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Prior Art On Verizon Patents
greenbird sends in word that Techdirt has up information from Daniel Berninger documenting prior art in the Verizon patents being used to destroy Vonage. "...due to the fun way the patent system works, introducing that kind of prior art to the USPTO for it to review the validity of Verizon's VoIP patents will take quite a bit of time and effort — much longer than Vonage has to fight Verizon in court." From Berninger's note: "In particular, the claims in both patents were anticipated by open standards assembled by the VoIP Forum (H.323) in 1996 and published in January 1997 with the participation of members from Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, and VocalTec Communications, among others... The Eric Voit patent applications reflect, in particular, contributions made by VocalTec Communication to the VoIP Forum during 1996 and formally published at the same time as a separate document."
"due to the fun way the patent system works, introducing that kind of prior art to the USPTO for it to review the validity of Verizon's VoIP patents will take quite a bit of time and effort."
Oh okay. And I thought one of the basic ideas behind creating a dedicated body to examine and grant patents was to create a way to examine all important aspects. Clearly, prior art is not one of them - even if "the concepts in those patents were clearly discussed and published by others prior to the patent being filed. Berninger says that the ideas were discussed at the VoIP forum meeting in 1996 and published in January of 1997. The patents in question were filed after that."
...really hope they don't end up going down. I know it's hard to believe that i'm a slashdotter (albeit an AC) and i use the phone for a good hour, long distance, every night. their unlimited plan is just great for me (and the rest of the family)
So why hasn't Vonage been able to dig up this information? They certainly had enough motivation. Is it too late to do any good?
Wasn't verizon required to disclose prior art with their patent application ?
The thing that people don't get about prior art and patents is that prior art is narrowly interpreted. A published discussion, even if broad and comprehensive, about voice over IP, is not necessarily likely to count against the issuance of a VoIP patent later on. In fact, the prior art may establish that the subject is actually of commercial interest.
Saying that a patent describes "just another way" to do some obvious thing, and is therefore trivial, is missing the point. It's exactly that "just another way" that a patent is intended to protect. Patents covering radical ideas are the exception, not the norm. If you have some obvious thing you need done, but you can't find "just another way" to do it that someone else hasn't already patented, and you don't have a license covering one of those other ways, you are S.O.L.
Maybe now that a major company is affected we might see some movement in the completely fu..ed up patent laws. Ya know, with all those jobs at stake, the lawmakers just might get a clue that curent IP laws are completely at cross with realism.
Hey, one may dream...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The submitters of these patents are midlevel tech specialists. They get a 1000 dollar bonus per patent, they have no tools or desire to look for prior art.
Well I don't buy it! I think the USPTO is broken in a few ways.
First off, the examiners are likely working to some sort of quota: Gotta process 10 claims a week or whatever. They can spend a reasonable amount of time investigating the application, or they can process it quickly. If they find some prior art, they send it back to the applicant who will send in a more supporting paperwork resulting in more work for the examiner to clear the patent application. The shortest route to clearing the patent is to just grant it. Come Friday and you're a few behind for the week, well they get slipped through double-quick.
Secondly Uncle Sam makes a bundle out of the USPTO. Each examiner can crank out a few grand's worth of work a day. Make it harder to get patents and less people will apply (and the processing costs would increase). It is easier to just make patents as easy to get as one of those credit card college degrees.
Thirdly, the USPTO is not held accountable to any quality measures. USPTO does not wear the costs of bad patents. Heads don't roll if patents get overturned. The lawyers love it. All the patent applications bring in money. Bad patents == more work. Nobody is motivated to improve patent quality.
Basically everything is stacked to delivering poor patents. I have a few patents, more than half of which I think are crap. I recently searched one of my patents and was suprised to see that other patents were granted for the same idea, even though the application quoted my patent. This really sucks. A patent is supposed to be property, but here the USPTO have clearly sold the same property many times over.
Is there a solution to this all? Perhaps. Firstly, patent quality needs to improve. That can only happen if the USPTO is help accountable. For example, if they grant a patent that is later overturned, then the USPTO could be held accountable for costs and losses incurred.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
... since they are in essence acts of fraud and the patent office is supporting them....
