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USPTO Issues Email Address Patent to Microsoft
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted U.S. patent no. 6,895,426 for treating electronic mail addresses as objects, which Microsoft notes allows email addresses to be easily added to a contact list, copied to the computer's clipboard, or double-clicked to open the related contact information for that email address sender. After the reaction to news of his first patent, betcha inventor Dan Crevier isn't too eager to let folks know about this one."
This is complete and utter nonsense. E-Mail has been around longer than Microsoft (at least in DoD).
Because the USPTO has a right to issue patents, this kind of action could not succeed. My understanding is that the laws that enable them to issue patents do not require them to ascertain that the patent isn't for something ridiculously trivial like this one, therefore they have performed their duty as described in relevant laws and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Except bring political pressure against it. Have you talked to your political representatives at every possible level of government and asked them to do something about this problem?
I can't figure out what is worse - the idiots at the US Patent Office who allow this, or the M$ A**HOLES who actively pursue this sort of drivel.
Apple would be just as bad if they were in Microsoft's position.
About that patent reform... Isn't it about time? The lamebrains behind awarding patents must really not understand these things. I remember when a person had to spend weeks or months proving that they should get a patent and that it's valid. Now i think they employ a bunch of 6th graders to stand around and stamp reams of applications with "Awarded" or something...
People have a lot of theories for why bad patents are granted. In reality, it's a bunch of different problems combined. I've dealt with a few trademarks and I've been involved in some patent review talks. Here's my IANAL take on some of what's involved:
There's a company out there called M-CAM that does IP valuation - in other words they can tell you if what you have is a bogus patent worth nothing that shouldn't have been granted, or if you've got something that is fundamentally innovative. I saw a presentation a while back from the guy who runs the company, and they really get it. (The presentation started off by likening bogus patents to counterfeit money, particularly since companies use these patents to inflate perceptions of their valuation when sold)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
What about judicial review?
Xenu loves you!
"Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company"
That's BS. Let's assume that a company admits the patent system is screwed, so it obtains patents for defense. That makes no sense unless it is also working to change the current patent system so defensive patents are NOT necessary.
Obviously because Microsoft is not working to fix the current system, it is using these patents for offensive means, not defensive means.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Wow, that may be the craziest post of the hour for slashdot! Congrats! http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8& q=sue+court+federal+government&btnG=Search+News
A couple of other things to keep in mind about the USPTO - this doesn't in any way excuse their behavior, but makes it at least somewhat understandable. First, this was filed in 2000, so the examination about its merit probably happened a long time ago. Whatever standards the USPTO has now for examination of these patents, they didn't have standards even that high at the time this thing was being seriously considered.
There are also quite a few claims with some specificity in them, which might have led the USPTO to think this was a new idea. One problem with these "obvious" ideas is that if it's really obvious, no one ever publishes anything on it, which lends credence to the claim it's a new idea. After all, if it wasn't a new idea, wouldn't someone have written about it?
Keep in mind also that a patent is frequently used as a defensive mechanism. There's a difference between having a patent with the claims that they have attached, and having something that will lead to a successful suit in open court against an infringing party. Sometimes though just the threat of an expensive lawsuit is enough to get people to back down.
My guess though would be that this is so widespread, MS probably patented it to prevent someone else from doing the same and then beating them over the head with the patent.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
...he gets a barrage of posts criticizing him for stifling innovation, and instead of addressing them, he closes the thread. Yes, yes, I'm well aware it's his blog, and if he doesn't want to play, he' s well within his rights to close the thread...just like that kid who would always take his ball and go home when the game didn't go his way...
Actually, what would anyone expect him do do? Arguing the current patent system is as bad or worse than arguing religion. There are good and bad points to both sides of the argument and nothing anyone says could possibly sway the other side's opinion. Especially when their opinion is strong enough to cause them to take the time out of their day to bitch slap someone on their blog...
That being said, I'm sure Dan doesn't want to sit there and get flamed all day... or waste his time getting into a religious argument. The only thing defending himself would do would be to invite more flames... Really, I can't blame him for closing the discussion...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
That being said, I'm sure Dan doesn't want to sit there and get flamed all day
Well, then perhaps he shouldn't have boasted about his new patent on his blog, and invited others to respond. I'm sure he would have kept the blog open if all the conversation was mindless adulation for his cleverness (which it looks like he was expecting), but since he got a little heat, he just shut down and ran.
As to what I expect him to do...I expect him to follow through. If you're going to open a discussion, don't shut it down because things aren't going your way. Heck...he didn't even have to post anymore if he didn't feel like it, but killing the thread is just plain cowardly.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Well it does say "In a preferred embodiment... {blah, blah, obvious stuff about user interface}". If you were Microsoft trying to make a buck off of this patent, do you honestly think they would limit their lawsuits to applications that exactly implemented the user interface decisions described in the patent?
Back the question of objects, wouldn't any patent that begins "blah, blah, treat X as objects" be invalidated because of prior art due to the existance of pure OO languages like Smalltalk. I mean if there has ever been an email client implementated in Smalltalk or other OO language wouldn't the email address be treated as objects by the definition of that language?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
or_maybe_like_this?
