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USPTO Issues Provisional Storyline Patent
cheesedog writes "The USPTO will issue the first storyline patent in history today, with two others following in the next few months. Right to Create points out that this was anticipated several months ago in a story by Richard Stallman published in the The Guardian, UK. With the publication of this not-yet-granted patent, its author can begin requiring licensing fees for anyone whose activities might fall within its claims, including book authors, movie studies, television studios and broadcasters, etc. The claims appear to cover the literary elements of a story involving an ambitious high school student who applies for entrance to MIT and prays to remain sleeping until the acceptance letter comes, which doesn't happen for another 30 years."
RMS: If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written.
USPTO: Ooh, good idea!
Seriously, the US patent system is very broken, and it appears they are moving in a direction to expand, rather than contract, the amount of things that are patentable. They clearly have no care for whether the patents they grant are stifling innovation. Action is needed to reverse this, but I doubt we'll see it while Bush is still in power.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Hopefully someone will patent reality TV shows. I am rather sick of those.
Wait no, this wont work. You need to have a story to be able to patent it. Soon all that will be on the air is reality TV. Noooo!
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Claim 1: a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who is so shocked and enraged by the concept of patenting a storyline, that he "snaps" (see USPTO #12006213391)
Claim 2: a communication process according to claim 1, wherein said character subsequently goes to his bedroom, where he keeps a loaded Glock 32C, and racks the slide.
Claim 3: a communication process according to claims 1 and 2, wherein said character subsequently flies to DC and unloads his plastic fantasic on an unsuspecting USPTO in a singlular act of biblical fury.
Claim 4: a communication process according to claims 1 2, and 3, wherein said character subsequently returns to his hometown and has a slurpy, cosmic justice being served.
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
So y'all thought software patents were evil incarnate. Well it was only a matter of time until someone came along and made them look reasonable. And here it is.
This is so fucking depressing. Do Australians have to honour this patent within Australia? Did the government fuck us over with a treaty that makes it so any of our work falls under this god-forsaken piece of shit?
I don't know why they want to spend billions going to Mars... this planet is bizzare enough.
Get it right. Even the article does. These are patent applications that are being published because of a recent statutory change requiring publication of all patent applications 18 months after filing. This has nothing to do with whether or not letters patent will be granted.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
[wo]man vs. nature
[wo]man vs. [wo]man
[wo]man vs. the environment
[wo]man vs. machines/technology
[wo]man vs. the supernatural
[wo]man vs. self
[wo]man vs. god/religion
That pretty much covers everything.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
The system is now officially broken, and anyone who takes the USPTO seriously after today is part of the problem.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
... that's got to be the lamest story line I've ever heard.
Not to mention the fact that Rip Van Winkle, King Arthur, and Sleeping Beauty are all prior art.
Hrm.
Sleeping Beauty?
Maybe the worst part is what Disney is going to do to this guy...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Linked article title:
U.S. Patent Office Publishes the First Patent Application to Claim a Fictional Storyline; Inventor Asserts Provisional Rights Against Hollywood
Thanks to the posters below, thought I would put it up here so people see it.
- TheSpoom
There's a good body of prior art out there to invalidate many patents. All you need to do is work on an existing story archetype. That's a pretty wide range, covering the entire literary world to date.
According to Joseph Campbell, nearly all good stories conform to a standard cycle (the name of which eludes me right now), making all heroic-type stories unpatentable.
Shame about originality though. And also a shame that if someone comes to sue you, you've got to go through a long process to prove that you weren't copying their stuff. The one with the biggest legal bill will probably win.
What was wrong with copyright anyway? All works of fiction are under copyright, and there are existing ways to deal with transgressions. Plagiarism is anethema to real authors, as well.
However, the fact that the USPTO accepted the application at all merely reinforces my assertion: The USPTO is now officially broken.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
In his book Palm Sunday Kurt Vonnegut talks about a project he completed in school where he graphed the happiness curve of the main character over the course of the book/story. He examined many popular stories and found out that all of the stories he looked at shared only a handful of common graphs. It's been a while but I remember him saying that the book of genesis has the same graph as cinderalla for example.
Whoever patents the five or six storylines that are the basis for virtually all books will become richer then Bill Gates.
The neat thing about this is that you don't have to actuall write the books yourself. The patent office punishes the people who get off their ass and do things while rewarding people who get in the patent line early and patent things they have never built or made.
evil is as evil does
Cause that industry can afford to pay big bucks and they only have one storyline:
Knock knock!
Who is it?
Pizza Delivery!/Copier Repairman!/Pool Cleaner!
Bow-chicka-bow-bow
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Novelty and nonobviousness are where prior art comes in. Novelty essentially means that a applicaiton is not exactly the same as another (or a combination of) patent/reference. Unobviousness means that an application is not so close to another (or a combination of) patents and references.
No way this gets past utility.
