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NCR Patents the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "We all know about NCR's lawsuit against Palm & Handspring, but I haven't seen much press about patent infringements they are claiming against some of the biggest sites on the planet. According to documentation that a friend's company has recently received, their patents protect everything from keyword searching to product categorization. Patents to look for (and filed in 1998) include 6,253,203, 6,169,997, 6,151,601, 6,085,223 and 5,991,791 . IMHO, this is absolutely outrageous and is likely to cause billions in both legal fees and eventual licensing fees (eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR). How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business."
Finally, someone will make money off the internet.
(eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR)
Is there proof of this?
If Borland could find an old copy of PowerBase they could probably get this patent thrown out for prior art, and have their own patent rejected for coming 20 years too late.
I dunno. Whining about incompetently issued patents is like whining about Microsoft or the DMCA. Good for a few quotable flames, but no real news. Move along, nothing to see here.
John
You can't stop the future, you can only simulate it by stopping progress.
Patent 6085223 describes the method to look up the very same patent using the USPTO database by clicking on this url! The patent office is violating the patent!
At least, by making patents available on the internet like this they make them sort of "open source" so that stupid patents like this one will be challenged as soon as someone finds out.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
Another shining example of the US patent office's brilliance. What child has never done that on a swing before? The children at the US patent office, obviously...
I used to say "Don't worry... there's no way anyone will take this seriously."
Except that they are. Ebay, Amazon, etc are licensing these patents. Why? Because it's easier than fighting in court.
But I still used to say "Don't worry... eventually, this will get bad enough, and real reform will come."
Except the people with the money to change things are also benifiting from this situation. See Amazon's "one click" patent.
So now I say, "start worrying." I get the very bad impression that things will get much worse before they get better.
So, what needs to change?
1. The legal system makes it more affordable to lie down and take it than to stand up to those who more than likely have no legal leg to stand on. This has to change.
2. Patents protect just about everything possible. If you can do it with a computer, chances are someone, somewhere, has a copyright that you are infringing. I once saw a patent on nested for lops, for crying out loud. Software and business practices shouldn't be patentable.
3. Lobbyists have got to go. People buy legislation. That is not democracy, and it is not right.
4. Parties. "Go ahead, waste your vote on a third party candidate. Muahaha!" We should not have to choose between Republicrates, Democans, and Hopeless.
Thomas Galvin
The problem is that this is going to screw over a whole lot of people before laws are enacted to end this legalized extortion.
What makes this especially ugly is that it's going to have a disproportionate impact on smaller web-based retailers, because they are going to have neither a legal department nor the hundreds of thousands of dollars a legal battle of this scope would cost--the only real choice will be to either pay the extortion money or not do business on the web. Everyone but the patent holder loses.
everyone knows al gore did that
Can't Al Gore claim prior art?
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
It doesn't matter.
.. aka, self-censorship and the growing iirelevency of America's legal system.
America's #1 passtime is 'settling out of court'
Not only is lady justice blind, she's also sitting at home watching financial interests undermine her purpose. It's become cheaper to sell out to your sworn enemy than actually figure out who's on the correct side of the law.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Agreed.
:(
"A method, apparatus, article of manufacture, and a memory structure for storing and retrieving data in a database implementing privacy control is disclosed." (Abstract of 6,253,203)
I think a filesystem with permissions would be prior art for this... Who the hell would sign off on this patent?
Further on...
"1. A data warehousing, management, and privacy control system, comprising... a database table comprising a plurality of data columns and at least one data control column... information reflecting consumer privacy parameters"
exactly passwd which contains a "customer's" password hash and his/her home directory and shell.
"5. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a customer interface module providing access to the database table via the privileged view and to permit specification of the consumer privacy parameters."
A file system with permissions.... (eg. AS400 whose fs is *actually* a database)
Can anyone else see anything that's origional about this patent? I'm looking through all the claims and they all fit with either a filesystem or a rdbms.
Why the hell would anyone take an infringement law suit seriously from these patents?
Sometime the profound stupidity of businesses really hits me. Like the time an old boss of mine wanted to patent the ability to write libraries so that the implementation could change without changing the code written against it (ie. API's). This was in 2002.
It's broken, but I don't see it getting fixed in this life time
-RB
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business.
Or maybe, just maybe now, because it's a complete non-story. If these patent claims are so ludicrous then they will never stand up to a serious challange. You say the USPTO grants some silly patents? So what else is new? Call me back when any of these manages to survive a day in court.
