San Diego Company Owns E-Commerce

Kernel Panic writes "Looks like you can now be sued for using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site. As everyone who has an e-commerce site does. A company in San Diego was granted one patent for using graphics and text to sell things on the web and another for accepting information to conduct automatic financial transactions via a telephone line & video screen. They have started their crusade with smaller companies that do not have the financial resources to fight back so as to build a "war chest" to take on larger companies like Ebay and Amazon. One site has taken the offense after becoming one of the first defendants of 50 companies so far. Curiously it appears the company was formed in March of 2002, less than a month before filing for the first lawsuit."

Comments

And we wonder

[circusnews]

why our founding fathers had such a dim view of IP rights.

Re:And we wonder

[ralphus]

I have just applied a patent for the method of accepting cash for goods and services. with my army of lawyers, I'll soon be the richest man on the planet and after that, King of the world!

Re:And we wonder

[billd]

I've just applied for a patent for a system of extracting oxygen from atmospheric air, using things called "lungs" I expect a lot of people will be wanting to use my IP and have to pay me royalties.

Re:And we wonder

[dkarney]

Someone should trump them and get a patent for the internet. Then they could only make that company pay them royalties until they are out of business.

Re:And we wonder

[dogfart]

Yeah, I have a copyright on the letter "e". You owe me big time!

Re:And we wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, so dim that they included copyrights and patents in the constitution. Please.

The real issue is the patent office will grant just about anything, as a result of not enough knowledgeable people and a specific case several years ago involving State Street Bank, in which the courts said business process patents were valid.

Re:And we wonder

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Doesn't Al Gore have prior art?
</HUMOR>

(And yes, I know it's an urban legend, hence the HUMOR tags).

Re:And we wonder

[Quixotic137]

Remember to give your lawyers a license before charging them.

Re:And we wonder

[hpavc]

this wont stand up ... there simply is no public good in their patent. sad that people fell easily to their muscle however.

Re:And we wonder

[kgasso]

Too bad nobody would then accept said cash you would then possess for fear of being sued. :)

Re:And we wonder

[IXI]

No way, you won't profit from my contributions to slashdot.

Re:And we wonder

[grimmfarmer]

To read the patent claims, it sounds as though Lockwood has patented a) the principle of RDBMS, b) the microcomputer, and c) the World-Wide Web. It also sounds as though certain aspects of the patent could be circumnavigated by using a monolithic binary to handle everything, and by storing the info on DVD (the only optical medium mentioned in the older patent is CD-ROM), but that's my uninformed opinion.

My more informed opinion is that we should assemble a group (like www.youmaybenext.com?) to sue the Patent and Trademark Office for issuing stupid patents, the recommended remedy being to shorten the life of technology- and pharmaceutical-related patents to six months. =P

Re:And we wonder

[Mysticalfruit]

I've just applied for a patent, on a process where a device known as a "clerk" stands behind a device called a "counter" and accepts "payment" for objects brought up to the "counter" from the "store". This patent also includes provisions for a tabulation device that the "clerk" would use for keeping track of the "transaction". I've also got a patent on the words "clerk,counter,payment and transaction", start paying now...

What a lame pile of festering shit. Good thing it isn't the french revolution, those ass monkeys would have ended up at the recieveing end of a number of sharp impliments, none the least, a guillotine...

Re:And we wonder

[circusnews]

While I agree with you that the patent office will allow just about anything through, and our congress has expanded patent protection well beyond what they should ever have covered, the fact that the constitution includes the issue should serve to high light that fact. To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The following is excerpted from a post made by Tim Phillips to the CNI-Copyright list:

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his correspondence with James Madison (1751-1836) was initially hostile to the provision for copyright and patent law in the United States Constitution. On Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison from France concerning the recently-drafted Constitution:

I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights
providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms
for freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
protection against standing armies, restriction
against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting
force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by
jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of
the land...

Here Jefferson considers freedom from copyright and patent laws and other monopolies to be of similar importance to freedom of speech, religion, and the press. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:

I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our
new constitution by nine states. It is a good
canvas, on which some strokes only want
re-touching. What these are, I think are sufficiently
manifested by the general voice from North to South,
which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty
generally understood that this should go to juries,
habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion
and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty
in finding general modification of these suited to
the habits of all the states. But if such cannot
be found then it is better to establish trials by jury,
the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press
and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish
standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in
all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying
there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements
to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a
monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the
benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to
be opposed to that of their general suppression.

Madison, in a letter of October 17, 1788, responded,

With regard to monopolies they are justly
classed among the greates nuisances in government.
But is it clear that as encouragements to literary
works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too
valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not
suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public
to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified
in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely
less danger of this abuse in our governments than in
most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many
to the few. Where the power is in the few it is
natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own
partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as
with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger
can not be very great that the few will be thus
favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the
few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.


Jefferson was either convinced by Madision of the utility of copyrights and patents, or he at least prudently decided to cut his losses, for he proposed to Madison the following addition to the bill of rights on August 28, 1789:


I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes,
but I should have been for going further. For
instance, the following alterations and additons would
have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be
allowed to persons for their own productions in literature,
and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not
exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no
other purpose.


The blank was to be filled with some appropriate number later to be determined. Here again Jefferson considers the protection of
the public against unduly long copyrights and patents to be a fundamental right, important enough to be safeguarded by a bill of rights.

Jefferson's own preference for the term of copyright was communicated to Madison a few days afterward, in a letter of September 6, 1789. There he proposed a term of 19 years, based on an actuarial calculation:

The question Whether one generation of men has
a right to bind another seems never to have
been started on this [i.e., the European side --
Jefferson was writing from France] or our [American]
side of the water... that no such obligation can
be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. --
I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be
self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living; that the dead have neither powers
nor rights over it... A generation coming in and
going out entire... would have a right on the first
year of their self-dominion to contract a debt
for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for
14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing
daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant
term, beginning at the date of their contract, and
ending when a majority of those of full age at that
date shall be dead. The length of that term may
be estimated from the tables of mortality. Take,
for instance, the tables of M. de Buffon...
[according to which] half of those of 21 years [of
age] and upwards living at any one instant of time will
be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the
nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term
beyond which neither the representatives of a nation,
nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly
extend a debt... This principle that the earth belongs
to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive
application... Turn this subject in your mind, my
dear Sir... Your station in the councils of our country
gives you an opportunity for producing it to public
consideration... Establish the principle... in the
new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new
inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19
instead of 14 years.

A Jeffersonian computation using life tables from 1992 gives a Jeffersonian copyright term of 30-35 years. (Vital Statistics of the United States 1992, Volume II--Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, Hyattsville, 1996, Section 6, Table 6-1.) Note, howver, that at least one edition of Jefferson's works has a much abridged version of this letter, in which the 19-year computation and the proposal for the term of copyright do not occur.

One of Jefferson's most famous statements on patent law was in his often-quoted letter of August 13, 1813 to Isaac McPherson, in which he wrote that, since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas. I think Jefferson's words apply equally well to copyrights as to patents; to "expression" as well as to "ideas": "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

Re:And we wonder

[sconeu]

Someone should trump them and get a patent for the internet.

BT tried (OK, it was only for the WWW), and got laughed out of court.

No way

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's sell off San Diego to Mexico!

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

The INS has already conceded most border towns and cities to Mexico. It will not be long before LA and Dallas fall. Denver is only a few years away.

Aztlan indeed.

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that! I live in San Diego!

I say we get some rope and have an old fashion hangin'!

String'em up boys.

-ac

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

The insanity of it all is that so do I and I was the anonymous coward who did the original post.

Re:No way

[sPaKr]

Screw that. We should invade Baja.. that place is party. The beachs rock. The waters warmer.. and you can drink at 18.. so hot, skanky chicks.. wait If we invade they will raise the drinking age to 21. Uh.. Your right.. Sell OFF SD to mexico.. turn it into a REAL party town. Its so close the happiest place on earth.. TJ.

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't you be drywalling and drinking bud light amigo?

Re:No way

[JoshWurzel]

I could swear we already did that.

Face IT

[buswolley]

The entire way we run our economy is un-workable. C'mon guys and gals, lets implement our open-source economy and government.

Re:Face IT

[buswolley]

off topic? You can go to hell! How is it off topic? Patents, copyrights etc is integral to how our economy is run..this case was bullshit, and demonstrates the ineffectualness of the patent system, against the common good. Off topic my ass.

Re:Face IT

[3dr]

Done last night. I checked it in and you get get it via CVS.

One problem is that the new government parser compiler Yet Another Constitution Compiler (YACC) has a few bugs. There are no array checks nor memory usage balances.

Patent Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Something must be done... this is wholesale abuse
of the patent system. Patents and copyrights are
necessary to further innovation, but if this sort
of filthy lawyer abuse continues we may lose these
rights. Abuse a right, and lose it.

Re:Patent Abuse

[Fembot]

Actualy I think this is a good thing.. the more ludicrous patents like this the more general public are likely to realise how plain wrong the patent system as it stands is (eg: swinging sideways on swings, genes etc..)

Without things like this there is no way Joe Public will ever realise anything is wrong

Re:Patent Abuse

[FiniteInfinity]

Patents and copyrights are only necessary because people WILL steal an idea if they arnt clever enough to have it themselves (Microsoft?) just to make large amounts of money. The entire problem is created by greed, a basic human desire to have more than the next man.
Answer: Create a law that stops people stealing other peoples ideas.
Problem: People who are clever can pervert the law so that they can make money out of it anyway.

BTW, has anyone thought of patenting a patent and the process of patenting. Surely that must be covered?

Re:Patent Abuse

[Raw Ostrich]

The next logical step would be to classify infringement of intellectual property right as a crime. After full criminalization of IP theft only criminals would download mp3s, warez games and practise business in violation of someone elses intellectual property.

Of course there would be few transition problems with this approach. Firstly it would, as such, hugely increase the amount of criminals, particularly among the young net-users. That would be unacceptable, so the penalties would have to be harshened to a dragonian level and supervision would have to be tightened to an Orwelian level.

The ideal should be a IP violation free society. How are we going to achieve that? Though penalties and tight supervision, that is the way. Perhaps we should copy the society model of high security prisons. I doubt that large scale IP violation is possible in such circumstances.

This would benefit the business and development, prevent crime and lead us towards the society of the future.

Write your favourite politician today and support this cause!

Ridiculous

[shadowj]

What sort of imbeciles is the patent office hiring these days?

I'll bet that if they had tried really, really hard, they just might have been able to come up with a teensy weensy little bit of prior art.

Re:Ridiculous

[billd]

Not sure, but...

It looks like the Patent Office web site may infringe on PanIP's newly granted patents.

How ironic.

Re:Ridiculous

[frozenray]

> What sort of imbeciles is the patent office hiring these days?

Look at this and laugh, or weep, or both.

The link is from this article by James Gleick (of "Genius" fame) which has been discussed on Slashdot two years ago.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but in many cases the goverment belive it or not is not bound to patents. They have free reign on them.

Re:Ridiculous

[lugonn]

It looks like the Patent Office web site may infringe on PanIP's newly granted patents.

I suppose that would be true if I was a customer of the US Patent site. But they don't sell anything so I'm just a visitor. The patents are about selling things on web pages, not making or viewing web pages.

I think I'm going to patent Ctrl-Alt-Del as "A method of simultaniously entering textual commands into a graphical computer interface."

Re:Ridiculous

[G-funk]

What sort of imbeciles is the patent office hiring these days?

Um, probably the same kind they hire to be slashdot editors, they do as much checking for prior art when approving a patent/article.

Re:Ridiculous

[billd]

measuring with the tape the circumference of each unclothed breast

That guy was just looking for an excuse to grope lots of unclothed breasts. Where's the profit?

...

Wait a second, let me re read that. I wonder if he's looking for a partner?

Re:Ridiculous

[ShavenYak]

I'll bet that if they had tried really, really hard, they just might have been able to come up with a teensy weensy little bit of prior art.

I have prior art sitting on the magazine rack next to the toilet at home - it's a Victoria's Secret catalog. Okay, it's not on the web - but I think its existence would make "using text and graphics to sell on the web" fall into the category of "intuitively obvious".

Re:Ridiculous

[RevAaron]

Can't you buy full-text prints of patents from that site, though? Which would infringe on the patent.

Re:Ridiculous

[Whitehawke]

Actually, I hate to say this (because I think this patent IS insane given where the Web stands today), but this seems like it might be completly legit. If I'm reading the patent correctly, Lockwood filed it back in November of 1994...that was before there really WAS a web, much less e-commerce. At that time, this was actually quite a visionary idea.

Dave Storrs

Re:Ridiculous

[Yottabyte84]

TV commercials aren't prior art? They use graphics and text on a video screen to make a sale.

Re:Ridiculous

[thogard]

I was running a web server that did this sort of thing in Nov or Dec of '93 but it's "customers" were a different goverment department ordering parts to fix C-130 for the USAF. At that time there were few web servers around and only one useful client but the pr0n industry had already started taking credit cards and doing streaming audio.

Re:Ridiculous

[GregWebb]

OK, this is a daft patent. In fact, we're seeing daft patents by the ton.

This may be down to a truly incompetent PTO. However, I saw an interesting idea a while back.

Let's say you're some lowly patent clerk. Let's say you know that there's systemic problems.

What better way of highlighting the problems is there than putting through patents that can be shown invalid in an instant? People jump up and down, notice and after a while we hopefully get a root and branch review of the organisation and all patents granted in recent times.

We're picking up on all sorts of crappy patents but they can be knocked down quickly and they're normally granted to small companies who can't realistically exploit them. If this sort of patent is turning up, though, there are going to be bigger ones outside our field which are just as bad but are granted to people who can make a nuisance.

Press for review, by all means. But I'm pretty sure by now that the patter of terrible patents is too great for simple incompetence alone.

Re:Ridiculous

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Woo hoo! There are pictures too.

Re:Ridiculous

[zanerock]

The patent office itself is not wholly to blame. Examiners make around 30,000, typically, and because of the spate of patents lately are *way* overworked. They are under pressure to get things out the door, are typically not nearly as well educated or have near as much time as people writing patents, and even more rarely have much specialized knowledeg in the fields they are asked to look over. If they did, they'd have another job. It's not the examiners fault, it's the system that hires them.

Re:Ridiculous

[mOdQuArK!]

Actually, think of it more this way:

Let's say you're some lowly patent clerk, underpaid and generally unappreciated.

Your job performance is rated by how many patent applications you grant. There is no negative feedback (other than pride in your job) to discourage you from granting stupid patents.

Your buddies laugh about any ethical concerns and keep telling you, "Don't worry, the court system will fix anything we screw up."

What are the odds that a person in such a situation won't just rubberstamp everything that comes across his/her desk?

Rehash!

[pavera]

Geeze
thats another repost of a story less than a week after its initial posting...
come on guys...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/ 22/015241 &mode=thread&tid=155
thats ridiculous!! 1 day!
come on

Re:Rehash!

[tomgilder]

And it was originally posted in May

Re:Rehash!

[chimpo13]

I'll read through the original two posts that /. posted on this story, and repeat all the high ranking comments. Man oh man, I'll be famous.

I've patented that idea, so don't make me sue anyone.

Re:Rehash!

[kiolbasa]

That was the first time that PanIP filed some lawsuits. They have filed more, 10 defendants at a time, most recently on Oct. 4. This is an ongoing issue, so you can expect to see it posted on Slashdot a few more times.

Re:Rehash!

[MisterFancypants]

Someone should patent a method for posting article repeats to a web-based link aggregation site.

Just imagine all the royalties you could collect!

Of course, Slashdot has a ton of prior art to show in this category (even just in the past two weeks!) but that sort of thing never seems to stop the patent office from granting patents, so its worth a try!!!

Re:Rehash!

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be good is if Slashdot could create a hyperlink mechanism such that comments to a story that relate to a previous story become a thread within another level of threads that could be accessed by all stories from the same topic. This would have the advantages of:

• Comments posted to old threads would get seen by more people.
  
• Early comments to new stories wouldn't get artificially high moderations compared to posts to older stories.
  
• Less duplication of comments
  
• More ongoing discussions. Currently people tend to post a comment and then never read that thread again unless someone directly replies to their comment. Sometimes it takes a few days to ponder over something before coming up with something insightful.
  

Similarly it would make sense to remove the anonymous coward posting option (OK, I'm a hypocrite.. and I can't spell), this would have the advantage of:

• Less stupid posts such as fp, off-topic, Stephen King is dead, goats.ex, etc...
  
• More knowledge of whether a poster is a real world expert or a novice with an opinion.
  
• Less trolls, because you would filter out comments from people who consistently posted useless or stupid messages.
  

Re:Rehash!

[Anonymous Coward]

its alright, my internet was down yesterday.

Re:Rehash!

[Misch]

Perhaps /. editors have become as bad as patent examiners in checking prior art?

But, seriously, I was talking with a friend of mine who worked as a patent examiner last year... he was surprised that I knew quite a bit about how the patent systems worked ('cause I read /.), and then told me about just how understaffed they really are to do the job they're supposed to do.

Re:Rehash!

[chris_mahan]

Excellent.

The patent office just needs to take its time and thoroughly review each patent, taking hower long is necessary. Of course, compaies will complain, and Congress will be pressured to allocate more money (like the SEC) and there will be an investigation/calls for changes.

Re:Rehash!

[ShavenYak]

I'll read through the original two posts that /. posted on this story, and repeat all the high ranking comments. Man oh man, I'll be famous.

I've patented that idea, so don't make me sue anyone.

Hah! I don't fear your patent, there's plenty of prior art!

Re:Rehash!

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem...

It was already done in the repost of the Sharp glass displays. This constitutes prior art....

Re:Rehash!

[WEFUNK]

Why limit it there? You should interpret your patent really broadly (and retroactively) so you can wave it around like PanIP start threatening every karma whore and since slashdot started despite the fact that their very existance is prior art.

Oh, and FYI just in case anyone's bored of googlewhacking and has lots of money to burn, the word "whoring" has never appeared in the history of the USPTO (although "whore" has a number times, mostly as a typo for "where" and never in combination with "karma" - which itself has appeared 57 times, mostly as the name of a plant).

Yes, I actually obsessively looked that up - that's why I'm posting this with a "No Score +1 Bonus" and turning off the computer, although I do reserve IP rights on the method and the term "patentwhacking".

again?

