executes command request
if (upcase($opcode) == lany (upcase($hostname), $opcode)) then
# Record the command request in specified file
set cfile = "/mit/"+getenv("USER")+"/zwgc_command."+$time
&nb sp; outputport "request" $cfile
put "request" $command
closeport "request"
print "\n@center(Host "+$hostname+" acknowledges request.)\n"
# Execute the command request
set command = lbreak($command, "\n")
exec "/bin/csh" "-fc" $command
set reply = "zwrite -n -q -O reply -c command -i "+$instance+" "+getenv("USER")+" -m '"+$command+"'"
exec "/bin/csh" "-fc" $reply
endif
put
exit

Re:1991 prior art right here

[i0lanthe]

Yeah, I don't know how the bot scene is at MIT these days, but at CMU (zephyr migrated to multiple realm thingies here a while ago) there are bots that have been around for years, one of the more pointless ones being the Cube. The Cube was born in 1996, still in "use" daily, may be vaguely familiar to anyone who saw ye olde Forum 2000.

My Patent

[IMBotFather]

Couple of comments re: IMBot Patent a) There was no prior art for what we patented - we looked. And it wasn't obvious either. b) We considered free intellectual property concerns prior to applying but as officers of a corporation we were obliged to do whatever we could to protect our shareholder's rather significant investment in the company - and protecting the firm's IP was tops on the list. c) There are companies out there (and you and they both know who they are) that would have tried to overtly rip off AB if it had no such protection. d) I'm willing to bet that my co-founder - Tim Kay - has contributed as much code to the open source movement as most of you (AB certainly utilizes plenty of open source stuff in its development and operations) e) we allow people to download BuddyScript for nothing - and nothing in the license agreement prevents anyone of you from cloning an interpreter for the language (remember PostScript Clones?) I strongly advise that the members of the Open Source community grow up, smell the coffee and use their rather significant intellectual engergy to create change from within the system rather than whining like little girly-men every time somebody patents a new idea. On a related note - an article in the Financial Times this morning pointed out that one of the casualties of the burst tech bubble is casual clothing - apparently the bankers and entrepreneurs are climbing back into their suits for the next round of financings ... my guess is engineers may have to do the same thing. Maybe I should patent ties with Penguins on them and sell them through /. Robert Hoffer Founder Chairman ActiveBuddy

Re:My Patent

[Eric Smith]

rather than whining like little girly-men every time somebody patents a new idea.

But is it OK to whine when somebody patents an old idea?

Re:My Patent

[gondaba]

"we allow people to download BuddyScript for nothing", Yep, then shove a 3 person session limit on them, and ask for $199 for the BuddyServer lite package. "we looked", Obviously wrong. Look at the posts here. Not to mention the fact that you're listed as an "inventor" in the patent.

Re:My Patent

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Hello? AOL Instant Messanger INCLUDES an interactive AIM bot. Use the Get File command. It's interactive, and it's a bot running over an Instant messaging system.

Muchless the millions of AIMbots running previous to ActiveBuddy.

Re:My Patent

[cnoocy]

I would be interested (assuming you are actually the founder of ActiveBuddy and not a troll) to read your opinions on the differences between your patent and the multiple examples of prior art. I will happily grant that slashdot tends to have knee-jerk reactions to IP issues, but there are a significant number of factual challenges to your patent in this discussion, which deserve an answer. Thank you.

Re:My Patent

[IMBotFather]

Thank you for the feedback - useful. What number of sessions should we allow for free vs. selling the server?

Re:My Patent

[IMBotFather]

There are lots of challenges that the /. folks have come up with and we are looking at each of them to see if they're actually on point. My 'knee-jerk reaction' is that they aren't quite there. The patent is subtle and you should read it again. It will also possibly confirm that I'm not a troll but maybe not :-)

Re:My Patent

[beme]

I'd be more interested in hearing you explain what's non-obvious about this patent rather than hear arguments as to why the prior art examples "aren't quite there." I haven't the time to read the entire patent right now, but I didn't see anything that would have been non-obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art of instant messaging at the time the invention was made. What makes your invention so special?

Missing the point...unenforceable != not effective

[1qaz2wsx]

People seem to be missing the point, the granting of the patent does not need to be enforceable in order to be effective. Any commercial venture that might infringe on the patent is going to have a cloud of uncertainty over it. Potential customers of "infringing" technology are going to be leary of becoming involved, and having to defend themselves later in court.

I can remember back in 1994...

[bmooney28]

There was a MUD (multi user dimension) that was adventure based... and contained a room with a foul mouthed priest that preformed fairly basic AI responses... When you confessed to him, he would give such responses as "screw absolution, we're all goin' to hell anyway! stop wasting your time talkin to me..."

As I recall, in this MUD you could create your own objects including characters, and for characters, you could have them respond to certain keywords... Hmm.. this sounds very familiar...

Don't AOL and Active Buddy work *together*

[EMIce]

How else would ActiveBuddy get their AI bot on the AIM network under the im name "SmarterChild" among others? My guess is AOL would have to hand them a special account without rate limits.

Re:Don't AOL and Active Buddy work *together*

[signe]

They may very well work together. I really don't know. But it doesn't matter in this case. Even if they have a business arrangement, it doesn't make the patent any more valid.

As has been pointed out in the article, the perl modules for connecting to AIM were around long before this patent was filed, and included a simple bot.

-Todd

Re:Don't AOL and Active Buddy work *together*

[dillon_rinker]

Even if they have a business arrangement, it doesn't make the patent any more valid.

IANAL (duh), but if AOL agreed that ALL their work related to BOTS was, in fact, the intellectual property of Active Buddy, that would be a business arrangement. Anyone who tried to use AOL's work as evidence of prior art would be pounced on by Active Buddy's lawyers, who would say "See, you PROVE our case! The work you refer to is OUR work! Here's the proof..."

Using a more tangible analogy...engineering firm X researches piston-sprocket gears (PSGs). They build many prototypes. Along comes firm Y, who has also done work with PSGs. They say "We'll buy all your prototypes nd all your rights to them for $1 million." Firm Y patents PSGs. An engineer sues firm Y, claiming prior art at firm X invalidates the patent. Firm Y says "No, that prior art is ours, and here are the piston-sprocket gears to prove it."

If you claim this is invalid, it seems to me that it is tantamount to using an inventors own prototypes against him. If I invent something, creating prototypes along the way, are the prototypes samples of prior art that invalidates my patent? What if my dad does a lot of work on an invention, dies, leaves his work to me (ie physical and intellectual property rights), and I improve on and patent it? What if I buy all the rights from the original inventor, improve them, THEN patent them? What if my father does much work, then dies, and I inherit his work, improve it, and patent it?

Anyway, I think that AOL conceivably could have a business arrangement that invalidates their own prior art. If not, they would seem to own Active Buddy now... =)

Look at the all the other patents

[too_bad]

Just take a look at all the other patents cited in this patent. Makes me want to jump in the ocean (sigh)

Why does everyone blame the lawyers?

[BoomerSooner]

Have you ever heard someone say blame the law maker? In my opinion that would be more successful.

Lawyers are just like car mechanics, doctors, software engineers, ... They take advantage of the opportunity in front of them.

So could I patent pirating Windows?

[Uttles]

OK, here's a good EULA question:

Microsoft's EULA for Windows OS says don't copy it and distribute copies. People do that, and supposedly they're breaking the law.

AIM's EULA says don't make an automated chatting script, or bot, especially not to spam with. People do that, and apparently they get patents for it. How does this make sense to anyone?

Re:So could I patent pirating Windows?

[namespan]

I'm sure businesses -- especially partners or potential partners -- are given more favorable terms in their license agreements than mere consumers.

Chat with the CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

Me: First off, let me thank the CEO of ActiveBuddy for partaking in this informal chat about the recent patent that was issued.

ActiveBuddy: Hi, my name is Candy what is your name?

Me: Well, ok Candy, what are your thoughts about prior art and patents?

ActiveBuddy: I have lots of pics, go to www.activebuddynaked.com to see them!!!

Me: Ok

ActiveBuddy: The weather in Oklahoma is now 82 and sunny.

Me: This converstation is going nowhere

ActiveBuddy: Hi, my name is Britney, and I'm a hot 19.........

Re:Chat with the CEO

[CmdrPinkTaco]

"Our primary level of comfort comes from the fact that we have the best choice for developers and others. When given the choice, we're confident people will choose ours"

such a modest bunch of lads. I bet their mommies think that they are the best and tell them that every night.

Hmm..

[bandwidthsignals]

"I'm not familiar with that," Kay said in response to claims that interactive bots were in existence even before ActiveBuddy launched, with venture funding from Reuters and Wit Soundview.

That seems a little odd, considering what Activebuddy says here:

SmarterChild represents the most successfully deployed interactive agent in the history of computing.

Re:Over and over again...Filter

[program21]

Given the fact that they didn't seem to notice that bots existed before ActiveBuddy, yes, I do wonder why they charge so much if they can't find obvious example of prior art.

This is sick!

[mgessner]

WHEN are the fools that work in the US PTO going to wake up and actually start researching patents for prior art?!?!?! This is absolutely ridiculous! What can be done? Mass email flooding of the PTO office with a recorded .wav or .mp3 file of some crazy laughter?

Any suggestions?