Isn't this story early? I thought we did patent hysteria on Thursdays.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
This sort of a patent is good news overall, because it will give anti-patent advocates yet another argument against patents, and perhaps Congress will get a wakeup call from the people they fear the most--ordinary voters motivated to cause change. The people did win the vitamin battle against well connected and rich corporations. Who says we can't win the patent battle?
Unfortunately, this type of patents is also good news for large corporations. Sure they might have to pay a few dollars here and there, but it keeps that pesky innovation from the small players at bay, and that's the biggest threat to the established order--not patents from another stagnant mega corp. So it's dumb for a big company to fight this kind of patent. For them, patent payments are just musical chairs.
You can submit evidence to the patent office and force the patent into reconsideration. You can also file a declartory judgement action against the Patent holder if they are threatening you with their patents.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Don't you mean "Not making money on the internet was patented by Amazon"?
Prior art does not invalidate a patent or make an invention unpatentable unless the prior art covers every single part of the new patent down to the tiniest details. You can patent something that's already patented with only a slight addition. You'll have to have a licence to use the other patent to implement the invention, but you can still get a patent that grants you a limited monopoly to just the new parts. Since the time this article was posted until now (when I've seen dozens of people claiming that these patents are invalid due to prior art) there is NO FUCKING WAY that people who were unaware of these patents before could have figured out wether these should be valid patents or not.
In summary: prior art doesn't mean you can't have a patent. It just means you have to list it in the "prior art" section of the patent and licence the old patent to implement your "improvement" to the old invention (assuming the original patent is still valid).
Simple: make software-patents illegal. They're really plain stupid stupid stupid. Software is NOT a device but merely a list of commands which controls a device. Such a list of commands is sometimes called a recipe - a list of actions which you should perform to reach a certain goal. Recipes should not be patentable, otherwise the way I move my hand when jerking of can also be patented (good luck trying to proof prior art:P). Or the way you move your mouth when saying "Anarchy". All actions:) What kind of agent (me, you or a computer) performs those actions should not matter of course. Patents are meant for fysical things. It's just the retardedness of the patent office that causes them to consider computers and software some sort of magical thing. Their way of thinking has become a bit like that the inquisition - driven by utter ignorance and FUD. Someone should either educate them or just kill them for stupidity.
0x or or snor perron?!
Nothing is going to change until we start suing the patent office to recoup costs on claims related to gross negligence on the part of the patent office. A method by which a remote client can query a database and recieve a result? We're not talking about a child on a swing here, we're talking about patenting things for which entire industries have existed since the 70's. This is gross negligence of the highest order, with prior art just a quick altavista search away. Come to think of it, Altavista is prior art.
This gross negligence on the part of the patent office is costing companies and consumers millions of dollars, while adding absolutely nothing to the general pool of knowledge. If the underfunded patent office found it was more resource-efficient to hire competent personel than it would be to simply fail at their appointed task, then we wouldn't have these sorts of problems.
I say we get a class-action suit against the patent office. Any lawyers with me?
The ______ Agenda
**quote** Method and apparatus for providing database information to non-requesting clients Abstract A method and apparatus for providing access to object data stored in a database management system to a receiver client. The method comprises the steps of receiving a database query from a submitting client on a first communication path, transforming the database query into database management system commands, transmitting the database management system commands to a database management system, receiving a response from the database management system comprising a media object locator, compiling an answer set comprising the database management system response, and transmitting the media object locator to the receiver client on the first communication path. **/quote**
That being said, it seems to me that a we were able to do this w. dBase back in the '80's over a lan, w. netware serving as the communication path, etc.
adjusts tin-foil hat
Personally I think there's a major backlash campaign being given unspoken support from all the old-money dow-like companies. The internet is something they have never understood, and view it only as a threat to thier way of doing business.
The legal system in no way supports the proliferation of free technocratic society, but serves only to perpetuate old-money institutions.
You will never find a retired programmer on the bench. You will find a trial lawyer of some 30 years experience whos outlook is based entirely on precedent(think 1970s and 1980s). This was a time of farms, banks, automobile production, petroleum embargoes, and cold war.
90% of the serving officials in the 3 branches of government were lawyers before being elected senators, or supreme court judges, or in many cases presidents. Very very rarely will you ever see an engineer or scientist turned politician.