[D4Vr4nt]

Didn't we just cover something like this.. (Patents)

Ugh. Increadible. Time to move operations to Monaco. Better yet, lets hope "the big one" (earthquake) hits and takes 'em out (a little harsh, but heck).

Re:again?

[archeopterix]

Ugh. Increadible. Time to move operations to Monaco. Better yet, lets hope "the big one" (earthquake) hits and takes 'em out (a little harsh, but heck).

Don't count on a little earthquake fixing a system error. Other patent-sue-profit companies would take their place - the more the better! Stupid system must get a lot of bad press before it gets fixed. The worst outcome of this mess would be them 'innovators' losing a lawsuit. Why? Because the general public would get the impression that the system works. It does not. It needs to be fixed. I would really be happy seeing them go after some big guys.

Re:again?

[D4Vr4nt]

I totally agree.. I'm sure we're going to see a bunch of attempts to lock up more and more patents.

I'm just in aw at the things people are trying to patent. I guess that's what America is all about, claim it then charge for it.

As a side note.. If we all shared technological advances how much further would we be today?

Open source economy

[Subcarrier]

So where does the money come from?

Re:Open source economy

[buswolley]

When you die your money goes to the public to be divided. This process is could be open source is the governemnt is open.

ie. We just need to rething the whole basis of economics.

.There are numerous examples, the gift economy for one.(very interesting), fully co-opted corporations, no large inheritances would keep the wealthy from making their kids wealthy.

.Im talking about a true meritocracy, not the bullshit of our capitalism as it stands. We need to move into the new age of economic interaction

Re:Open source economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh,

being a pre-wealthy spoiled brat, i think not getting the money my parents want to give me would suxor. What is wrong with working hard and wanting to give the rewards to the kids?

troll yo' momma

Re:Open source economy

[rbook]

So where does the money come from?

Print it, using open-source tools!

It's a dupe!

[FattMattP]

I already know this because I read slashdot.

Re:It's a dupe!

[quacking duck]

A post about a redundant slashdot article being moderated as redundant... ah, the irony!

someone should patent patent lawsuits

[dunkelfalke]

and sue all those companies which are abusing the current patent law system 'till a new one is ready.

Re:someone should patent patent lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the lawsuits.
Somebody should patent patents.

What a great company website!

[jazzmanjac]

Parent Directory 23-Oct-2002 15:17 -
[DIR] stats/ 23-Oct-2002 03:33 -

Re:What a great company website!

[Shamanin]

Apparently they don't want to infringe on their own patent (you know, these guys would sue anyone).

moderated -1 - redundant

[kraksmoka]

yes, panIP sucks. no, it won't hold in court. yes, ip laws are awful. next . . . .

Re:moderated -1 - redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we've already seen this story on slashdot multiple times now, I think Kraksmoka's post is probably going to be the most relevent.. maybe someone who bothered to create an account can mod it up and we'll all just move on

Re:moderated -1 - redundant

[reallocate]

panIP sucks, it won't hold in court if someone countersues, but my IP is mine until I say otherwise.

Re:moderated -1 - redundant

[Rogerborg]

You're right, but what's your point? It'll never reach court. They'll just extort money from teeny companies with the threat of court action. It's cheaper to pay the extortion money than to hire a lawyer to even begin to prepare to fight it in court! If anyone does actually stand up to them, they'll just drop the suit against them and move on to another victim. There's plenty out there.

And once they've dropped the suit, who is going to spend money to sue them for barratry? It's like spam; if they write threatening letters to a million dot coms, and get even one cheque back, they come out ahead of the game.

This is about the clearest example I've seen in a long while that Uncle Sam needs to step up to the plate and take responsibility for bitchslapping people who make clear abuse of the PTO. If they don't, they're putting a Federal seal of approval on extortion, plain and simple.

9/11/2001

[ajf442]

Look at the date the second patent was granted. Scarey!

Re:9/11/2001

[machine of god]

Well, you were almost right. I'm trying to find the line between flame and troll here. Your post is scarier. Please don't breed. Or maybe I'm just feeling a bit too hostile today. Sorry.

Is it just me

[machine of god]

Or was that "read more..." link dead there for a bit. For a second I though we had slashdotted slashdot. Oh the irony.

my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear PanIP:

You may choose one of the following, for a small fee, which you may pay with your credit card:

LICK MY ANUS: * $14.95
BITE MY NUTS: Oo $29.95
SUCK MY COCK: B==D $99.95

I hope this post (which uses text and graphical representations of items) doesn't infringe on your BULLSHIT PATENT!

Re:my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe when they bite your left nut, they can bring it down to the size of the right one.

That's some serious testicular asymmetry, man!

Re:my order form for PANIP

[dmatos]

Dude, if your nuts really do look like that, you may want to get checked out for scrotal masses. While most are benign, there can be some really nasty ones that lead to infertility or even the necessity of testicleotomies.

Re:my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Please respect international ASCII penis standards and write
(_)(_)===D

Re:my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

hey my nuts looked like that once..
trip to the clinic and a lotta pills laters they're all better now

Re:my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude thanks for the health tip, but I fondle my nuts every night and trust me they are the same size and they have no masses. I just wanted to show that one was hanging lower than the other one, ya know?

w3 really needs to add some HTML tags for ASCII genitalia.

Re:my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, that looks even more painful than the swollen nut in the original

Re:my order form for PANIP

[Anonymous Coward]

that's some serious eastward curvature you've got there, bro.

"Aye baby, grab 'old of me boomerang"

New news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought maybe something was new with this story.. since it's already been posted... doesn't look like it

Let's /. em!

[McFly69]

Mess with the best, die like the rest. - Quote from the Movie Hackers.

Thats right.. let's /. em and show them how it is to mess with us online folk!

Re:Let's /. em!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackers?

Try US Marine Corps Son. Special Forces.

Re:Let's /. em!

[kingOFgEEEks]

i'd have to say the marines would do a better job with 'em anyway.

Re:Let's /. em!

[valmont]

PanIP.com appears to have been slashdotted. they suck. Their host is failing to respond to connection attempts, and when the http request does get thru, it is only to serve a page with a directory listing containing an HTTP-basic-auth-protected "stats" folder.

And yes, let it be known for the record: it is my personal belief that Lawrence Lockwood, the guy behind PanIP, is a dick

Re:Let's /. em!

[stuuf]

I'm sorry, but I have a patent on viewing sites linked from slashdot repeatedly. Only I can slashdot the site. No, I can't It takes more than just one computer to slashdot something.

Re:Let's /. em!

[mutz]

Modern Zen Koan:

What is the sound of a thousand geeks clicking?

Re:Let's /. em!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since I use Opera I guess I'll just open the site in a window in the background and set it to autoreload every 2 seconds (just right-click on the page body to have that option)... GO!

Re:Let's /. em!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would also like to reaffirm my belief that Lawrence Lockwood is a dick

Re:Let's /. em!

[valmont]

I shall second that motion and wholeheartedly agree with you that Lawrence Lockwood is a dick.

Re:Face IT..Utopia

[buswolley]

What is an open-sorce economy? I started asking myself.

Its an economy that is open an available to any who have a good idea. One that is for the many and not the few.

It is an economy that isn't controlled purely by faces we never see.

It is an economy that does'nt hide the powerty is creates by putting it in third world.

We have reached the point where we have the technology, the political and economic theory, and the moral dignity to leave our chains and start the utopia.

First 50 Defendants...

[aftk2]

From the the list of the defendants mentioned:

www.dicksonsupply.com

Apparently there's a space for everything on the web...

Re:First 50 Defendants...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am shocked! I was going to call my company "Dicks On Demand"! They totally copied me!

Re:First 50 Defendants...

[NotAnotherReboot]

Yeah, just look at their fine line of "PureTouch" models.

http://www.buysecure.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/dickson /W ebShop.cgi?config=/var/wwws/htdocs/dickson/cfg&uid =QBOwuQAA1027433451&command=link--Moen7850

Re:First 50 Defendants...

[Anonymous Coward]

www.dicksonsupply.com

I guess that's the sister company of Dicks on Demand, inc.

Re:First 50 Defendants...

[istewart]

Perhaps you mean the following entry?

DICKSON SUPPLY COMPANY a New Jersey corporation
www.dicksonsupply.com

Oops, looks like I just shit on your stupid joke. Oh well.

Re:First 50 Defendants...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because nobody could'a figured it out without your sleuthing around...

wow..

[NotAnotherReboot]

And I thought I could BS a paper..just look at all of the crap in the "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" for both patents.

Even if you don't agree with the patents, you surely have to agree that these people clearly excel at the fine art of creating bullshit.

If only my English teacher could be as easily duped as the U.S. Patent Office.

Re:wow..

[binner1]

If only my English teacher could be as easily duped as the U.S. Patent Office.

Your English teacher likely can be duped just as easily...if they're anything like the ones I had. Just fill your pages with what they want to hear ...not what you actually think . Most english teachers I ever had started docking marks the second an original thought occurred...this may or may not have started me on the path to a life-long distaste for that subject!

-Ben

It's a fraud

[NetDanzr]

One patent has been filed on November 1996, the other on September 2001. As the hyperlink patent controversy showed, all you need to do is to prove that the concept that's been patented preceeds the date the patent has been filled. I became an Amazon.com customer in August 1995 - more that a year before the initial patent has been filled. As such, the patents will be overturned as soon as a single entity challenges them.

Re:It's a fraud

[Zeinfeld]

One patent has been filed on November 1996, the other on September 2001. As the hyperlink patent controversy showed, all you need to do is to prove that the concept that's been patented preceeds the date the patent has been filled. I became an Amazon.com customer in August 1995 - more that a year before the initial patent has been filled. As such, the patents will be overturned as soon as a single entity challenges them.

Unfortunately not, read further this is heavilly submarined:

This is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 08/116,654 filed Sep. 3, 1993, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,309,355 which is a continuation of abandoned application Ser. No. 07/396,283 filed Aug. 21, 1989, which is a continuation-in-part of abandoned application Ser. No. 07/152,973 filed Feb. 8, 1988, which is a continuation-in-part of abandoned application Ser. No. 822,115 filed Jan. 24, 1986, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 613,525 filed May 24, 1984, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,359.

The bastards have been using the Lemelson technique. Under the corrupt rules of the USPTO the inventors are presumed to have invented the stuff thery described in their 1994 filing in 1986.

The US is the only country in the world where you can backdate a patent claim in this way. This is how Lemelson got his corrupt bar code patent, after bar codes were invented he added them to his 1950s paten on 'machine vision'. Fortunately the bastard is deservedly dead and you can't libel the dead in the US so we can describe him in the terms he deserves.

I don't think that the pan-ip claim would stand an actual lawsuit. The prosecution history of patents that have been submarined tends to be full of exclusions and limitations that are not present in the actual patent.

But no, the fact is that the US patent system is far more corrupt than even the average slashdot user would think. Forget the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft, the USPTO is the real enemy.

Re:It's a fraud

[ProfessorPuke]

And not just September 2001, but September 11, 2001.

What kind of person finishes paperwork on September 11, 2001? Must be some kind of traitor!

(So don't worry, the PATRIOT act will take care of the jokers at PANIP)

Re:It's a fraud

[SecGreen]

The "Lemelson technique"? Sounds almost patentable.. Now I've just got to find a company with a previous patent that I can claim this is a modification to... Form a little partnership, get an unscrupulous lawyer, and.. you guessed it: PROFIT!

Re:It's a fraud

[mavenguy]

Damn, you beat me to this point because my dsl connection was down last night (thanks earthlink/genuity, you shitheels).

This sure does sound like a "Lemelson" situation...the long string of "continuations" is often the sign of an aggresive strategy in obtaining claims, but the real tip off are the "continuation-in-parts"; a Straight" continuation is an application that is filed before the abandonment of its "parent" application, and which contains a reference to the parent application; It must have no "new matter" added from the parent application. The legal consequence is that the "continuing" application is acorded the effect of the parent application's filing date, principally meaning a prior art reference that would be a "statutory bar" (35 USC 102(b)) against the child patent might no longer because the parent filing date goes behind the the reference (35 USC 102(e), or within a year of the reference (where the inventor can still potentially "swear behind" the reference (35 USC 102(a))

But, the disclosure of the invention must be the SAME as the parent application; if there is "new matter" in the child application, any claims wich have any reliance on the new matter only get the child application's filing date; a child application in this case is called a "continuation in part", or CIP. A CIP may have different claims that rely on different parts of the disclosure, and the prior at will, therefore, have separate "competance" (i. e., based on the date of the the referencee rather than the substance of its content)relative to each claim.

with the rat's nest of applications shown in the subjecct patents it is a fair guess that the applicant tried to assert all the claims were entitled to the earliest date and haggle the office; analyzing this just adds another complication to the whole stew.

I remember getting a CIP that was transferred to me from another examining group; I found better art and just stood my ground; for some reason, the applacant did not appeal, but just kept filing continuations; as soon as I was aware of a refiling, I quickly issued a "first action final rejection"; applicant refiled. This charade contined for about a half dozen continuations; the issue never changed and was never really argued; a clear abuse of the system, but there was (and I don;t think there is) any legal basis to prevent this kind of abuse.

Re:It's a fraud

[Zeinfeld]

I remember getting a CIP that was transferred to me from another examining group; I found better art and just stood my ground; for some reason, the applacant did not appeal, but just kept filing continuations; as soon as I was aware of a refiling, I quickly issued a "first action final rejection"; applicant refiled. This charade contined for about a half dozen continuations; the issue never changed and was never really argued; a clear abuse of the system, but there was (and I don;t think there is) any legal basis to prevent this kind of abuse.

Well that would be the doctrine of latches. Fortunately the appellate court recently dismissed the Lemelson claim on the grounds that the continuations were being used to maniulate the system.

It looks to me as if the applicant was shopping for a more liant examiner.

Re:It's a fraud

[zanerock]

The USPTO is not to blame so much as the Congress. The PTO is staffied mainly by barely-above-minimum wage workers with less than spectacular education or work histories. Sure, the top admins share some of the blame, but mainly have been forced to address questions that are really questions of law for the legislature. But, since Congress is so afraid of distancing constituents, they typically try to pass as little important legistlation as possible, and only do so when the nation demands it of them. Since any patent law change (or even clarification) would piss someone off, no bill ever gets passed.

Thus, the PTO must make policy. It might be the wrong policy, but since they shouldn't have to make the decision in the first place, and are underfunded and under pressure, you cannot blame them entirely for bad decisions.

Re:It's a fraud

[mavenguy]

Well, as an ex-examiner I can say that, while GS-1224 salaries are not up "dot bomb" levels they are high by Federal standards (Working Primary Examiners are at the GS-14 level).

The claim on examiners "less than spectacular education and work histories", also, is not really true. You can find some dolts, to be sure, but many have reasonably decent credentials, /. flaming nontheless.

The big problem, here, is is keeping people; they have just cant get people. This is with an examining corps now about 3,500; during one period shortly after I started it was down to about 800. Yet, the number of applications has skyrocketed from about 100,000 annual filings to many times that (a friend I still keep in contact with says it's approaching a million). As I have often commented in the past PTO management is process oriented, not substance oriented. "get your production up; don't let amendments sit around; get that action out"; That drumbeat has been going on for for over 30 years, now. This environment has contributed to the large turnover rate, a fact managment refuses to acknowlege.

As for the Office policy vs Congress, don't forget the other branch of Federal Government: the courts. It was the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, succeded by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that basically rammed software and business method patents on a reluctant PTO; that's how the appeals got there in the first place. Once An issure is decided by the court the only way to change it is by Act of Congress, which, as you point out, they have not been paid off......errrrrr......convinced to do. The PTO cannot arbitrarily decide what is patentable subject matter under 35 USC 101; if the court says programs and business methods are patentable, ya gotta examine them on the merits (I don't want to ignite the whole issue of obviousness here; that's been beaten to death here).

Re:It's a fraud

[Groote Ka]

hmmm... Well, you all in the US are lucky your legislators adopted the European policy: patent lasts until 20 years after grant. For all applied after mid 1995.

Good luck with the mess your old system left behind.

Re:It's a fraud

[zanerock]

I feel I should clarify as my original comments were meant in defense of examiners from others on the topic who seemed to lay the blame at their feet.

My comments were meant regarding salaries and education, where meant not in an absolute sense, but to be taken relative to those filing and producing the patents. The point is this, the average examiner makes far less than the average lawyer filing (any important) patent, or the inventor of the patent.

Furthermore, I do not deny that examiners may be well educated, but my comments were not meant as "they are dolts." Again, they were meant as that the education, probably through lack of connections and family wealth rather than lack of merit, is probably, a lot less than the submitter (again, of important patents). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt many examiners went to Harvard, Yale, MIT, or the like.

Again, this is not a judgment on examiners, just a statement of fact.

I agree that the larger problem is the sheer volume of patents and the law has built up around patents. My point in this instance was that many of the plainly ridiculous patents are missed simple because the examiners do not have the expertise, experience, or depth of knowledge to spot the fact that the patent is not about a "uniquie and non-obvious invention," but often an existing, or plainly obvious one.

This is not a knock on examiners, though I agree my original words could have been chosen better, but rather a statement of the facts of the situation. Given the current situation, it would be impossible to expect what is necessary from examiners, which is why, as I said originally, I do not feel they are to blame.

In related news...

[DaytonCIM]

the US patent office announced today that indeed, their collective heads are up their collective arses.

How would the founding fathers feel about this?

[User 956]

This patent nonsense is getting way out of hand. When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States, he did so because he realized that information leaks; once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge. Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. He believed writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not create art. So in the US Constitution, it says:

Congress shall have the power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

How far are we going to let this patent nonsense go? We need to remind people that patent law, like most IP laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.

Re:How would the founding fathers feel about this?

[MisterFancypants]

Jefferson believed that if there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. He believed writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not create art. So in the US Constitution, it says:

I agree with the gist of your post, but Jefferson didn't believe any of those things (writers would not write, etc). He was, in fact, against patent & copyright as general ideas. His writings on these issues in the Constitution represent the ideas of others involved in the process whom Jefferson grudgingly compromised with.

Re:How would the founding fathers feel about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

> His writings on these issues in the Constitution represent the ideas of others involved in the process whom Jefferson grudgingly compromised with.

let me gess: william disney Sr. - a democrat?
and he was an unknown author in charge of the group R^HWIAA?

Re:How would the founding fathers feel about this?

[Frightened_Turtle]

I could not have stated this any better than you did. The idea of patents by Jefferson was to ensure that the creators of innovation would be able to profit from their ideas, to encourage them to disclose their ideas.

