Posted by
michael
on from the patent-office-fails-the-turing-test dept.
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."
Re:Have to say it...
by
zapfie
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· Score: 3, Insightful
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...
by
neuroticia
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· Score: 5, Insightful
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
I'm patenting ass slapping!
by
tommck
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· Score: 4, Funny
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:-)
-- ----
It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4, Funny
that's not money you're smelling
Re:I'm patenting ass slapping!
by
elflord
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· Score: 3, Funny
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."
Over and over again...
by
kawika
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· Score: 5, Interesting
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.
Every step of IM botmaking technology?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Funny
Does it please you to believe I am botmaking technology?
In a word, yes:
by
FreeUser
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· Score: 5, Insightful
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:
by
Ironica
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· Score: 5, Insightful
"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?
-- Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
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.
-- These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
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.
documented? i'd say.
by
MORTAR_COMBAT!
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· Score: 5, Informative
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 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.
-- MORTAR COMBAT!
Instant Prior Art
by
signe
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· Score: 5, Informative
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
--
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Patent wording....
by
GiorgioG
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· Score: 3, Interesting
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?
As long as they're rewarded...
by
Dark+Paladin
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· Score: 5, Interesting
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...
by
JohnG
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· Score: 3, Insightful
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.
The real problem
by
pmancini
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· Score: 4, Interesting
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?
"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."
"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*
-- I stole this Sig
Patenting Ideas
by
Tall+Rob+Mc
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· Score: 5, Insightful
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.
Send them your opinion about this.
by
warpSpeed
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· Score: 3, Informative
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.
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
I can see the spam of the future....
by
CaffeineAddict2001
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· Score: 5, Funny
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....
by
Peter+Trepan
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· Score: 4, Funny
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.*
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
-- "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Re:Can you blame them?
by
Jucius+Maximus
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· Score: 3, Insightful
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?
by
Physics+Dude
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· Score: 5, Insightful
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.:)
prior art posted here?
by
shren
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· Score: 3, Informative
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.
-- Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Re:prior art posted here?
by
Mr_Silver
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· Score: 3, Interesting
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.
-- Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Re:prior art posted here?
by
shren
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· Score: 3, Informative
-- Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Opening up application review.
by
mbrubeck
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· Score: 4, Informative
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?
It's a symptom, not the problem.
by
Fat+Casper
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· Score: 5, Insightful
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.
-- I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Re:Can you blame them?
by
Pxtl
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· Score: 5, Interesting
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.
Press Inquiry to ActiveBuddy
by
program21
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· Score: 5, Interesting
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.
-- This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
Peek Into European Patent Examining Cancelled
by
tiedyejeremy
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· Score: 3, Interesting
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.
The real problem - quotas
by
Erwos
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· Score: 3, Interesting
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
-- Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
WHAT?! She WASN'T real?!?
Damnit, I thought I could have gotten some.
-- WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Re:The ultimate patent
by
zmalone
·
· Score: 3, Funny
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).
Stealing treasure from the dragon
by
Have+Blue
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· Score: 3, Interesting
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.
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.)
Prior art ... the USPTO itself!
by
VisualStim
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· Score: 3, Funny
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.
So could I patent pirating Windows?
by
Uttles
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· Score: 3, Insightful
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?
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.
-- !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
suddenly i have an interesting view on patents
by
shren
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· Score: 3, Insightful
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?
-- Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Eldred v. Ashcroft
by
yerricde
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· Score: 3, Informative
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.
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.
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.
-- Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
A few words on AOLiza
by
KFury
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· Score: 3, Informative
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.
Slashdot Mirror
All Your Bots are Belong to Us!
AMCGLTD.COM. Where cats, science fictio
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 :-)
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
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.
Does it please you to believe I am botmaking technology?
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
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.
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.
MORTAR COMBAT!
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
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
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?
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.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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?
"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*
I stole this Sig
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.
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
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!
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
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
Don't you mean "an opportunity to make money"?
There is a slight difference. :)
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.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
They did.
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.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
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.
This is the full text of an inquiry I have sent to ActiveBuddy via their Press Inquiries area./ 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'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
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.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
I'd certainly like to know European Patent Examiner John Savage's opinion on this US patent craziness!
Anything you say will be held against you.
Then there's Net::AIM, which includes this text, from over a year before the patent was applied for: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.
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
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
WHAT?! She WASN'T real?!? Damnit, I thought I could have gotten some.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
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).
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.
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.)
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.
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?
~ now you know
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.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
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?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
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.
Kevin Fox