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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?
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.
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.
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.
(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 ?
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!!
From wikipedia:
"In the United States, inventors and their patent agents or attorneys are required by law to submit any prior art they are aware of to the United States Patent and Trademark Office so that the patent examiner can take the prior art into account when examining the patent application."
Now is a telephone company going to claim that they had no knowledge of discussions within a standards setting body which was setting standards for making telephone calls over IP - the very subject of this patent ?
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?
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?