Slashdot Mirror
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
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!
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
there are general divisions for chemical, electrical, mechianical, biotech and business methods. from there, there are breakdowns into specific technologies, such as sporting equipment, telephones, tyres etc, nearly every catergory of invention.
At least BS is requried, for some techonolgies, more is required for education/job experience.
the people who work at the PTO probably know far more than you do about a specific technology. The problem is you have to read how the claims are written. The claims define the actual invention. If the law firm does a good search prior to filing a patent, they can word the claims so that the examiner can't find it. Likewise after a non-final rejection, the attorney can ammend the claims to not read on the art the examiner cited.
"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."
The article poster only quoted the preamble, not the actual invention, so the slashdot article is misleading. Likewise the passage from the above poster is inaccurate. That is called the preamble and is not the actual invention. The actual invention portion of the claim would likely read something like this:
1) A method if inserting small steel spikes in a piece of wood, wherein said wood is composed of pine. ETC with more and more detail AFTER the preamble portion
I'm pretty tired of slashdot people, who are entirely uneducated in the patent process, critizing a process which they don't even fully understand.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
For prior art see the Internet Shopping Network (now part of HSN) which was operating in '94, Also the UK Prestel system which operated in the early 80s.
I don't doubt that we could have got a patent for HTTP, but it is only a more efficient transport than ftp. There used to be quite a few sites that used ftp to serve HTML.
This type of extortion should be punished. In the UK you would be hit with a crippling legal bill for the defendant's costs if you lost so there is little point in filing vexatious patents. Also prior review means that the probability of getting a vexatious patent is much lower.
The problem with the USPTO is that it speaks with a forked tongue. When it is justifying its racket it claims that a patent has to be 'novel', when justifying the actions of its franchisees it claims that their legal definition of 'novel' is 'anything at all, even something completely obvious'.
Actually cases like these are the ones that might lead to reform. A corrupt senator bought by USPTO franchisees can ignore the complaints from the likes of Microsoft or slashdotters, but it is harder to ignore small business owners. And no, the judgemet against Microsoft on the disk compression patent was not any more justified than the present scam. What was being claimed there was not LZW but the idea of a compressed disk.
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.
They have their own problems in this area, there are something like 2000 odd patent extortion scams going on and Amazon have their fair share.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.