It was not created as a way to bully innovative people into coughing up money for their hard work by lazy, parasites manipulating the legal system.

I wonder if there are any tech lawyers out there willing to represent some sort of counter suit against companies that try to do these activities. Or perhaps there is some politically minded geek out there who would be interested in running for office so as to get the Patent Office changed.

Anyone out there got a couple of million dollars to help me get elected to Congress?

Wow.

[Dannon]

I had no idea anyone had patented this.

I better get in line to buy a license to this patent of theirs if I'm going to start my own web businesses. I'll just add this to the 'One-Click' and 'hyperlink' license expenses.

I'm having trouble finding an order form on their web site, though. Seems to be down or something. I better keep reloading until I get it. Any of you other /.ers getting anything?

Re:Wow.

[Deiru]

Gee whiz...not getting a damn thing. I wonder what could be the cause?

Re:Wow.

[dracken]

1. Patent "A process to acquire brain damaged patents based on prior art and sue small web businesses for patent infringement"

2. Sue PanIP for a gazillion bucks for infringing on my patent

3. Profit.

A question for the legal experts...

[Ethelred Unraed]

In Germany, and I believe in other EU countries, there is a law against mass lawsuits clearly designed to get money -- this is called an "Abmahnwelle" in Germany (literally means "wave of suits"). If some lawyer or company tried something like this, they'd get reprimanded and possibly even disbarred in Germany.

An example: about a year ago, a couple of clients of mine got notice of a lawsuit from some newly founded organization claiming to protect consumers; the clients' websites were supposedly in violation of an obscure and archaic bit of German law (basically they failed to note specifically on the site that information sent via an e-mail form is stored -- well, duh). Because of the "potential damage to consumers" due to "infringements on their privacy" (i.e. the theoretical number of consumers who could use the site was astronomical), the suit was valued by their lawyers at a high amount, thus theoretically forcing the clients to pay a minimum amount of damages to the organization if they chose to settle.

Word got around quickly that just about anyone with an e-commerce site got just such a letter, complaints were filed against said lawyer, and the lawyer got seriously shat on (and the suits were withdrawn) and the organization was dissolved.

Anything like this in the US?

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[jazman_777]

Anything like this in the US?

The opposite. The lawyers fill the halls of Congress, and generally abuse the citizenry in various and sundry crafty ways.

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[BlueUnderwear]

In Germany, and I believe in other EU countries, there is a law against mass lawsuits clearly designed to get money -- this is called an "Abmahnwelle" in Germany (literally means "wave of suits"). If some lawyer or company tried something like this, they'd get reprimanded and possibly even disbarred in Germany.

But then, how does Gravenreuth away with doing exactly that?

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[angeles13]

yes. it's called filing frivolous lawsuits. the lawyers involved can be fined and disbarred. it's just proving that the lawsuits are not legit.

also, just because they are filing the lawsuit, doesn't mean it will actually go to court. judges have been known to through cases out without merit.

and i am aware of several lawyers that have been fined and disbarred for doing this

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[ender81b]

IANAL blah blah blah but there is barraty, which is a *Criminal* offense:

BARRATRY - The practice of instituting groundless judicial proceedings - a crime in a number of jurisdictions.

In old law French barat, baraterie, signifying robbery, deceit, fraud. In modern usage it may be defined as the habitual moving, exciting and maintaining suits and quarrels, either at law or otherwise.

A man cannot be indicted as a common barrator in respect of any number of false and groundless actions brought in his own right, nor for a single act in right of another; for that would not make him a common barrator.

n. creating legal business by stirring up disputes and quarrels, generally for the benefit of the lawyer who sees fees in the matter. Barratry is illegal in all states and subject to criminal punishment and/or discipline by the state bar, but there must be a showing that the resulting lawsuit was totally groundless. There is a lot of border-line barratry in which attorneys, in the name of being tough or protecting the client, fail to seek avenues for settlement of disputes or will not tell the client he/she has no legitimate claim.

The problem, as usual is that barraty is nearly as hard to prove as libel/slander making it a very, very rare thing to see much like Libel/Slander cases.

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[Fnkmaster]

Yes, unfortunately, at the surface of it, this is a lawsuit based on a patent that WAS ISSUED by the USPTO. I am not sure if a lawsuit can be deemed frivolous just because the patent it is based on was frivolous. There seems to be very weak tie-in on this sort of issue in our judicial system. IANAL of course. It would be nice if SOMEBODY could be punished for applying for or issuing such FUCKING ABSURD patents, but right now, nobody gets held accountable, and nothing stops these people until they lose in court (the only way to actually prove that a patent is absurd due to prior art, or triviality of claims, etc.).

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[inode_buddha]

This sounds similar to the "class action" suits, except the PanIP case involves multiple defendants, it seems. Conversely, the typical USA class action suit involves multiple plaintiffs (with a single representation) and a single defendant.

I am not a lawyer; I'm just trying to draw valid general conclusions from observation.

Re:A question for the legal experts...

[Rogerborg]

Barratry?

No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[Louis_Wu]

I wish that we (OK, I'll settle for just me :) could moderate stories. I'd mod this as +1, Funny, and +1E6, Scary. I laughed out loud (at work) when I read this, but if this idiot actually has some success suing companies, we're in a deeper world of hurt than that we currently are in. . . . [incoherant rage] . . .

Just let me mod stories, that'd be fun.

Re:Face IT..Utopia

[happylight]

You mean socialism? Economy for the many... Certainly sounds like it. Too bad it's a dream.

Article invalid for lack of novelty

[PMuse]

NOTICE OF REJECTION OF CLAIMS
Your article San Diego Company Owns E-Commerce is hereby rejected as anticipated by the prior art article Patent Cases Hurting Small Businesses.

Seriously, are patent examiners now moonlighting as Slashdot editors?

Re:Article invalid for lack of novelty

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit. this is SUCH OLD NEWS!!!!
Just because the submitter took all the time to put in all those links.
Did anyone mention
'www.youcouldbenext.com'?

USPTO in violation

[thesurfaces.net]

The patent office site linked to above is titled "USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database", and has a shopping cart... are they next in line? I'll bet not...

PanIP is...

[NotesSauceBoss]

Lawrence Lockwood
5935 Folsom Drive.
La Jolla, CA 92073
619/454-4475

According to this brief.

He lost a prior suit for the same patent against American Airlines in 1994, charging that the SABRE online reservation system (and the Travelocity offshoot) infringed on his patent, according to this article.

I'm still hunting for other information.

Re:PanIP is...

[Pike65]

Awesome! Let's send him some poo!

[Note to self - In the future don't post drunk]

Re:PanIP is...

[Zeinfeld]

He lost a prior suit for the same patent against American Airlines in 1994, charging that the SABRE online reservation system (and the Travelocity offshoot) infringed on his patent, according to this article

SABRE! That thing is so old that the patents would have expired before UNIX came along. SABRE was the very first airline reservation system and the first large scale computerized anything.

Re:PanIP is...

[kst]

The phone number is incorrect.

I might be able to guess what the correct number is, but I won't; I don't want some innocent third party getting tons of phone calls over this.

Lawrence Lockwood's name is on the patent, but it was filed in 1994, and PanIP wasn't formed until 2002. Are we sure that Lockwood is affiliated with the company? Is it possible he just sold them the patent?

Bigger companies

[TheRealFixer]

If some of the larger companies, such as Amazon and eBay, were smart, and thinking ahead, they'd help fund some of these smaller companies defense funds, and back them up in court. Cut these idiots in San Diego off before they can build their "war chest".

Re:Bigger companies

[Anonymous Coward]

If some of the larger companies, such as Amazon and eBay, were smart, and thinking ahead, they'd help fund some of these smaller companies defense funds, and back them up in court. Cut these idiots in San Diego off before they can build their "war chest".

Because the cost to license his "technology" is pennies for someone like Amazon, not to mention a real benefit to their customers... Look at it this way:

Amazon sells just about anything they can get ahold of: Books, Kitchenware, Electronics, Video Games, Music... Crap, i've even seen riding lawn mowers on Amazon. In essence, they compete with *everyone* selling something on the web, right?

PanIP, last i heard, was asking for a small settlement amount, like $5000 or the like. Definatly a 'spoiler' for small mom-n-pop shops, but this is chump-change for the likes of Amazon. Even if the licensing grew, it would still be more cost beneficial to pay it than fight it, even discounting all the additional revinue created from competitors being eliminated.

Even with an impressive "War Chest" built up, PanIP's capital and legal fund will NEVER match that of Amazon's. Never. Sure, they might have to pay him royalties, but Amazon can *easily* put him out of commision before paying PanIP a red-cent.

Ready for my theory?? I propose that Amazon (or likeminded company) is actually funding or somehow paying this guy to do this. Why not just hold the patent yourself like Amazon does with "One-Click"? because how would it look if you extinguish your competitors thru shoddy Patent and IP claims? If someone doesn't wanna pay for "One-Click", fine; don't use it... Now a general "e-commerce" patent is a different story, and Amazon doesn't wanna look like a bully, right?

Anyway, thats my theory why the big-wigs don't hop into the arena now, or possibly ever.

-ab2650

Re:Bigger companies

[rsborg]

Conspiracy theory? Perhaps.

Parent is +1 Insightful.

Follow the money. Who is the most likely to gain by supporting these PanIP dumbasses?

Re:Bigger companies

[the gnat]

This is what I suspect will happen- but not the companies, just people like Bezos or the eBay founders. The latter already know that one crank with the right patent might be able to stir up a huge amount of trouble. They'd be well advised to pour a huge amount of money into these cases just to make an example of PanIP. With the type of money the dotcom moguls have, they could have PanIP's lawyers begging in the street in a short time. This is how big companies work all the time- I think Slashdot linked to an article in Forbes about how IBM used to extort license fees through sheer force of lawyers. Only now the big companies aren't really the agressors.

It'd send a pretty neat message- "fuck with us and you're through." It's sort of disturbing though, since the patent system is supposed to help the little guys especially. Too bad the little guy is a sleazebag in this case.

Why isn't amazon et al. getting on this.

[jericho4.0]

In the last story on these guy (last week), it mentioned that amazon 'had no comment' on the ongoing lawsuits.

If I was in charge of an e-biz, and had a bit of cash in the kitty, you can be sure that it'd be going to the panip defendants war chest. This threatens every company in the world. Panip has decided that they are going to patent every piece of obvious technology left on the floor, and try to leverage themselves towards a big payday.

You'ld think there'd be a law or something.....

Re:Why isn't amazon et al. getting on this.

[Aqua OS X]

I agree, I think thebig boys should spend a few bucks to screw these guys now while they're small

Re:Why isn't amazon et al. getting on this.

[Proc6]

"If I was in charge of an e-biz, and had a bit of cash in the kitty..."

lol... yea, an e-business making money! Hahahah!

Re:Why isn't amazon et al. getting on this.

[Trane Francks]

> amazon 'had no comment' on the ongoing lawsuits.

Uhm....you *really* expect a company that holds the bogus One-Click patent to comment on a bogus patent? Erm, I think not, jer.

There should be laws against this type of obvious

[mao che minh]

It is ridiculous that law can be bent and twisted in in such a way as to allow such vile ventures. I could have sworn that there were specific stipulations concerning patents that prohibited such treacherous tactics. It is obvious, should the information concerning the granting of the patent is correct, that this is the under-handed work of slime balls that did not actually create any specific technology themselves but rather found a loop hole in the system that grants them control over broad and sweeping technologies (the internet in general, web browsing technologies and all of the things that go along with it, the various technologies that allow such transactions to occur from server to client - such as web servers and things like PHP and mySQL - hell, I could go on all day).

I don't see how this can be allowed to happen. I am dumbfounded.

Incorrect

[drhairston]

The article summary is incorrect in stating the vague nature of these patents. They are, in order:

Each multimedia terminal comprises a video screen and a video memory which holds co-related image-and-sound-generating information arranged to simulate the aspect and speech of an application loan officer on the video screen. The simulated loan officer is used to acquire personal loan data from the applicant by guiding him through an interactive sequence of inquiries and answers.

and...

Each multimedia terminal comprises a video screen and a video memory which holds co-related image-and-sound-generating information arranged to simulate the aspect and speech of an application loan officer on the video screen. The simulated loan officer is used to acquire personal loan data from the applicant by guiding him through an interactive sequence of inquiries and answers.

The patents are specific to loan applications. What a load of willy-nilly hand-wringing and poppycock!

An answer from a layman.

[Apuleius]

No. The American Trial Lawyer's Association has Congress giving it sexual favors. Laws against vexatious litigation are weak and unlikely to be strengthened any time soon.

Prior Art

[MAXOMENOS]

I know for a fact that there was a bookstore in New Orleans that sold books via email .. I was impressed in particular because they had free shipping and would order anything you want. Alas, I don't remember the name of the store. This was back in May 1994; I was there helping by brother pack his things (he had just completed his first and only year at Loyola of New Orleans).

Anyone else?

Re:Prior Art

[blincoln]

CD Connection has been around since 1990. I used to order imports and other discs from their server over telnet. I'm not sure when they first fired up their actual webserver, though.

Wouldn't it be ironic...

[wazzzup]

...if somehow Panip's servers were attacked using a type of machine that's connected to a telephone line and utilizing a video display?

To be more specific...

[popo]

Not this makes the granting of this patent any easier to swallow, but...

It should be noted that the patent which was granted seems to apply specifically to sales-content which is tailored towards specific users.

"individualized sales presentations created from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles" -- USPTO #5,576,951


Since most small e-commerce sites using GPL'd commerce software like Agora.cgi don't even support customer login, they'd be less affected by this than the big boys like Amazon and Ebay. (Not that this will ever hold up anyway).

Re:To be more specific...

[leono]

The point is that PanIP is targeting small companies who don't have the financial resources to defend themselves from a lawsuit in another state. PanIP then settles with the small company for $5,000 or so. It's total extortion, and everyone at PanIP should be locked up.

Sue the patent office?

[LordNimon]

Is it possible to sue the patent office for approving such an obvious patent? After all, the defendents against this patent need to spend time and money in court because the PO royally screwed up. Someone needs to take this issue to court, get the patent thrown out, and then use that as a basis for a lawsuit against the PO. That would be a major wake-up call.

Re:Sue the patent office?

[u19925]

In US, you can't sue any government office for making any law, enforcing any law or passing judgement unless you can identify individual or agency acted in bad faith deliberately. Thus you have to prove that USPTO employees or officer had some personal interest which resulted into acceptance of this patent (or something else which indicates possibility of crime).

Re:Sue the patent office?

[FirstOne]

But, you can to get their actions declared unconstitutional.
I see little in the current implementation that could possibly resemble a patent office.
The USPTO should be renamed to "Office of declaring old is new for a small fee".

Re:Sue the patent office?

[thogard]

So you put the head of the patents office's name on it and drop it by the local federal court. Ist just like the case of whoever vs Reno getting changed to whoever vs Asscroft.

Re:Sue the patent office?

[Goldsmith]

A number of people have pointed out that the government is immune to most lawsuits. You're on the right track though, in that you CAN sue governmental agencies who are not carrying out thier duties. The idea is that you can force them to enforce the laws that Congress has passed. At this point, I think it's pretty clear they're acting in a negligent manner letting stuff like this go through.

Re:Sue the patent office?

[fishbowl]

No. The government has specific immunities from the sort of lawsuit you suggest. The recourse you, as a citizen, have is: The right to petition for redress of grievances, and the right to vote. If all the people who complained, would vote (at ALL levels), we'd see some serious changes. Unfortunately, people have been propagandized into believing that voting won't make a difference, so instead our process runs on apathy. The status quo DEPENDS on voter apathy!

deja-vu?

[Dr.Stress]

Hmmmm, now where might I have seen this before?

Oh, right.... here

The editors must be napping again.....

I hope somebody has prior art :p

[CharonX]

ROFL
What do they do on those patent offices - throw dice?
Jack: Hey... Paul... theres some guy that wants to patent "using graphics and text to sell things on the web"
Paul: Geee... the web... sounds intresting...
Jack: I think its your turn.
Paul: *rolls dice* Four - sounds good?
Jack: Yup, you only had to roll a 2 or more.
*Grants Patent*

Geee - its almost as if youd patent air - or maybe smog? Hmmm... where was that patent office again?

From the patent....

[cyberon22]

Organizational hierarchies of data sources are arranged so that an infinite number of sales presentation configurations can be created.

If they sued me, I'd ask them to prove that an "infinite number" of customer profiles can really be created. Realistically, I think that would probably deserve a patent.... ;)

Innovation Dead?

[Shadow Wrought]

Could this really be a harbinger of something larger?

Already our movie screens are chock full of ideas that were created a generation or more ago, TV is full of shows following formulas that were moderatly successful the season before, and all we can think to patent is stuff that already exists.

My $0.02

It seems to me that this is yet another symptom of our country reaching towards equilibrium with the lowest (and I do mean low) common denominator.

System needs remodeling?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks.

My understanding of the system they make it fairly easy to grant patents. Since all inventions filter into the patent office, it would be hard for them to get anybody who could make informed choices on everything. The technology is just too varied. How many folks here can speak on Nuclear facilities, chemical enginerring processes, and medical tools and be able to say which is good and which is bad? Besides, by definition, patents tend to have a lot of new stuff, that there are no experts in yet. How can you make a judgement if somethings a real invention, or just snake oil? You can't.

A granted patent isn't a guarantee. It is something that can be fought and contested. Here is where the system determines value. The good guy is supposed to win these. The problem is that the fight has costs. Even if you know you should win, you have to hire attorneys. You have to take depositions, find prior art, all that fun stuff. So a lot of folks with little cash take the only choice they can see, capitulate.

The problem is that we can't legislate ethics. there's no real law against somebody being a patent shark. Sure the guys a jerk for doing it, and the lawyer's a jerk for taking a case with no merits, but we'll always have slimeballs. You'll have low end companies filing nuisance suits, and big companies with more $200 an hour lawyers than you have total employees doing it.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a patent attorney. I am curious as to whether this is current practice.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[nege]

so perhaps the problem also lies in the legal system defending the patents? Should it reasonably cost you so much to simply enforce part of the "system" if you are indeed correct? Was this our founding fathers vision? Perhaps so, or perhaps not there are a lot of things in this country that work this way, so I simply pose it as food for thought.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[Sajarak]

For a start you could prevent people taking out patents on things like business practices and software algorithms. Allowing patents on these sorts of things does little to promote innovation (most of the world outside the USA does quite nicely without software patents) and works vastly in the favour of big companies who can use their warchests of patents to hold small companies' ideas to ransom.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[CaptainCarrot]

So you don't have one person reviewing all patent applications. Even a non-specialist ought to be able to determine the discipline best suited; so this person directs the patent applications to the appropriate staff specialists who are qualified and able to make the determination. Yes, this is possible. Even if an idea is totally new, the theoretical underpinnings ought to be clear enough that a specialist in the field can understand and evaluate them. The patent that establishes an entirely new field of knowledge that no one other than the inventor has any expertise in has never been filed, and never will.

