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Xybernaut Patents Collar Computer
igargoyle writes "Wearable Computer manufacturer, Xybernaut, has encouraged the kludge that is the patent office by patenting collar based wearable computers. Besides being extremely vague, the whole thing sounds likes the Slashdot article, 'A Linux Machine For Your Collar.' There are many references to this idea, and computer collars have been used as nomadic radios and animal tracking devices before. Please help encourage this company to stop wasting taxpayer's money and encourage innovation instead of preventing it."
Please help encourage this company to stop wasting taxpayer's money and encourage innovation instead of preventing it.
This comes with a link to Xybernaut.
Now, I still do not understand how this company is evil and wasting public money if the submitter cannot even qualify their product better than "vague".
What is it ?
A wearable computer which is being patented.
We know that patents are evil but why is this one even more evil ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The patent office's dubious practices don't cost us anything now. They're actually profitable. It's just the long term consequences for innnovation that worrying.
-sd
To quote the article
involves a wearable computer having computer components movably located in a collar (such as that of a garment) that the user wears around his or her neck. The computer component(s) can be a display, monitor, a microphone or audio headset
Which is even more stupid than previously thought.
Before you reply, please read the patent file.
IANAL, but wouldn't these jackets made by Levi's & Philips, from 2001, count as prior art?
I believe that this is exactly the same as James Dyson combining the large industrial vortexes which are used to get dust out of factories and a standard vaccum cleaner. He was given worldwide patents and you don't see many slashdotters complaining about this...
PS. I'm against patents being granted for both
Right... the patent office has basically stopped screening patents in an effort to reduce costs. I've had a patent lawyer explain this to me, basically the USPTO office got sick of paying for detailed review of the ever increasing number of patent submissions. The unwritten protocol now is that almost anything goes and the review process essentially occurs if/when the case goes to court. In other words they want the companies to pay for the cost of review in the form of lawyers -only- if the claims in the patent are contested. If no one is going to contest the patent, why spend money reviewing? Its a sort of innocent until proven guilty approach with respect to prior art. Just because a patent is granted nowadays does not mean the claims were valid, it basically means they followed procedure properly.
I work as a patent examiner, and if that was the case my quota would be so easy.
I personally allow less than 6% of the cases that go accross my desk.
The office doesnt have enough funds to hire more examiners as the funds are being diverted.
actually no
0 04 0202.asp
http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2004/2
examiners don't get paid by the claim, they get paid by the disposal and first action, so a case with 10 claims counts as much towards one's quota as a case with 500
the new fee structure was imposed to actually reduce the number of claims, by having larger numbers of claims cost signifgantly more, thus reducing examiner workload
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
You laugh, but this has been done. Not with a computer, but with a wire tap. Pick up a Newton's Telecom Dictionary and look up "Bikini Transmitter".
Better yet, I have one here. I'll read it to you:
"The Bikini Transmitter is a body wire developed for a special surveillance project. Law Enforcement professionals needed to secretly record a conversation between a suspect and a female agent. The suspect insisted the meeting take place at a topless beach. An audio transmitter was sewn into a string bikini with the antenna threaded through the string. The largest component, the battery, was carried, uh...internally. It is not known whether the transmitter was waterproof."
Now, get to patenting! Chop chop!