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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."
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.
Vonage had 30 minutes to reply in court, to a non-technical jury. Go rocket docket. Goodnight irene.
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.
No, but it would take a lot longer than that to convince them that the documents cover the patent claims in question, especially if Verizon is claiming otherwise.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Even worse, as I understand it Vonage is using off the shelf hardware that they bought from someone else.
Who is John Galt?
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?
I too would like to see both sides lose, the better to hasten the end of patents. I mean, sure, It's be better if no one has to die to convince people that something is dangerous, but I don't see that happening. Intellectual property law has made technology like the wild west, with businesses both upright and shady being gunned down every other week by small-time patent trolls, or by large, organized rivals, with undertakers loving every minute of it. The bigger gangs have made truces with each other, but not peace. The govt, far from stepping in to stop the slaughter, is tacitly egging them on out of a mistaken notion that this activity increases revenue. The govt is behaving like a gun dealer who sees shootings as good for business. Courts, like hospitals, cost everyone. The defendants and plaintiffs pay for lawyers but that's all. We pay for judges, juries, officers of the law, guards, facilities including jails, record keeping, notifications, etc. That Vonage, like RIM, can be threatened with death over this issue is ridiculous. If Vonage dies, we will have fewer options. Prices will go up, such choices as remain will not be as good. Everyone suffers. But if these are at last the corpses that get law makers to reconsider, then the deaths will be worth it. RIM's near death experience helped, though the results were more along the lines of law makers deciding that hollow core bullets are too destructive, but regular bullets are still okay when the law makers ought to be considering measures to stop the destructive fighting altogether.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"