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Patent Cases Hurting Small Businesses
smudge writes "An Information Week article states that multiple small businesses with Web presence are being sued by PanIP LLC. The claims in these patents being asserted in the lawsuits refer to 'a
computerized system for selecting and ordering a variety of information, goods and services' and 'an automatic data-processing system for processing business and financial transactions between entities from remote sites.'"
I'd think any patent that uses phrases like "a variety of" is too vague.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
"The patents, No. 5,576,951 and No. 6,289,319, cover, respectively, an "automated sales and services system," and an "automatic business and financial transaction-processing system."
Vending machines anyone?
Jason Lotito
Patent abuse should really be punishable. I mean, patents were made to stifle innovation, they were made to promote it. Now we've got every tom-dick-and-harry patenting blatently prior art things, or just commonplace market things, and attempting to sue people out of existance.
Let's just make it that if you patent something that is reviewed, and sounds like a dug-headslap type thing - you get a toenail pulled out with a pair of pliers. On severe cases - just bring back public stoning (no, not drug induced bliss - bludgeoned to h*ll with big fu***** rocks) for the offending numbskull, and his/her lawyer.
Too bad these people seem so be trying to get their money from suing others rather than perfecting the magic of E-commerce, which they basically claim to have invented.
It seems that the disease that is PanIP has been spreading...
Namely - any store or business with a cashier.
Some one needs to phrase the job of the US Patent office really vaguly and then get a patent on it. Then sue the patent office for patent infringement.
hmmm, wonder if i could make this into a business plan and get some VC behind me...
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
is 1996 seem a little to recent to have a good claim for a patent? now if it had been around 1990 then sure I could see how they think they have a good patent, but 1996!!! my god....businesses were doing web sales for a few years before these yokels said "hey that sales system is not patented..."
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Can you imagine if this lawyering tactic and blatant abuse of an overburdened patent office had taken place 150 years ago. I could patent things like "a way to use electricity for an artificial light source" and then I could have sued Edison or perhaps I could have patented "a method of towing freight along metal rails" and the railroad and locomotives would have been sued into non-existence. Its insane.
Please file a protest for patents 6,289,319 and 5,576,951
c /mpep/document s/0841.htm#sect1901.01
"1901.01 Who Can Protest
Any member of the public, including private persons, corporate entities, and government agencies, may file a protest under 37 CFR 1.291. A protest may be filed by an attorney or other representative on behalf of an unnamed principal since 37 CFR 1.291 does not require that the principal be identified."
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pa
Jason Lotito
And yet another part of the article bothers me...
It seems scarry how some coperation may potentially come after me, for me using a system I invest a mild amount of trust in, just because I -trust- the system. They coming after me, just so they can use me as a stepping stone to attack E-bay is even MORE frightening.
And I was scared using my credit card online.... This may cause much worse damage.
In the United States, people currently can sue each other for any reason and any thing, and usually win, thanks to the corrupting influence of trial lawyers in Washington, DC.
There is hope, however; tort reform is taking storm in many states, and it's preventing such frivolous lawsuits from taking place.
If you don't want these small businesses to be persecuted, then drop the keyboard and write your state and federal Congressmen by snail-mail and demand that he or she fight in the Capitol for real, meaningful tort reform.
Don't wait until tomorrow -- do it now!
Seems to me that the solution is somewhat obvious, and implied in the article. It is likely that they will try to sue some of the big players with deep pockets if they can collect enough in settlements. Don't you think Amazon would be well served to help these little guys squash this thing in the first round before it gets any momentum.
It boggles the mind to think about what kind of qualification process would keep letting through all sorts of patents that any semi-competent engineer would recognize as obvious and/or prior art. Maybe it is just easier to rubber stamp the applications so they can get to the bar early.
OK, Amazon.com, Buy.com, bn.com, and anyone else who wants in should set up a fund to hire someone to club the kneecaps of everyone involved in this stupid, stupid lawsuit. My usual style would be to hit them in the face with a frying pan, since it is almost impossible to misinterperet that action as anything other than sheer and utter revulsion and hate, but sometimes the frying pan just doesn't do the job.
I mean, seriously. This is one of those 'just when you had accepted the fact that things couldn't get any more stupid or pointless, you were harshly proven wrong' things. I'm going to patent candy and beachballs and start collecting royalty payments from kids, those pathological users of unlicensed intellectual property... (No, don't even try and apply logic to that one. Trust me, don't.)