We are a fundamentally misrepresented class of people. Our priorities are largely askew from the priorities of the "majority voting public". All we want is unlimited bandwidth, unlimited computing power, and to be left alone. These 3 things are very much within our technological/finacial means as a nation. If the $200billion spent on the defense budget was poured into building a broadband infrastructure we would have it. And we all know how quickly processors and storage mediums improve. Simply said there are no real technological bariers towards the implementation of what the majority of us here want.
But none of this will happen because old-money has become aware of the threat of giving abundant resources to "everyone". They will use the legal system as a means of slowing/crippling/dismantling the "internet" until it is no longer functional.
Said again, the "internet" is under siege from old money...and it is nothing if not a war. Throwing file-sharers in jail, patenting hyper-links, all of this is insanity...but in war you use whatever means necessary to destroy your enemy. We, and what we represent, are the enemy of old-money institutions....and they will leverage every resource in thier means to destroy us.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor and his sister as "Tarzan" swinging. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required.
It does however have one redeeming quality - it's one of the most readable patents I've ever seen
If it's a joke, why was it approved? Why is it in the US PTO database? I would think a joke would get a good laugh, and then cause a reject letter to be mailed out.
If jokes get into the US PTO database, that makes the system a joke. After all, if it is a joke and not marked as such, how do I tell a joke? Perhaps the patents referenced from the main story are all jokes?
At this point, I hope you see the folly of your comment.
http://www.uspto.gov/ appears to violate all those patents itself !
NCR Corporation provides us with some examples to get you going:
- Exactly like a database, except it's on the Internet.
- Exactly like a secure database, except it's on the Internet.
- Exactly like a commerce database, except it's on the Internet.
- Exactly like a database client, except it's on the Internet.
- Exactly like computer security, except it's on the Internet.
Thanks, NCR!Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
That's classic. My favorite quote comes at the very end.
Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor and his sister as "Tarzan" swinging. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required.
Licenses are available from the inventor upon request. "
(Score: -1, Stupid)
A small company doesn't need an army of lawyers. Everyone who runs an internet business needs to join together and sue them all at once. It would cost pennies on the dollar to sue them that way.
How about Penn Jillette's (of Penn & Teller) patent for arousing women in a hot tub?
This sig intentionally left justified.
Actually yes, it was intended as a joke. If I remember correctly, a patent lawyer used it as an example to teach his young kid the process, and decided to send it in just for fun. It came back approved, and he was more than a little surprised.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It is ILLEGAL to steal money and to cause monetary damage to other companies (*ahem*hacking,sharing mp3s,violating DMCA*ahem*) and this is no different. They should be held responsible for their actions.
What everyone forgets is that if anyone in the US was doing what your patent describes before you filed for the patent, then your patent is no good. And it doesn't cost billions of dollars to get a patent invalidated. First you need to get sued for violating a patent. Then you need to show some proof that at least one person was doing whatever the patent says before the filing date. Then you win. Given that it costs a minimum of $20k to get a patent, all this company has done is waste lots of money. If it ever tries to bring suit it'll spend even more money and it'll have nothing to show for it because these patents all seem to cover stuff that people've been doing with computers for a while. I doubt you will ever see a suit on any of those patents. It's like the guy who patented swinging. He spent at least $20k to prove that he doesn't understand the patent system. All I need is to bring in some witnesses that'll say they were swinging before Nov. 17th 2000 and he has officially wasted a lot of money. Patent examiners can only work with what they find in literature and trade journals etc. Courts can use anything you bring them.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='6368227'.WKU.&OS=PN/6368227&RS=P N/6368227
#6,253,203 - June 26, 2001
A database containing personal privacy prefferences.
I distictly remember setting AOL privacy prefferences in 1996...dont even try to tell me they didn't use a database to track that
#6,169,997 - January 2, 2001
Category viewing of portal content such as News, Sports, Weather, etc instead of simple chronological organization.
I signed up for my Yahoo! ID in fall 1997.....
#6,151,601 - November 21, 2000
This one uses the words "collecting" "transformation" "organization" and "transmitting" so many times I can't even understand it. However, it appears to be for using a database system to analyze network traffic at the ISP level.
I don't know the inner workings of AOL or any other major ISP, but I'm betting they've been using these type of systems for a loooong time.
#6,085,223 - July 4, 2000
This is for connecting a client to a database through a seperate step, seperating the client and the database.
One acronym to defeat this one: ODBC
#5,991,791 - November 23, 1999
A database system to catalog a bunch of stuff...whether digital or not, and to deliver it when requested..
My local public library had everything on an electronic catalog waaaaaay back in 1990. And vending machines delivered me content on request as well.
There's your prior art - run with it
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....