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
The patent's about tagging the origin of an email address and altering the display of that email address based on the origin of the email address - if the email address came from the address book it looks one way if it comes from the internet it looks differently.
Trivial. Seriously.
"Check the address against all entries in the address book. If it's there, underline it. If it's not, italicize it."
I'm not aware of prior art in this one - do you know of an email client that visually differentiated between internet based email addresses and ones from the address book?
Remember, kids: just because you do something first, doesn't mean that it deserves a patent.
"Keep in mind also that a patent is frequently used as a defensive mechanism. There's a difference between having a patent with the claims that they have attached, and having something that will lead to a successful suit in open court against an infringing party. Sometimes though just the threat of an expensive lawsuit is enough to get people to back down.
Do you care to explain how using the threat of an expensive lawsuit is a defensive action. The way I see it is a very offensive action to bypass the law system using economical power.
Rethinking email
Well, then perhaps he shouldn't have boasted about his new patent on his blog, and invited others to respond. I'm sure he would have kept the blog open if all the conversation was mindless adulation for his cleverness (which it looks like he was expecting), but since he got a little heat, he just shut down and ran.
Yeah, perhaps he shouldn't have, but as you pointed out, I don't think he was expecting to get flamed for it either. I'm sure we've all done something we've perceived as a personal achievement and sought recognition and congratulations from our peers only to be less than enthusiastically received (I know I have...). They knock you down a few pegs and you want to crawl under a rock for a while...
Granted, a public forum probably wasn't the best place to boast. However, I would think it reasonable for him, since it is his blog, to expect that most (surely not all) people reading his blog are his peers (or atleast people who think like he does) and he would receive a warm reception. It's not like he posted it to Slashdot...
As for not following through, he wasn't planning on getting into the religious argument in the first place. He post wasn't "Hey, software patents kick ass and here's why...". He was just looking for a pat on the back from his peers...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
The USPTO didn't officially start granting software patents until 1996. As we all know, software patents were getting granted before that. The trick? Just claim a mthod for doing something that can be run on a computer. It's a smarter way to file anyway, because it prevents people from getting around a pure software patent by implementing something solely in hardware, or even manually.
As for doing away with all method patents, most patents have some method attached to them. Patent holders generally don't create that many new physical devices. (And most of those get design patents, not utility patents). Most of the new inventions are processes. The United States is no longer a manufacturing powerhouse, we don't make that many tangible goods, we create ideas. Doing away with method patents would also create a disincentive for people to improve how things are made. Got a cheaper way to make solar cells? If you can't patent the method, you just keep it secret. If it were patented, people could use the idea after 20 years, when the patent expires. With no patent, the idea may never get into the public domain.
The GPP should be modded down as "troll" or "flamebait" because, COPYRIGHTS are not PATENTS!! Bitching about the "Hypocracy" of GPL defenders in another article about patents doesn't add a lot to the conversation. But, to be honest, either does this post so I'll shut up now.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Well, I endorse the sentiment, but your view of business is not how business views itself.
First approximation:
Businesses aren't there to fix society's problems. They are there to make a buck for the stockholder.
Second approximation:
OK, that's not completely true: we as a society grant them incorporation and all its benefits because as a side effect they do solve a lot of society's problems. Hunger is not wiped out in the US, but all the hunger than can be wiped out by the profit motive is, which it turns out is a lot more than a 100% government driven system has ever been able to accomplish.
SO:
Corporations, from their own internal viewpoint, are machines that exist to generate profit. They do this in a framework of laws and regulations and norms that we as a society fix with an aim to maximizing the public good of their work.
If that framework incents them to damage the public good, then righteous indignation only takes us so far. Energy is better directed at reforming the framework. Unfortunately, this means politics, but there you have it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Um. Where is innovation happening these days? More and more, it's moving to places where there is less respect for intellectual property laws, not to places where there is more. The U.S. is the bastion of IP protection. In ten years, it's quite possible that there will be no innovation going on here - we will have to move to other countries in order to work.
When you talk about where innovation happens, remember that most of the really amazing breakthroughs in computer science happened _before_ software patents were legalized. Have you ever read Knuth, or read old JACM issues from the sixties and seventies? Stuff like that would get patented now, and would never make it into a journal at all - the first we'd hear about it was when the owner of the patent sued someone who'd invented it independently.
You could argue, in fact, that since software patents were legalized, the software field has been fighting a losing battle to continue to innovate, and that slowly but surely, the we are being dragged under.
The idea is that there is some kind of great risk that if I come up with a cool idea, and implement a really nice application on top of it, I won't be able to make a profit because my competitors will just look at what I did and copy it. The reality, though, is that if you give me a patent, I won't bother to make my app cool - I'll just do the minimal thing I need to to exploit the patent, and then charge whatever the captive market will bear.
Result: hardly anyone will be able to afford my app, and those who can afford it will be getting a really crappy app, because I have no incentive to spend money making the app easy to use, reliable, et cetera - my customers are trapped, for longer than the forseeable life of my company, so why should I bother? The incentive system right now is ass-backwards.