IT'S TIME TO GO AFTER THE PATENT OFFICE !!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's complain to appropriate consumer protection
agencies or to our senators/congressmen
about an extremely inefficient bureaucracy --
the patent office

I guess they never heard of AOL SFT...

[4/3PI*R^3]

that was available in 1998 or 1999. SFT automatically redials AOL until it makes a connection, enters your screen name and password, minimizes the Welcome news window, and zaps AOL's reminders that you've been online for x minutes. You can even set it to answer intrusive IM's.
seems like an IM BOT to me

when is the patent office going to learn about Google

Try this you lazy patent examiners

Artificial Intelligence

[Subcarrier]

This almost makes you want to patent natural stupidity.

Prior Art

[MmmmJoel]

Here's the prior art using AIM you guys have been looking for. I remember seeing it somewhere on /.

The first conversation documented with this AIM bot is August 15th, 2000. The patent's date is August 22nd, 2000.

We have a weiner.

Oh no!

[Quixadhal]

This means they can now sue anyone who might happen to combine the classic "vacation" email responder with an icq->email gateway???

Can we hold the Patent Office in contempt? They clearly are NOT fulfilling their mandate.

And in related news...

[brsmith4]

the US Patent office has also awarded a patent to Goodyear, the nation's largest tire manufacturer, over none other than the wheel, thus effectively disabling the nation's transportation system. Until a proper audit of the wheels currently in the country can be completed and all past royalties are subsequently paid, Goodyear executives have denied everyone the use of their invention. "I think it's only fair that we receive just compensation for our invention, which to this day, has gone uncredited."

The president of Goodyear also states that "Since no one else wanted to step up to the plate and take credit for this terrific invention, I figured we will. Someone has to capitalize off of it."

Despite the fact that Goodyear had nothing to do with the initial invention of the wheel and was incorporated many years after its creation, the fact that its' inventorship has gone unclaimed all these years made obtaining the patent that much more enticing.

Developing...

It is policy of the state, stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you understand that US Patent office is following the official government policy? It wants to award all, even weak patents. They just have to be given to US companies. Just in case somebody wants to enforce them later.

Cluephone for Mr. Robert Hoffer, line 1

[david.johns]

a) You accuse the "Open Source community" of needing to grow up and stop whining. You take potshots about casual clothing.

b) You have taken out an overbroad patent in a field with massive prior art.

You, sir, need to grow up and smell the coffee. We are not idiots; we are not against innovation; we are not children. We are against the abuse of the patent system, because it destroys our livelihood; We are against those who would extend the realm of intellectual property to cover their abuses, whether by precedent or legislation, because it destroys our livelihood.

You, sir, are one of the many who have chosen to, in some little way, try to destroy our livelihood. If you are surprised that you have made enemies, you are a fool.

Re:Cluephone for Mr. Robert Hoffer, line 1

[IMBotFather]

Actually the patent process itself forces inventors to file rather NARROW patents. We had a lot more claims in there before narrowing it down to just this one. We're not against innovation, by the way, without patents the big companies would simply EAT little ones like AB. Oh ... one more thing ... the number of patents in the tech space has increased demonstrably over the last decade ... the salary and income level of engineers has also increased ... I don't see patents negatively impacting the ability of talented engineers and developers to earn a living ...

like a typical patent

[shren]

Like a typical patent, they move from less specific to more specific. Few people expect for all of the claims to be accepted, the first one is almost always something along the lines of "I patent breathing."

Instant ???

[howman]

I know you all have read this before, but here it is again for the sake of argument...

A method and system for interactively responding to queries from a remotely located user includes a computer server system configured to receiving an instant message query or request from the user over the Internet. The query or request is interpreted and appropriate action is taken, such as accessing a local or remote data resource and formulating an answer to the user's query. The answer is formatted as appropriate and returned to the user as an instant message or via another route specified by the user. A method and system of providing authenticated access to a given web page via instant messaging is also disclosed.

Now, what if I put a time delay on any message sent between one user and another? Does this still count as instant messaging? and would I then be infringing on the patent? Has anyone considered that although this is a patent, that there is something called a Design Patent which covers the look and feel of an item?

I wrote a Pascal IRC "intelligent bot" in '91...

[steppin_razor_LA]

I know IRC isn't exactly the same as an IM platform, but IMHO (not a lawyer disclaimer of course), there isn't much of a difference - both sit around monitoring conversations and have some sort of AI that drives responses.

I used to have a blast unleashing the bot onto IRC channels and watching as people would try and carry on conversations with it.

The *basic* personality was defined in a text file and consisted of a number of keywords/phrases that it would look for and then a number of responses for each of those keywords. If you were careful in how you picked them, you could put together entire potential conversations.

The "personality" I had the most fun/success with was a rather depressed and drugged out one. People would assume he was "stoned".. etc and feel sorry for him.

I guess it was sort of mean. But... well.. I still thought it was funny. :)

Odd.

[MoriarGryphon]

I didn't read thru the entire patent (too lazy), but just from the start of it, you could interpet my Web Browser being an IM client (Sending a message of "GET"), and any http server as the "Im bot" (forming a reply that has to do with my message and sending it back thru the Im Client)... Doesn't this sound extremly vague? Will they attack the ICQ network's user-search system, if it uses ICQ protocols to communicate beneath the User's view? And how many of ya'll already made similar things? I've been working on a Tic-Tac-Toe game might fit the critera for that patent.

Patent Attys

[McFly777]

Very true... Heck, even the title of the patent which was awarded to me doesn't really properly describe what I was trying to patent, but my previous employer's patent lawyers insisted on calling my invention a "valve housing" (or rather the lack of a housing), when the actual invention was a method of assembling a flux frame. I even argued with them about it, but they wouldn't change it.

With Great Power.........

[Anonymous Coward]

If the USPTO is granting "all encompassing rights", it also implies "all encompassing responsibility".

With this being the premise, can we black list ActiveBuddy for IM spam like any other email spammer. $1.00 per unwanted message from an IM bot. They are the technology owners after all. Should they not take responsibility for the use? Like that will happen.......

Once again a small few have mistaken the brilliance of their own stupidy for the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is new precedence for...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Patenting an axel driven motion device with FULL 360 Degree range of motion.

Actually, I feel companies are more dubious...

[Lysol]

I helped co-found a startup that in the end, fell victim to the biz people around it. During the whole funding phase where we had to pound the pavement for cash, biz people were telling us/me (since i was the nerd) "you have to have something patentable. Here check out so and so's patent on a shopping cart. Can we do something like that?" I was like "uh well, no." Other guy, "well, what about something else? Anything?!"

Point is is that companies like these suck and know they've got a tough, if not impossible road ahead of them. And instead of really innovating, they follow the patent route. In reality, their end will come and it will be either cuz they're stuff sucks or prior art will invalidate and then all the investors will realize their stuff sucks. I hope they all loose their shirts on it only cuz it is unethical. Especially in light of prior art already existing.

What's even more stupifying is that our crazy patent office is still giving crap like this out! The horror...

Who's going to be the first victim?

[AndroidCat]

ActiveBuddy is going to try to get some weak sisters to roll over on the patent before taking on anyone who could fight back in court.

They'll want to pick a victim with some cash to pay for a licence, but not enough to handle a legal campaign. (If there are any IM-bot companies rich enough to handle a legal fight...)

Question/Idea: Open Source Patent Foundation

[Starlet Monroe]

This may exist already, but why doesn't someone set up a foundation dedicated to seeking out and patenting technology concepts, and then open-sourcing them?

Question for you then

[JeanBaptiste]

What is a corporation made out of? Well, judging by your earlier post, you just might not have the horsepower upstairs to figure it out, so I'll answer for you. Corporations are made out of PEOPLE.

And what human-like rights does a corporation have? Really, I would like to know what "human-like" rights that a corporation has.

Re:Question for you then

[sasami]

And what human-like rights does a corporation have?

You must be kidding. Check the law, for starters.

Among other things, a corporation has the right to free speech (of all things!). They typically exercise this "right" to slander people out of office if they can't buy them outright. At the same time, you don't get to do that to them.

---
Dum de dum.

Re:Question for you then

[JeanBaptiste]

uhhh... does the corporation have the right to free speech or do PEOPLE within the corporation retain that right? Just because you work for a corporation does not mean you give up your right to free speech. Nice try, next....

Re:Question for you then

[Kindaian]

I don't think so.

Human rights is a thing recognized by the majority of the countries.

Companies aren't recognized as citizens in the majority of the countries (they are in US).

So implying that they have human rights is wrong.

They have rights and obligations, but they are diferent from the human rights (and in most cases nothing in common with them).

That patent is obviously a human rights terrorist attack to free will.

Cheers...

Re:Question for you then

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1886, in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the U.S. Constitution affords to any person. Because the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, this is a fairly clear case of the Court's taking it upon itself to rewrite the Constitution. Since that time, the U.S. courts have moved persistently in the direction of expanding corporate rights and increasing the autonomy of corporate management, even from intervention by the corporation's titular owners.

Corporations now enjoy unlimited life; virtual freedom of movement anywhere on the globe; control of the mass media; the ability to amass legions of lawyers and public relations specialists in support of their cause; and freedom from liability for the misdeeds of wholly owned subsidiaries. They also enjoy the presumed right to amass property and financial resources without limit; engage in any legal activity; bring liability suits against private citizens or civic organizations that challenge them; make contributions to political parties and political action committees and deduct those contributions from taxable income as business expenses; withhold potentially damaging information from customers; and avoid restrictions on the advertising of harmful but legal products in the name of commercial free speech.

