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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
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.
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
Leaving us the fertile artistic ground of [The Environment vs. Nature] and [The Machines vs. God]. I am *so* in.
M
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
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.
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.
On behalf of all Americans, I apologize if our screwy patent office has deprived Aussies of their God-given liberty to write bad novels combining MIT and Rip van Winkle.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Nah, they're obligated to accept it, so long as the paperwork and bribe are all proper.
You misspelt bribe. I corrected it in my quote for you.
entity vs. (other) entity
entity vs. circumstance(s)
entity vs. nonentity
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
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...
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.
It's a test case. If approved, there will be literally thousands of similar ones approved and used to harrass writers all over the world.
I found this on the asshole who is making the claim's website:
So the same concept as submarine patents: don't create a sellable product, just patent the concept and wait to ambush someone who has the talent to think of it AND bring it to market. The main target will be movie studios I think -- already they have to fight off hacks who claim that someone read their script and stole the idea, now they'd be liable even if the "idea" was never shown to anyone or published.
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:
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!