Slashdot Mirror
BountyQuest CEO Patenting Lighting Toilet Water
theodp writes "Charles Cella, CEO of the widely-hyped Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly funded patent reform vehicle BountyQuest, has filed for a number of patents since BountyQuest's demise, including one that covers illuminating water in a toilet bowl (see FIG. 7). Cella's co-inventors include principals of Color Kinetics, which has come under fire for strong-arm patent tactics and whose Board colorfully likens its IP to nuclear weapons."
Bah!
When I was young, we used to chug a pitcher of Plutonium and really light up the bowl.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
I think they can have that patent
I already illuminate toilet water, naturally. On the other hand, maybe my microwave needs to be fixed.
This guy is full of
shit
Have a read down the list below. If this patent is granted, we will all be
taking dumps in the dark.
The items in question:
57. A method of providing illumination for a toilet, comprising: providing a
light system with a plurality of LEDs and a processor for controlling a color of
light from the LEDs; and disposing the light system in connection with a toilet.
58. A method of claim 57, wherein disposing the light system comprises disposing
it on the seat of the toilet.
59. A method of claim 57, wherein disposing the light system comprises disposing
it in the toilet bowl.
60. A method of claim 57, wherein disposing the light system comprises disposing
it in a rack above the toilet bowl.
61. A method of claim 57, wherein disposing the light system comprises disposing
it in connection with an odor control facility.
62. A system for providing illumination for a toilet, comprising: a light system
with a plurality of LEDs and a processor for controlling a color of light from
the LEDs; and a toilet, wherein the light system is disposed to illuminate a
portion of the toilet.
63. A system of claim 63, wherein the light system is disposed on the seat of
the toilet.
64. A system of claim 63, wherein the light system is disposed in the toilet
bowl.
65. A system of claim 63, wherein the light system is disposed in a rack above
the toilet bowl.
66. A system of claim 63, wherein the light system is disposed in connection
with an odor control facility.
Investigate Rumsfeld, Tenet for Torture
I'd like to see the patent you're talking about, but even without seeing it, prior art would make it ludicrous to try to enforce.
Got the patent #?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Is this him trying to get an utterly absurd patent to forward the cause of patent reform, or is he just the sort of whore who would take a CEO position at a patent-reforming company, then start patenting willy-nilly when it went belly up?
for all those who think that the sun shines out of their backside ...
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
Is persistantly glowing toilet water, so when that Charles Cella goes in and drops that big brick (that he's so full of) and water splashes his undercarriage, he can walk around with a glowing backside!
I filed a patent for turning the lighted water in a toilet bowl yellow.
What kind of stupid moron thinks this patent is worth the paper its written on? Is there a large market for lighted toilet water? What kind of competition is out there?
Yet another stupid patenting case. It's all getting pretty monotonous.
What we really need is a patent that *hurt*. Nothing will get rid of this ridiculous system, until we find a way to grab the legislators in the balls.
Maybe we need to play dirty. We need patents that compromise the US's national defense. Patents that prevent the IRS from doing its job. Patents that hurt lawyers, and politicians, and people in charge of the system who have no idea what they are doing.
I like pictures. Now while I can go to the site, no pictures show up. Anyone got a mirror somewhere?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
...so long as he doesn't infringe my patent on Improvement in Method of Leaving Things Well Enough Alone.
Or is it just a bunch of blue-skying about lighting things up?
I think this is the sort of patent Justice Bradley described as the "foam" of the "advancing wave of improvement".
1) People like things lit
2) There's lots of ways of lighting things now.
3) Here, we'll broadly patent lighting up a whole bunch of things.
4) PROFIT
Though I think the "inventor" must have been forced at gunpoint to write this patent... consider the line "Example: as your tidy bowl reached the terrifying point of not flooding the sewer lines with chlorine at every flush, your tiny tricolor LED would pulse RED hues to alert you."
Just try patenting the illumination of plumbing fixtures. I work for a lighting company. One of our main clients is a plumbing fixture manufacturer whose name begins with K.
We light commodes, suanas, showers, baths, and faucets all day long, and we won't stop anytime soon.
See you at the National Homebuilders Show.
(FYI, colors you will never see in our displays illuminating commodes or tubs: yellow or red. Think about it.)
If he has a patent on lighting toilet water and I have lights in my swimming pool... does that mean I can be sued if I pee in my pool?
Oh wait, prior art. I did that twenty five years ago. *Whew*
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
This shit is very illuminating!