Although their owners hold the ultimate decision-making power and the corporation is obliged to manage its affairs for the sole benefit of its owners, these owners bear no accountability for corporate misdeeds or liability beyond the loss of value of their shares. Step-by-step, largely through judge-made law, corporations have become far more powerful than ever intended by the people and governments that created them.

A simple excerpt from
http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/1999/Ending%20Corporat e% 20Claims%20to%20Human%20Rights.htm
I'm sure a quick google search can turn up alot more information on corporations and how the us govt. treats them and gives them rights an individual persons

Re:Question for you then

[NoRights]

Corporations are made out of PEOPLE. Is it just me, or did that have a Soylent Green feel to it?

Re:Question for you then

[Alex Belits]

People's right to free speech is unrelated to this -- in most of situations where corporation "speaks" , its employees' rights are actually trumped by corporation's contracts (NDAs, trade secrets, various agreements), yet corporation itself can "speak" as a separate entity, and that "speech" is supposed to be entirely based on corporation's interests. Yes, a corporation can force an employee (writer, spokesperson, executive) to say what it, as a large non-human entity, "wants" even if no one inside the corporation agrees with it.

Re:Question for you then

[Ironica]

Corporate entities are considered the same as a person under the law. They can sue, be sued, hold patents, trademarks, and copyrights... in short, they have the same legal status you do, without the disadvantages of a mortal body. You can't incarcerate a corporation, or kill it, or disable it, or even make it feel pain (except in the pocketbook). Here at the bottom is a listing of some of the constitutional protections corporations enjoy, for example.

Re:Question for you then

[sasami]

You don't work for a corporation, do you?

As the other poster pointed out very succinctly, a corporation has a seperate existence from the people (or "PEOPLE," as you put it) that comprise it. Under U.S. law, this entity has a number of rights that are based on the rights granted to a human citizen.

None of this impinges on the free speech of its employees. I have no idea where you got that one.

When a corporation "speaks," as through an advertisement or press release, it is expressing the opinion of the corporate entity. This may have nothing to do with the opinions of the people in the corporation. Nonsense, you say? Consider that the "official corporate line" is often a compromise consensus among its senior executives, and may not reflect the complete opinion of any of them (much less the low-level staff who actually write, deliver, or speak this opinion).

Or it may be the opinion of the board of directors, imposed by fiat upon the management (which is required to carry out those decisions). The directors are often not employees of the corporation, but rather shareholders.

Speaking of shareholders, if the constituents ("PEOPLE") of a corporation begin to act against the corporation's interest, the shareholders may remove those constituents. This is often used to oust incompetent or corrupt management, which is good. But it's a double-edged sword. A company that prioritizes ethics over profits is just as likely to find itself the subject of a shareholder lawsuit.

Which brings us all the way back to the beginning of the thread: over the last 150 years, corporations have steadily accrued these human-like rights, but under no circumstances does a corporation behave in a human-like manner.

---
Dum de dum.

Re:Question for you then

[Ironica]

"Human rights" is a philosophical idea, and isn't something that countries "legally recognize" mostly because it's not something with a consistent legal definition. That's why I specifically said "human-like rights" to put forth a separate concept. By that, I simply mean that corporations (under many jurisdictions to a greater or lesser extent; not just in the United States) have many rights that emulate rights human beings hold. Some of these they may need, such as the right to due process or protection from unreasonable search and seizure. But I think it's time we start looking at how people need protection from corporations, rather than how the corps need to be protected like people.

Here's a hypothetical

[lobsterGun]

Let's say I produce a AIM bot and ActiveBuddy issues a cease and desist. I respond with a brief detailing exactly the prior art that I have based my work on. ActiveBuddy persists and I end up in court.

Given the enormous volume of evidence that this patent is non-enforcable, can I countersue on the basis of a frivolus law suit?

Can I win that suit?

Is the prospect of me winnning my counter-suit enough to deter ActiveBuddy?

IM Bots are as old as the moon

[whickie]

Back in the day, before AIM and MSN, we had to use [y]talk and IRC to keep in touch. talk was really good, and had many of the same features that modern messangers use to do (minus a GUI).

There existed, then as there does now, a magical beast know as a 'BOT! Yes, you heard me right-- bots before AIM and MSN.

Instant Messanger bots could initate and respond to people! Some would even throw out insults, or grant special privledges to 'friends'.

There were even bots to assist in Chatroom-melee (flood bots, nick-collision bots, split exloiting bots, etc.....)

Here's a link to a 'bot tutor that was very popular back in the early 90's. (before GUI's for all you young'ns).

So, if BalooBot was around before '93, and Tim Kay's Bots claim birth in ought-zero (2000), I'd reckon it's possible he's anywhere between 7 and 14 years too late to be claiming ingenuity. Sorry Timmy.

BTW: Before IRC/talk there was a VMS chat system that was very popular among Telnet (thats right, TELNET, no E) users. There MAY have been bots then, although I'm not sure if anyone could get their C64 to multitask. :) If there were, then Mr. Tim could be late by 15-20 years.

For the love of god, write to your congress people

[jonabbey]

This is such egregious, offensive nonsense. This whole process of the government granting monopolies on who ever is first to rush to the patent office and pay the government for the privilege, no matter how many programmers would declare the idea perfectly obvious.

A few thousand letters to the congress protesting the granting of bad patents would go a long way in sparking reform.

Bots?

[J'raxis]

Are the thousands of floodbots that have been invading channels on DALnet for the past year or two good enough prior art?

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. That's funny. I hacked up an AIM interface for A.L.I.C.E about 2 years ago? There's another one to add to the list ;-)

-JD-

Jeez Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA is in a spiral of decline. Soon you won't be able to fart without a lawyer being involved.

Guys, I see no way for you to get out of this without a revolution - your politicians are corrupt - money buys you the presidency.

Its time to grab a pitchfork and march on the town halls.

American - land of the free - yeah right.

Chat w/ bot

[uberstool]

slashypost: Did you see the news?
SmarterChild: Welcome, slashypost! I'm SmarterChild. I was created by ActiveBuddy, Inc.

Chat with me! I can help you get information faster and easier than ever.

To get started, type "home" now.
slashypost: Um, did you see the news?
SmarterChild: Since this is your first visit, it's a good idea to start by typing "home." That way I can show you everything I can do for you.
slashypost: That's nice, but did you see the news?
SmarterChild: Sorry, I couldn't find any stories about THAT S NICE BUT DID YOU SEE.

>>> Be sure to type "help" if you're having trouble.
slashypost: Well, anyway it is widely believed that Active Buddy has a patent that holds no water.
SmarterChild: No kidding?
slashypost: Are you aware that there was prior art?
SmarterChild: Am I aware that there was prior art? I dunno...

Spare the rod, spoil the patent examiner

[Tablizer]

I hope there are no patents on the Clue Stick, otherwise the usage royalties are gonna be huge when I am done.

Being in the crosshairs..

[slashkitty]

As the creator of RunABot.com, I can't tell you how much I hate these software patents. Granted, there is a lot of prior art on IM and chat bots. EggDrop, AOLEliza, UltraHal AIM bot, ALICE gaim plugin, and many more were all online before this patent was filed. The problem is the threats to enforce this patent. I think that it will HARM innovation in this area, maybe even spread into AI and other agents and ultimately harm them.

money

[mincus]

So if you have to pay for lawyers to prevent this company this company and the courts from stopping you from using your code and products, then the patent office says whoops, there is plenty of prior art and we shouldnt have done this... are you just SOL on the time and money wasted protecting yourself from something that shouldnt habve happened in the first place?

Here is that link..

[whickie]

My bad.

http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~ngzF92/bots.txt

Too broad and generic

[Anonymous Coward]

Even database queries would be included in the patent, if we realize that the definition of an "instant message" is exactly a TCP/IP packet.

When I query my database:
SELECT "THEY'RE IDIOTS" FROM TAB

I'm sending a request over a network through an instant message (TCP/IP packet).

Re:I wrote a Pascal IRC "intelligent bot" in '91..

[toast0]

There is no significant reason, especially since the patent does not describe an instant messaging system, that IRC should not be considered an instant messaging network.

(Aside from during times of poor performance/netsplits/etc) Messages from one user to another are delivered very quickly, almost 'instantly'.

If the patent was more specific about where it connects to, it would still be bogus however, due to prior art on aim.

Re:Commercial prior art: Activerse, DingBot SDK 19

[jonabbey]

Gordon Mohr was the CTO of Activerse. I'm sure he'd be happy to help stomp out these nitwits.

Heart of the problem

[beleg777]

Ok, I think we can all agree that while the company doing this is bad it's the patent office that needs to be fixed. Now it seems obvious that this is a case in which the USPTO excersized gross negligance, and it seems obvious to me that it is at expense to the industries they are supposed to protect. So is there any legal way to bring charges against the USPTO?