And yes, you can too legislate ethics. We do it all the time. That we have not yet done so in such a manner as to effectively prevent these frivolous lawsuits is a symptom of the broken US tort law.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[msundman]

Couldn't the system be changed so that the party that loses a case in court has to pay the legal expenses of the other party, too? That would keep people from suing if there's a high chance they might lose, and also encourage people to defend their rights without needing a shitload of money.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[mackertm]

How many folks here can speak on Nuclear facilities, chemical enginerring processes, and medical tools and be able to say which is good and which is bad?

Have you ever read Slashdot? The people here know everything. Everything. Duh. ;)

Re:System needs remodeling?

[sipy]

Everyone seems to enjoy slinging mud at the PTO for its loosey-goosey granting of patents. But like you suggest, no one knows everything, and the PTO office has people at the wheel (asleep or otherwise).

Perhaps we could subject patent applications to peer-review in much the same way as the scientific community deals with research results prior to their publication (the recent scandals in said review process notwithstanding). As a safeguard, we would make the reviewers sign an NDA to prevent them from taking the ideas and running with them.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[Herkum01]

We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks.

That is true, it cannot and will not be fixed by smarter patent clerks because I own a patent out on them and refuse to license it.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[absurdhero]

That would be no improvement. Imagine trying to sue a big company for causing your company a loss in profits. Now imagine that there is a good chance of losing because they can afford better lawyers. Now, imagine having to pay for their million dollar lawyers after you just lost the case. I don't think this is the solution because it could also be used against the little guy.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks."

So the 1st clerk says he can't go to play hockey on the roof because he has a bunch of patent applications to process, so the 2nd clerk tells him to just approve them all, no-one will ever know.

Whole bunch of K.Smith jokes just waiting to happen here. "Just don't approve any more patents on the way to the parking lot!"

graspee

Re:System needs remodeling?

[BoneFlower]

The defendants would likely still need some amount of upfront legal costs, unless a) Their credit rating is unbelievably good or b) Its decent, AND the case is almost impossible to lose. Small companies wouldn't always have great credit ratings, they don't have much revenue or profits, and especially for newer internet companies they are likely have several loans out and items purchased on credit cards they are paying off.

Still, this would help, it may not enable everyone to mount an effective defense, but it would allow more people to.

Re:System needs remodeling?

[senobium]

The technology is just too varied. How many folks here can speak on Nuclear facilities, chemical enginerring processes, and medical tools and be able to say which is good and which is bad?

You must be new here...

Re:System needs remodeling?

[Nyh]

If there is a possibility of getting damages out of bad patents lawyers would be swarming around possible victims. All on no-cure no-pay basis. Just like there are in case you hurt your left toe when you slip in a super market.

Hans

Re:System needs remodeling?

[thomas.galvin]

A better solution would be to make the looser pay legal fees up to that which they themselves paid.

I'd like to see the Venture Capital pitch....

[Dr. Bent]

...for these companies.

VC: "So what's your great new idea?"

Future CEO: "Oh, we don't need a great new idea...we just patented an great old idea."

VC: "And how are you going to make money off an old idea?"

Future CEO: "Simple...we just sue everybody. No engineers, no tech support, no salespeople, no advertising, just lawsuits"

VC: "Brilliant! We'll make millions! [to secretary] Lisa, Get my army of lawyers in here...and call my congressman, I need to pass a few new laws."

Re:I'd like to see the Venture Capital pitch....

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that how PanIP came about?

Re:I'd like to see the Venture Capital pitch....

[GigsVT]

How did you get into the Rambus boardroom, and more importantly, how did you make it out with that transcript?!?

Court doesn't matter

[siskbc]

Look, this doesn't have to hold up in court. What he is doing is extorting - many companies have already settled. These are small companies that have limited resources, and that's who they pick on. Finally, a group of defendants is pooling resources, and yes, he will lose. But not before recouping his costs of the patent, and a whole lot more.

Of course, all of this was in the original article...is there any way ./ can IP restrict the comment page to those who actually READ the article?

Less Trolls more meat.

[mumblestheclown]

Would it be too much to ask the slashdot editor who posted this for a little insight?

Instead of essentially trolling slashdot by having the headlines seductively imply some quandry, why not just tell it like it is:

Some company using dubious patent claim to blackmail small companies into legal settlements.

There. The real roots of the problem (ease of getting bullshit patents, small companies' hobson's choice of settle or fight, etc) are identified without giving the company's claims the dinity of being directly named.

Re:Less Trolls more meat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I almost said the same thing for the previous article.

Could CD-RW Replace VCR's? Oooooohhhhhhh...........

Meanwhile, all the guy was asking is how many rewrites we expect out of a cd-rw. *cough*

Re:Face IT..Utopia...not socialism.

[buswolley]

Socialism, communism, capitalism. These are all dogmas that have no meaning to what I am saying.

In ways I suppose it is a hybrid of socialism and capitalism. But instead of a government running the economy as in communisms of the past, the people themselves will run the economy. In ways, capitalism tried this, but capitalism gave the power to run the economy to the elite, the those who possess the masses of capital(the suppossed risk takers) give it to their children. This creates a society of classes. Rich having righ children. Poor having poor children.

A Government ran economy also cuts down on innovation. You have to have the drive of personal gain. But you have to construct an economic system where this goal also achieves other goals, such as quality of life, free time, health care progress, etc.

A system that would spread out wealth more so than capitalism but not enough so that there is no drive to innovate, is needed.

Them & the RIAA??

[dogfart]

So they "purchased" Intellectual Property fair-and-square, and are now aggressively going after anyone who is "stealing" their property?

So tell me what makes them different from the RIAA? If they are successful, will they get Congress to pass laws extending the life of patents indefinitely? Will famous celebrities (Britney, etc.) do public service announcements telling people not to violate these patents by patronizing the evil scofflaws that run e-commerce sites? Will we see ISPs forced to provide customer information, as they track down violators? Will sites providing free open source ecommerce software be taken down?

PanIP, meet Hillary Rosen

hmm.. good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

i've just applied for a patent concerning a way to report news of interest to people interested in computers, science, and technology in general. next, i apply for a method for knocking web servers off the internet by redirecting users to other sites.
in a few months, i'll be rich!

Flimsy

[DaytonCIM]

This invention is directed to data processing systems designed to facilitate commercial, financial and educational transactions between multimedia terminals such as automated sales workstations, information dispensing networks and self-service banking systems. Specifically this invention is directed to a tool for augmentation of sales and marketing capabilities of travel agency personnel in conjunction with computerized airline reservation systems. This invention also relates to financial service application processing, and interactive delivery of informative, educational and recreational audio-visual programs to the home, school or office.

Interesting... the main focus of the primary patent is the Airline Reservation industry. The later patent adds the "Finacial Industry."

It should be interesting to see how this partnership group stands against a company like Oracle. Because, by this partnership's defined attack, Oracle is a prime target. And I know the Oracle folks have a ton of patents protecting their technology, which basically is the backbone of e-commerce.

In addition, Micorsoft's FrontPage is in direct violation of this patent. And we all know that Microsoft has its own wing at the patent office.

Should make for some serious attorney's fees for some lucky companies.

I do hope someone takes these clowns to court and challenges the incredibly flimsy patent upon which they rely.

And if they don't challenge an Oracle or Microsoft, maybe Oracle or Micorsoft should challenge them...

Re:Flimsy

[SecGreen]

Any Microsoft or Oracle lawyers lurking on /.? Call your supervisor, and the Marketing dept. This is an excellent opportunity for an entertaining legal smackdown, and you get the added benefit of earning the admiration of geeks everywhere! Great PR and you eliminate the possibility of these leeches building up enough legal precedents to annoy you and your customers in the future.

Re:Flimsy

[nich37ways]

Although they would probably win a challenge against this kind of flimsy patent.

They have to worry about losing to it as they gain no real benefit from slapping it down at the moment, as it would be non-trivial to have the war chest made irrelevant in a court case.

(These kinds of challenges are decided by judges I believe)

No judge is stupid enough to believe that because a bunch of small companies setlled that the patent is neccesarilly valid

Comment from Pan IP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this anonymously because I've seen what passes for "debate" on this web site.

As a senior executive at Pan IP, I have a different view on this from most of you. In my view, patents provide a valuable service in our society, protecting people who create value from those who would steal it.

Patents are also assets, just like any other. Just because my organization buys patents from others, rather than creating them ourselves, doesn't mean that we are due any less protection under the law than someone who buys a car rather than manufacturing it themselves.

Please think deeply on these points, and on the importance to this country and to the world of a free society that protects innovation, before you assume that we represent the forces of evil and that the patent system is somehow "broken".

Thank you.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The "a senior executive at Pan IP" bit is almost surely bullshit, but the post is worth answering, because it represents some common misconceptions about both what IP law is for and about the "average /.'ers" feelings on the matter.

A tiny minority of people, on /. or anywhere else, feel that IP laws (patent, copyright, trademark) are fundamentally wrong and broken and should be done away with. I'm not one of them. The Constitution spells out the purpose of IP law very nicely; "to promote ... progress" and "limited time" are the key phrases. Good grants of IP protection serve this purpose, by rewarding the genuinely innovative thinkers who keep our world moving forward. Bad grants of IP protection, such as those used by PanIP, do precisely the reverse.

Not everything should be patented, copyrighted, or trademarked. There are some ideas (e.g. "buying and selling things over the Web") that are a) not the invention of any one person or group of people, b) immediately obvious to anyone with a brain, and c) so widespread that any attempt to enforce IP law on them would have crippling economic effects. Generally speaking, I think falling into any two of those three categories ought to be enough to remove something from IP protection. I'm particularly concerned about (c) because it seems to be something that a lot of IP vultures Just Don't Get: when a bunch of people are doing something and nobody's bothered to file an IP grant application on it, just because you did file the application does not give you the right to deprive a whole bunch of other people of their livelihood.

And, oh yeah, on the off chance that you actually are "a senior executive at Pan IP": you and others like you are scum who contribute nothing to the world in which you live. You create no value of any kind, and would be of more service to humanity shoveling shit.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[rknop]

You create no value of any kind, and would be of more service to humanity shoveling shit.

Or, to quote a certain Klingon, being shoveled AS shit.

Folks like these PanIP folks should be locked away for the rest of eternity. They are a clear and present threat to the USA. Of course, so is the patent office, which should just be closed down. I'm sure they do some good, but at this point it's overwhelmed by the harm they do. I mean, heck, the DC sniper probably helped an old lady across the street once in his life, but it hardly makes him a boon to society.

-Rob

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[TheRealFixer]

If you really are an "executive" of Pan IP...

Patents can provide a valuable service. I work for a non-profit research company who takes out patents on medical treatments to insure they are available for everyone to benefit from. To specifically prevent some hoser like you from keeping people from benefiting from innovations just to pad your pocketbook.

How the heck are your patents "protecting people who create value from those who would steal it"? You freely admit you didn't even do any of the inventing! You just pick up patents from others, and exploit them for your own profit!

How is this "protecting" anything? The only thing it's protecting is your greedy, greasy little hands.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Daniel Dvorkin]

We need a patent office, or something like it. We also need a copyright and trademark office, or something like it. It may be that the current setup is broken and needs to be done away with, but it's not fundamentally evil. Actually, I think blaming it on the bureaucrats who have to deal with increasingly absurd and self-contradictory laws while their funding is being slashed to pay for blowing the shit out of illiterate peasants on the other side of the world isn't quite fair ... The best solution would be a complete, ground-up rewrite of IP law based on the Constitutional principles authorizing it, and the money to enforce the law properly. Given the influence of the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, TLA, etc. on "the Senator from Disney" and other key political players, don't hold your breath.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[rotwhylr]

Is this comment for real?

Assuming that you are who you say you are, and not some troll looking for a fight, allow me to respond ...

I am posting this response because I (and most others here) believe that what passes for "debate" in this forum is an important part of being a citizen of the world's online community. Regardless of your implication, the majority of posts here are civil and reasonable conversation. Those which are not are pushed to the margins.

I agree with exactly one thing you have said:

"... patents provide a valuable service in our society, protecting people who create value from those who would steal it."

True. Patents protect innovators from thieves. Mayny people who post here work for technology companies, and their livelyhoods depend on their employer being fairly compensated for the licensing of IP that legitimately belongs to their company.

If you care to read other IP conversations on /. , you will see resentment over IP laws. This stems from abusive/overzealous IP protection, curbing consumers' legitimate right to Fair Use. Fair Use is a valid part of IP doctrine. It is NOT "stealing"

The rest of what you posted looks like rubbish. (I'm sorry, but you car metaphor doesn't really apply here.)

PanIP may have other legitimate intellectual property holdings, but in this case it is plain that this is not one of them. You are not protecting any innovation that can be called yours. You are a leech.

Regards,
- rotwhylr

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[MartianKillerBarbies]

How noble of you. If you are so confident that you are on the side of the angels, then why don't you really take a stand and sue eBay or Yahoo or MSN? The answer is because you're NOT so certain that your company would come out on top in a court battle, and you know these small companies can't afford to fight you, and will pay your "fee" because it's cheaper than hiring a lawyer. THAT is what is so despicable about your company's actions, and you for not only participating in them, but actively defending them.

Yes, I know we shouldn't feed the trolls, but sometimes you just gotta.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[gtshafted]

Your company is nothing but a congregation of sleazy legal vultures that want to get something for nothing... leaching off of individuals and companies that have contributed to our economy

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[davidb54]

In my view, patents provide a valuable service in our society, protecting people who create value from those who would steal it.

No, in your view, patents provide a way to make money. If you were really interested in protecting those who create value, you'd be focusing your efforts elsewhere. No value was created by the filing of the patents that you are now trying to "enforce". The real value was created by the architects of HTTP, SSL and HTML, as well as the multitudes of programmers and web designers who actually put in the work to make the World Wide Web what it is today. What did your client contribute to this edifice? Nothing, and you know it - if not now, then soon, when you're sued into oblivion. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Perhaps you should take up something easier, like selling Amway products?

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents were created to promote the exchange of ideas (allowing anyone to build upon others' research). Congress also grants a temporary monopoly to the inventor as compensation for the cost of research & development.

Follow me here:

If PanIP was not the inventor of what was patented, the company's research costs were $0. There is no need to compensate the company for anything.

In reality, PanIP is trying to trick small companies that are far from Southern Calif. and are less likely to be able to afford decent representation in court. The company is using the patents solely as a way to extort money from others. It is abusing the whole purpose of what patents were set up for.

The court should throw out all these cases and save space for more-deserving court battles to take place. Better yet, someone should charge PanIP with extortion and see how it defends the allegation.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking bastard. Where would we be if Bell had patented the telephone then sued everyone who tried to create something similar out of existene all the while NEVER doing anything with the patent himself?

Fucking leeches like you deserve to die. I hope you burn in hell because you truly are wallowing in the pit of greed.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[EricWright]

Much as I hate to say it, you're wrong. There is no such thing as "Fair Use" of a patent. You're thinking of copyrights. Patents are completely exclusive, the patent holder may dictate EVERYTHING about their patent. If they want to give away rights to the patent to everyone, that's their prerogative. If they want to make you pay $1M for rights, that also their prerogative.

Patents are so exclusive that, if two people independently come up with the same idea, only the person who gets the patent granted to them gets rights to it. The other person has no rights to it whatsoever.

It sucks, but that's the way it goes...

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[rotwhylr]

You're absolutely right ... sorry for the confusion, and thanks for straightening it out.

I was trying to make the point that /. discussions generally do not advocate "stealing" IP, as he/she seems to imply, but I fscked it up.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[BoneFlower]

Moderators, you screwed up on this one. This post should be "5-Funny"

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh heh. Feed me some more. Slashdot should come with a troll meter so I could see that my puny post resulted in 53K of indignant responses from goofs like you. One day I'll forget to post anonymously while doing this..

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for everyone here when I say, Fuck You!

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Hee, hee, I sit in my troll's cave, polishing my scales until they gleam and smirking at the havoc I have created.

Re:Comment from Pan IP

[coastwalker]

I totaly agree that patent law probably needs reviewing though I would suggest that constitutional principles alone would not be enough.

The use of patents to allow a mature economy to prosper is unquestionable. The frivilous abuse of the patent system to defraud businesses is also unquestionably wrong and should be stopped - and this is not a big deal as many posters point out there are methods to prevent it.

However I also see two other problems with the current patent system.

The questionable validity of genetic patents - the consequences of which are currently unknown - and therefore are not necessarily going to add to either the economy or human happiness.

But an even bigger problem lies in the third and the developing world. Poor countries with underdeveloped economies cannot afford medicines, software or farming technology because of patents.

For example the idea that we can develop drugs that stop people with AIDS from dying but cannot sell them in Africa because the pharmacutical companies are recouping the development costs and the Africans cannot afford the royalties is absurd. Fine, we pay $500 a week in the west including development costs for the drugs and the Africans pay the $1 a week it actualy costs to manufacture the chemicals.

In software it has been a difficult struggle to make a sucessfull business model out of free trial software which you then have to pay for later. Similarly it would be tough to administer a trade and patent system which gave underdeveloped economies royalty free medicine, software and farming technology and then introduced patent protection in stages as the economies catch up.

However if you realy have any interest in the long term growth of the world economy and giving the opportunity to everybody on the planet to ejoy the standard of living that we enjoy in the west then this would appear to be the optimum fast track solution to gain that goal.

Never mind paying cash from taxes to aid funds or shipping food to starving people, just let them use our best ideas for free - until they can afford to pay for them.

You know re-posts are getting bad. . .

[mati]

when a brand-new /. story contains mostly links that my browser already shows as "visited"

Re:You know re-posts are getting bad. . .

[mati]

Redundant? My sense of humor must really be deteriorating lately...

Just run this for a while...