You can't handle the truth.
It attached to the seat lid and shined a light into the bowl to provide a "lights out" target for stand-up pee-ers to aim at.
I saw this at least 5 years ago.
Also, Japan is so far ahead of the US for toliet automation -they haves seats/toliets that have lights, sprayed perfumes, measure blood pressure, urine sugar, fecal blood, spray water on your ass after you're done, etc, etc, etc.
Sorry but it looks like he's trying to make all case modders pay him on his patent.
The glowing toilet crap is just that, crap. And about as likely to sell.
But, from what I read, "All your case mods are belong to him."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...lighting a fart?
Unless someone claims prior (f)art??!!
Sorry.
AT&ROFLMAO
i almost choked on my coffee when i first read that headline... a "lightning toilet"?
behold the flush of god!
Lighting toilet water ? Patenting it ? America truly leads the world in innovation.
Bring on the Vogon construction fleets. Truly our species no longer has any worth.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
That would have been a shocking development. Is there a massive crack problem in the patent office? It's like Eric Idle on SNL talking about how the USA has been using the English language without paying any royalites.
So that's what backlit Taco Bell-and-coffee-induced diarrhea looks like...
Just what the world needs, a better lighting on our turds.
Brilliant.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Why would anyone want to illuminate the poo floating or sunken in toilet bowl water? Is this guy patenting this for sake of doing it?
FYI, most poo is brown (depending on your diet and health) and emits low molecular weight volatile organic compounds (this is why you smell it). I don't need to see it in the dark in the middle of the night. The next thing you know, they'll attach a linux cluster to it with sensors and cataloging every loaf-pinching session for monitoring your health, nutrient uptake, excretory efficiency rating, etc... Then when you're sick, the toilet can forward all the data to the doctors at the hospital.
"Yup Mr. Smith, it's right here in your toilet's log, your daily intake of fiber decreased over a 7 month period. We recommend that you buy 42 coconuts with the soft fiberous shell intact, and eat the shreaded fiber for one week. This will remove all of the undigested red meat that is obstructing your bowels."
Worse yet, I actually took the (wasted) time to write this scenerio.
BountyQuest? I've been waiting for a new series from Sierra, maker of King's Quest and Space Quest!
look at the ingredients they intend to illuminate... i hope it's not all together...
6. A method of claim 5(container contains a fluid), wherein the fluid is selected from the group consisting of water, ammonia, bleach, window cleaner, insect repellant, insect killer, lotion, soap, liquid soap, kitchen cleaner, bathroom cleaner, shaving gel, cleaning fluid, lighter fluid, furniture polish, wood treatment, paint, primer, drain cleaner, disinfectant, room deodorizer, carpet deodorizer, room scent, perfume, cologne, shaving foam, toilet cleaner, aerosol, skin care fluid, suntan lotion, shampoo, surface cleaner, and liquid wax.
12. A method of claim 1(lighting a product), wherein the household product is selected from the group consisting of a pencil, a pen, a fork, a knife, a spoon, a kitchen utensil, a whisk, a broom, a bottle, a glass, a mug, a coffee maker, a toothpaste tube, a dispenser, a shampoo bottle, a soap holder, a razor, an electric razor, a hair dryer, a picture frame, a marker, a jar, a makeup facility, a perfume dispenser, a brush, a lipstick, and a candle.
IMHO the USPTO is giving out too many highly specific applications patents. maybe if i specify that my lighting system only illuminates the "toiletbowl-bound stream of urine just before surface impact, thereby creating a firework like display" i'll get a patent for lighting a toiletbowl too! then i can sue anyone who turns the light on to pee!
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
It looks as if Color Kinetics is about to have much, if not all, of their IP portfolio ruled invalid because of a plethora of existing prior art from as far back as the 1970's. All of this has come to light (no pun intended) after their lawsuit with Super Vision International. With that in mind, I don't now how to take this one. Is this a stupid patent that just injures Color Kinetics IP case more, or are they serious? Wouldn't the existing LED based technology that is used to illuminate pools be considered prior art, i.e. the Boca Flash products?
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
LEDs emit light, directly or indirectly, only on a few narrow wavelengths. Therefore unless you're looking for just those few colors you're going to have to do mixing of multiple LEDs to get intermediate shades.
Complicating things further is that not all wavelengths are emitted equally strongly, and also that the human eye doesn't perceive all color equally strongly. This isn't a case of RGB, or CMY, it's a few off-variations of differing intensities.