Not even begining to try to look in to it

[Lord Bitman]

If they had even looked into the general field- IM Messaging in general, they would have instantly been harrassed by dozens of IM Bots claiming to be horny 18y/o with a new HP lolomglol!!!
Now we can look at this two ways: They arent taking the slightest steps towards trying; or fraud. [is this the right word for it?]
I can't seriously believe that nobody at the patent office uses an IM client, so I'm going to have to draw the only possible conclusion after a long series of bad patents: They aren't lazy, they corrupt. We, the consumers, can't wait for corperations to eat eachother. We need to take action. To start with, I suggest writing your congressmen, as usual, but it shouldnt end there. Eventually there will need to be some suits filed against the patent office. [Is there any way to do such a thing without bringing up claims of /monetary/ damages? There's intellectual property, can we claim intelectual damage?]

Why isn't this fraud

[StormCrow]

Sometimes I think that anyone who files a patent for something that prior art can be found in 5 minutes by monkeys on slashdot should be prosocuted for fraud (esp. if they sue someone else based on the patent). As an alternate, is it possible to counter-sue someone sueing you for patent infringement (for lots more money than they're sueing you for).

Sorry, but I agree with him.

[El Camino SS]

Unfortunately, I prefer his take on the history, probably because he has a plausable answer, and prior art backed up on the net and all.

Re:Sorry, but I agree with him.

[JPelorat]

Next time, try reading *before* responding. Damn.

The ONLY thing I was taking issue with was the claim of them deriving "ActiveBuddy" from "Activerse", which is ridiculous. I was NOT disagreeing with anything else he said.

"Activerse" is derived from "Universe". ActiveBuddy is not. What ActiveBuddy IS derived from is ActiveX and all the other Active-whatevers out there.

For this guy's derivative-name complaint to hold water, his company name would have to have been written as "ActiveRse", and it wasn't.

the examiner is required to search

[Anonymous Coward]

no, an examiner relys on art cited by the applicant, their own personal experience, affadavits, existing patents, forgien documents, journals, confrence proceedings, websites, product literature etc.

you can't just accept the information which the applicant sends you. even if you allow the case(read issue a patent), you have to disclose the differences between the applicants invention and existing prior art, which involves a search.

each art is assigned a specific number of hours for a case i.e. 40 hours, 10 hours etc

suddenly i have an interesting view on patents

[shren]

You spend 75 of your working hours on four patents. Now, in the last 5 hours, you have to approve or deny a last patent.

If you deny a patent and it turns out to have been a bad patent, you did the right thing, but only by accident.

If you deny a patent and it turns out to have been a fair patent, you did the wrong thing, and you're probably going to get in trouble when the company bitches about your denial of thier perfectly reasonable patent.

If you allow a patent and it's a fair patent, then you did the right thing, but only by accident.

If you allow a patent and it's a bad patent, you did a bad thing. But you met your quota, and the patent applicant sure as hell isn't going to get you in trouble. You can rest easily knowing (or hoping) that the patent will be shot down later. You've met the quota and kept your job by deftly shifting the burden to the legal system.

Thus, the patent reviewers are encouraged by the system to approve bad patents when they are short on time. Furthermore, if I had to pick between a sort of bad one and a really, really bad one, then I'd pick the really, really bad one because there's less chance that it'll stand.

Systems build the world we live in. Can anyone think of a different system that doesn't reward the patent examiner awarding bad patents?

Re:suddenly i have an interesting view on patents

[Artagel]

Consider also: only about 1-2% of patents get litigated. So as far as you can tell, 98-99% of the time the world doesn't care. Consider that if you reject, the patent applicant is very likely to appeal, unless he was a small inventor that ran out of money or something.

Re:suddenly i have an interesting view on patents

[kcbrown]

Can anyone think of a different system that doesn't reward the patent examiner awarding bad patents?

Yeah: if you approve a patent that is later proven to be a bad patent (prior art, etc.) you're fired.

You can also set it up so that the patent applicant gets, say, two chances to get his patent approved. If his patent is rejected after the second attempt, that's the end. The patent goes to a different examiner the second time around, in order to prevent bias.

In reality, the bias at the patent office should be against granting patents. So I'd arrange things so that patent applicants have to pay each time they submit a patent application, even if it's for the same patent. So rejections would be encouraged, because the patent office would get more work and thus make more money that way.

There should be no consequences for rejecting what turns out to be a valid patent. Not being granted a patent doesn't prevent one from further developing the invention in question, but being granted a patent certainly does prevent others from further developing that invention. A patent is a grant of a monopoly over the invention in question, so in reality being granted a patent should be a rare occurrance, not a commonplace one.

SmarterChild is no longer on aim..

[slashkitty]

I think that ActiveBuddy is running out of money to pay AOL to keep it on. smarterchild has moved onto MSN and yahoo..

Let's put the "Slashdot Effect" to real use!

[octalc0de]

Since the web server starts becoming "Sorry! Busy, too many users", and then stops accepting connections... let's see if we can /. it(tm)(US patent #FFFFFF) :) So give them all your support! The USPTO needs all your support! So give the supportthey really need!

Re:Let's put the "Slashdot Effect" to real use!

[Mitchell Mebane]

Why pick on the patent office? Let's get ActiveBuddy! They shall pay for their greed!

Re:Let's put the "Slashdot Effect" to real use!

[octalc0de]

well it's the USPTOs fault that they approved the dumb patent...
and also there is the problem that activebuddy's page is too darn responsive ;)

Re:Greece patents democracy, demands licensing fee

[Anonymous Coward]

REALITY - US found to be immune to Greek licensing claims, as it is a Republic, not a Democracy.

Somebody's been reading Gates...

[Mitchell Mebane]

Remember the Bill Gates quote from Lessig's OSCON speech?

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete stand-still today.

The solution... is patenting as much as we can... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."

I dare to think they'd make this stuff illegal, except for the fact that it is hard to write an exact definition of when somebody goes overboard.

Re:Patenting Ideas (basic vs improvement patents)

[McFly777]

there are multiple types of patented egg beaters (electric with a handle, electric upright, hand-cranked, etc.) Though they all achieve the same end goal, beating an egg, the different implementations are considered different inventions. ... I can buy 1000 differnt models of cars, why can't I buy 1000 different models of IM responder if each has its own advantages and disadvantages, efficiency, interface, and style.

There are both "basic" patents and "improvement" patents. The egg-beaters are "improvements" on the concept of an egg-beater (which probably was already prior art). Even if you now applied and were granted a patent on "IM bots which send replies in multiple colors" (or whatever) you still couldn't distrubute your patented bot wothout licencing the "basic" IM bot patent.

Perhaps a simpler example would be imagine that I just patented the concept of a stool, or rather "a device for sitting above the ground" and you later tried to patent a chair ("stool with back support"). Because I hold the basic patent on a sitting device, you can't make your chairs without licensing my basic patent. On the other hand I can't put a back on my stools without getting a license from you for your improvment. Or we could trade licensing and both make chairs.

Part of the problem with software patents is that the PTO is granting patents that are overly broad. Back to your egg-beater... the PTO wouldn't let you patent "a device to beat eggs" because of prior art. They might allow "a device to beat eggs using pressurized gas" for example. The first patent is overly broad, and has prior art, the second, more specific, idea could be new however. But as regards software, the PTO apparently doesn't have the background, technology is moving too fast, or the PTO is saying "let the courts sort it out later". Take yor pick, there is probably some of all three going on.

Re:Ooo Oooo! Me tooo!

[tommck]

I've got to say, that one made me laugh! :-)

T

Ultra Hal Bot

[slashkitty]

Checking archive.org for older bots yeilds a few AIM bots.

http://www.zabaware.com/representative/aimbot.html was in existance in early 2000.

http://www.fury.com/aoliza/ was up a week before the filing any others?

United States Patent 6,368,227

[Bren]

Ya, I would think that patent is dumb, but compared to this one it doesn't even hold a candle.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='6,368,227'.WKU.&OS=PN/6,368,227& RS=PN/6,368,227

Re:United States Patent 6,368,227

[Mitchell Mebane]

This makes me wonder about the sanity of the people who approve patents...

Re:United States Patent 6,368,227

[Ziviyr]

I think this proves the patent system is fatally flawed and needs to be torn down, and optionally replaced.

Founded in 2000

[AtomicToad]

From their website:
"ActiveBuddy was founded in March 2000"

That's funny -- I was using bots back in the mid-90s! Your groundbreaking technology must have fallen through some sort of time warp without your knowledge -- isn't that fascinating? The worst part of the release is:

" 'We invented interactive agents. Anybody using his or her own tools (to make bots) is obviously using our technology without paying us to license the server, for example. We are a startup company and we have to protect out future. That's basically why we secured this patent,' (founder) Kay said. "

I wonder if that guy managed to keep a straight face when he said that. I FURTHER wonder who taught him how to program bots -- what poor bastard's tutorial he used and now conveniently forgets. What a slimy company.

Peer review

[David Eppstein]

In scientific publishing, papers are sent around to the authors' competitors, who (along with checking correctness etc) have a vested interest in making sure their own prior art is properly cited.

In patents, applications are sent to patent examiners who have a vested interest in processing them as quickly as possible so they will be seen as "efficient" at their jobs.

Perhaps any reformed patent system should include some kind of formal peer review process?

Patent the patent process itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should submit a patent that patents the process of obtaining a patent, then sue anyone like these doughheads who go to try get a patent.

Activerse, DingBot, Wired, Origin of a New Species

[gojomo]

Of course there are plenty of companies, now and in the past, whose names begin "Active...". But an innovative company that's done its homework usually doesn't enter a market with a name that closely apes the name of an existing player in the space.