Consider who you are dealing with.
The way to win the software patent game is to not play it, don't participate. Let it fall upon itself to flush out the reality of software not being patentable.
By fighting againts software patents via prior art, you are doing so in a supporting the existance of software patents.
The real fight is exposing and getting the general population to recognize that due the nature of software it is simply not patentable and any organization supporting software patents are commiting fraud against others.
People do stupid things.
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
Vonage is a big Cisco customer. Why didn't Cisco save their customer to pay them more money later by reporting they had prior art that invalidated Verizon's patent?
Maybe Verizon is a bigger Cisco customer than Vonage is.
OK for capitalism. Now tell me how any of that government-granted monopoly serves to "promote progress in science and the useful arts"? It's obvious that patents do more to inhibit that progress. But they do make quite the buck, if not as many overall as if they actually promoted that progress.
--
make install -not war
No, it's called perjury. You have to sign an affidavit when you submit.
MOD THE PARENT UP!!!
The article links to a wikia article on the subject, which provides a very nice summary of the arguments. My question is how is this stuff even patentable?
Patent 6,282,574 clearly states that no one except Verizon can legally translate an IP to a telephone number and vice versa. The rest of the patents are basically saying Verizon owns the only right to transmit other various phone communications over TCP/IP.
WTF? How can someone be awarded a patent for their idea for an application layer protocol that depends on something like TCP/IP to even opperate?
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
TOAD THE WET SPROCKET!!!
(IANAL)
I assume all Vonage has to do is say to the judge "We have found prior art. We'd like the injuctions extended until we can invalidate the Verizon patent. We can show you the prior art and we have an extremely good chance of winnnig".
What reasonable judge wouldn't go along with this line of thinking?
I just bought a router that has two phone ports for Vonage and I've been waiting to turn them on. As an aside I'm sorta freaked I can buy a router for $100 with a $50 rebate. I'm used to writing very big checks for routers.
But I guess that was in a different century.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Okay, so reform is needed. But what's the solution, though? Is it legislation-based? Is it market-based? We have to make sure the solution doesn't fuck us over more than the problem it's trying to solve.
A good example of how a good idea can go wrong is Digg. It addresses one of the sore spots about Slashdot: the ability for anyone to submit news, and immediately have it viewable by others. It also opens up the comment moderation system to everyone. It's the Digg comment moderation I'd like to consider for the moment.
What we often find is that people in the know get their posts voted down, especially if they say something unpopular (even if completely factual). An example of this is noted Slashdot poster John Randolph, who goes by the handle jcr. He often speaks his mind, and that gets some people at Digg all riled up. So they moderate down his comments. This is especially true in his posts dealing with Apple, where John says it as it is. After all, John worked at Apple for a long time. He knows how things are done there. But that's not good enough for many of the morons at Digg. They bury what are perhaps the most informative, insightful and interesting comments. It's a perfect example of how a system that tries to fix Slashdot ends up being far worse in most cases.
I could see the same thing happening with proposed solutions to these US Patent and Trademark Office problems. If it's a legislation-based approach, the law may end up making innovation far more difficult, time-consuming and expensive for individuals and start-ups. A market-based approach will no doubt have even more problems.
I've got an idea. It's crazy, but it just might be crazy enough. It seems clear that this is just the beginning, if Verizon succeeds, they'll likely soon start going after other VOIP providers (or offer licensing at extortion rate prices) taking away choices for everyone, removing competion, and regaining some of their stranglehold on those of us unfortunate enough to live in Verizon country. This seems to me to be in a similar vein to net neutrality, in that Verizon doesn't like their customers using their broadband connections for what they wish. What if those most cited in the net neutrality debate, those doers of no evil, kicked it up a notch to outright doing good. Google has the resources to fight Verzion (and Vonage stock should be cheap enough at this point), and if they can hold out long enough to get the patents invalidated, VOIP will be able to continue on, further eroding the power base of the evil Verizon.
I know it's a crazy idea, but it might just be crazy enough.
Help us Obi-Wan Google, you're our only hope.
you apparently want me to spell it out so i will..
c - o - r - r - u - p - t - i - o - n
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
HONOR THE LIGHT BRIGADE!!!