I'm ready to put in $20 for the hitman. Who is with me? Hey, it worked for the blender source code.
(OK, I'm not an evil person. I really just wish they would drop the lawsuits and grow a spine and some clue. That would be far preferable to having to spend money on a hitman. I mean, uh, I hope nothing bad happens to them. But I'll probably smirk if something does. No, wait... If the police ask, I had nothing to do with it. Yeah, that's the ticket...)
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
Why even have patents? Call 'em trade secrets. If someone can figure out what you did and do it better, faster, cheaper, and easier, tough luck, it's their achievement.
At a minimum, the government should legislate that the patent holder must prove there is a 'case to answer' before any defendents have to touch their wallets. Maybe small businesses should even be exempt from patent claims altogether.
This whole thing reminds me of a recent set of high-profile cases where Australian local councils paid $100,000s for people tripping on a crack in the sidewalk!
Once people figured out that it was generally cheaper for councils to pay them $10k to shut them up than to fight the claim, everyone jumped on the bandwagon, hoping for a 'lottery win' payout.
The patent system will remain broken until the 'lottery win' mentality no longer applies.
-- Askari: Give JavaScript the bird.
Most (if not all) of these bad patents we have been reading about lately in the news have to do with human leaches trying to get money without working for it (the lawyers do all the work).
It's easy. For patents just come up with some broad, utterly asinine idea that people have been doing long enough that people will not stop.
This works for the same reason that sending a bill for $15 to a large business works; the company will pay the small fee because it is cheaper to do so than to investigate every questionable bill.
With these bad patents, if the price is low enough then most companies will pay the licensing fee instead of the greater cost to fight it in court.
The only solution that could work is getting the people working in the patent office a clue. How about some redundancy so it would take at least 3 people to review patent. That way if we can get at least one of those three to be a person who has common sence, problem solved!
Or is this just wishful thinking?
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
This Lockwood guy sounds like a real pro. He's been at it for at least 10 years. He sniffs out broad new technological trends in business - the kind of thing you might read about in a Forbes article - and then cynically abuses the weakness of US Patent Law by patenting a vague expression of that trend. He never intends to produce anything with his "ideas"... he just slinks into his hole and waits for the real innovators to come along so he can extort money from them.
He's going to lose any court case--that's almost a given--but in the meantime he's hoping that enough of his small, carefully picked victims cave in and throw him $30k, or at least a few grand to make him disappear.
The key to wiping the smirk off his face is to make sure no more of his victims cave. Sure, lawyers aren't cheap, but the 30 companies have to realize that there is no way they can lose this disgusting and frivolous lawsuit, especially if they work together.
The Patent Office is unequivocal. "All patents are presumed valid once they're issued," says Brigid Quinn, deputy director of public affairs.
This would be funny if it wasn't true, but there decisions are legally binding until challenged, as you say.
I was talking to a friend about a more libertarian or maybe even anarchistic legal system where the government wouldn't be the only entity with the legal standing to represent the public at large. I know, there could be real problems (like SLAPP style prosecutions for any law they can find on the books). He's really much more libertarian than me, since I think there really is a constructive role for government to play, if only they were effective and actually represented the people.
He was telling me that there is a legal mechanism where you can try to force the state to take legal action. I forget the technical legal term, but it basically translates as "do your job", and he was telling me about an example (which I also forgot). Maybe the patent office can be sued under this framework, but you still have the basic catch 22 that they didn't do their job in the first place, so it will be difficult to enforce an effective remedy.
What they REALLY patented was pretty much *ANY* database. It even looks like a series of labelled pictures in a word document would violate the patent as written.
All it'll take is one person to take this to court to get the patents invalidated. They're atrocious.
paintball
A system for the disabling of logical, rational thought; a system that creates random decisions and has no method of control or accountability?
Sorry. I really don't think you can patent the U.S. Patent Office itself.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I was talking to a friend about a more libertarian or maybe even anarchistic legal system . . .I think there really is a constructive role for government to play, if only they were effective and actually represented the people. . .I forget the technical legal term. . . and he was telling me about an example (which I also forgot).
Yeah, I like smoking weed with my friends too.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
So please don't put all the blame on the patent examiners; while there are plenty of idiot examiners, a lot of this also has to do with bureaucracy's normal functioning: higher-ups trying to cut corners and save a buck.