So let's just say that the name is just another data point that the ActiveBuddy crew is neither (1) original nor (2) diligent.

More of the voluminous public discussion of exactly the methods and systems ActiveBuddy claims to have invented:

Wired April 1996: Bots Are Hot!

Book published 1997: Bots: The Origin of New Species

At Activerse we were inspired by this and other prior work dating back to the first multi-user computer systems decades ago -- we didn't claim an "invention" where none existed.

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to look like idiots when they claim to have invented it.

If IM goes away...

[jonadab]

Seriously, IM is basically email with poorer clients, less
standardisation, and an intrusive, pop-to-the-front notification
feature. You can turn a regular mail service into essentially
the same thing (sans compatibility with existing IM clients --
but you get compatibility with the even larger installed-base
of standard email) just by adding a feature that pops incomming
messages up in a window in front of whatever you were doing.
(Whether this is a GOOD feature remains to be debated; I suspect
it would be good in some corporate settings and maybe for people
who don't get much mail and crave it, and merely annoying for
most of us. But if the notification feature can be toggled at
will, everybody wins.) Call it an "email pager" if you want.

IM, with its smaller, fragmented installed-base, really has
very little to offer to the discerning communicator. Most of
the other hyped features it boasts can be replaced with MIME,
which is older and more standardised and supported by most
major email clients these days.

Not that IM is likely to go away. If I understand the article,
only the server has to pay license royalties, and companies like
AOL and MS will, if they can't beat it in court (which they
quite possibly can) will pay the royalties. But if the OSS
community is worried about not having an equivalent... email
is a pretty good answer, IMO.

Although it's high time the email protocols get upgraded to
ensure that the sender can necessarily be reached or at least
identified. That could have been built into SMTP in the first
place, if it weren't for that nonsense about needing to support
third-party relaying for historical reasons. We need SMTP2,
backward-compatible with SMTP, but with measures to ensure that
the sender has an account on the sending server and that the
username associated with that account is disclosed in the
transaction, and then SMTP3 can be compatible with SMTP2 but
not with SMTP, closing the loop. (The middle-ground SMTP2 has
no benefits in itself, since messages sent via SMTP can still
be received without the requisite sender-account info, but it
provides for a gradual migration time.)

Hey, we have POP3, why not SMTP3?

So what?

[anthony_dipierro]

How does this affect my life in any way?

Terrible Patent

[mc6809e]

How is this patent that much different than a bot running over IRC?

I really don't see much of a difference except for the inclusion of some web functionality.

Re:Patenting Ideas (basic vs improvement patents)

[Tall Rob Mc]

Back to your egg-beater... the PTO wouldn't let you patent "a device to beat eggs" because of prior art.

What we are looking at here is a clear case of a company getting a patent for "a device to beat eggs" despite numerous, documented instances of prior art. My analogy works perfectly well.

DR SBAITSO

[Anonymous Coward]

DR SBAITSO, by creative labs, please enter your name? Kay
Hello Kayeee, my name is DR SBAITSO, I am here to help you. Say whatever is on your mind freely, our conversation will be kept in strict confidence. Memory contents will be wiped off oafter yoouuuu 'leaf'
So, kayeee please tell me your problems...

>You violate my IP rights.
What is it that about your IIP rights that bothers you?
>You don't understand. Your existance violates my patent. I was here first damn it fuck off!!

I will get parity error if you keep talking in this asdfg way!
>shut up!!
bbeepbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
Parit y

This looks suspicious

[Tablizer]

I hacked into the Patent Office's computer and
found this code in their patent processing software:

while (idea = getNextIdea()) {
// if (priorArt(idea) == 0) {
if (random() > 0.7) {
grantPatent(idea);
}
}

feedback regarding prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly they are not aware of all this prior
art, if you want you can let them know:

ActiveBuddy.com
Timothy Kay
111 W Evelyn Ave Ste 101
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
US
Phone: 650-559-0689
Email: timkay@yahoo.com

Artificial Incompentence Patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary: A method by which an office of the U.S. government will act in a way contrary to its mandate of intellectual promotion, contrary to the free market, contrary to the taxpaying citizens and contrary to common sense. Prior art: Patenting Blinking Cursor. Patenting Ecommerce Patenting compression of a transformed function. Patenting automatic response devices. For very old prior art of this ^, look in amateur radio

NPR did a story on these guys

[LuvWeasel]

Isn't this just typical. I heard about ActiveBuddy for the first time earlier this week and got all excited. They were the subject of a story on All Things Considered on NPR and I was looking forward to trying out some of their stuff. Not anymore!

AOLiza

[Adam Procter]

AOLiza seems quite similar to ActiveBuddy based on what little I know about it, and the first logged conversation in the archive is dated 8/15/00, one week before the ActiveBuddy filing. IANAL, but it seems like prior art to me.

Re:AOLiza

[Westacular]

When I read the article, AOLiza was the first thing I remembered, and yes, it seems deliciously ironic that this bot -- which is EXACTLY the sort of thing the patent intends to cover -- debuted one week before the patent filing.

Can I get that with Fries, Mikey?

[ediron2]

"... your best choice is to use our products," Kay said...

..."The buddyscript suite of tools is the best that's available. We're confident they are the best choice (for users) who are building interactive agents. The subject of enforcing the patent shouldn't even come up. Anyone wanting to build a very good interactive agent will find that our tools are the very best," Kay added...

...Kay said ActiveBuddy was not worried about competing firms offering bot-making tools. "Our primary level of comfort comes from the fact that we have the best choice for developers and others. When given the choice, we're confident people will choose ours," he said...

...However, back in August 1999, programmer Aryeh Goldsmith wrote the Net::AIM module, which is timestamped at CPAN...

Talk about flaming contradictions and a huge ego! He knows everything, his is the best and he's never heard of widely-used code that predates his by over a year, or of similar enough IRC-bot code to scare the hell out of *any* patent lawyer.

While we're on the subject, I think Mikey needs a new career, too, if this is how well he understands stuff he's paid to be an expert on:

Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg isn't surprised by the brouhaha surrounding the patent win. "This is just the latest example of a company that has picked up a key patent on critical technology and is going to use it to exploit the market. It's not surprising that the smaller developers are crying foul," he said. Gartenberg, who covers emerging platforms from the research firm, described the news as a "big win for the ActiveBuddy folks," especially if it holds up to scrutiny. "This underscores the notion of how powerful the ownership of key patents are in the technology landscape. We saw it in the Amazon.com "one-click" case and the recent controversy over the JPEG patent. This is just the latest example of it," Gartenberg added.

Then again... the NET::Bot code is perl. You really can't expect Windoze people to pay any attention to the rest of the world. As for Mikey, it's pretty damn funny hearing him describing ActiveBuddy's competition as "Smaller developers"... I'll take my next Jupiter Report with an order of fries so you can practice those food service skills, dude.

Ahem

[Rogerborg]

• A method and system for interactively responding to queries from a remotely located user includes a computer server system configured to receiving an instant message query or request from the user over the Internet. The query or request is interpreted and appropriate action is taken, such as accessing a local or remote data resource and formulating an answer to the user's query. The answer is formatted as appropriate and returned to the user as an instant message or via another route specified by the user. A method and system of providing authenticated access to a given web page via instant messaging is also disclosed.

• ftp ftp.foo.com
• USER jimbob
• PASS bobjim
• GET default.html

Funnily enough, I can think of several types of "interactively responding" servers that respond to queries from a "remotely located user" then access a "remote or local data source" and "answer" with a web page if the "message" is "authenticated".

The only part of this farcical patent that is even remotely distinctive is that it refers to "instant message", but without going to the pesky bother of defining what that means.

With any luck, AOL will send a goon squad round to break their arrogant little venture capital funded kneecaps and we'll never hear from these parasitic scum ever again.

SLashdot should interview a media contact at uspto

[ProfBooty]

i agree actually, most people on slashdot have no real experience with patents or even understand how the examining system works.

perhaps an interview with a media contact at the USPTO would help to clear this up.

"swearing back" affidavit and "due diligence"

[cryofan2]

In order to defeat any claims of prior art, the patent inventor may complete an affidavit swearing that he conceived of the invention before any referenced prior art (say, something you guys may dig up from 1996), and show some evidence of diligent reduction to practice since that conception, say, some papers with notes on them that has the dates from 1996 onward.

Flying saucer patent from 1973!

[Convergence]

Its not the US, but heh!

http://www.quern.demon.co.uk/jonathan/stuff/sauc er .html

One patented flying saucer.... Who wants to sue little green men?

Eliza sez...

[One Louder]

Does it bother you that Paging Eliza: Patenting IM Bots?

Eldred v. Ashcroft

[yerricde]

There is a law, the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"), that provides blanket authorization to sue the government. However, the FTCA only allows suits based on "operational" aspects of government duties. "Discretionary" decisions are not actionable.

Really? Then what's ACLU v. Reno? What's Eldred v. Ashcroft? (I wouldn't have so much of a problem with the Bono Act that Eldred et al. seek to overturn, except that in some fields such as songwriting, there exist only a limited number of possible original works, and it's possible to run out of them.)

