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EFF Runs Patent-Busting Challenge
markclong writes "Every year numerous illegitimate patent applications make their way through the United States patent examination process without adequate review. The problem is particularly acute in the software and Internet fields where the history of prior inventions (often called "prior art") is widely distributed and poorly documented. As a result, we have seen patents asserted on such simple technologies as One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.), Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.), The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.). The EFF is hosting a patent busting project to fight the most egregious abuses of the patent system."
How about a Wiki-type thing that lists some previous art for patents that a watchdog group lists out? Get some serious evidence and archive it in one place so the masses can check and see what patents they don't really have to pay attention to.
I hope every
Apparently the current US patent system does not want to spend the time/money to carefully check new patents. Now the EFF and volunteers are doing the USPTO's work for free.
It might remove the most harmful and obviously insane patents, thus making the idiocy of the current system less visible.
I have a bit of confusion over one patent they have listed, however. They label it as patenting "using a credit card online", whereas the patent that they link to is described as being a voice-based terminal for collecting loan applications and processing them based on user input and credit rating information. Can anyone tell me if I'm missing anything or if that's just a mistake on EFF's part?
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When they say fight the outrageous patents, are they referring to the ones that already exist, or future ones? Or both? How would you combat a patent that already exist? Show prior art? Anyway, I think it's rediculous that we have to go as far as to create an organization to stop what should be common sense. Come on, a patent for double click? Oi..
Then again, if life were perfect, I'd have better things to do than rant on slashdot at 2 am in the morning. Hehe =)
well, the most nafarious patent of them all was when an ozzie man decided he wanted to patent the wheel, and actually succeded.
the lawyer patented the " circular transportation facilitation device". so that means anyone who ever produced car, bike, even unicycle in australia would have to pay royalities.
dont believe me, well check the BBC or CNN
personally this is a prime example of intellectual rights gone amok. i would rather convert my car to square wheels before paying any damn royalites on a wheel. but i dont think it will be a problem. but just in case, im going to go patent the spherical rolling device. lets see MR. Keogh drive home without any ball bearings.
There was a recent slashdot post about Microsoft's patent on the autogenerated TODO list in an IDE. They filed in 2000. Well, as usual, it's pretty easy to find prior art for something like this, if you just search google on the grand-daddy of IDEs.
I was so confident, I went with "feeling lucky". Sure 'nuff, the very first hit, automated TODO lists in 1999, From Tulane University.
Your politicians will do anything for a vote.
Ah, if only.
It has turned out to be simpler to block the people most likely from voting a certain way so they can't vote at all.
The legislators will really do anything for... a campaign contribution.
Unfortunately, most people can be counted upon to vote for the incumbent, or the slate from the same political party with which their parents identified themselves. And patent reform is too esoteric of a subject to capture the interest of most folks.
Democracy was great, in theory...
<grrr>
I worked at a company in the early '90s, which had one of the very first ecommerce sites on the early web. The public production prototype of the site was being used by a restricted subset of the public a year or two prior to OpenMarkets patent. This was back when the web was relatively small and ecommerce was a novelty. It was C language CGIs running on NCSA, the horror. This site included, among other things a shopping cart, which we called a "shopping cart", which did all the thing a normal web shopping cart does.
As it happens, I was one of the developers of that project. Because we didn't think it was that big of a deal and it wasn't a secret, I actually had email exchanges with one of the guys at OpenMarket (and anyone else who cared to know) explaining how we had implemented it, basically giving them the design from our running site, all prior to their filing date.
Fast forward several years later, and I discover that OpenMarket is claiming the invention of the shopping cart. I don't mind patents generally, but that one was grossly unethical and I nearly blew a gasket when it was announced. Unfortunately, the company that did develop the shopping cart notion, and which helped at least one OpenMarket engineer figure out how to do it themselves, has been long gone for years.
The bottomline being that not only was I involved in creating the prior art for OpenMarket's patent, as far as I can tell one or more engineers at OpenMarket actually learned how to implement them by emailing myself and others at our company.