Therefore to produce a specific shade, say Corporate Logo Color, Pantone #22578, isn't a no-brainer. The same is true for visually smoothly fading from shade to shade, it's not just a matter of turning down Bank A and turning up Bank B. Instead some calculations need to take place to make it all look decent, and that is the space where Color Kinetics has got their patents.
BTW, for those interested, Color Kinetics makes a home product series, "Sauce". These are night-lights & light bulb replacements that can be set to strobe, flicker, cross-fade in different ranges, etc. They're pricey at US $10-20, are available at many toy stores, and tend to crap out after a year or two of use (the blue goes.)
I use mine in my bathroom as a ever cross-fading night light, also set to one shade or another on on an empty white living room wall to 'punch it up'. I've friends who use their's for mood lighting in their bedroom.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Apple already have a patent on gloving toilet chairs.
Only one thing for it. Can we patent the Justice System?
There, now you don't need to RTFA ;-)
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
and you can truly shed some light on a lot of crap.
Sorry.
if it is meant seriously or not. Of course the thing the /. poster caught about toilets is 1% of the total. It has some interesting ideas like lighting a bottle of wood stain so you can see the color and making spray from a spray can look like rainbows. But of course 99% silly and obvious, if LEDs and processors were cheap.. on the other hand if you are talking about lighting your house with such a processor and aimable leds or projectors (and I've been interested in the projector side for a while) then it is either a silly extension to prior art, or possibly even dangerous. As for toilets, it might be useful if you had a power outage but the toilet lit up the room. Also for checking urine color for medical data input, diabetic feedback, ketone check for dieting etc., of course this is already done, as is the cleansing function.. IIRC Japanese toilet bowls (some) have UV or other cleansing mechanisms, certainly they have LEDs in the armrest next to the toilet seat but nobody ever I think expressed that much interest in looking clearly into a toilet bowl in a dark room. I suppose the only useful purpose for which I could imagine wanting to use it is if someone got up in the middle of the night (I suppose more likely for females) and didn't turn on the bathroom light because it hurts the eyes, but then needs for sanitary reasons to be able to see what one is doing after finishing with business. A very low level light (LED) would be sufficient in that case, though it should come from overhead or the side (that "shelf" they mention?), not from inside the toilet bowl. Anyway this is a ridiculously broad patent and I don't see any actual invention, or reason why a processor or led is needed.
Probably because the "patent on patents" joke appears in every single patent discussion. Redundancy isn't limited to submission.
I also expect to see lots of "I patent using patents to get licensing fees". Always funny.
But semi-seriously, this thing will really take off once they get Billy Mays to sell it over an infomercial.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
I thought the article was refering to Vapoorizer.
I guess Slashdot would provide heaps of prior art for that!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Is this prior art? The bottom of the page says " Copyright © 1994-2005 mkp.net....". So it's been up since 1994 or at least from a few years. Although the site says illuminated toilet, not illuminated toilet *water*, it does seem like pretty much what the patent says. (Note: It's not exactly a complete implementation of illuminated toilet/water, but the idea is there on the webpage and that's all that matters.)
(Also note to the webmaster: sorry for slashdotting your site, dude.)
Color Kinetics has a long history of overly broad patent schemes. Some were so bad that a their competitors in the LED lighting field were forced to form an alliance to combat the CK's over-reaching patent strategies.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
PS : If you get into the "consistency" bit, you're in big, big trouble.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Wouldn't lightning toilet water be really dangerous?
http://www.aaplblog.com/ - News about Apple Inc.
I don't think I'd feel safe if I dropped the soap in that bathroom.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
of my intent to patent bioactive toilet bowl lighting and intent to register the trademark.
Psychedelic Toilet Zoo
PTZ for the marketing weasels.
Yes, you guessed it. Bio-engineered, bio-luminescent, zooplankton populated from a secondary waste reservoir, AKA they process cage,
will iluminate both waste and and art forms one may whish to incorporate into the bowl. As an added benefit, the low-flush bane of man, problem is errrr eliminated through recycling of a portion of previous flushes from said process cage.
Here is how it works.
Sensors detect the presence of solid or liquid waste to control a proportioning valve which directs an appropriate amount of waste from the discharge line to the prerocess cage. Ths is necessaryto maintain the proper nutrituinal components for the zooplankton which breed in the cage. A linux(or other OS) baded micro-controller keeps track of plankton health and nutrition levels.