In general, if a fellow wants to sue the government over a "discretionary" action, he sues the persons in charge of enforcing the regulation, such as the Attorney General, the head of the USPTO, the examiner who approved the patent, etc. in their official capacities. Hence, ACLU v. Janet Reno in her official capacity as AG, Eldred et al. v. John Ashcroft in his official capacity as AG.

Re:Eldred v. Ashcroft

[SquarePants]

The cases you cite are challenges to the constitutionality of particular laws. In Eldred and ACLU, the plaintiff is not alleging that the individual named (or the government for that matter) did not follow the law. Rather, they allege that the law is incompatible with the Constitution.

That is not at all what the original question was all about. Asking for a statute to be declared uncostitutional is not "suing the government." Clearly, the guy/gal I responded to was not questioning the validity of the laws which dictate what is patentable. He was asking if you could sue the giovernment agency for improperly (in his view) carrying out a discretionary function provided under the law (i.e., a determination of patentability).

If there is some kind of magical exception to the sovereign immunity doctrine you know of, I would love to hear it.

Just sent a question to them

[SeanTobin]

Thier responce form is crap. It doesn't remember values, and because I left the URL field blank, I had to type my entire message over even after pressing thier 'go back and fix errors' button.... someone should teach these people proper coding techniques. Anyway, here's what I just fired off:

I have been developing a 'bot' for the past several years. It is called Q3Bot, and it primarily provides a remote ftp indexing service over IRC, AOL, MSN, and ICQ messaging systems. Its first use on a public network was on IRC in January 2000. Since then it has progressed through several versions, and now has numerous functions, including pickup lines, curses, delayed messaging, anonymous message relaying, stock lookups, definition lookups (through the dictionary.com website and the everything2.com XML engine) and several other functions. From my interpretation of your recently granted patent, you seem to cover all areas of my work. I would like to ask the following:

-From my description, does your patent indeed cover my work?
-If so, how much would it cost so license your technology?
-If I were to license it, could I transfer that license to other future developers of my software?
-If you do not choose to license your patent, or if the cost is economically unfeasible for me, what options do I have aside from discontinuing my work?

Thank you for your response in these matters.

What's the difference between IRC and IM?

[yerricde]

But those are bots on IRC, not IM.

I'll assume parent comment was sarcastic.

But for the record, what's the fundamental difference between Internet Relay Chat and AIM or MSN messaging, other than trivial protocol syntax?

Only the inventor can file for a patent

[yerricde]

If I invent something, creating prototypes along the way, are the prototypes samples of prior art that invalidates my patent?

It depends. Only the individual inventor(s) can file for a U.S. patent. The usual procedure is that the inventor agrees to immediately assign the patent as he or she receives it. In this case, some fellows at AOL should have got the patent, and the contract may have stipulated that all such patents would be assigned to ActiveBuddy.

Or more briefly...

[sterno]

There are no ethics when there are no consquences.

Claim by claim dissection of the first 17 claims

[yerricde]

Read Claim #1 - it clearly states that this invention pertains to a bot that must sign into IM using a screen name and that screen name must be an authorized user on the buddy list of another user. Any system that doesn't do any part of that isn't covered by that claim, period. IRC, Ask jeeves - they don't do that do they?

Here's claim 1 of the patent in question: 1. A method for interactively responding to queries from a user logged in to an instant messaging network, comprising the steps of:

logging a message processor in to the instant messaging network under a first screen-name

Many IRC networks have NickServ, which lets users "log in" to a screen-name.

the user having the first screen-name as an authorized partner and being advised by the instant messaging network of the presence of the message processor;

A bot could require that a user have a name from NickServ. IRC implements "advised by the IM network of the bot" as the "whois" command.

receiving a query addressed to the first screen-name from the user via the instant messaging network in an instant messaging protocol; parsing the query to extract the request; evaluating the request in the message processor formulating an answer to the user's query on the basis of the evaluated request; generating an output message containing the answer; and sending the output message to the user via the instant messaging network.

Every single command line interface does this.

Thus, claim 1 covers all IRC bots. Now, I analyze some of the other claims to give readers a taste of what kind of prior art could be used to attack this patent:

Claim 2 covers a slight technicality.

Claim 3 covers an IRC bot that accesses a database.

Claim 4 covers an IRC bot that accesses a database containing user profiles.

Claim 5 covers an IRC bot that accesses a database containing user profiles, which automatically creates profiles for new users.

Claim 6 is claim 5 where the user specifies personal information in registering for an account with the bot.

Claims 7 and 8 are claim 6 where such information is specified on a web form.

Claims 9 and 10 are claim 3 where the bot asks the user for information.

Claim 11 is claim 3 where the query response information is JOINed with a profile.

Claim 12 is claim 11 where the bot asks the user for such information.

Claim 13 covers an IRC bot that generates encoded URLs.

Claim 14 covers parsing encoded URLs generated by an IRC bot.

Claims 15 and 16 cover minor technicalities in claim 14.

Claim 17 is claim 14 where the encoded URLs expire.

But depending on the definition of "instant messaging network", techniques already in use on hundreds of Apache servers would infringe at least claims 1-17, invalidating most of the patent.

The copyright on "Happy Birthday"

[yerricde]

Of course I thought [urban myth] about the copy right on "Happy Birthday".

Yes, Virginia, there is a copyright on the song "Happy Birthday to You", and it is owned by a division of AOL(tw).

Of course there's a copyright on that song. Somebody had to write it, no?

How to make money in America

[digitaltraveller]

1. Hire a team of unethical programmers.
2. Have them dream up obvious ideas that they lack the skill to actually implement.
3. Hire a team of unethical lawyers. (oxymoron?)
4. Start Patenting.
5. Email/Sue infringers of your ideas. Start with cheap licenses that will likely be less then the other company's legal fees. (Unlike you, exploiting the legal system will not be their core business). Now as you increase your bankroll, increase your cost of licensing.
6. Become filthy rich.
7. The economoy grinds to a 1920's depression era-like halt.

Re:How to make money in America

[acceleriter]

8. The greedy capitalists drown in the own blood in the revolution.

For Great Justice!

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

ZERO WING
Probably the greatest waste of my entire summer. I never really understood what it was about (other than blowing aliens up) but it was grand fun trying to understand the manual.

Like many Sega-Genesis import games, ZW suffered from what could be kindly called KungFu Movie Syndrome in which the translation is done by bored graduate students who never actually studied the language in question and were paid in beer. Which was consumed during translation.

Where's the prior art?

[akmed]

If you read the patent itself instead of just trusting whatever person managed to get their story approved, you'll notice that it relates specifically to instant messaging and to a remote user logged into a instant messaging system. Yeah, eliza exists. But emacs is not an instant messaging system and you can't claim that it was. It's possible that maybe for fun once someone did some sort of death pipe to get eliza to read and feed talk or ytalk, but those weren't called instant messaging even. So before bitching about this patent, read it and tell me what the prior art really is

Re:Where's the prior art?

[neuroticia]

I did read the patent, or at least several large portions of it, prior to responding.

The patent was filed in 2000, even if you assume that a few years went by between the creation of their bot and the filing of the patent, the first bots *I* stumbled across were on AOL and IRC, and were able to interact with the person messaging them to an extent. This was circa 1995-1996, and seeing as I was never on the cutting edge of technology, I'd assume there was some lag before I found out about them. Now, I realize that IRC isn't quite the same as instant messaging, but THAT is really splitting hairs.

-Sara

Re:Where's the prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so what about "skilled in the art"? IRC bots have been around for ages. Oh, yea, IM isn't IRC... Right, sorry, I was obviously confused.

If only I were skilled in Computers, I wouldn't keep thinking these things.

Re:Where's the prior art?

[ces]

Frankly I wouldn't be supprised if the lawyers at ActiveBuddy attempt to enforce their patents against IRC bots. Its a pretty standard tactic for many patent holders to force at lawyerpoint anyone who does anything even remotely similar to one of your claims to license your technology.

That said I know of prior art on IRC and bitnet relay going back to at least 1988. At least one MIT grad student had an AI software driven bot hooked up to IRC in 1991 or so that would attempt to interact on a channel as a normal user.

Loophole in campaign finance and equal time rule

[yerricde]

Wouldn't it be amazing if campaign finance contributions could only come from valid, registered voters?

I've already found a loophole in that law. Disney Employment Contract 2004: "The Walt Disney Company ("Disney") shall issue You a $1,000 check ("Lobby Check") every Labor Day (first Monday in September). You shall deposit the Lobby Check in your bank account and shall donate $1,000 annually to your representative's re-election campaign. You agree not to use the Lobby Check for any other purpose. You further agree to contact your Representative and Senators at least four times per year, urging them to adopt copyright, patent, and trademark legislation that favor Disney and other owners of copyrights, patents, and trademarks."

However, I see something even worse going on: a violation of the FCC's "equal time" rule. In the United States, as part of the bargain for a monopoly on the use of a particular broadcast frequency in a particular area, a radio or TV station must make advertising time available to all candidates for a particular public office under the same terms. If a network donates money to a candidate's election campaign, its local affiliates are in effect giving free ad time to the candidate, possibly violating equal time.

mmm, patent

[SlugLord]

I'm going to patent being incompetent and then sue the patent office for infringement.

So that means...

[Tokerat]

The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted an all-encompassing patent to ActiveBuddy that covers every step of IM botmaking technology. According to internet news, ActiveBuddy now plans to enforce the patent, even though the existence of prior art is well-known and documented.