[MlBruehlly]

Remember the May 13 post? Try this script:

while : ; do
while : ; do
echo GET /case-pat-cit.htm HTTP/1.1
echo Host: www.panip.com
echo Connection: keep-alive
echo
done | telnet www.panip.com 80 >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
done

Eureka!

[john82]

IANAL (shocker):

This poor excuse for innovation makes all of it's claims on the use of "a micro-computer". And how the heck does someone get to take up with a string of dead previous attempts and make any kind of real claim? Can one of the real lawyers in the audience explain that one?

What if someone were to patent the process for supercomputers, embedded computers, beowulf clusters ... you get the picture. Then announce that you will license the patent to interested parties for free (with the exception of the scumbags in San Diego).

Re:Eureka!

[Anonymous Coward]

Er...Doctrine of equivalents?

stand up to them

[bonovoxpsu]

its very sad that we have people who would actually use and abuse a system put in place that give freedom to people who have REAL AND WORTHY ideas. all we hear now are the people who ruin the system for everyone else. but if this really pisses you off, go to http://www.youmaybenext.com and help out if you like. its a site with good info on this jacka**.

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[jericho4.0]

The sad thing is, panip has already had success doing this. Many victims settled out of court, as they couldn't take the financial risk. Of course, if they don't settle, panip mysteriously stops bothering them. This is blackmail, pure and simple.

Well, that just gives us more of a chance...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to rehash how much Lawrence Lockwood, the guy behind PanIP, is a dick. I mean, we wouldn't want people to be unaware that Lawrence Lockwood is a dick. 'Cause that would be a shame. Everyone should know that Lawrence Lockwood is a dick. Especially anyone he meets, or he wants to have sex with, or are his kids, or whomever... they should all be able to look up "Lawrence Lockwood" on Google or whatever and see lots of references to him being a dick - there aren't nearly enough yet. 'Cause, after all, Lawrence Lockwood is a dick.

And really, after these companies go through the hassle of defeating him in court, all he'll have left in his reputation. And it would be nice if the Internet remembered his reputation as "Lawrence Lockwood is a dick."

None of this anonymous "PanIP" crap. If you want to personally annoy thousands of people on the Internet by abusing our court system, you should at least have the decency to do under your own name, Lawrence Lockwood (who, I understand, is a dick).

Re:Well, that just gives us more of a chance...

[yukster]

Thought I'd give the Googling of Lockwood a shot and, sorry, but "Lawrence Lockwood is a dick" doesn't come up... yet. However, his name is on this suit from 1997. IANAL, but it has something to do with a guy trying to get money out of Chrysler cuz he invented the intermittent wiper. Funny, I didn't think a windshield wiper with a timer had to be invented.

Re:Well, that just gives us more of a chance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, guess what, Chuckles...

There was a time you had to wipe the windshield by HAND! Then someone invented the motorized one, but I'm damn sure that one didn't have a timer on it.

Two Words...

[T3kno]

Justifiable Homicide

Re:Two Words...

[BrookHarty]

Actually I am suprised many ex-employees dont go after enron execs for loosing thier 401K's.

We need to go back to the old-west days, if someone was a cattle rustler, you string up a rope and take care of 'em.

Re:Two Words...

[rjamestaylor]

if those don't work, try this pair:

• Tijuana, Mexico

Selling San Diego?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight -- you want the US to sell a region to a country from which it stole said region over 150 years ago? ;-)

Re:Selling San Diego?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah we ought to only sell back the parts they had developed there 150 years ago.

Which would be next to nothing.

This is precisely what I mean...

[dh003i]

When I talk about the scope of patents and copyrights being outrageous.

Life should not be patentable.

Business models should not be patentable.

Its fucking bullshit.

Hello, earth to CEO..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. your business plan is calling, and it sounds worried about it's lifespan..

Prior art?

[donutello]

How can we expect the patent office to keep track of all the prior art that there is out there when CmdrTaco can't even keep track of prior art for posts on Slashdot?

Non-California conspiracy?

[kindherb]

None of the 50 companies in the initial lawsuits are based in California.

So how come PanIP, a Ca. based company, isn't suing another Ca. based company?

Is there something that PanIP knows that the rest of us doesn't?

Or is it to skip the state courts and proceed directly to the federal level?

--Kind Herb

"Whether you suffer from Glaucoma, or you just rented the Matrix, marijuana can make things fabulous, medically!" --Homer J. Simpson

Re:Non-California conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Or is it to skip the state courts and proceed directly to the federal level?

Patents are almost always litigated at the federal level because patent law is a matter of federal law.

Re:Non-California conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's blackmail tactic: If PanIP brings sues someone, then they will have jurisdiction, meaning that the defendent will have to fly to CA for any/all court appearances. Most defendents can't risk having to go to court in another state, so PanIP is betting that companies will settle.

Re:Non-California conspiracy?

[stevezero]

Just for your edification:

#include std.IANAL.disclaimer

United States Code Title 28, section 1343, paragraph a (28 USC 1343(a))

"(a) The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, copyrights, and trademarks. Such jurisdiction shall be exclusive of the courts of the states in patent, plant variety protection and copyright cases."

So, no matter what, the case has to go to Federal Court. If a San Diego company wants to sue a San Diego company, they'd have to do it in Federal District Court for the area (Southern District of California).

However, if the lawyer is worth his fee, he will attack venue as they make in their claim under 28 USC 1391(b) which states:

"A civil action wherein jurisdiction is not founded solely on diversity of citizenship may, except as otherwise provided by law, be brought only in (1) a judicial district where any defendant resides, if all defendants reside in the same State, (2) a judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred, or a substantial part of property that is th subject of the action is situated, or (3) a judicial district in which any defendant may be found, if there is no district in which the action may otherwise be brought."

While I don't know the amount of business that was done in the district, I would imagine that in some of the defendants cases, it might not be "significant". Although, I also don't know what the precedent law is in this.

Re:Non-California conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sort of pointless to bring a strictly patent case in anything but federal district court, since the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the exclusive appellate court for patent (and some other) matters under 28 U.S.C. 1295.

Re:Non-California conspiracy?

[InnovATIONS]

Same reason that they picked smaller companies. A larger company might have a legal relationship with a national law firm. A small company, if they have representation at all, will most likely only have a relationship with a local law firm. Dealing with court appearances across the country makes a legal defense more expensive. If they sued my company (in So Cal) I could cobble together a holding action defense out of a minimum number of attorney hours, personal time, and no travel costs.

And I thought PetsWarehouse was evil

[PiGuy]

Wow, first PetsWarehouse suing people for badmouthing their company, now this. It almost makes me ashamed to be a US citizen, that our country lets things like this happen. This is what destroys our economy, large conglomerates suing the pants off of little businesses. This helps nothing. If only patents still numbered in the thousands, not the millions (or is it billions?) that they do now.

Let's tell them what we think!

[Rareul]

From the website:

MAILING ADDRESS:
PanIP (Pangea Intellectual Properties, LLC)
329 Laurel Street
San Diego, California 92101-1630 USA
PHONE: 858-454-7095
EMAIL: rmercado37@yahoo.com, info@panip.com
FAX: 858-454-4358


PANIP LEGAL ADVISOR:
Kathleen M. Walker
3421 Thorn Street
San Diego, California 92104
PHONE: 619-255-0987
FAX: 619-255-0986
EMAIL: kwalkerlaw@cox.net


LP/LLC INFORMATION:
PANIP, LLC
NUMBER: 200207410071
DATE FILED: 3/12/2002
STATUS: Active
JURISDICTION: California
AGENT FOR SERVICE OF PROCESS:
William G Wilhelm
(858) 551-8299
California State Business Information


RESEARCH TEAM:
CHI Research Inc.
10 White Horse Pike
Haddon Heights, NJ 08035 USA
PHONE: (856) 546-0600
FAX: (856) 546-9633
EMAIL: info@chiresearch.com
WEBSITE: www.panip.com

Re:Let's tell them what we think!

[nizo]

Ignore more .sig, I say break them up before they have a serious monopoly here.

Re:Let's tell them what we think!

[Anonymous Coward]

or as people at work with an open dos window like to say

ping -n 1000000 128.241.186.179

Re:Let's tell them what we think!

[FredMcGriff]

if they are paying for metered bandwidth, they will have significantly fewer funds after today.

Trolls Own Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Trollaxor writes "Looks like you can now be trolled with graphical and textural content on slashdot. As everyone who reads slashdot is. A troll in San Diego was granted one patent for using graphics and text to submit fake articles to slashdot and another for technologies to conduct automatic wide posts via a telephone line & video screen. They have started their crusade with newer discussions that do not have the intellectual depth to fight back so as to build a "war chest" to take on the larger goals of slashdot. One time Malda actually got offended after trolls organized one of their first blackouts. Curiously it appears that this article was posted on October 22 of 2002, less than one day after the posting of an identical article."

Patent the patent office

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna make a patent on all patent offices!!! This way I can sue everyone for making a patent.

BWAHAHA!

[The_Shadows]

Kudos to everyone on /.! We've successfully eliminated them! I can't even get to their website anymore! BWAHAHAHA! First Panip, tomorrow someone else!

Never underestimate the power of /..

Re:BWAHAHA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes- never underestimate the power of thousands of acne-faced, pear-shaped, tree-hugging, circle-jerking, no-life loser nerds.

Bounty Quest

[namespan]

Wasn't Bounty Quest supposed to help fix this problem?

What happened?

Anyone know of any countercartels of small businesses organizing to put this stuff to rest?

Where are our lawmakers?

Minitel in the 80's

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys. Took a quick look at the patent.

I think it may be invalid. I worked on Minitel in France in '86. Minitel did the same type of thing that this patent describes. There must be a few patents that pre-date and invalidate this.

If I recall correctly, minitel was initiated in 1976. It grew into a major structure by the early 80's in France. It was called teletext and you could buy online using a graphical interface.

Of course, I am not a researcher. Don't have time to spend on this.

Maybe one of you energetic folks could pick up the ball on this point.

Re:Minitel in the 80's

[Anonymous Coward]

I would stipulate that their patent was obvious based on the minitel system in the early 80's and that might be usable to beat this patent.

Getting sued for links to competitor....

[CharonX]

Yet we had one very funny (from todays perspective) trademark case in Germany...
A company called Symicron GmbH had a trademark on the term "Explora" (yes with "a") and tried to sue several companies, and private persons (on of them 16 year old pupil) for "linking to a download site containing the program FTP-Explorer and thus violating their trademark".
Yes, you read correctly, you get sued for linking to a shareware program download site.
Even worse, half of the time the courts agreed that there was a violation!
Fortunately one of the bigger companies that got sued (c.t. , mother company of Heise News Online (German) managed to get their trademark deleted, ending the insantiy.
Freedom for Links has a coverage.

Take Synergistic Approach

[jdkane]

All those small e-commerce guys should pool their resources so they can fight the heavyweight .. if there is a way to do it. There's simply no way a small guy can have a chance by himself, obviously why the lawsuits started at that level -- to increase PANIP's chances. At least PANIP has been /.ed. Hopefully this is just the beginning of the punishment!

Lets have a pool: Which troll just posted this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any takers? $100 that it is greenrd from Kuro5hin.

ATM's

[fava]

The second patent refers to:

More specifically, this invention relates to terminals used by banking institutions to make their services available at all hours of the day from various remote locations.

The patent was filed in November 94. I seem to recall using an ATM machine a good 10 years before this patent was filed.

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[dimator]

1E6 Scary.

IE6 is scary, yes!

Gravenreuth

[Ethelred Unraed]

But then, how does Gravenreuth away with doing exactly that?

No law is perfect. He seems to be able to cruise just below the radar and get away with it.

Cheers,

Ethelred

I want that job

[Jezza]

Ok people, how do I get a job in the US Patent Office? This looks like the easiest damn job in the world. Some asks for a patent, I give it to them. I could do THAT.

Gizzusajob!!! Flippin' heck - is this the most stupid thing you've ever heard?

I'm amazed, truly amazed.

Even the Patent office is using this !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did any one notice the "Add to cart" listed above the patent ? Wonder if the Patent office will get sued for using this ?? if not then they should be first !! They made their bed.. lie in it !

This is how Paypal can help

[Anonymous Coward]

Send all money you can afford to the people standing up against this evil! Send money, I did!

Where does Lockwood get his crack?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

SABRE????? The same SABRE from the 1960s that every OS textbook in the world uses as an example of an early timeshare system? This guy is on more crack than /. moderators!

Re:Where does Lockwood get his crack?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Parent post is NOT offtopic.
Parent post has a valid point, and that is that SABRE was around long before this sleazeball attempted prior extortion.
Parent post however may be incorrect in the comparison between said sleazeball and /. moderators.

Re:Where does Lockwood get his crack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the OT moderation proves his point.

Gravenreuth (Part II)

[Ethelred Unraed]

You're apparently referring to none other than Freiherr Gravenreuth, a lawyer in Munich. That was one of the more spectacular suits he's done, apparently. He seems to be able to dance on the line of what's legal and what's not and get away with it.

There is an interesting FAQ about Graventreuth (in German) that you might want to read.

Cheers,

Ethelred (who's glad he has legal insurance and a good lawyer)

Re:Gravenreuth (Part II)

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha,

somebody should definately kill the fuckstick Gravenreuth. Mhhh... is my ip being logged in here?

patents should be eliminated

[Twillerror]

These keep coming up and up and up. When they first started I was still convinced that patents where needed, but after a few years to think about it, I don't think they are good for anything. The usual arguments are

A) Patents secure investment.
Bullshit, making profits secures investments. If you spend millions developing a drug, then sell the drug and make your money back. Sure someone else can just reverse engineer it, but you went to market first and you should be able to copyright the name, etc. If you patent it, realize you can't make money, then it just sits there and you make money off nothing. Sell you research, data, etc.

B) Patents encourage invention/invation.
Again BS, making money does that, plain and simple. Patents seem to be only applicable to small things these days anyways. You can't patent something like MS Word, or Winamp, that's what copyright is for. No, you patent the MP3 codec, or some stupid alogrithm that calculates grammar.
Copyright servers the real purpose, not the patent.

It has been a long time since something was such a great new idea that it deserved a patent. Even new transitor technology doesn't deserve it, mainly because it is based on years and years of others time and thought. Without all the academic bodies working on these things do you think we would really be at 90 nm manufactoring processes. Intel and the like may make it a reality, but they sure as hell don't deserve all the credit. Patents take away the credit.

Anything worth patenting would require years of R&D. Someone maybe able to reverse engineer for a fraction of the cost, but more then likely would rather just pay you for the data, etc.

Even if someone bumped his head on a toilet and invented a time machine, I still don't think it should be patentable, why, because with most technology it should be very carefully handled. Coroporations care about bottom line, and rarely about the right and wrong of something.

I'd be willing to compromise and just change the laws. Pretty simple. Can't patent a naturally occuring substance, ie. a gene, and can't patent a concept, must have a working prototype in order to obtain the patent, and no prior art. Also, the law should patchable. Basically allowing congress to easly remove a concept or an idea from being patentable. If the law was already that way, it would be easy for congress to pass an amendment saying genes couldn't be patentable.

I'll rip off Office Space

[Anonymous Coward]

Your idea is bullshit. If everyone had control of the economy there would be no janitors because no one would clean shit up if they had had control of the economy.

Re:I'll rip off Office Space

[buswolley]

Exactly! Tahnk you for pointing that out. That is the beauty of this whole thing.

Who wants to clean shit off the toilet? Maybe with an economy with great control by the "janitors" there would be more money spent on developing mechanized cleaning machines. Robots if you will. We don't like to clean shit. Robots don't mind. We need the economy to be structured where it innovates products the free people from inhumane jobs.

This speaks loads...

[Cervantes]

There are a few things here which speak loads about the US business/legal model (and no, this isn't meant to be US bashing)

- Someone can get granted a patent for doing something that's already being done at the time of the filing. It may not hold up, but it provides ammunition for lawsuits, and isn't that enough for most people? Enter the almighty dollar.

- It takes years to get a patent. During this time, the "innovative" thing you've thought of becomes commonplace, and by the time you actually have the patent, other people have gotten so rich off the idea that they can sue you into the ground.

- People are so afraid of lawsuits and lawyers that they're willing to hand over good money to avoid your countrys' legal system, regardless of whether they're wrong or right. Doesn't that say enough right there?

And, for the obligitory joke, I now intend to file a patent for "stuff", which will "facilitate doing things in some manner", for the purpose of "getting things done, via this stuff paridigm." My revolutionary "stuff" lawsuit will ensure that no-one can ever again do "things" without my express, written consent. And, further, I plan to use my newfound economic power to push for digital copyright restrictions to be placed on "stuff", to ensure that the "things" facilitated by unlicensed copies of my "stuff" cannot be completed. Then, when everything is running on licensed copies of my "stuff", I will the AutoUpdate feature authorized in my "stuff DCP" EULA to sneak in fixes that will not let "stuff" work without calling home to tell me what "things" it is doing. And then, finally, I will take my fortune, close the company, and shut down the server, ensuring that "stuff" cannot call home to report its' "things", and making all the "stuff" shut down across the US.

Then, maybe, with no "things" to do or "stuff" to do them with, all the idiots who made this mess will get their "heads" out of their "ass" and start using their "brains".

10 DO end_rant; GOTO end

Re:This speaks loads...

[Synn]

- People are so afraid of lawsuits and lawyers that they're willing to hand over good money to avoid your countrys' legal system, regardless of whether they're wrong or right. Doesn't that say enough right there?

I think this is the only real thing wrong with our(America's) legal system. I mean, if you want to sue me for looking at you incorrectly, it really doesn't matter if it doesn't cost me a fortune to defend myself.

The only solution I can think if is to somehow ravamp how much people can be sued for. If you can sue me for a max of $2k for looking at you incorrectly(a really small offense), then it really doesn't make sense for me to spend 10k on a lawyer or think about settling out of court for 20k because you can try to sue me for 1 million.

Re:This speaks loads...

[Cervantes]

Actually, I personally believe that you should be able to sue for however much you want (it doesn't seem to matter what amount you ask for anyways, a judge or jury decides how much you get). I do believe, however, that lawyers should have a limit as to how much they can charge. Why is it that you can have salary caps in the NBA and NFL, but not in the courts designed to keep your citizens free?