.... Boo hoo, hoo hoo hoo
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Sure these folk would have been bums anywhere else, but then they'd probably have been fired too!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm amazed that Slashdot readers are unable to detect BS.
Go to your local library or bookstore and read "Patent It Yourself" or similar book so you can identify people spouting BS before giving them mod points.
>First off, the examiners are likely working to some sort of quota: Gotta process 10 claims a week or whatever.
A single patent application may have dozens of claims and the thought of a 10 claim per week quota is so insane that "or whatever" isn't enough to disguise ignorance.
>Make it harder to get patents and less people will apply (and the processing costs would increase). It is easier to just make patents as easy to get as one of those credit card college degrees.
Anyone who files an application for a US patent knows that the examiner automatically rejects applications upon first view (seemingly for bogus reaons.) This is how they filter out lazy or hobby applicants who aren't serious. The filter is effective because it takes time & effort to respond to the rejection.
>I have a few patents, more than half of which I think are crap.
Seems extremely unlikely given the comments you've made in your post. Prove me wrong by listing the patent numbers. If you want to pretend, at least read an introductory book on the topic.
A patent examiner is GS-5 $38K job to start
http://usptocareers.gov/jobsearch.asp
Key requirements (redux):
- US Citizenship
- Ability to travel
- BA or BS from a community college accredited by ABET _or_ 2nd year coursework in 5 of 7 areas: physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology
- Registered as a professional engineer by a state, DC, Guam, or Puerto Rico
- Pass a written test for "Engineer In Training" or professional registration test
- 60 semester hours of courses in basic sciences/physics/math/engineering
So you've got to really want to be a patent examiner, be willing to live with a salary far below what you'd get in private industry with the same paper qualifications.
And then you get to do the scut work for a couple of years.
If you want to have your pay grade go up, you need time in grade and even more qualifications.
So it's pretty much the same deal that entry level teachers get, only you don't get the summer off.
-- Terry
This has actually been my point for quite some time now, that "one (wo)man, one vote" doesn't mean shjit anymore. "One million dollars, one policy" is more like what we're calling democracy today. While far from perfect, Canada has been trying hard to limit the impact of political contributions by (at least) limiting individual contributions. There's still lots of work to be done in this area, but high level corruption* is the fundamental flaw in a democracy.
* and some might mock place like Mexico for it's street level corruption, when America has corporate and political corruption...which impacts everyone: not just those that partake.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
MOD THE TROLL UP!!!
If Verizons patent holds I think I'd be using the worlds "anti trust" a lot. And loudly. Like, in caps even.
Need Mercedes parts ?
OK Bogus patents bring down a company, surely though if those patents are overturned due to prior art after going bust, those previous share holders can take Verizon to court for massive damages?
IANAPL but I have written quite a few patents and had them filed at the USPTO, EPO, Japan, and Internationally.
In my experience, whenever the USPTO has done a prior art search, it appears they only looked at previous US patents. I've never received any references to international patents and certainly not scientific papers so I assume they don't bother searching those.[shrug]
This is in stark contrast to the EPO etc, who will fire all sorts of references back at you (including those from smaller scientific journals) and make you explain why your invention is, or more usually the just the claims are, novel.
(My addition in bold)
Charging fines for patents invalid at time of submission would cut perhaps be enough to make companies stop and think. But how to do this without hurting smaller inventors who do not have the resources to check thoroughly?
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
MOD THE PARENT DOWN!!!!
Fixing a screw up should be more important than screwing up more. If businesses are being squashed because of "system failure" than the USPO should fix it fast. There could be a bounty paid to citizens that expose an invalid patent. The USPO would get much needed help reviewing patent applications and the bounty should be paid by the patent submitter. That would cause many bogus patent seekers to rethink their shoddy work.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
They have SOME cisco to be sure. They went with Juniper for a lot of the core, they replaced the ATA186s with motorollas and the linksys deals arent a huge moneymaker for the linksys arm. They use Juniper firewalls, and certainly don't use cisco VOIP call gateways.