. . . the patent in question here, it has a single independent claim. It consists of 11 unconditional sub-clauses and 1 series of conditional sub-clauses with 6 options. So to violate this patent a system would have to perform all of the actions in those 11 sub-clauses and at least one of the actions in the conditional sub-clause.
There's the rub. When you see a patent with a claim this narrow, you can bet that the USPTO kicked the applicant's butt. MS would never have put all that stuff in the claim if it didn't have to.
This patent is useless as an offensive weapon. It is only useful as prior art to some later, broader, stupider patent.
YIAAPLBIANYPL. GYODPL. YMNO.
can't we hold the USPTO responsible for issuing patents for which there is BLATANT prior art?
Have you ever tried to sue the Federal Government before? Try it and see how far you get and don't forget that these agencies have the power to make your life miserable while your case winds its way to defeat through the courts.
If you read the patent, it could be interpreted as something innovative, until you start looking at the examples of how it's meant to be used.
Correct. Now, I'd imagine that the innovation tagged by use of the phrase "...on the internet" will be replaced by "...as an object". What absurdity. What companies have started doing is disecting broad areas of knowledge/application, and staking claim to individual pieces. In this case, "...as an object" is exceedingly trivial to anyone even mildly familiar with object-oriented programming...ANYTHING can be an object. And to think that having an icon to denote some kind of state, or classification is something new or innovative....
Errors like this really should have been corrected before the patent was granted, and this indicates that there has been spent too little time examining the patent.
This is not just a grammar error somewhere in the patent. It is a grammar error in the only independent claim of the patent. Without the sentence that contains this grammar error the entire patent would be useless in court (and would probably not have been granted).
Nonsense. Some copyright protection schemes make making a backup copy (almost) impossible. So they are taking rights away, and as a consumer you don't have a change in court because you're bankrupt long before the MPAA/RIAA runs out of money.
No, they do not say you're not allowed to make backup copies - however, they make it technologically almost impossible to make that backup copy. And if you circumvent the anti-copy system, then the MPAA/RIAA will throw the DMCA at you.
Making a backup copy is fair use, but if you're not a geek, then some anti-copy systems will prevent you from making that backup copy; and if you're a geek who can and does circumvent, then they'll hit you with the DMCA.
There are good points? Like what? Defending inventor's rights? Ummm no.. quite the contrary the fact they will grant a patent to most non novel ideas with or without priror art simply makes for an easier legal challenge. More lawyers, time money wins... Patents are becoming worthless (or worth 10 hours of a lawyers time) under the current review process. Letting ideas eventually reach the public domain? And what about when a couple of companies gang up to extend a patent well beyond it's expiration date ( see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AF01 8-31CA-1FFB-B1CA83414B7F0000 )
So please tell me what the USPTO is doing that is worthwhile. Seriously.
=======
Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
His blog is not your public playplace.
By initially allowing responses to his post, that's exactly what he made it.
Some of the posts he had could be likened to vandalism on private property.
Wrong. In effect, he handed out cans of spray paint to everyone and encouraged them to write their thoughts. It was only after he found that some of those thoughts were not fully complimentary to him that he squealed 'vandalism' and knocked the spray cans out of everyone's hands.
If he didn't want people posting their opinions, he shouldn't have started the thread in the first place. Period.
I guess he knows that now...why is it so difficult for you to grasp?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If I can ignore the copyrights of the MPAA/RIAA/EULA and use their material as I see fit, then by the same token, I should be able to ignore the GPL and use the code any way I see fit, including using it in a piece of commercial code without making my code GPL as well. Because the MPAA/RIAA/EULA defines in which ways that you are allowed to copy copyrighted material...
For the most part, your copyright-RIAA-MPAA-GPL analogy is pretty good, but it completely misses the mark in adding EULA to the list. Copyrights, the GPL, etc. all deal with who is allowed to make duplicates of a copyrighted work, and under what conditions. The default is "you can't copy copyrighted works", but content creators can then loosen this a bit by stipulating "unless you pay me a lot of money", "unless you distribute the source code too" or whatever appeals to them.
A EULA, on the other hand, tries to define under what conditions you can USE a particular work. Rather than specifying a set of exceptions to the powers the creator has under the law, a EULA is an attempt to grab additional powers over and above what copyright grants, typically by holding a piece of software a user has already bought and paid for hostage and not letting it run until the user "agrees" to a bunch of unilaterally dictated conditions that were never part of the purchase agreement. These demands don't necessarily deal with copying, as copyright does, but make crazy stipulations like "you can't look at how this works", "you must use this only on platform such-and-such", "you can't sell this when you're done with it" and so on.
I think much of what is wrong with America today is because so many people busy at their vocation don't work too many hours, then crawl into the cave they call home and never really notice a lot of these issues until they directly affect them, or they do, but they are too tired to care. A lot of apathy is simply lack of time or energy to do more than make a living and then relax. This guy invited folks into what he thought was his safe cave to have a poke at him.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest