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Dell Infringes on Patent by Selling Overseas?
senior.wrangler writes "Looks like new evidence that the U.S. Patent Office is hiring monkeys to bulk-approve new patents. DE Technologies has been granted a patent covering international transactions handled over the computer. Here's a quote from their web site:
With patent coverage securing 80% of the world 's trading markets, DE Technologies is securing licensing arrangements with international trading participants. Kinda creepy, if you ask me."
I remember hearing that some computer store was taking orders over their dial-up BBS in the 1980s. I don't see any technical reason that such a setup couldn't have been used from long-distance dialup from another country to perform a transaction via computer.
How about Interac (direct payment) machines? I know I've been able to use my Canadian debit card in the US long before Amazon became big. I think that qualifies as an international transaction via computer as well.
How can anyone take this out-of-work patent attorney loser seriously? His patent is lame, his business model is lame and even his website is totally lame....NICE JPEG JIGSAW PUZZLE YA DUMB TURD! That "1996 school of WWW design techniques" screams "innovative" about as loudly as your stupid patent.
* I want to patent sales in general. It was my idea to sell stuff.*
no no, it doesn't work that way.
you take something obvious, like opening a car door. then you add to that computer, digital and network.
so the patent you're going to file for would be "Opening car door using digital computer network", then you sue car companies for using digital authentication/key systems in their car keys/door openers.
or another one, writing an essay.
to that you add computer, digital and network.
this time the patent would be for writing literature works over a network of digital computers. THEN YOU SUE SLASHDOT!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I find it amazing (I guess I shouldn't) that we are seeing all of this commentry, but as of yet no reference to the actual patent.
As far as I can see the article does not mention it.
Does anyone have a reference to it so we can actually discuss this sensibly, or would we all prefer to keep shooting off our mouths in ignoarnce of the actual issue?
I am of the mindset that a computer is simply a tool with which to do things I normally couldn't do.... like compute primes faster than my monkey brain could ever hope to...
A car also lets me do things I normally couldn't do (like move in 3d space at a rate of 60mph)...
Is someone going to patent the idea of me driving my car so that I may get to work on time? The logic is the same IMHO....
They made one mistake; they started their lawsuit strategy with Dell. Traditional practice is to sue the little guys first to build up some resources and set some precedent, then go after the big guys. Dell can (and probably will) keep this lawsuit dragging on for years, and they'll probably win in the end.
Clearly you have the patent number? I looked at the article and found no mention of an actual patent - only the assertion that one exists. Of course, this is an obscenely irresponsible method of journalism since every issued patent is published and available on the internet.
It's quite obvious that unless someone can provide the patent number, any discussion here epitomizes uninformed bullshit. Of course, I could search for the patent, but I would have no idea of knowing if what I found would be the patent actually being used in litigation.
So, do you have the patent number? I'm interested in reading the patent myself.
So cheer on the next time you hear about a really stupid, indefensible patent, and think to yourself "We're one step closer to making the whole thing so stupid that it will have to be scrapped."
When I was at Palm, they paid us bonuses for filing for patents, and then extra bonuses for getting the patents. My name is on the patent for the web based calendar. How stupid is that? Apparently not stupid enough. A year later I got a patent for pretty much the same damn thing -- a method of scheduling events over the web. Now when I was doing this, I just wanted the $$$ Palm was paying me to think up stupid ideas, which they would then patent. Then after I left Palm, I felt guilty I had given them all these patents they might use to stifle innovators (namely me). But now I cheer! Because those patents are so dumb that they will fail under challenge, and as more and more patnets fail under challenge, things will start to get better.
Want to help? Apply for more and more stupid patents. See what it takes to get a patent rejected. Break the system.
As an aside, we also just got threatened by Acacia for streaming oggs. Honestly...where DO these people get the balls...
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
I like this quote by them, "What an insult to call it a business process. To this day no one has been able to duplicate this design." -- sounds like someone has a chip on their shoulder.
You just voted in a government that is the one government singularly unwilling to do anything about this problem. If you think Bush and Cheney and co will do one single thing to change the patent system that gives them huge kickbacks, you are dreaming. Expect nothing, absolutely nothing to be done about this for the next 4 years.
The general criteria for a patent is that it must be novel, not obvious to those working in the same field, and of practical use. Looking at the patent, it violates the 'not obvious' part of the criteria. It seems to be saying that it's not obvious to string together all the functions that would be needed to do business internationally over the internet.