In short. A flush feeds some fresh and some waste, in part to the cage and in part to the waste lines. Effluent levels are independent of inflow to afford a good volume for flushing while maintaining the legally imposed 1.6 gallon maximum fresh water flush threshold. Stirring the water by adding waste to the bowl activates zooplankton from the previous flush thereby illuminating the contents, art, or what have you with the fluid dynamics of the flush creating a burst of luminescent activity as ones waste departs.
Talks are planend with municipal planning professional organizations in hopes of obtaining government subsidies for the PTZ as the zooplankton eliminate much of the downstream waste processing load. Other benefits include more colorful streams and rivers, fatter whales, and tastier crabs.
Currently seeking first round funding. Only 6 positions available at the $US4million level. Missed out ong google, well here's your chance at redemption and the good feeling that comes from aiding the planet, the children, and art.
Whoops.
Gotta GO now.
Lawyers & politicians haven't been doing much new and innovative that might be stopped by patent. That's one of their many problems.
http://inventionshowcase.com/jlhome.htm
I get that anyway... although I probably drink waaay too much Guinness.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
How else could GI Joe avoid the shark?
Japan already has this kind of stuff
They didn't list UV light purification, but it is obvious they are going for "Toilet has home health station".
Don't worry. Robots never have any interest in abusing the orifices of innocent humans. Not even in Japan.
That's the tentacle demons' job, and their union is very touchy about demarcation issues and has high-level contacts with the yakuza.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Err...Mythbusters busted that myth. See the "Peeing on the third rail" episode. Apprarently, the urine stream is not solid, but rather made up of droplets after a certain distance. Informative!
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Do they expect someone to be inside trying to see something? Seriously gross man.
Count down to the first Tubgirl link 3.,. 2... 1...
After reading that I pictured the TV commercial that offers to help you patent your own ideas. When it shows the people holding up popular products screaming "That was my idea!"
That will be me now every time I light up the toilet bowl after a trip to Taco Bell.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
The guy's probably a quebecer. They always invert the "h" sound when talking english. It's hilarious! It's EElarious! EYE! MY NAME IS HHHHALEX. OW HARE YOU?
... that this is someone who is trying to point out just how ludicrous the US patent system is.
Free Firefox news reader.
Especially since infrared remote controls (at least since the 1970s) would never have used similar techniques to increase range by driving their LEDs with a pulse current significantly higher than the maximum sustained current (an idea which isn't reminiscent of the stroboscope -as opposed to the floodlight- either, of course)...
You take a little bracket (that costs 10 cents), and screw it to the seat. Then, you screw a flashlight to the other end of the bracket, pointing in the toilet.
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
I have prior art, thanks to grain alcohol and a devil may care attitude:
Toilet Water Colored a Brilliant Luminescent Orange-Red
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
This shit is very illuminating!
This is illuminating my very shit!
What did you want to go today? You can not miss!
MKP has prior art on his web site...
http://mkp.net/glo-loo.html
I got some glow in the dark paint and painted all the vertex's in my house from the Bedroom to the Bathroom (as well as all the lighswitches around the house). I had a perfect run to the toilet without having to turn the lights back on and be dazed by the light. Worked well, seeing all the edges of the walls, the skirting board, edges of the 2 steps down, one step up. Last remaining problem I had was the toilet itself. In my half awake state, I needed a way to tell if the toilet seat was up or down. Quick writing of 'DOWN' on the lid sorted that out. Was originally going to paint the toilet seat, but ended up paiting a thin line around the porcelain, as it gave a usefull target to aim for, if the glowing line was broken, then I was missing the spot, easy and quick to adjust so the noise of water being hit was heard.
Must admit, I did think a nightlight might of been a tag brighter, but I was trying to make it work without using any electricity at all.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Methods and systems for illuminating household products... From what I barely understand they want to iluminate the puff of arisol from a automatic air freshener with a variety of colors.
:)
Sounds like the kinda thing only chavs would buy
(seems the original poster wants to make 'household container' a toilet, when really it would be a very long strech, and a japanese company probably already holds a patent on lighting toilet bowls with various colors)
wasn't designed to be a big deal. It started out when Bezos and others were shining a flashlight down the toilet to see if they could find all that blown capital.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
Ah good, that makes me feel much safer! Just one question, what does the button on those toilets that seems to be marked "sterilize" do?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
As someone living in the UK, I find automated bathrooms very offputting. Even the (admittedly a good idea) IR sensors in public toilets in the US don't feature over here.