Why not implement a deposit sum for patent to be granted to the person that found prior art or faults invalidating it. This would probably end all talk about underpaid or overworked reviewers and spawn a new profession on the internet.
I like this idea quite a bit actually. It sounds a bit like this project is trying to do half of the patent office's job. But even if they were doing their own job, having a full fledged project of this nature would be a boon. Forums, mailing lists, wiki, the whole nine yards. If I was a bit older, and had lived through a little more history, I would gladly help patent bust as a hobby. I think there are many here on slashdot who feel the same.
It could just fix one problem this way. Without the type of feedback/interaction mechanisms you mention, projects like this tend to disappear from view. If there was a following to the project, there would likely be more items submitted to slashdot, drawing the long term attention of a fair percentage of slashdot users (and other news/forums). The effects could be a mild domino effect, not becoming the best known project in existence, but making its presence felt to those most able to help.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
IBM got a patent on CAPS LOCK status indicator: Here's the link
It's patent 5,924,098. It's owned by Sun and it's basically on using the Boehm style GC to do well known lock-free programming techniques, one of which RCU is based on. I even commented on the obviousness of the technique before Sun was issued the patent here. It's not prior art but it does show obviousness to someone (me) versed in the art of lock-free programming. It's a standard technique that depends on some mechanism to delay deallocation of data nodes until they are no longer referenced. Which is by definition Garbage Collection. Specifying a known form of GC in conjunction with this technique is not an invention. Coming up with a new form of GC or proxy GC is an invention.
Thats a very general definition which doesn't real say how obviousness is determined. From the MPEP 2143:
To establish a prima facie case of obviousness, three basic criteria must be met. First, there must be some suggestion or motivation, either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art, to modify the reference or to combine reference teachings. Second, there must be a reasonable expectation of success. Finally, the prior art reference (or references when combined) must teach or suggest all the claim limitations.
The teaching or suggestion to make the claimed combination and the reasonable expectation of success must both be found in the prior art, not in applicant's disclosure. In re Vaeck, 947 F.2d 488, 20 USPQ2d 1438 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
Obviousness is determined from the prior art, it is not a subjective determination as to whether one would think that it would be obvious to make the claimed system. As far as the "ordinary skill in the art" requirement, it is a rather complicated issue. Generally, the courts view it as a way to insure objectivity in the determination of obviousness rather than a requirement for employement. See for example MPEP 2141:
The "hypothetical 'person having ordinary skill in the art' to which the claimed subject matter pertains would, of necessity have the capability of understanding the scientific and engineering principles applicable to the pertinent art." Ex parte Hiyamizu, 10 USPQ2d 1393, 1394 (Bd. Pat. App. & Inter. 1988) (The Board disagreed with the examiner's definition of one of ordinary skill in the art (a doctorate level engineer or scientist working at least 40 hours per week in semiconductor research or development), finding that the hypothetical person is not definable by way of credentials, and that the evidence in the application did not support the conclusion that such a person would require a doctorate or equivalent knowledge in science or engineering.).
The EFF strategy could very easily do more harm than good by strengthening the patents they are trying to invalidate. Except for a few special situations, only a fool challenges a patent using reexamination.
Reexamination is rarely used as an offensive strategy to attack a patent, because it usually works to the patent owner's advantage. When a patent is litigated in court, the patent is presumed to be valid over all prior art that the examiner has considered. This creates a very high hurdle for anyone challenging a patent. Once an examiner has considered a prior art reference, it is almost impossible to successfully use that reference in court to invalidate the patent.
In fact, it is very common for a patent owner to do extensive prior art searching and then request reexamination before asserting the patent in court. The patent owner wants to "knock-out" all prior art that the defendant might be able to use to attack the patent.
Probably the only way to make reexamination attractive is to eliminate the presumption of validity. But that doctrine is firmly established in U.S. patent law and isn't likely to change anytime soon.