Many of the not so credible patents have inate and self-evident common senses that have been documented by Greek/Roman historians in B.C. times!
This is not what us commoner had envision for our ideal patent system. Oh boy, Adam Smith must be hotly spinning in his grave!
--
Disclaimer - I, too, am a pending patent holder.
info@plotpatents.com
AC comments get piped to
Seriously fucked
What sickens me is your sickness is going to seep into Canada. I'll fight this one tooth and nail.
Really, at the risk of being redundant you are deeply badly fucked.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
What on earth does the statue of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima have to do with this patent company's About Us page?
:)
They have another reason to be ashamed... Not to mention their whole site looks like it was done in Front Page. Oh wait... It was
meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"
This guy is way out there
A textbook wouldn't have a storyline so the answer could not be (a) or (c). However, whether you are violating (b) depends on whether the page you photocopied was from a textbook printed on paper or an electronic book which displays text encoded digitally. In the first case, the old and established Fair Use Act covers this and no violation has occured. In the second case, the DMCA comes into play and you would be subject to penalties on par with those for second degree murder.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
WTF? The "About Us" section of Knight's website states:
"Recognizing that fierce competition for publication and financial reward focused on the quality of storytelling, as opposed to the quality of the underlying storyline itself, and further recognizing that even the world's most skilled storytellers (of which he is clearly not) rarely turn a profit, his unique fictional storylines have matured into pending patent applications instead of novels or screenplays. He thus seeks reward on the true value of his innovations--the underlying storylines--instead of forced, sub-par expressions of these underlying storylines." (http://www.plotpatents.com/about_us.htm)
Basically, he wants to get paid for coming up with a story idea and not the work of turning the idea into an actual GOOD story because he is not a skilled storyteller. Here's an idea for you: (1 come up with a good story idea (2 find a skilled storyteller and (3 contract them to write the story (with both names appearing on the work maybe? or not in which case this is just hiring a ghost writer). Oh yeah, he'd have to actually DO THE WORK of looking for a skilled storyteller he is able to work with. How about this one then: (1 come up with a good story idea (2 write a BAD story (3 what for someone to copy it and (4 sue them under copyright law. Oh yeah, the duplicate story would have to be VERY similar to the original to be considered for copyright infringement and would most likely be just as bad as the original and not sell either, so he still would not get paid. I can see why so many foreigners see us Americans as lazy...
Besides, the idea behind the patent system is you can patent your idea, PRODUCE your idea (which Knight apparently IS NOT GOING TO DO with his story ideas), and try to make money from it without having to worry about a bigger competitor copying your idea and profiting from your creativity... Oh yeah, the patent system is still broken... never mind...
However, what you are proposing is a direct attack on the operation and function of a government agency. In case you haven't noticed, "Peaceful protest" is no longer tolerated at a federal level. In fact, what you propose could be construed as terrorism (don't laugh, careers advance on this stuff), leading the USPTO to finally get put under the protective wing of the DHS.
My original point was just that large corporations like IBM already do exactly what you are proposing, and in numbers that dwarf what you could organize. Problem is, it hasn't fixed a thing and instead has contributed to the lack of scrutiny given current applications. You see, not only would you have to own these thousands of minutea patents, but you will also need to fund the lawyers to protect them. The patent office is willing to grant a patent to just about anything; they figure any problems will get resolved in the courts. Of course, that solution works just fine if you own an army of attorneys or happen to be an army of attorneys...or a politician that once part of an army of attorneys or who is owned by an army of attorneys or a corporation that owns an army of attorneys...
The impression I've been building as I read each example of this kind of crap is that the US through organizations such as the WTO and internally with "IP" laws is trying to grab as big a piece of the pie as it can in the initial Information Age. Nobody knows what the future is going to be like in 20 years but it's a safe bet that if you weight the rules to favor your nation (which doesn't neccessarily mean individuals within it) so that you "own" everything then stategicaly you should be better off. If something like this idea isn't making it's way through the machinery of the US government then they must simply be incompetent or playing pork barrel games.
You know, in China which tends towards the opposite of US IP laws, every motivated individual still has their stuff but as you work up into business organizations they simply have different rules that make things work their way. For example, music piracy is (more) rampant in China so instead of record labels sitting back and raking in the dough there are no record labels and artists are paid through corporate sponsorships - different systems that accomplish the same effect of getting a person their music.
Shh.
Wow, what category does this fit into? Let's try all of them shall we?
Yah. What have we learn about categories?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hollywood will die slowly as a new Hollywood without patent restrictions will emerge in Europe or Asia.
Maybe it'll be the end of the Oscars as a bonus.
home
Could be worse.
What about parody? Surely this would prevent anyone parodying said stories either? Copyright law protects the right to make parodies of copyrighted works, but I'm guessing the same doesn't apply to patents on storylines.
>> see it while Bush is still in power.