Rather than get defensive, how about dealing with the basic issue which is that granting a patent on an obvious process is rather silly. In the case of this lawsuit, unless DE Tech can show that Dell is actually using their exact process and didn't develop it independently, I'd say they're screwed since that will prove it is obvious. Hell, if Dell has been conducting international transactions online since before the patent was issued in 2002, it seems that DE Tech has a problem as well.
The thing that blows me away about these 'patent-pending' articles is that whether there is prior art is irrelevant; the point is that no-one should be able to have a mandated monopoly on a practice/method/etc that is trivial or self-evident, prior art or no. The patent system is supposed to foster innovation, but is being abused in the worst possible way. The current system encourages valid (if you assume a little competency in the USPTO) but meaningless patents that do nothing but stifle innovation. Thank God, today as yesterday, I don't live in the US.
That is not so. One man can dig up only so many references, precedents and prior cases... and a team of lawyers, with assistants of all sorts, can just flood him with precedents and he won't be able to rebut most of them. Lawyers team up not because they want to divide the spoils but because it makes their case stronger.
The patent is supposedly #6,460,020. The problem with it is that it is totally obvious even to a high school dropout. Here is the first claim:
The rest of the claims are further minor tweaks on this same theme.
Here is my assessment of these steps in their transaction process: (a) duh (b) duh (c) duh duh (d) duh duh duh duh (e) duh (f) duh (g) duh (h) duh.
Is there any possible way to implement an "international" purchase that doesn't require all those steps? Is there anything innovative at all in those claims? No, because everything there is totally OBVIOUS.
The idea of the government granting a 20-year monopoly on this set of steps is utterly absurd.
After reading through this, it seems clear that the actual software should receive copyright protection, but not necessarily patent protection. The basic problem is still that the issuance of the patent presumes that integrating all this is non-obvious, which is debatable. While the patent office might have thought it was, this is the type of problem computers were made to solve so by the very nature of computing it seems obvious.
I think the point was that any system that cannot see the obviousness in the above steps is either broken or being run by monkeys*. I don't need to know the wording and interpretaion of the legislation to deduce that - the granting of the patent proves this from first principles.
* NB I don't have any personal knowledge of which it is, but anything that produces results like that has got to be due to either bad systems or bad people.
This sig all sigs devours
Yes, but the devil is in the detail.
The summary is just a summary. To actually find if you're violating the patent, you need to look at the claims. It's a shame the summary and the detail both failed to give the patent number.
I would guess that if you took the time to try to find a publication dated prior to December 30, 1996 (the priority date of this application) that proves that this concept was obvious or previously existed you would find it an annoyingly difficult task.
And if that is what is truly necessary then you are just proving the parent poster's point about the monkeys. The basic steps listed in the patent have been done by people for decades if not centuries. Just following along the same steps on a general purpose programable computer is not an invention, it's what computers are for. The first guy who just happened to own both a microwave and a cold piece of pizza shouldn't automatically get a pantent on "heating up pizza in a microwave"... not even if he writes down every little half step involved in the process of opening the pizza box. The first CPA to get their hands on an electronic calculator didn't deserve a patent on "A system of prepairing taxes using an electronic calculator" because that was an obvious thing for a person with that problem to do with that tool. I've been waiting for my flying car since at least the 70s and now it looks like the first guy to get one is going to patent every possible use one might make of a flying car and no one else will be able to actually go anywhere in one without violating a patent.
The basic problem is still that the issuance of the patent presumes that integrating all this is non-obvious, which is debatable.
Furthermore, within the position paper itself, they assert "These questions relate generally to the false premise that the patent covers the simple automation of an old process on conducting international trade." Then later they claim clients can "turn to a software system and have all the necessary tasks efficiently performed" as the novelty of their patent claim. This fails to adequately refute the counter-claim that they are claiming novelty by merely automating existing processes. Reading through the patent filing, I still fail to see how this is novel. The import-export and shipping businesses are horrendously inefficient; that's a business condition, not a patentable insight.
Useful? Without a doubt. Automation of existing manual or unintegrated automated processes is always a productivity enhancer. But it fails the novelty test because they have conflated the tediousness of implementing complex regulatory-induced processes with unique insight. If this is patentable, Fred Smith could have patented FedEx, and innumerable other business opportunities capitalized by entrepreneurs every year predicated upon performing existing tasks more efficiently can also be patented.
This is an abuse of the patent system, plain and simple. I hope their patent is revoked and they're sued into oblivion. They could have made a killing just building the system and maintaining compliance with the constantly changing regulatory and pricing environments, and offering a mass-production version of import-export services (and an outsourcing option for large companies that currently internally manage import-export issues). Trying to patent this however, is just plain folly, because it raises the ire of the large companies that already do this internally, and could have been their outsourcing client pool.