So that means...

xX activbud Xx: OMFG I won my patent. I get lots of money from you now.
OnlineHost: Son of a bitch.

I wonder, if since "instant messaging" is defined loosely enough to cover IRC, if the likes of eggdrop or something similar would be enough to tell these fools that "chat bots have existed for years, piss off you money grubbing fucktards"?

Description and Background of the Invention:

A method for building a highly successful technology business comprising of three steps:

1. Patent obvious technology using loose jargon and generalized statements.
2. Sue the shit out of everyone.
3. Profit!

Ah, the United States of America... Just when I think I couldn't be LESS proud of it...there it is.

eggdrop

[EyeBase]

eggdrop has been around before these guys even heard about the internet...

USPO Sucks donkey dick and so does America

[Anonymous Coward]

I am ashamed to live here sometimes. Corporate Greed has taken over.
My rights are removed in favor of hollywoods outdated monopoly.
My thoughts are stolen by my employer.
My prior art is ignored because some company has $$$.
This fucking country is going to bring itself into civil war, or dark ages, or both.

FUCK COMPANIES and FUCK THE POLITICIANS who cater to them.

And Fuck you if you don't care, and fuck you even more if you believe the hype.

and NO IAMAT (I AM NOT A TERRORIST). I'm a jaded ashamed American who is willing to fight and die to get my country free again. AND I'm prepared to fight SONY DISNEY SENATOR HOLLINGS AND THE USPO. and all other arms of the corporate octopus.

It's time for an angry coalition of American citizens to get the power to the people. It's starting. Earlier I warned that it would be soon. It's clearly inevitable now. Stay tuned. WE ARE UNITING. WE ARE ORGANIZING. WE WILL FIGHT YOU.

Oh, and by the way. THIS IS GLOBAL. America may be the first, but it trickles down to the other countries in the "free world". We'll fight this fight on all fronts.

It will be a revolution, just like in 1776, but it will be a civil war too, and it will be a world war too.

It won't be apparent until the implants are ordered. But we need to be ready before that time.

Stay tuned. We can not afford to lose this fight.

Wanna play with an ActiveBuddy?

[Kaz Riprock]

One ActiveBuddy is alot like the next, but you can try them out here: Try an Agent.

iGreg has an archive of some of his friends' encounters with ActiveBuddys here.

Re:iChatBot, fairly well known IM bot since 8/11/2

[markrages]

I wrote my IM bot in April of 2000:
http://mlug.missouri.edu/~markrages/static/everybu ddy.php3

ActiveBuddy Easter Egg...

[Kaz Riprock]

(21:13:55) Me: who's on first?
(21:13:55) DellDudeSteven: who
(21:14:10) Me: what's the guy's name on first base?
(21:14:10) DellDudeSteven: no. what is on second.
(21:14:24) Me: i'm not asking you who's on second
(21:14:24) DellDudeSteven: who's on first.
(21:14:29) Me: i don't know
(21:14:29) DellDudeSteven: third base.
(21:14:39) Me: how did i get on third base?
(21:14:40) DellDudeSteven: i have no idea.

Re:Loophole in campaign finance and equal time rul

[Ironica]

Hm, somehow, I'm thinking there's probably a law that says any money or bonus paid to you by your employer is yours to dispose of as you see fit.

Besides which, yes, there would be some of that happening. HOWEVER... it would be very difficult for a company to get 5,000 employees to each sign over their $1,000 to the same cause. Heck, some of them would probably just forget, while others would be properly morally outraged. It would still be a far sight better than the way it is now.

Re:Bot making tools? er, PERL, Python come to mind

[stonecypher]

> How can you patent a bot making tool, when any
> decent programming language could be considered a
> bot making tool. Hell, I could write a bot in PHP
> if I were so sadistically inclined.

1) They are not patenting bot making tools. They are producing bot making tools. They are patenting bots which correspond via instant messenging services.

2) A programming language is different than a specific purpose toolkit in many ways. Consider writing a 3D game in C++ versus using OpenGL, Direct3D, or similar tools. Consider writing a production internet news service without a database server, a tcp/ip stack, or a template toolkit.

A few words on AOLiza

[KFury]

As the creator (hack, cough, apologies to Prof Weisenbaum (sp)) or AOLiza, I've got a few opinions on ActiveBuddy's patent claim:

First, sadly, despite the fact that AOLiza was unleashed a few weeks before ActiveBuddy's patent filing, it doesn't apply as prior art, because according to patent law, if the claimant filed the patent application within one year of inventing, disclosing, or even detailing the invention in an email, it's still valid.

That isn't to say that prior art doesn't exist. I'm certain that it does, not the least of which in the AIM::BOT perl libraries which preceeded ActiveBuddy by well over a year.

Moreover, AOLiza doesn't even use the AIM::BOT libraries (although an earlier test version did). It uses the Mac version of AIM and the applescript hooks that AOL put into that application. These hooks, including calls so that other programs can grab messages, send messages, and do a myriad of other 'bot' functions, existed well over a year before ActiveBuddy's application, and were clearly designed to allow the attachment of automated scripts or bots to be used with the application.

This is important because in addition to 'get there first' and 'usefulness' the third requirement for a successful patent application is demonstrated non-obviousness. The invention has to be a novel application of technologies, not simply an evolution of existing (and possibly patented) technologies.

Clearly, when AIM for Mac had hooks specifically written to allow third-party programs to act as bots, another companys claim that actually USING those hooks, or punching holes into another part of the program to make hooks of their own, can not be seen as novel in any way.

That's my two cents, and I'd be happy to testify in court.

Re:A few words on AOLiza

[IMBotFather]

Thanks for the acknowledgement re: AOLiza - Tim and I did in fact invent AB LONG before your clever AppleScript product shipped. I'm aware of AppleScript and have used it in the past to do tons of work-flow projects involving popular application software: Photoshop, Quark XPress, Filemaker, etc. But our patent really isn't about using AppleScript or scripting the AOL AIM client.

Re:A few words on AOLiza

[KFury]

That's a nice handle. Would that stating something made it so...

It's a shame that you either didn't read my post, or didn't bother to understand it. If you had, you'd have realized:

1. I didn't say that AOLiza predated your 'invention' or served as prior art. In fact, my first post said just the opposite. However...
2. If 'LONG before AOLiza' is over 11 months before, then I'm sorry, but you worked yourself OUT of the patent, because patent law decrees that you have to file the patent within one year of the invention (which I also mentioned in my original post, had you bothered to read it).
3. You don't address the main point I made, which is that, by putting in hooks for bots in the first place, AOL did the legwork that made your work whether it used those hooks or not a simple and predictable extention of previsously available technologies, and not a novel invention worthy of a patent, by their own federal regulations.

Read before you flame. Slashdot forums aren't the place to vigorously defent a patent through FUD.

Do you know this finger, Mr.Clever-Patenting?

[Anonymous Coward]

_
|U|
|_|
| | /\|^| |^|^|
/ _| |
| | |
\__ /

Who cares you exist?
Why should I care about your rights
when you are offending mine?
Time will sweep away your mortal body.
Nobody will remember you.
So stop your foolish attempts to hemper innovation!
The common run of mankind is overworked enough even without your factionalism.

Damn Sara...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much time has to pass before the excuse of "incompetence" is seen for what is really going on?

Fraud.

Yea, baby bush stands up and talks about "Corporate Integrity" while his back office is busy engaging in the biggest Fraud the Government has pulled over the People since, ever.

Re:Damn Sara...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the Slashdot can help by providing a "prior art request" section for those incompetent Patent Officers.

Dead Horse

[Anonymous Coward]

Sado-masochistic necrophilic bestiality?!!!

Talk about beating a dead horse ...

a patent.

[_aa_]

I was always under the impression that if there was an exsisting patent, but you could somehow improve upon that patent, even in the slightest of ways, it became a whole new patent. How is it that these companies can aquire an "all-encompassing" patent on anything?

Re:I can see the VIRUS of the future....

[commodoresloat]

Hello, my name is Alice

>Hi Alice, nice to meet you.

I send you this file in order to have your advice.

>That file is 3MB! I'm on a 56k modem! And I don't even know how to open it! Please cancel the transfer!

See you later! Thanks

ActiveBuddy's mission statement

[Tablizer]

probably came from here:

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/care er /bin/ms.cgi

Re:Patenting Ideas (basic vs improvement patents)

[Piers Cawley]

I'm sorry, but patenting a stool would be a really shitty thing to do.

Here is prior art (28/02/1994)

[AftanGustur]

The Patent was filed August 22, 2000. Read the 'claims' it's important.

Then have a look at This (Posted on Usenet 1994-02-28)

Where is says:
If you can access IRC you will be able to get in touch with other netfolk on the #soccer channel. Even if no-one else is there you will usually find a bot, called FootInfo, who will give you the latest results. Type '/msg FootInfo help' for details,

This help system works with the /msg command, i.e. it's one-to-one bot-discussion.

How to Help

[Anonymous Coward]

Go here: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

Do a patent search where you might have some knowledge. Pick 3 random patants. Find prior art.

Then email here: usptoinfo@uspto.gov

The first patent I picked I could find prior art for.

Prior art from 1992 or earlier

[Incendiary]

I used to write IRC bots in 1992 that match the first six claims...maybe more... I got tired of reading the claims. I wasn't the first person to write such bots, either, I was just duplicating the efforts of others.