>
> I'm not a Bush fan in the slightest, but I don't see it
> being the kind of thing a Democrat president would give
> a crap about, either.
So long, and thanks for all the fish — Douglas Adams:
(Just posted this on another site, but it should be here as well:)
And here's the patent application:
The relevant parts:
I claim:
1. A process of relaying a story having a timeline and a unique plot involving characters, comprising: indicating a character's desire at a first time in said timeline for at least one of the following: a) to remain asleep or unconscious until a particular event occurs; and b) to forget or be substantially unable to recall substantially all events during the time period from said first time until a particular event occurs; indicating said character's substantial inability at a time after said occurrence of said particular event to recall substantially all events during the time period from said first time to said occurrence of said particular event; and indicating that during said time period said character was an active participant in a plurality of events.
OK, so this claim covers all stories which involve characters that wish to sleep until something happens, apparently achieving this wish, and then discovering that they were awake but don't remember everything that happened in the meantime.
Typical practice in patent applications is to put something very broad in the first claim in the hopes that it will be granted, but not to actually expect it to be enforceable because the chances are somebody has done something similar before. (If anybody can name stories that follow this structure, published before Nov 28, 2003, now is the time to tell the USPTO about it).
2. A process of relaying a story as in claim 1, comprising: indicating that said particular event has occurred at a second time in said timeline at least one week after said first time; and indicating said character's substantial inability at a time after said second time to recall substantially all events during the time period from said first time to said second time.
Claim 2 is the same story where the event waited for takes at least a week to occur, and everything that happened is forgotten about.
3. A process of relaying a story as in claim 2, wherein said second time is at least one year after said first time.
The same, except a year or more elapses.
4. A process of relaying a story as in claim 1, wherein said particular event is at least one of: a passing of a particular amount of time; a notification of a decision; and a relief of a pain.
5. A process of relaying a story as in claim 1, wherein said plurality of events comprises at least one of said character's wedding, a birth of a child of said character, and performance of said character's occupation for a substantial portion of said time period.
Things a character might wait for and things that might happen during the wait.
6. A process of relaying a story as in claim 1, further comprising indicating a belief held by at least three other characters that said character was conscious during said active participation in said plurality of events.
Something that's likely to happen after the character 'wakes up'.
7. A process of relaying a story as in claim 1, wherein each of said steps of indicating comprises indicating in a written form.
8. A process of relaying a story as in claim 1, wherein each of said steps of indicating comprises indicating in a video form.
Books, TV series and films are covered.
9. A process of relaying a story as in claim 8, wherein said process is a process of displaying a motion picture having a timeline and a unique plot, comprising: displaying a video representation of an actor acting as said character; displaying a video representation of said actor indicating at said first time in said timeline a desire for said at l
But is this Knight guy actually serious about this? Is this all just satire to show that the USPTO is incompetant?
The site is so absurb that it almost does count as some kind of anti-patent comic sketch.
May the Maths Be with you!
This doofus JUST GOT OUT OF LAW SCHOOL.
This "doofus" is part of the New Wave of Hip young legal eagles, trained in the modern intellectual property mindset, who are going to sweep away all your old outdated notions of "justice" and "fairness" and take the legal industry to new heights of glorious profit!
So Preacheth The Church Of The New Global Economy! Hail Satan!!
May the Maths Be with you!
This guy seems serious. Now let's just hope the USPTO realizes the stupidity of allowing even an application for this sort of patent. Stories have been around since the beginnings of humanity. Patenting the ideas behind them would be like patenting speech itself.
I still can't believe this. It's like something out of The Onion.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I mean, that's a weird idea, but it seems to me that they're basically forcing the government to deal with the problem. Surely any halfway intelligent person can see that this system just isn't working
I've highlighted the flaws in your argument. Otherwise, it's the only sane explanation.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The USPTO did not "issue" a storyline patent. They published a copy of the patent application filed by some idiot who wants a patent on a storyline. He gets no rights unless the PTO actually grants the patent. So far no one has ever been granted such a patent. You can file an application asking them to give you a patent on anything - it doesn't mean you're going to get it. Don't shoot the PTO until they actually grant this one. They are legally obligated to publish it - so that means nothing. The application was published, not "issued." There's also a lot of confusion here over the word "provisional" as used with patents. There is something called a "provisional patent application" and there is something called "provisional patent rights." They are totally different things and are unrelated. The "provisional patent application" is a way of starting the patent process. You get no rights with it unless you later file a patent and that patent is approved. Provisional patent applications are never examined and are never published. "Provisional rights" refers to rights you get after your non-provisional patent application is published. Patent applications used to be secret. When the decision was made to publish them, it seemed only fair that if somebody learned about the invention because of the publishing and began to copy the invention, the inventor should get a "reasonable royalty" for that copying. Provisional rights apply only if the patent is ultimately granted, and only if the infringer is actually notified of the provisional rights. The inventor only gets a "reasonable royalty."