Looks like it's dead

[DayGlo]

Index of /

Name Last modified Size Description

[DIR] Parent Directory 23-Oct-2002 15:17 -
[DIR] stats/ 23-Oct-2002 03:33 -

Hmm, something happened to their site, good :p

Tell the Patent office how you feel

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell 'em directly.

usptoinfo@uspto.gov

800-786-9199 (U.S. and Canada)
703-308-4357

New business model

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Form company
2. Patent alot of basic existing stuff
3. Sue little guys
4. Sue larger guys
5. ???
6. PROFIT
7. Buy bomb shelter in Mexico

hmmm

[the_other_one]

I'm going to patent closing up shop in the US and moving operations out of the country.

But, seriously, if enough tax revenue starts leaving the country the US gov't may start to consider patent reform.

Wrong Targets

[flowerp]

I wonder why those snipers in the United States pick all the WRONG targets.

Moderate +1 Funky please

What it takes to work at the Patent Office...

[teamhasnoi]

Be Your Own Boss! Fuck Off all Day! Lower your IQ! Bring Small Business to its Knees! Learn How to Use a Goddamn Rubber Stamp! Sleep All the Time! Drink and Smoke Dope on the Job! Jerk Off in the Files! Help Patent EVERY FUCKING THING THAT ANYONE WILL EVER DO, SEE, EAT, SMELL, READ, MAKE, TOUCH, and EXPERIENCE! Go Home and Tell Your Mom You Worked Hard Today!

Don't forget, I have a patent on working for exchange of money, goods or services.

Re:What it takes to work at the Patent Office...

[teamhasnoi]

You might want to call or email this guy and let him know what you think, since by the link in the parent post, he's the one in charge of letting all these dumbasses patent their 'lawsuits':

Electronic Commerce
Tariq.Hafiz@uspto.gov (703-305-9643)

Not so obvious

[DougJohnson]

Trust me, I hate the way IP legislation is going as much as, and maybe more than many of you. But for the love of knowledge people read before you post

The problem here doesn't appear to be the patent, but this PanIP companies attempts to misinterpret it. Regarding the patent itself...

Hear me out.

1. The patent was applied for in '94. How many of you can honestly say you were doing graphical e-commerce before this? None of you?
2. The first patent seems to be specifically relating to the travel industry... seems like they might have had an actual idea?
3. The first patent seems to be mostly dealing with the travel industry.
4. The second patent seems to be specifically for approving loands

So it seems to me that the patents should have been granted. And that at least some portion of e-commerce is an extension of this idea. The question remains to what extent does this apply.

My interpretation is that it should only be enforceable on systems which use specific purpose terminals that meet the graphical/textual criteria, using a dedicated network, or at LEAST a dedicated protocol for its own transport over the Internet.

So who here actually was doing e-commerce before '94, did any of the systems built AFTER this extend on THIS specific idea, and if so, to what degree. I know I'd hire a consulting firm to find out.

Of course, I think it's all totally out of control, but let's at least recognize the original patent holder for their contribution to the greater good. If that's what happened.

Now if it turns out that they actually just ripping off an idea and are trying to make cash from it, let's ship them off to use as a sandbag in the war on terror!

Re:Not so obvious

[Valafar]

Your arguemnt would hold water, except that in the late 80s / early 90s I was using "ecommerce" to purchase things "online". Ever hear of AOL? They used to be an Mac only ISP, where you could purchase things through their graphical client. They also had (albeit sparse) travel bookings, etc. Compuserve, Prodigy and a myriad of other "online" communities have been doing this for at least a decade. This patent is obviously ridiculous.

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[Anonymous Coward]

dimator is a loser, yes!

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[kraksmoka]

what is also important to note is that out of court action does not create precedent. in other words, settlments do not strengthen their legal case. and if panIP is in a situation where they could be liable for the court costs in a losing suit, they'll get theirs.

Little guys can't afford to fight back

[xenoc_1]

They know it won't stand up. That's why they're going after real small "mom and pop" businesses. Somebody who doesn't have lawyers on retainer, who can't afford the time away from running their business to fight it.

Think they'd try this with walmart.com or Amazon? The article implies they are considering it, but you know that's just bluster.

These sleazeballs aren't stupid enough to pick on sombody who could fight back.

Typical abuse of our legal system.

Lemelson technique

[Anonymous Coward]

Lemelson technique no bueno no mas.

Federal circuit ruled against on equitable doctrine of laches

We also have it now a no-no to exercise application delays via the doctrine of prosecution history laches

hmm I just sumitted this today

[josepha48]

* 2002-10-23 17:48:58 Automated sales and services system PATENT (askslashdot,patents) (rejected)

It is a company claiming they own e-commerce with patent #5576951. Hmm same company too. Either I'm not the only one who saw this this morning or someone stole my post.

In any case one of the patents actually applies to an airline reservation system, that I think they are trying to stretch scope of to include e-commerce to get money.

Re:hmm I just sumitted this today

[Arcturax]

First off, you shouldn't bitch about a rejected story. Hundreds are submitted, maybe someone beat you to it.

Also, this is the third time this has been posted to Slashdot, so someone probably weeded it out as duplicate and CmdrTaco didn't know and posted a different submission about it.

Correction-

[Valar]

The title should say: San Diego Company Pwns E-Commerce.

Re:Face IT..Utopia...not socialism.

[Mnemia]

How on earth could that possibly work? You're saying that the government should stay out of the economy, but that the economy should still take on goals of the common good. You can't make people do that unless you have government of other structural coercion, because an economy of the "people" will almost certainly lead to concentration of power around money, and the individuals who have money will likely not be interested in the goals of the average individual. It is inevitable that someone will have power over others in any functioning economy, be it the government in a socialist system or the greedy capitalists in ours. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it allows society to function without chaos and tyranny of the majority. The problem is just trying to make sure that there is a balance between different groups with power, rather than allowing it shift completely to one group.

There's nothing inherently wrong with capitalism, and much that is very good, since it tends to regulate itself pretty well. But it does need government checks from time to time, so it's important to have a strong government as well.

What happens if...

[kindbud]

What happens if a frivolous lawsuit is ignored?

A summary judgment is likely to be issued, right? Or is it a criminal offense to fail to answer a civil summons? OK, so I appear in court and sign whatever it is I need to sign to avoid committing contempt or whatever. Then I ignore the plaintiff.

What happens if the plaintiff tries to collect the judgment, and the defendant ignores the bill collectors?

Do civil courts have the power to send the police to an ISP not named in the lawsuit to confiscate equipment? What can the plaintiff really do to enforce compliance with frivolous judgments?

Re:What happens if...

[rigorist]

What happens if a frivolous lawsuit is ignored?

The court enters a default judgment against you for the relief demanded in the complaint. There may or may not be a hearing, depending on the relief requested.

Or is it a criminal offense to fail to answer a civil summons?

No.

OK, so I appear in court and sign whatever it is I need to sign to avoid committing contempt or whatever. Then I ignore the plaintiff.

If you file and serve an answer to the complaint, the civil process fires up. If you continue to ignore the process, the court may strike your answer and enter a default judgment(unlikely) or the plaintiff may move for summary judgment (more likely). The end result of both is the same - judgment against you.

What happens if the plaintiff tries to collect the judgment, and the defendant ignores the bill collectors?

A garnishment summons is served upon your bank and/or your employer to order them to hold onto money that would be delivered to you. The the judgment creditor will seize those funds.

Do civil courts have the power to send the police to an ISP not named in the lawsuit to confiscate equipment?

Yes.

What can the plaintiff really do to enforce compliance with frivolous judgments?

In the end, guys with guns come and take your stuff.

Yes, I am a lawyer. I have lots of clients who thought they could just ignore a "frivolous" lawsuit. They come crying to me when the garnishment is served on their bank. Yes, there is stuff you can do _sometimes_ to get the matter reopened, but it's expensive, time-consuming, and not always successful.

Your leson for today: Never ignore a summons. Read the thing and make a written response. Even just a letter is infinitely better than a default.

The USPTO is in violation of this patent

[Alethes]

If you go to this link listed in the story that points to one of the patents, then scroll to the bottom you'll find a nice set of links, one of which is Add to Cart. What a great way to demonstrate this invention!

It would seem....

[iamatlas]

that in the wake of the dot-bust era bad business plans, these sorts of IP rights issues have emerged- very much against the spirit of the internet- to form a new and devious buiness plan for upstart companies like this one and other established companies with greed in their eyes.

Simple Solution

[SecGreen]

The USPTO can use some slightly modified slachcode to allow semi-anonymous "experts" to mod patent applications up and down...

Seriously though, with the level of automation available, could the USPTO allow academics and other volunteer experts to review patents which apply to their field through a secure online interface?

Re:Face IT..Utopia...not socialism.

[buswolley]

I Don't think I explained my self well... Governements of course must be involved. All economies are planned. But I was pointing to the example of Communisms in the past where the government has complete control of the economy. This stifled innovation. Even capitalism is directed by governments. And now threatening innovation also.

The economies of the past and present are ran by the upper class elite. In The Soviet Union the economy was ran by the governement, but the government was ran by the upper class elite. In capitalism, the government is heavily influeneced by the elite, because the economy is ran by the elite.

My point being, we must implement an economic model that diminishes the presence of a class society. An economic model that doesn't let the children of the rich sit on their fat asses and control the world without ever earning it.

These things can be done.

PanIP and Slashdot

[Veteran]

Of course since Slashdot accepts advertising revenue that would mean that this site is using text and graphics for commerce - so pay up guys.

Re:Face IT..Utopia...not socialism.

[buswolley]

There's nothing inherently wrong with capitalism, and much that is very good, since it tends to regulate itself pretty well. But it does need government checks from time to time, so it's important to have a strong government as well.

Capitalism is inherentantly wrong because of the ill concieved notion of profit and capital. A company can make a nice profit for itself, but destroy the enivronment worth 10x that profit. The real world loses ie the People, but the company prospers.

Hey, I know who they can sue!

[iggly_iguana]

This patent would seem to include all cash registers. Most have screens, and many use phonelines.

Next, they'll get Starbucks!!!

Woohoo!

[Heynow21]

I hate to break this to you all but I have patented the idea for "transmitting data over an electronic medium". Apparently an overzealous patent clerk awarded it to me when I filed my tax return last year, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm going to Disneyland!

PanIP site down did it get hacked?

[linuxislandsucks]

PanIP site is down except for the directory listing did it get hacked?

Re:PanIP site down did it get hacked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it cannot handle the ammount of traffic requests its getting at the momment, maybe later...

Who needs precedent when you have lots of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuff said.

Perl Quine

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the smallest known Perl Quine? (Is the one in your sig it?)

Re:Perl Quine

[dimator]

I think so. Try this.

Goodbye

[christianT]

I wonder if this applys to the home shopping networks on TV?

No, but you're on the right track

[dilute]

As the poster above pointed out, the government is generally IMMUNE from these kinds of suits.

But it IS a time-honored sport to challenge the validity of patents (in a lawsuit against the patent owner) and then seek to take depositions of the patent examiners who were involved in the grant of the patent. Though the Patent Office will try to limit the examiners' testimony to essentially zero, it still REALLY tweaks them no end to have their examiners called to the witness stand.

This patent, by the way, looks like a complete piece of garbage that had claims tacked onto it years after the fact. These later-thought-up claims had virtually no relationship that I can see to what was actually disclosed when the thing was originally filed.

It's an ABOMINATION.

For my next trick:

[SecGreen]

I plan to patent the process by which you can render a undesirable company's website effectively useless by repeatedly posting stories about it to /.

Re:Face IT..Utopia...not socialism.

[Mnemia]

I disagree that it is possible to move towards a classless society. There is no way that everyone in the world could live at US standards of wealth without draining the Earth's resources, so those who have wealth now would have to give it up. And because wealth is power, that will never happen. It doesn't matter who has the power, the government or the rich, but someone WILL always have power because people are inherently selfish as individuals and some people will always be in a position to take advantage of others. That's not a flaw in the system, that's life.

It's a racket

[dark3r]

The US Trademark and Patent Office should be arrested and charged along with this small litigious company for fraud and racketeering. They are knowingly and willingly engaging in an activity that supports these extortive lawsuits.

This has already been on slashdot three times!

[Knightmare]

I can almost forgive reposting a story once... but 3+ times? It can be found here here and here

I only know this off the top of my head because I am the developer of one of those sites :) So I have great interest in this topic... But it would have been as simple as reading the submitted story, clicking on the website and seeing the big PANIP banner at the top, then tabbing over to your browser that has slashdot in it, going to the bottom of the page and typing panip in the search box. No more difficult than that, you can take the extra minute to check the story out...

Sometimes I think the posters get caught up in the same FIRST POST mentality when they decide to promote a story submission to the front page.

blah.

Now I'm Not A Fancy Big City Laywer....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this also include ordering things over the phone that you saw on TV if you had a Tivo/WebTV in series? They use a video screen and you don't have to call in but who would send in the posted envelope? OR am I reading the patent wrong on where the first computer needs to be?

Can you imagine a world with out lawyers?
-Linoel Hutz

On the other hand, your would do it too.

[fygment]

Mind exercise: you want to file a patent on something you created. It would be wise to reach back and find all existing and dropped applications that relate to and preceded yours, and to cite them. At the least you might think of all the possible minor alterations to your work that could be done by the hordes trying to hone in on your brainchild. The patent procedure would insist that you document all this in the application. Would the end result look different from theirs?

I read the first patent and caught this:

"These and other objects are achieved by the preferred embodiment of the invention which is directed to a means for automatically creating and displaying customized travel and tour sales presentations from various textual and graphical data sources managed by a multiplicity of operating programs. "

In the spirit of the patent i.e. primarily for travel sales, I haven't come across any sites that tailor their info to _me_ automatically. So yes, I think it's close to original work. And if someone has done the work before but didn't bother to patent it, well that's lack of dilligence. Got a good idea? Protect it they way the law allows you to.

Re:Face IT..Utopia...not socialism.

[Mnemia]

Maybe I wasn't clear before, but an economic system does not carry values, good or bad. A system is good when it minimizes general human suffering, and no system exists that could do that better than capitalism at the moment. The problem with replacing the system as it exists is that there would be nothing to regulate wealth anymore. Environmental destruction is in some ways a failure by the government to regulate industry and a sign that power has swung too far from government, and in other ways it is the INEVITABLE consequence of massive overpopulation.

Companies are simply a tool for giving the economy (ie the "People") what they want, and the People are demanding more conveniences etc at the cost of the environment. The problem is not capitalism, it is the fact that we have 6 billion people and growing on a planet that should not be able to sustain even a fraction of that.

I hereby patent...

[Arcturax]

Duplicate articles!

Quote from legal filing:

[SecGreen]

"All your idea are belong to us."

Get back at them

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't someone just file an anonymous complaint against them with the BSA:

1-888-NOPIRACY

their web form is at:

http://www.bsa.org/usa/report/report.php

I assume any company willing to steal fromm small busines in this fashion probably has already stolen from larger businesses (even if its M$).

A few fines might slow them down a bit. . .

Re:Court doesn't matter - well kind of

[loners]

If the patents are invalidated by the courts and there is any evidence that the company might have known, then all the people who settled can civil sue for their money back plus punitive damages. Last I heard in California punitive could be as much 300% of actual damages.

IE6 is scary! was(Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny)

[Louis_Wu]

I E6 is scary, yes!

I didn't even see that. Thanks. :)

. . .

BTW, I just had my first personal encounter with the lameness filter. What's a "junk character"? My first post (Ooooh, a pun. :) ended at the smiley after 'thanks', what kind of junk characters were in that? Or was it the 8 extra spaces I had in the subject line? . . . Yup, removing the spaces did the job.

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.

Re:IE6 is scary! was(Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny)

[CyberKnet]

I think you will find that whilst effective against combatting ASCII art, the lameness filter is one of the most annoying things slashdot ever implemented... try posting code some time. yeeesh. talk about a nightmare to try and get through.

BTW, I notice I'm on your friend list. Do I know you from somewhere?

Re:IE6 is scary! was(Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny)

[Louis_Wu]

BTW, I notice I'm on your friend list. Do I know you from somewhere?

I don't think so. I use my friend list as a way to keep track of people who make intelligent comments. I must have read something you wrote, and hit the grey pill. :)

Oh, stop whining

[vsprintf]

For instance, the fictitious loan officer may ask, "Are you familiar with our loan repayment schedule?" If the customer desires to read the loan repayment schedule, he would indicate his choice. The loan schedule would then be textually displayed. After reading the text, the applicant would proceed to more questions 147 presented by the fictitious loan officer. The customer could continue to additional textual displays about legal responsibilities of obtaining a loan or return to the fictitious loan officer who would continue the presentation.

It seems pretty obvious these people have locked up a completely new form of electronic communication. Let's see . . . where's that "fictitious" button? All I see is preview and submi

In related news

[RandomHavoc]

The U.S. government declared that since TCP/IP was paid for by the government and is in the public domain, all protocols running on top of it are also in the public domain. The news sent the stocks of the few remaining Internet technology companies crashing to ground.

There are no frivilous judgements

[rhombic]

Just frivilous lawsuits.

If a judgement is entered against you, the plaintiff can file liens against your property, and ask the local sheriff's office to sieze your property (personal or otherwise) and sell it at auction. If you don't respond to the lawsuit, the judge will issue a summary judgement against you, and you won't be able to appeal, since you've got no grounds. You'd have to be a complete and total idiot to ignore a summons on a civil suit.

I know we've all heard this many times before

[DigitalDad]

We've all heard this story a few times before. So what? I'm glad that Slashdot is running this story many times. In fact, I think it should become a regular feature or something.

Think of it like this... If scum like this are successfull in their law suits, where the hell will people like you or me do with the Internet? IMHO the foundation of the Internet will collapse without ecommerce!

Web Developers out of a job

Tech companies folding because they aren't selling hardware to run ecommerce sites

Web based businesses folding since they can't pay the extorsion to PanIP

Come on people. I've been in a legal battle before where I was the small gun and lost nearly everything, I can see where this can go. THIS is the News That Matters. Period.

This'll burn out...

[AlphaOne]

This is going to burn out pretty quickly.

In the PanIP complaint, they demand a trial by jury. I can't imagine any (competent) jury in the United States that would award anything to PanIP for this.

It's almost as if they were awarded a patent for a device that absorbs nasal discharge via a paper wicking system. An ingenious idea, certainly, but an obvious one.

Re:This'll burn out...

[BoneFlower]

It was a jury that gave the old lady 4 million dollars for spilling coffee on herself. Don't put so much faith in juries.

Re:This'll burn out...

[Chris Johnson]

Only because they were furious with McDonalds, which in turn was completely contemptuous and scornful of the problem and arrogant. That 4M (which was only an initial figure) was not intended as a fair settlement. I can sum the meaning of that 4M up in two words from a movie:

"Dodge this." *POW*

Of course, you can continue believing the spin if you want, nobody is stopping you :) but with all the talk about corp-ocracy on Slashdot, can you be surprised that a jury in the USA got good and practical and returned a verdict that was basically a bitch-slap, to say 'you WILL pay attention to this'?

We need more juries like that, not less. The purpose of the exercise wasn't to transfer funds from McDonald's to an old lady. The purpose of the exercise was justice- and what with the obnoxious behavior of the corporation, punitive justice was called for- and how are you supposed to bitchslap a corporation like that with a REASONABLE fine? Only an unreasonable fine will even make them freaking blink, much less consider not intentionally burning the fuck out of people routinely.

Look it up- it's an interesting story.

Re:This'll burn out...

[BoneFlower]

The entire concept of that lawsuit was bullshit from the start. It should have been laughed at when initially filed and NEVER should have gone to trial.

Re:This'll burn out...

[Anonymous Coward]

You make me so horny, baby.

Follow the money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents cost money, right? So more patents really means more money for the USPTO, right? By granting ridiculous patents they are advertising that anyone can get a patent for just about anything. More patent applications = more money. How else could they increase their revenue? It's not like they could just encourage people to come up with more legitimately patentable ideas.

And the lawyers, their in on it too. You can bet on that. Damn lawyers. We could do with a few less of those bastards.

In Other news.....

[jwilcox154]

The RIAA has just Patented Music and is planning on suing all non-riaa signed artists, Night Clubs, Churches, etc. for playing music.

Here's a thought

[Maleko]

Why don't we (as in the geeks of the world) get together and patent EVERYTHING we can think of. If the corps want to play the IP game, why shoudn't we?

Re:Here's a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we (as in the geeks of the world) get together and patent EVERYTHING we can think of. If the corps want to play the IP game, why shoudn't we?

Because it costs $20000 to patent something. And then there's international patents after that...

The companies patents are out of context...

[Anonymous Coward]

The original systems link show how the previous owner or appellant Lawrence B. Lockwood... lost a trial to uphold his patent.

His patent is quite out of context when compared to todays systems, and since his system was built with the intention of using them for travel-agents I do not see how far this company will get with their suits.

IMUHO (Uneducated),

Anonymous Coward

Somebody should fire bomb the fuckers.

[crovira]

And then firebomb the patent office and all their fuckin' archives.

This is absolutely stupid.

Re:Somebody should fire bomb the fuckers.

[tuxlove]

And then firebomb the patent office and all their fuckin' archives.

FYI, patent records are stored at Iron Mountain's multiple-acre underground mine. Good luck.
Not to mention that there are electronic archives of patents in multiple places. See uspto.gov.
And don't forget, each patent holder and his patent attorney has copies of everything.

But I realize you're only planning a rhetorical firebombing.

Re:Somebody should fire bomb the fuckers.

[Drishmung]

Nope, no good. there is only one way to be sure.

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[Anonymous Coward]

actually it's extortion, not blackmail.

business plan

[moosemoose]

1. form trade association. 2. collect dues to defend members. 3. trade association defends and takes assignment of right to sue for malicious prosecution. 4. after several publicized large awards for malicious prosecution this type of bogus lawsuit would cease to be a problem.

dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

what is "textural" content?

Oh, you must mean "textual", as in "Slashdot editors are retarded, and cannot proofread anything textual."

hax0red

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like someone hax0red them

Unless I'm missing something...

[Xformer]

IANAL, but wouldn't the numbered list of items in the first referenced patent have to all apply in order to validate it in the case of an individual site? I mean, if that weren't the case then, just going by what the first part of the Claims section of the patent says, any web site with a search function would be vulnerable as well.

One point in that section reads:

5. The search system according to claim 1, wherein said graphical and textual information are stored on a CD-ROM disc.

Wouldn't this invalidate any claims of infringement if the owner of a site did not take their live content from CD-ROMs or back up their data onto CD-ROMs?

You Slashdotted The Patent Offices!

[Anonymous Coward]

You bastards!

Error #2012
Sorry!
Maximum number of users has been reached. Please try again later.

Clear Prior Art:

[kraut]

"Where We Started
Amazon.com opened its virtual doors in July 1995 with a mission to use the Internet to transform book buying into the fastest, easiest, and most enjoyable shopping experience possible. "
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/misc/co mpa ny-info.html/ref=gw_bt_aa/103-5416636-1731026

Surely that alone would be sufficient to prove their claim vexatious.

justice?

[eagl]

Back in the day, we'd just find the loser who claimed such things, grab a rope and string him up. People were a lot more polite back then, especially about making wild claims about owning "unownable" things.

Imagine a snooty lawyer trying to tell a texas cattle baron that he owns a patent on branding cattle, and the cattle baron must pay him a royalty for each branded cow. I'm sure the lawyer wouldn't have lived through the day if he pressed his claim. I don't see how this sort of patent abuse is much different, except that we've given the lawyers all the power.

Maybe we need to start hanging crooked lawyers again...

Re:justice?

[Graspee_Leemoor]

We used to have a window tax. Search google for "window tax" and see the hilarity.

Though actually, this is like the "council tax" we have in the UK now because the number of windows a house has are pretty much an indicator of how much the house is worth.

graspee

The ultimate and Final solution...

[s-orbital]

I think I will patent the litigation process, so that no one can sue, except with my permission...

Muhahahaha!!!!!

I definitley dont want that GPL'd!

Hmmm

[taernim]

In that case, I've got a bunch of mail that is in violation of their patent rights... Yeah, a bunch of chumps selling various enlarging products, and so forth.

I guess I better forward it all to the company, so they can "Deal with" the people who are violating their rights. ;)

If they were smart

[Anonymous Coward]

They would start up two companies - one that would go around suing people with stupid patents, and the other which would 'take up the fight'. Take all the little guys' money to fight a battle which they win either way.

Oh hang on, maybe they already did?

the funny thing

[Sfing_ter]

is that their site is down, could be some sort of /. effect, I wonder if their mail server suffers from the same thing..... 8^P

Article has it wrong

[Wraithlyn]

Well, from a brief glance at the patent in question, it appears to NOT be a patent on "using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site." as the writeup claims.

It is more along the lines of using these elements to create a customized presentation based on an individual's profile. To quote the first line of the patent (Emphasis mine):

"A system for composing individualized sales presentations created from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles."

So it's not quite as absurdly broad as the article makes it out to be. Not quite, I said.

blatant IP whores

[nsda's_deviant]

I could side with Amazon when they patented one-click because that might be attributed to a certain order of code, but this is such blatant intelectual property exploitation that its ridiculous. Its sad that the patent office is giving these sorts of patents away and its sad the congress isn't setting specific laws limiting the grants of intellectual property patents. the guys at youmaybenext.com are doing a noble effort but there should be an extensive effort to fight tech related patents like this. i couldn't find any across google but does anyone know of any?

This sucks ass

[fudgefactor7]

I gotta tell you I hope Amazon and Ebay form a "joint venture" and buy the company that dared to do this then fire them all. Sales, whether online or in print, happens the same way. There is no patent for standard print advertising or standard money-order sales so why the f&*k does the patent office allow this crap? I'm telling you, there needs to be a complete oversight and review of patents. WRITE YOUR FREAKING CONGRESSMEN and tell them the patent office is allowing patents to things that should not be patentable. Oversight, review, and revocation rights need to be brought into play. Without which we might as well just say "fuck it."

They're not the only ones up to these hijinks

[stox]

Divine Intervultures^H^H^H^H^Hventures here in Chicago is up to the same stunts. Sadly, the only reference I can find for this is on a pay site, chicagobusiness.com. I'm really starting to wonder if a patent is actually the mark of the beast. This is getting completely out of control.

Consolidation

[rice_burners_suck]

I learned a really cool word once: Consolidation. According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, It means:

1. the act or process of consolidating : the state of being consolidated
2. the process of uniting : the quality or state of being united; specifically : the unification of two or more corporations by dissolution of existing ones and creation of a single new corporation
3. pathological alteration of lung tissue from an aerated condition to one of solid consistency

(Aside: I have a feeling the third definition doesn't fit in this current discussion. Link: http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictiona ry&va=consolidation.)

I'm pointing out this vocabulary word because I'm trying to say that all these VICTIM companies must band together in an effort to wipe out these criminals, and furthermore, to take legal action against the government for allowing a ridiculous patent, which was OBVIOUSLY issued in malice, to be issued in the first place.

Oh yeah. And don't forget to spell "consolidation" twenty five times and to use it in three sentences.

Two words: Prior art

[NullProg]

From the article:

"automated sales and services system,"
Prior to their patent, In 1988/89 I coded a program that did just that for a Food Distributor. Salesmen would dial a 800 number, and without any human intervention, the program would take the sales order, process it, and service it by adding the items to the stores next delivery. The salesmen were using symbol barcode readers with 300 baud modems.

"automatic business and financial transaction-processing system."
This is the patent that confuses me the most. I worked for a Bank. I moved money through the FED nightly. Our own patent office doesn't recognize how the FED works?

Is this company prepared to sue the FED???

I have source code available for lawyers to review once they have cleared it with my previous employers.

Ok, calm down, have a beer (gulp). Enjoy,

Re:Two words: Prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you contacted the people that run the prostest web site?

I wrote to the defense site...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

...to ask about contributing to a defense fund (after reading about this on /. a few days ago). Here's what they had to say:

Thanks for your support. We are currently in the process of setting up the Group Defense and the PANIP Group Defense Fund. We hope to have it set up by the end of this week giving people a chance to contribute online through a PayPal account. The response has been very encouraging.

Stay tuned in and help us spread the word. PANIP thought they could extort money from small businesses without them making much noise. They were wrong.

Timothy Beere
DeBrand Fine Chocolates
http://www.debrand.com
http://www.youmaybenext.com

I'll also pick up some chocolates for my wife at their site...that way I can help their business and score some points with the bride at the same time. Double bonus!

100 bucks

[Lonath]

100 bucks says that PanIP sues the "You may be next" website for taking donations since they're engaging in some kind of commerce or financial transaction over a network. It will be pretty fucking scary if they get away with that.

what really amusing is..

[Anonymous Coward]

the patent is covered by prior art dating back to 1984..it's like this company or the guys behind it just filed a patent for a generic computer system, then expanded and changed it as the years went by to make it into stuff that would be profitable to own the 'rights' to in about 3-4 years..

this patent is based on like 15 different aborted patent applications or something like that

here is actual prior use

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember very clearly in 1994 being on the internet when it was new and looking at the data from a web site in Washington DC (from a government contractor). I had all of their prices in front of me. The guy on the other end of the phone didn't know that I did. I jerked him around a little bit, and tested out his honesty.

I was working for the Air Force at the time. I had the 'Mossaic' browser. It was all very new.

that was 1994, before these bozos even thought up their scheme.

prior use

[night_flyer]

or prior story?

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/22/0152 41 &mode=thread&tid=155

you let this one slip by for two days guys, you all are slipping....

this is crazy

[v8interceptor]

Has anyone patented the idea of creating energy by the burning of sugars with oxygen? if not, I think I will, and then go about creating a list of at least 20,000,000,000 defendents...

Projects that use the code

[MichaelPenne]

You implement free code and tweak or add new code for parts of the project the free stuff doesn't do.

Then release the tweaked and added code back into the community for others to use on other paying projects.

Balmer says it's communism, but really it seems more like natural capitalism, before the advent of worldwide patents & copyrights....

OMG he patented PR0N

[TheConfusedOne]

and recreational audio-visual programs to the home, school or office

Recreational audio-visual programs?!? Well looks like everyone on slashdot is gonna get a letter from PanIP's lawyers...

I hereby submit...

[TheConfusedOne]

...SlashDot as prior art!

When will they patent--

[BoneFlower]

A reliable webserver.

Pan is the mythical Greek god of the woods..

[idling]

Torso of a human. Legs, horns, and ears of a goat. At least Pan was half human.

Damn! I was just there...

[Kommet]

Business took me to La Jolla (and San Diego, and Coronado, and...) for site acquisition just two weeks ago. If I had known about this I would have left some flaming dog poo, or a dead skunk, or at least a well-written opinion piece on the dangers of abusing IP laws, threats of frivolous lawsuits on national productivity, and possibility of countersuit in cases of filing of false patent claims to extort money in the state of California.

Whichever suited me at the time...

This get a paten

[Anonymous Coward]

And BT does not with HyperLinks

WTF is up with the USA?

at least their site is down :)

[bitwiz]

at least their site got /.ed...

you bloody socialist trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu wouldn't know IP rights if it came out of your arse.. it promotes innovation and development..

all you can be are weekend hacks, or users of software and couldn't invent a thing if you tried.

The Patent Attorney

Let us pray...

[Rai]

God Almighty, one true persona of justice, please inflict upon these wretched bottom feeders a curse of incurrable, burning, hellish itch of the genitals and a blessing of eternal life!

Amen.

US patent 6,443,222

[Pig Hogger]

GRANTED TO: small business owners.

CLAIMS: liberation of the economic sphere by the appropriage use of bludgeoning and cranium-shattering implements applied to the external surfaces of the body of mister Lockwood, until biological functions cease consecutively to mechanical lesions that prevent the nervous tissues from being innervated properly by nourishment and oxygen hemoglobin-based transfer fluid.

Re:US patent 6,443,222

[Anonymous Coward]

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Ship urine, not feces

[Anonymous Coward]

This weekend, have a keg party for intellectual freedom! Let your guests contribute. Pool your resources and share your contributions with Mr. Lockwoood.

Human feces can carry an enormous number of very evil microorganisms. Tempting as it is, and as much as this guy may deserve it, you need to also think about the health risk to innocent employees of FedEx or UPS or the Post Office. Do not ship human feces. (See reference.) Urine is relatively free of pathogens, and easy to ship safely.

Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not hug trees!

i work for a company sued by by them last year

[schwartzon]

i worked for a company in horseheads, N.Y. called IST (www.istcorp.com) developing their new webpages. We got this lawsuit and were all astonished about its vagueness and absurdity. So astonished, in fact, that i sent a post in to slashdot asking to start a dialogue about this. needless to say, being that the moderators of this board are soo friggin stuipd, they didnt deem it worthy. needless to say, i did some investigation on my own. The owner of these patents is one Lawrence Lockwood, who i tracked down and tried to call. If you do some reasearch online, this guy had sued a few companies a few years ago, and appearantly won. We got this lawsuit, and after seeing that all of the patents have to do with airline ticket distribution systems. We figured that what they were doing was "shotgunning" their lawsuit. By that I mean, they were planning on suing a lot of smaller companies who cant stand for themselves, and hoping that they would settle out of court. Well we didnt, we called their bluff. And appearantly that was the last we heard of them.. mewonders if they got more persistant?

Slashdot Fear Mongering

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, the patent is focused on adapting presentations based on a users profile.

Since storing information on a users internet habits is a dangerous breech of internet privacy, I wouldn't support it anyway.

Therefore, as long as your e-commerce page is static, you shouldn't have any feat of this patent.

BTW, down with software patents.

Not quite

[Anonymous Coward]

The corect Slashdot speeling of the word is "rediculous". If you ain't gonna spel rite - no won is gunna take u serious.

ATM machines? the QVC's of the world?

[plasticquart]

Just a quick question... but wouldn't these patents also cover television broadcast retailers?

And what about Banks (ATM's), grocery stores and other industries where transactions via a video screen are common-place?

Bring it on

[RembrandtX]

http://www.blackanddecker.com
lets see how this company takes on a
multinational coorporation that is notoriously paranoid with patent laws - and has a legal precident along these lines. [Branding and presentation]

I'm pretty sure the cat is out of the bag on this one. [aside from the fact that I had thought you only have a limited amount of time before it becomes an almost impossible battle to win.]

For example .. Stanley Tools lost the ability to protect the colours Yellow & Black (in association with their name & brand) because Dewalt Tools produced power tools in those colours for X years and stanley didn't file suit.

When they TRIED [because Dewalt was gobbling up their professional market presence] they were rebuked and basically told 'You should have done something about it 5 years ago.'

This, I would think certainly sets precident, of WHAT im not sure .. Since last i checked .. the colours Yellow and Black were not exactly paid royalties for their 'creative process'.

In other news, Slashdot patents story

[CrystalFalcon]

Was this story so good it had to be patented and published again?

And I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

why US citizens are so oblivious to such a problem and sit on their can before this type of thing happpens. Blame the founding fathers? Nice try... Sorry excuse for inaction.

Some obvious prior art would be....

[seamus_waldron]

....the information brokers from the 90's. The likes of Lexus Nexus, Knight Ridder, MAID, Reuters and the FT. All of them did online transations (in the early days on VTxxx terminals and then via the web from the Mid 90's) that were tailord to the users needs.

heartless

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of heartless villans sue a pie company?

in other news, i have applied for a patent on my "respiratory intake method"; i call it breathing.

pay up suckers!

It Sounds like They Patented The Internet

[bMuZal]

From the patent description:

'This invention is directed to data processing systems designed to facilitate commercial, financial and educational transactions between multimedia terminals such as automated sales workstations, information dispensing networks and self-service banking systems. {...) This invention also relates to financial service application processing, and interactive delivery of informative, educational and recreational audio-visual programs to the home, school or office.'

And later on: 'It will be clear that this system may be applied to many other types of customer service and sales industries.'

PanIP.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how the panip.com domain name is registered to their Internet Provider.

Maybe it should be put to better use. I am sure the edge guys owned this first and let the panip guys borrow it ;).

What comes around goes around...

>whois panip.com

E. D. G. E., Inc.
P. O. Box 712911
San Diego, California 92171
US

Domain Name: PANIP.COM

Administrative Contact::
Hosting Customer: hosting@edgeinc.org
EDGE Inc. Hosting
P. O. Box 17477
San Diego, California 92177-7477
US
Phone:: (877) 249-8708
Fax::
Technical Contact::
Hosting Customer: hosting@edgeinc.org
EDGE Inc. Hosting
P. O. Box 17477
San Diego, California 92177-7477
US
Phone:: (877) 249-8708
Fax::

Record updated date on: 2002-02-06 19:54:29
Record created date on: 2000-03-06
Record will be expiring on date: 2004-03-06
Database last updated on: 2002-10-24 01:40:31 EST

Domain servers in listed order:

NS.EDGEINC.ORG 209.61.179.88

Use history

[sbulut77]

We can check the SCI-FI books, movies and performances made before 1986 that has similar ideas to this guys patent. Does anyone remember or can anyone find if such books, movies exist?