Verizon on the other hand, thru its FIOS and its many mergers is a freaking huge customer and there is more money on the table for Verizon in a year than Vonage for a decade.
The reason Cisco shouldn't be giving Verizon high fives all around is the fact that these same patents cover Cisco's entire VOIP line of business. Im sure Verizon has no real expectation of them holding up that long, just long enough for vonage to go under.
Of course an aquisition by a competitor with deep pockets (Sprint) might teach Verizon a costly lesson.
The judge in the case could vacate the judgment, or an appeals court could do the same base on prior art.
Then Vonage could make their case about prior art to the USPTO and hopefully nullify the Verizon patents.
It'll be expensive but then Vonage should turn around and file suit against Verizon for the harrasment. Oh, and don't for a moment think Verizon isn't engaging in anti-competitive behavior here, they are.
You mean like these?
Veg-O-Matic: The greatest kitchen appliance ever made... All your onions chopped to perfection without shedding a single tear.
Dial-O-Matic: Slice a tomato so thin it only has one side.
Popeil Pocket Fisherman: The biggest fishing invention since the hook...and still only $19.95!
Mr. Microphone: Broadcast your voice on any FM radio!!!
Inside-The-Shell Egg Scrambler: Gets rid of those slimy egg whites in your scrambled eggs.
Smokeless Ashtray: draws smoke from burning cigarettes back into the ashtray itself.
The Cap Snaffler: Snaffles caps off any size jug, bottle, or jar... and it really, really works.
The process of proving prior art to the patent office will take far longer than Vonage can last.
Verizon is using this time sink to shut down competition, despite knowing their patents are bogus.
Basically, once the patent is proven worthless, what is left of Vonage needs to be able to sue Verizon for harassment, etc (iaobviouslynal) for abusing the patent system to cause predatorial harm.
There must be some evidence in the form of emails or memos within Verizon that prove they know this.
If prior art is newly discovered and relevant then Vonage can move to request relief from the judgement.
....has ****just published**** (and emailed to us) a note looking at the claims in Verizon's VoIP patents that a judge has ruled Vonage infringed on."
>If this prior art DOES in fact apply to the case at hand, you can be sure that Vonage's lawyers have dug it up.
"Dan Berninger...
FRCP
Rule 60. Relief from Judgment or Order
.
.
(b) Mistakes; Inadvertence; Excusable Neglect; ****Newly Discovered Evidence****; Fraud, Etc.
On motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may relieve a party or a party's legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for the following reasons: (1) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect; (2) ****newly discovered evidence which by due diligence could not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial under Rule 59(b)****;
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule60.htm
you can alwasy switch to Packet8 (www.packet8.net). I chose this over Vonage when they had a plan for buying the equipment outright for $75 and call all you want between them, and another plan for $20 that allows unlimited calling in US and Canda. Havent have a land line for the past 3 years and have been very happy with Packet8.
MOD THE GRANDPARENT UP!!!
It seems to me the patent is just too broad.
Like they are trying to patent getting from one house to another house by means of a "road" and a "wheeled vehicle".
There by saying anything, whether you pushed yourself down the street in a childs little red wagon to you creating a BRAND NEW hydrogen fuel cell vehicle just TODAY that NO one has ever thought of OR seen before, that this is "their" patent and they own these things because it's a "vehicle" that "travels" on a road. BS.
Unless, Vonage "stole" code from Verizon to accomplish this miraculous feat of getting voice from the internet to a phone then this whole thing is crap. It's just too broad to patent.
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml
k market.html
real motive behind 9/11
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stoc
what kind of games would such a coward as you play?
If I were Stallman I wouldn't say software will only be free when it is easy enough to create that anyone can and will upon need or inspiration, create the software they need or are inspired to create..
No different than how anyone who needs to calculate something can use a calculator today. Unlike the time of Roman Numeral where only elite accountant could handle the then large stock and coin of trade.
We installed VoIP in late 97, or early 98 at USSTRATCOM, Offutt AFB, Bellevue,NE.
Worked fine if a little shaky, of course we only had software AD/DA at the time,
VS a box with the same software in it...
Former geek, now I can rest...