Actually, I checked out the patents, they do use the word plurality, however :) ...
They're retarded. Both require that the 'textual' and 'graphical' content of the site be from a 'CD-ROM' or 'optical device'. I know of very few sites that do this. Additionally, the first patent defines that the device which essentially serves contents require a device for displaying graphical content. I guess the patent doesn't take into affect that some people host their shiznit on boxes without a monitor.
So, fear not the whores.
(I hope the lawsuits backfire on that blasted company)
what are the current job reqs for the patent office? Do they have different division? Meaning is there a patent division for internet technology, a patent division for genetic pateneting, etc?
Decisions about patents are obviously being made by people who have no idea how these things work in their respective fields. Are they just checking the patent claims for grammer, and that all the checkbox's are filled in? We need people working there that actually have a vague idea of what is being patented. I dont understand how anyone semi tech-literate could allow these pass, hell I dont know how anyone literate could let these pass?
Imagine if people start claiming necessary carpentry skills like 'the process of putting a a variety of small steel spikes in a piece of wood' - that'll cover hammering, screwing, etc. Or 'method of subdividing wood into smaller pieces.' - sawing.
How is this any different?
The PanIP Defendants web site mentioned in the article has a list of the 50 companies that have so far been sued by PanIP. Interestingly, despite the large number of e-commerce companies in California, none of the defendants are located in California.
Since the patent holder, PanIP, is located in San Diego the cases are taking place in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Since all of the companies being targeted are small out-of-state companies they are unlikely to already have an established relationship with an attorney licensed to practice in California. I wonder if PanIP is specifically targeting companies that are not in California, perhaps on the theory that out-of-state companies will be more likely to settle when faced with having to litigate a case far from home?
Biotech companies have been submitting patents of 140,000 pages in length. These may take some time to examine thoroughly.
Vagueness such as this rarely helps the plaintiff. Consider Claim 1:
Ordinarily, the preamble is not read into the claim, although it certainly can be in appropriate cases. But here --assuming, a bad assumption, that it actually serves as a claim limitation--, the addition of the words "a variety of" works to the detriment of the plaintiff. (Consider the fragment with those words deleted). In the absence of the language, the fragment is far broader, referring to all information, goods and services. With the language, which must be read to mean SOMETHING, a narrower set of possibilities is considered.
Does it mean: more than one thing, where each thing is either information a good or service; more than one thing, and different things, where each thing in one of the categories; or more than one thing, with things in two or more of the categories? Answers are found in the spec, the prosecution history and elsewhere, and it is stuff like this that gives defendants a chance.
I forget the technical legal term
Writ of Mandate. aka Writ of Mandamus A court order to a government agency, including another court, to follow the law by correcting its prior actions or ceasing illegal acts.
(BTW, IANAL, but more details can be found here in a legal dictionary)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I was implementing EDI 15-17 years ago.
IANAL - but IMHO there is prior art available that could turn these patents to where it belongs - /dev/null
IANAL either, but I do hold 12 patents and know a little about what prior art is.
Prior art simply is art that is in practice or was publically disclosed at the time the inventor claims he made the invention.
The fact that MiniVend was released in 1995 probably does not qualify it as prior art. The PanIP patent was ISSUED in 1996. The invention (and prior art) must occur BEFORE the original filing date which is in this case in 1984.
Unless you can come up with prior art in this time frame you aren't going to get anywhere.
Now what is particularly interesting in this case is the long string of CIP's. It would be rather interesting to learn what the expiration date of this patent is - it may be relatively soon since one of CIP's issued as a patent.
Optical device== Camera ?
So I'm guessing they think the patent covers anyone who took pictures of their product and put them up on their website.
the patent has an effective filing date of 1988!
Eh? What patents are you looking at? Either you are a troll or you didn't check them yourself:
Patent 5,576,951:
Inventors: Lockwood; Lawrence B. (5935 Folsom Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037)
Appl. No.: 210301
Filed: March 16, 1994
Patent date November 19, 1996.
Patent 6,289,319:
Inventors: Lockwood; Lawrence B. (5935 Folsom Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037)
Appl. No.: 347270
Filed: November 30, 1994,
Patent date September 11, 2001.
Where did you get the 1988? I am wondering if you are referring to the parent case text with abandoned applications that were referenced there? If so, the dates go back to 1984 and 1986. However, I am not aware of the rule that prior art has to pre-date any of the abandoned patent applications!