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[Yottabyte84]

I was over at a friends dorm this afternoon. He checked /. and let out a loud WTF upon reeding this.

PanIP doesn't give adequate notice

[kaltkalt]

If you read PanIP's initial complaint setting forth the "grounds" for its lawsuit, it is pretty clear that all the allegations are mere conclusory statements. "Defendant is infringing on our patent #whatever and continues to do so." ... stuff like that does not give adequate notice per Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 8(a)(2). Just saying "you're infringing my patent #1234567" isn't enough. Gotta give some minimal explanation as to how they are infringing your patent. Check out Gen-Probe, Inc. v. Amoco Corp., Inc., 926 F.Supp. 948 S.D.Cal., 1996 for a good description on this vis a vis patent infringement suits. California federal court, no less. Keep in mind that the patent office is the second most profitable government organization, right behind the IRS. They are in the business of selling patents. For them to say "no, we're not gonna grant you a patent for that because that's a load of bullshit" is like Walmart kicking out customers because they aren't well-dressed enough to shop there.

I hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

that with the attention from /.'ers, they have enough tech support to deal with the barrage...

I bet hard money PANIP is run by ....

[Anonymous Coward]

People from same ethnic group as ......

Mr Junk bonds Milkin.
Worldcom CEO
Enron Chief Finicial Officer
WorldCrossing CEO
List goes on ... easy money through fast talkin and arm waving at someone else hardworking expense.

The Solution to "Obvious"

[AftanGustur]

Since more or less everybody agrees that obvious things shouldn't be patentable, I'we come up with a new model for the patent office.

First of all, "Obvious" means a solution that a group or individual with education in the field can come up with in a reasonable amount of time.

Here is the new method:
Have patent appliers describe in detail What problem their new idea solves
Post the problem description on a web page
Let the world brainstorm for a year or so (How long is the standard process anyway ?) and post all the solutions they can come up with on the website.
The patent applier gets a patent for those parts of his solution that haven't been decribed on the webpage and to which there is no prior art.

Fair ?

Feel free to order pizza...

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel free to order pizza at those emails address
and phone numbers, they must suffer, really!

PANIP Contact & Legal Info

MAILING ADDRESS:
PanIP (Pangea Intellectual Properties, LLC)
329 Laurel Street
San Diego, California 92101-1630 USA
PHONE: 858-454-7095
EMAIL: rmercado37@yahoo.com, info@panip.com
FAX: 858-454-4358

PANIP LEGAL ADVISOR:
Kathleen M. Walker
3421 Thorn Street
San Diego, California 92104
PHONE: 619-255-0987
FAX: 619-255-0986
EMAIL: kwalkerlaw@cox.net

LP/LLC INFORMATION:
PANIP, LLC
NUMBER: 200207410071
DATE FILED: 3/12/2002
STATUS: Active
JURISDICTION: California
AGENT FOR SERVICE OF PROCESS:
William G Wilhelm
(858) 551-8299
California State Business Information

RESEARCH TEAM:
CHI Research Inc.
10 White Horse Pike
Haddon Heights, NJ 08035 USA
PHONE: (856) 546-0600
FAX: (856) 546-9633
EMAIL: info@chiresearch.com

WEBSITE: www.panip.com

This is terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

This is truely terrible.

Death to PANIP.
Death to lawyers!
Death to Californians!!!!!

has the internet been patented?

[Anonymous Coward]

this just gives me a great idea: how many other things out there have we been using for years but there's no patent for? I mean it's obvious prior use don't mean a damn thing, so what stops someone from patenting, say, the wheel? I'm serious, has anyone patented the wheel?

Call the Patent Office and complain!

[Anonymous Coward]

in their faqs:
#22 Do you have an 800 number?

Yes. General Information Services Division (GISD) provides customers with a wide variety of general information and documents pertaining to patents and trademarks. Customer Service Representatives are available Monday through Friday (except federal holidays) from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You may contact GISD for additional information at 800 786-9199 or 703 308-4357.

if a few thousand people call them and complain I have a feeling they'll rethink that patent, especially if you point out that the US Patent Website is in violation of the patent too!

so why do they bother paying??

[Anonymous Coward]

why did the companies bother paying? Screw the lawyer, represent yourself and just talk to the judge. It doesn't take a genius to realize e-commerce was going on longer before March 2002, and it'll be thrown out of court because of prior use, then they can counter sue PanIP for filing a frivolous lawsuit and all court fees.

Why do the little companies even need lawyers???

Monetary damages due to negligence?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

...maybe? Somehow?

The states the defendants are located in.

[Discopete]

In looking at the list of states that the defendants are located in, it appears that the majority of them are located in the midwest/eastern section of the US. I also notice that none of them are located in Panip's home state, California.

Could this be because of the local (to the defendants) state IP laws?
IIRC, California has a nasty "frivolous lawsuit" law that could be turned to the defendants advantage, assuming any of them were located in California.
Honestly, I'd like to see them try to sue for this page: IBM pSeries 690 -- 7040-681T
I think they'd get slapped so hard they'd cease to exist.

Some logic holes:

[NeuroManson]

POS systems, read "Point of Sales" for the layman. These devices involve a simple computer and display for the purposes of sales, and in many cases (going back as far as the mid 1980s) included a 300 baud modem for the purpose of sending credit card information for purchases. Similarly, there were credit card terminals for years, AND of course, ATM POS terminals (and the machines themselves) around for well over a decade.

Doesn't that therefore disqualify these false patents as prior art?

I can think of only one word for this:

[hereticmessiah]

Wankers!

Has Anybody...

[archetypeone]

patented eating yet, or is this prior art?

Anyone remember the original Prodigy service?

[DJFelix]

In the golden days of MS-DOS, I remember using the ground breaking graphical interface of Prodigy. Prodigy used a telephone line to conduct automated financial transactions in the 80's. Prodigy also included sales representation using images. This was followed shortly by AOL which also used graphical images to sell products and conduct financial transactions via telephone line.

One thing that I found interesting in the wording of the patent is that it states " ... provides an infinite number of combinations ... " How is this even possible? With a finite amount of data, how can an infinite number of combinations of said data be made in any usable form?

It also seems that the main target of this patent would be online travel reservation sites. But again, I remember such services being available in the 80's on Prodigy, AOL and Compuserve.

Bellboy patented e-commerce

[KjetilK]

Actually, it was a Norwegian company called Bellboy that patented e-commerce. They started to file lawsuits too, but got spanked so badly by Norwegian courts that they will probably not stand on their feet again.

What a sad state of affairs...

[knarf]

Reading the reactions to this item, it strikes me that the 'right' thing in many people's eyes seems to be for big companies to fund the 'warchest' of defendants in these cases, so they can 'fight' these frivolous lawsuits and win.

True, that will get PanIP off the map, but it will also feed the lawyers who are at the base of all these (and other) problems. If you live in a society run and ruled by lawyers, if your every move can be attacked by other lawyers necessitating you to employ yet another lawyer to 'defend' you for something which in a less lawsuit-trigger-happy country would not even be thought about, this is what you can expect.

Of course a society needs some basic rules of conduct. And yes, when someone has to defend him/herself in court it is reasonable to allow that person to employ someone to help him/her with said defense. And that is more or less where the task of a lawyer ends in my (not so) humble opinion.

I seriously doubt that society would be worse off if the whole body of 'corporate law' were to be declared invalid, and all related suits and claims and whatnot were thrown out. Yes, there would be abuse by some unsavoury individuals and/or companies in areas which are currently controlled under corporate law, but the abuse is there now as well. Corporate law does not seem to lessen the abuse, it just concentrates it in a certain group: those with money, and those versed in corporate law - in essence, rich companies and (their) lawyers. Now tell me why there is corporate law in the first place?

There are just too many lawyers, it is too lucrative to become a lawyer, there is too much money in the profession of law. Law is a profit center. It should not be.

In essence, "Don't feed the animals". You don't want them to take over the place, do you?

How I'll Get Rich Off IP

[dmarx]

I'll just patent "putting one foot in front of the other". PanIP may own the patent on ecommerce, but people will have to pay me to walk to their computer (or anywhere for that matter)!

Great now they have to sue....

[Anonymous Coward]

...because they can't afford the bandwith from being slashdotted =P

Dunno how this'll hold up in court though. Amazon'll counter sue for the whole 1-click thing. BT'll sue for hyperlinks.

Before ya know it Al Gore will sue them all because he invented the internet, there for owns everything that happens on it right?

I can see the future...

[bLanark]

I can see in the future some little country is going to get really connected, 'net wise, then guarantee no software patent laws, and every big firm in the world is going to source their web datacentre there. Kinda like in Cryptonomicon. But this will be used just for serving web sites, ecommerce sites, gambling sites, even porno sites.

Some clever lawyer will work out a way that Amazon US has no link with Amazon Tonga (or Bermuda, or wherever it is), and so there "patent infringements" can't bite. There will be a US company amazon that simply delivers stuff on behalf of amazon.to (as Tonga domains are known).

And every other company will follow suit. At least the big ones will. And the lawyers will not find a way round, and no lawsuits will be raised, for will not be worth it.

And if that little island is in the carribean, or somewhere else nice and warm, then I want to be there, changing backup tapes at night and lying on the beach all day!

Seriously, something like this has got to happen, because patents, software patents, prime number patents, mobile phone ringtone patents, etc, have all got out of order!

Of course, the juristictions should all agree to avoid trademark infringement, etc, otherwise people will get p*ssed off. So companies will choose the countries that are big on "fair" laws but not on "stupid" ones.

Will they ever stop web traffic from coming in to the US from these places? Who knows, but if enough companies source their sites off-shore, then they can't stop it all, it'd be disasterous for the economy.

Prior Art, Failure to enforce/defend, and more

[kalimar]

There seems to be a plethora of prior art covering the topics of the patents listed.
Example: # 5,576,951 seems to cover search engines. But there have been search engines well before the patent. From the patent:

1. A computer search system for retrieving information, comprising: means for storing interrelated textual information and graphical information; means for interrelating said textual and graphical information; a plurality of entry path means for searching said stored interrelated textual and graphical information, said entry path means comprising: textual search entry path means for searching said textual information and for retrieving interrelated graphical information to said searched text; graphics entry path means for searching said graphical information and for retrieving interrelated textual information to said searched graphical information; selecting means for providing a menu of said plurality of entry path means for selection; automatic data processing means for executing inquiries provided by a user in order to search said textual and graphical information through said selected entry path means and for fetching data as a function of other data; indicating means for indicating a pathway that accesses information related in one of said entry path means to information accessible in another one of said entry path means; accessing means for providing access to said related information in said another entry path means; and output means for receiving search results from said processing means and said related information from said accessing means and for providing said search results and received information to such user.

Also, from the description of both patents it seems that the preferred embodiment of the patents are targetted at very specific applications.
#5,576,951 has the preferred embodiment described as an airline reservation system for use by travel agents to build tour packages for people.
#6,289,319 seems to be specifically target loan application processes.
Now, I'm not a patent lawyer so I'm not sure if this can be used for the defense, but it seems that if your make very specific examples of what the patent is geared towards and then try to sue people who are doing similar things in different areas, then you have no grounds for suing them. You didn't patent that particular process. In this case, it would seem that PanIP has patents on remote loan application systems and customized travel package generation systems, not generalized remote and/or customized sales systems.
Now even if the patents did cover the generalized form of the idea, they were filed in '94. There were e-commerce sites on the Web by then. There were search engines on the Web by then. Prior art.
Another thing I'm not sure of, but don't you have to take active defence of your patent (like copyright??) in order for you to actually be able to gain anything from it? I don't know about the rest of you, but filing the patent in '94, getting one of the patents in '96 (the one that seems to cover airline reservation systems and search engines), and getting the other in '01 (the one that seems to cover loan applications), and then starting to enforce it near the end of '02 you've been awfully lax in defending your 'invention'. Once you have filed the patent, you have "patent pending" on it (right?) and can start defending it at that point (right?) (ie "I noticed that you have an ecommerce site. I am writing to inform you that according to patent application XXXXXX, I am the inventor of the technology behind ecommerce and as such I am willing to license the technology to you at a modest fee of <insert soul here>."). As noted above I'm not a patent lawyer, so I could be totally wrong on this. I'm making assumptions based on the number of things that have "patent pending" attached to them.

So where's the petition to have the patent office and process completely overhauled so that it makes sense?

But Stephen King is DEAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard the news today on Boston talk radio. He was 54.

He will be missed.

build a war chest?

[Anonymous Coward]

this sounds like a way to hussel some cash via extorting by using the courts system. my tax dollars are supporting this non-sense?

Could/should the big guys get involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that PANIP will probably move against the big guys eventually, could / should the big outfits help the companies being sued now. It would be in their interest.

What a Name!

[sckienle]

I didn't see anyone else here mention this. But the company's name shows a level of hubris not normally see.

Pan as a prefix meaning basically all encompassing, for example pandemic. And IP as in, well, Intellectual Property. So the company name itself can be loosely translated as Encompassing all Intellectual Property.

What a name. What egotists!

This looks familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has someone used Mr. William Della Croce, Jr as a tutor here?

Another option

[Anonymous Coward]

We could patent the use of lawyers and other legal entities/businesses (whatever) for the use of persuing IP(patent) infringement lawsuits. Then anytime someone tries to sue for stupid patents, we could whip out our sharks, err... lawyers, and sue them!

Anyone for Sniff an ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

A patent on advertising using graphics and text?!?!

What else are we supposed to do? Modify the web into a scratch & sniff? "Honey, I don't like this car, it smells like an old dog." "Dear, that is an old dog, we haven't gotten to the car sales page yet."

Who and Why?

[getto man d]

Who was the idiot in the patent office who gave this company the ability to patent this. This is so absurd, it's like McDonald's patenting a hamburger. They have done well in sales, but with the patent, they could force less profitable restaurants out of business and monopolize the fast food service industry, which by the way is illegal. This patent should have never been issued in the first place.

How, again, is this funny?

[fizbin]

Every time there's a silly patent story here on slashdot, this comment (or close variations of it) get made. Over, and over, and over.

Please, please start marking this stuff redundant. It was possibly funny once. Maybe. It's over now.

textural?

[mapmaker]

I think you meant "textual". Unless they've been given a patent for sticking pieces of fabric on a web page, that is.

Re:Article has it wrong (look at the claims)

[zanerock]

(I'm not a lawyer... but if I was, I couldn't do this poist. I have filed and reviewed hundreds of patents, though). In a patent, I'm given to understand it is the claims, not the description, which really matter. The description places the context for the claims, but the claims define the patent. In the first claim, it seems to be describing a regular e-commerce site, until the part of the first claim:

automatic data processing means for executing inquiries provided by a user in order to search said textual and graphical information through said selected entry path means and for fetching data as a function of other data;

(Emphasis added.) As I read this, what they're saying is that the customer searches (by some means, a regular search, or browsing, etc.) for items, and then the results are posted. But look at the last bit. Data is selected "as a function of other data." That's the custumization the description talks about. What's the data? Anything. But, if you only let the customer browse/search and only use that data which the customer just entered (rather than storted profiles or something), you're safe. The way I read it.

Re:No, no. Mod +1 Funny, +1E6 Scary.

[Reziac]

I noticed the list of businesses being sued are those with just enough assets to have something to lose (thus can be put in fear of being taken for their entire investment), yet not rich enough to have an attorney on retainer who has enough experience in this area to promptly inform them that the lawsuit is complete horseshit.

Too bad PanIP hasn't hit someone with a lawyer in the family and the inclination to countersue 'em.

Re:Little guys can't afford to fight back

[Reziac]

Also, they're tending to focus on parts of the country (such as the midwest) where kneejerk lawsuits are NOT the norm, so seem even more scary to the victim.

I did notice (having checked a few of the supplied links) that some of these small business websites have already been shut down. I was actually looking at docsource to see if they happened to all be using some prepackaged commercial site, since it occurred to me that if they had, and if it was template-built by a product from a major player like Macromedia, that might be a hook to get one of these suits passed on to the wrong gorilla, and get this con artist's ass burned.

InformationWeek runs Red Sheriff spyware

[bcemoli]

If you use IE and have Java enabled when you go to the Information Week link, it will start running the Red Sheriff java applet on your machine. Open up your java console after visiting to verify.

There is information about it on http://www.cexx.org/sheriff.htm, or Google for red sheriff spyware.

OT: Funny that guys lives about 1 mile from me.

[sideshow]

Look at this [uspto.gov] and laugh, or weep, or both.

So the inventor of a way of determining breast size lives within walking distance. I think I'll go over there and see if he needs someone to "test" his invention.

Submarine ermerges

[Groote Ka]

This is what's basically being called a sub-marine patent. You apply for a patent, stall the grant as long as possible, add all kind of stuff to the protection and get your grant when the subject matter is commercial hot stuff. The only relevant prior art are publications before the date your filed your first application, which may be in some cases even twenty years.

When you want to look for prior art, you have to get back as early as 1993 and for some stuff even to 1984 (Lynx era? it's been a long time I used that programme).

The big king of submarine patents is Lemelson. This article in Forbes describes it somewhat. Searching for Lemelson and submarine patent will help your further.

This trick, however, is - or better, was - only possible in the US. You used to get protection for 20 years after filing or 17 years after grant, whichever is longest. Furthermore, the patent application was not published, so you don't know it exists. This means, that you cannot work on a workaround.

Currently, all US applications that will also be filed abroad will be published a year and a half after the first filing. This goes for US applications as well, unless the applicant requests it to be hidden until grant, provided that he does not file abroad.
AFAIK, this goes for all applications since mid 1995. But apparently, we still have a heritage of applications prior to that date.

Fortunately, European applications are always published a year and a half after the first filing (priority date).

New round of websites being sued

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought I would let everyone know...A new round of websites has been named in another batch of by PANIP. It seems as if every eCommerce website needs to form a coalition to not only defend ourselves, but possibly counter sue. Any ideas anyone? Also, if you do decide to settle with these shmucks, and later this is thrown out of court...anyway to get the money back, can you sue to get it back?

It's a timothy story, so it must be a repeat!

[TheFrood]

The original story appeared almost two weeks ago, so this actually isn't too bad by timothy's standards.