As for having my toilet know about my urine sugar, hell no. Start with patents and soon you'll have Microsoft involved.
Brings a whole new meaning to "Where do you want to go today?" doesn't it?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Someone better tell those people that make big LED colour jumbo-trons and dot-matrix scroll displays. Well as long as no-one has tried to stick theirs down a toilet they should be ok. BountyQuest should really have given a courtesy flush and checked the records first.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It amazes me on the stupid shit people patent.
What's a patent anyway, except for a law allowing someone to sue you over a thought that they probably didn't have?
From /.'s FAQ:
Redundant -- Redundant posts are ones which add no new information, but instead take up space with repeating information either in the Slashdot post, the attached links, or lots of previous comments. For instance, some posters cut and paste otherwise legitimate comments in multiple places in the same discussion; the pasted versions are Redundant.
Now, I can understand a moderation of offtopic/flamebait/troll, but redundant? Come on!
stop wasteing valuable ./ readers time. why get PO'ed on the same issues reoccureing. I mean come on there is an internet full of new and exciteing things to get mad at.
get irate every time we open Firefox
Goes in Guinness, comes out Budweiser.
OK so if you have a container in your house, with liquid, and a light, your breaking his copy right? Well If you use LEDs, just use xenon lights then.
Seriously this type of enlightened bullcrapp is a joke. Really bring out the seriousness of our patent system where as someone can actually patent this stuff. If current LEDs where available in the 70's prior art would have ruled this out.
This patent thing has gone way too far-nothing new, but when the tax paying dollars are going to verify these types of patents...any how I'm surprised they have patented the war on terrorism!
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
After this, look for his website - Lighted Pee Cams - patent pending - only w3 have reel pr0n...
How fucking lazy are you? This isn't hard to confirm.
Look it up before you get such a ridiculous "Prove it!" attitude!
As for international violations, they apply only where the patent has jurisdiction. The US government is free to violate french patents so long as they do so on American soil.
*Toilet plays music and shoots colorful fountains of water.*
Toilet: I am honored to accept your waste.
Homer: Whoa! They're years ahead of us.
Kids, watching TV: Hey look, Dad's on TV.
*Zipper noise.*
Kids, Marge: AAAAAHAHHHAHAH!
Anyways, we still haven't caught up with the East's clearly superior lavatory technology. Until then, I say, good luck!
"News for turds. Stuff that splatters."
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The patent is intended to be stupid and pointless. He's still trying to show why our IP laws and the patent system need to be fixed.
Anyone who infringes a patent is liable, even if he bought an infringing item or method from a vendor. The vendor is liable for contributory infringement. In practice, the inventor usually prefers to sue the vendor rather than pursue a huge number of customers whose liability will be quite small.
For an example of the patent holder pursuing the end user, look up the Solaia case.
Are such things actually available yet? The shortest wavelength LED I'd been able to find for sale thus far was, as I recall, around 340nm, and THEY were $50US each...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
About 9 years ago at Christmas I was staying with my family at a waterfront house on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. There was an ice storm and we lost electrical power. The house used an electric well pump so we had no water to flush toilets.
We went to the dock and scooped up water in 5 gallon plastic buckets, to be used to flush the toilets. My fiancee made an amazing discovery that evening in the bathroom. When she used the water from the bucket to flush the toilet, the toilet emitted a green glowing light!!
My fiancee was able to see this because we had no electricity and she was flushing the toilet in the dark using water collected from the cove.
We got all excited and tried to figure out what was happening. We took a bucket of water into a walk-in closet to make sure there was no outside light source and we found that if we stirred the water it would glow.
Completely amazing!! Later I found out that the glowing green light was caused by dino flagellate organisms in the water. Sometimes ships will stir these up and leave glowing green trails at night which can be seen from above.
UV light on my arse? great. now at worst I'll be growing cancerous lumps on my arse just because I needed to take a shit, at best I'll be damaging the skin on my arse. a tan is not fucking healthy, it is damaged skin.
Claim 1 sounds not unlike a light switch or an internal refrigerator light, using a generic definition of "processor".
1. A method of providing illumination (light) for a household product (wall), comprising: providing a light system (lamp) under the control of a processor (light switch + person) for providing illumination (light) of a selected color (white); and disposing the illumination system in proximity to the household product to light a feature of the household product (putting the lamp near a wall).
Don't like a wall being considered a household object? Fine, pick something else.