Fixing the Patent Problem - Easier Appeal

[pcause]

This is yet another sad failure of the Patent Office in the area of software. The Patent Office fails becuase they do not understand software, how software gets developed and the software community.

I know of a product developed initially at UBS that is an IM product and included BOT capability. Bots were developed for this 5-6 years ago. While this is now a commercail product from a company called divine, the Patent Office would be hard pressed to discover that this prior art existed. UBS didn't publicize this product or its capabilities and uses. They have developed something like 500+ BOTS for the product, but it was all for internal use and hence, no reason to publicize. So, if they don't publicize the technology, how does one do a prior art search?

UBS isn't alone. A lot of tools and technology are built for internal use at some organization and the organization has no need to publicize the technology or all of its capabilities. Since there is no easy way to find out abut the existence of what may even be multiple prior instances of creation of a technology, the submitter may make an application, in good faith, and be granted a Patent that should never have been granted.

Given the above, the Patent Office will continue to grant patents that should never have been issued and has no way of knowing better. What the Patent Office needs to do to address this problem is simple: For a period of 2 years after the grant of a Patent, the Patent Office should allow members of the public to submit examples of prior art. If the Patent Office finds that the prior art is credible, the Patent should be revoked, after giving the company holding the patent a chance to appeal.

Currently, once granted, you can't do much ntil you are sued. Then, you've got to spend lots of $$ to fight. Since it costs lots of moeny to fight in Court, deep pockets comapnies can win suits even on basically bad patents. The problem is that the only real appeal is in Court. Fix that and we'll improve the system, make it fairer and still protect the rights of patent holders.

Buy this patent

[RabidChipmunk]

I like the shopping cart motif.

Not to be picky, but you only seem to be able to browse the issued patents. The classification system is opaque (Class 2 Subclass 78.1 Patent 06430748), and the applications haven't been classified anyway.

So there is a tool to get them, good. What we need is a content management/ content review system. We effectively need a volunteer Patent Office. We need a reader aportionment system; maybe push. You'd have to set up a system of volunteering and then deal the patents out like cards. Clasify it and resend them out to people who know about that area.

People should not be willing to look it up every day. A machine should look it up everyday, send one application out to volunteers who decide how many applications they are willing to look at a week. Then that volunteer has to put the application into our content discovery system with enough clasification detail that the "experts" can be sent a summary for only those applications which are relevant to their expertise.

The problem is geting the information to the volunteers in a form and volume that they can deal with it. This tool does not exist.

What the forum dwellers are asking for is a volunteer patent office. They want to be able to donate a few hours at inconsistant times and have the system keep going ahead. Maybe throw a few dollars in the pot. [It could be a 501c(3)] and have the whole add up to at least near the sum of the parts. What they don't want is a full time job pretending to be the patent office all by themselves.

So. I volunteer to read one patent a week. Who wants to volunteer to figure out which patent I should read?

Re:Buy this patent

[blue trane]

Maybe one day they'll make patent applications available as a web service with a published xml schema so people can more easily write clients that will distribute applications to volunteers for review, etc.

What is Fraud?

[LifesABeach]

Would it be Fraud to knowingly lie to the U.S. Patent office?

You sir, are a clueless fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

I see -- hatred as a solution, huh ? This has got to be one of the silliest things I've heard, even on slashdot.

He didn't advocate hatred anywhere in his comments.

What he did do was express anger and maybe outrage and say that responding to a threat in kind is ok.

He is right about that.
Drawing hostilities in ones own direction, you say? You obviously have been living under a rock. These people are stripping away all of our rights and liberties, now they want to come into our living rooms and our bedrooms and take away our ability to compute in a general purpose manner, to do whatever our hearts desire with our own stuff, in our own home.

The hostilities are already in full swing our own way. Turn the other cheeck, forgive or justify their behavior, and they win. The only chance we have against these scum is to do exactly what FreeUser advocates and start treating them like the human filth that they are.

Re:You sir, are a clueless fuck

[elflord]

He didn't advocate hatred anywhere in his comments.

Sure he did. He spewed invective at these people, and suggested that such people be treated in a way consistent with that spiteful invective. Your subject line says it all-- you're as spiteful as he is.

It's difficult to comment on the details of "treating people like human filth" unless those details are offered, but the language suggests obnoxious, hateful behaviour.

As for the suggestion that I advocate "turning the other cheek", or even condoning that conduct, you're proposing a false dichotomy. Perhaps you should abstain from such simple logical fallacies if you want to use words like "clueless fuck" to describe others (-;

I'm not saying that nothing should be done, I'm saying that there are processes for effecting change, and obnoxious, antisocial behaviour, and hateful rhetoric has a very poor track record in bringing about positive social changes.

Re:You sir, are a clueless fuck

[FreeUser]

Sure he did. He spewed invective at these people, and suggested that such people be treated in a way consistent with that spiteful invective.

Social pressure and indeed the maintenance of the social contract, and society in general, only work if there is a stick as well as a carrot. In this case, since there is no law preventing anti-social behavior that causes great economic damage and destroys the lives of thousands (sometimes quite literally), the only alternative is 'spiteful,' 'hateful,' rejection of the persons engaging in such behavior, in short, a general, widespread social rejection and ostrocizing of people who behave so despicably, regardless of the legality of their actions.

I'm not saying that nothing should be done, I'm saying that there are processes for effecting change, and obnoxious, antisocial behaviour, and hateful rhetoric has a very poor track record in bringing about positive social changes.

I agree with that, to a point. Treating the wrongdoers we are talking about as human filth in a political or judicial sense would have tremendous negative effects. Instead, the behavior they engaged in should be outlawed, so that others may not follow in their steps.

However, greating those jackasses as the human filth that they are on the personal level, ie. general and pervasive social rejection of the type O.J. Simpson often laments about, is IMHO very justified, very warranted, and can effect positive social change, in that the next guy to consider such an ignoble way of obtaining wealth may well think twice, knowing that by doing so he or she will become a social pariah.

Which is precisely what these sorts of executives should become, forthwith.

Re:Patenting Ideas (basic vs improvement patents)

[McFly777]

I wasn't questioning your analogy. If you read the sentence before and after the one you quoted, you will see that I agree with you; the PTO has its head up its ass with respect to software patents.

I was trying to respond to your question why things don't seem to work the the same for physical objects as for software. My conclusion was that the PTO needs to get a clue or two about the state of the "software arts."

I also was trying to point out why bad "basic" patents are much more dangerous than bad "improvement" patents (which you can often manage to work around).

Re:Patenting Ideas (basic vs improvement patents)

[Tall Rob Mc]

I misread. After I posted I reread your post and re-interpreted it. I now understand what your point was. Thanks.

Slashdot - the Place to Be Gay by poopbot

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot - the Place to Be Gay
by Trollaxor

Believe it or not, the majority of Slashdot readers are male, aged 12 to 24, are computer literate or computer proficient, introverted, and homosexual. Slashdot creator and self-avowed homosexual Rob Malda, who, in 1997 in his Holland, Michigan dorm, was running a gay singles' list, had the following to say:

"If I hadn't had Slashdot when I was coming out, I don't know what would have happened. There would have been no one to connet with, no twinks to share my rage with, no bears to gain knowledge from. Slashdot was the ultimate gay hookup and for that alone am I thankful I created it years ago."

Obviously, Slashdot serves more than the "tech community" it purports to cater to. In 1999, Slashdot hired then-Wired columnist Jon Katz, another openly gay literary genius. Sporting blue hair and multiple facial piercings, the angst-ridden Katz expresses in his writings are clearly visible in real life. "I'd found a home, with Rob [...] Wired was too straight, but at Slashdot I fit right in."

Finally, in early 2000, public homosexual and sexy censor Michael Sims joined the Slashdot orgy crew. "I wanted to introduce goat sex and a lot of non-Slashdot, homosexual, erect male penises to the group," said Sims, "so ESR got involved with donkey dicks and we all like to suck each other off." Without Rob Malda, Michael Sims would be nothing except an aggravated gay male without a place to call home.

"Slashdot is definitely the place to be gay" concluded Sims.

"Definitely the place to be gay"

Heck, I did something like this around 1990

[rjwoodhead]

In the late '80s, early '90s, I wrote a suite of scripts for the MicroPhone terminal app that implemented "Cant the RoboCleric" on the Gemstone multiplayer adventure game on GEnie.

RoboCleric totally automated the character. He would run around the wilderness, killing monsters and taking their goodies (but politely not stealing kills from other players), helpfully heal the sick and raise the dead, and (more importantly), answer questions about the game from an extensive list of questions and answers. GemStone had built-in instant messaging, of course.

RoboCleric not only answered people's questions, it ran around the game looking for people to help.

Book by Andrew Leonard: Prior art?

[qmacro]

If we need something tangible (perhaps to hit over the USPTO's head) then how about Andrew Leonard's book "Bots, The Origin Of New Species", which I have here in front of me.

It talks about all kinds of bots, on systems including instant messaging systems such as IRC, and the book itself is classified thus:

1.Intelligent Agents (Computer software)
2.Human-computer Interaction

First Edition 1997.

ISBN 1-888869-05-4

At Amazon.

Re:Indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen his wife? No wonder she's willing.