Patent Lawsuits Galore

eldavojohn writes "Guess who owns the patent on the touch-screen keyboard. Not Apple — SP Technologies has filed a suit based on just that. Ars brings out the intriguing detail that the founder of the patent troll company is serving prison time for health-care fraud." Read on for four more patent developments in the day's news.
Today the news broke that Aloft is suing Microsoft and Adobe for deliberately violating the patent entitled 'Network Browser Window with Adjacent Identifier Selector.' Qualcomm had a bad day as the US Trade Representative advised the President not to intervene in the patent beef it is losing against Broadcom. Today we found out Sharp is suing Samsung for an LCD infringement. Ending an eventful day on a note of sanity, a judge today threw out the jury verdict on Alcatel-Lucent vs. Microsoft and Microsoft no longer has to pony up $1.5 billion.

Comments

Palm together with every PDA out there

[klingens]

Why are they suing now, when Palm had devices with touchscreen keyboards only 11 years now. However they kinda hit the right company at least: the Apple Newton was before Palm and had a on screen keyboard on its touchscreen too. Too bad for the patent troll the Newton lived (and died) even before the patent was filed in 2000.

Re:Palm together with every PDA out there

[TheJasper]

The patent isnt 11 years old and doesn't cover touchscreen keyboards. it covers touchscreen keyboards which can't be minimized. This is a serious infringement and I hope the judge throws the book....at somebody.

Re:Palm together with every PDA out there

[sam1am]

Has SP technologies even tried out an iPhone? Their claim is for an immutable keyboard. I can make the keyboard on an iPhone disappear quite easily...

Re:Palm together with every PDA out there

[MindKata]

Maybe we should patent the idea of patent trolling. Then finally we can all have some peace.

Re:Palm together with every PDA out there

[Trumpet of Doom]

You missed it? I tried to do that 10 years ago, but some jackass claimed "prior art."

Apple should be happy.

[purpledinoz]

Apple should be rejoicing, since they claim that the patent system is running perfectly.

Re:Apple should be happy.

[gnasher719]

'' Apple should be rejoicing, since they claim that the patent system is running perfectly. ''

Just shows that you didn't read properly. In that recent discussion, Google said that the patent system itself is broken. Apple said the patent system is fine, the related litigation system is broken. And clearly it is.

The other example mentioned was Microsoft being ordered to pay $1.5bn over two MP3 related patents. We all know that MP3 is covered by a few hundred patents, and Microsoft paid a few million for a license for all those patents, so one or two patents they missed could never be worth $1.5bn.

Re:Apple should be happy.

[Goffee71]

And, funnily enough, the Judge in the MS case has just overturned the original decision. Leaving Alcatel hopping mad at the whole patent madness http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6934363.stm?

Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[pieterh]

Guess who owns "a" patent on the touch screen keyboard. Actually, on a supposed improvement to the touch screen keyboard. This is the lovely thing about patents in general and software patents in particular; you can claim so many patents for the same thing.

The humble network plug is covered by about 45 patents iirc. At least that's a finite number.

But the average humble user interface is covered by hundreds, thousands of patents, each for minor improvements (if at all) on other peoples' work.

Software patents are designed for one thing only: to allow lawyers to parasite off engineers. /me waits for the patent lawyers to reply to this post, telling me how utterly wrong I am, and how without software patents no-one would write software.

Come on, make my day, patent punks!

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[Nazlfrag]

You are utterly wrong. Touch screens are obviously hardware. Keyboards are too. This software patent rubbish you spout is invalid. This patent is as solid as the 45 network plug patents, if not more so. Do you realise that without software patents nobody would be able to defend their work using the expertise and diligence of ever patient, kind, humble and scrupulous lawyers?

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[timmarhy]

"This patent is as solid as the 45 network plug patents"

huh, so our saying it's all bullshit to!

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[Opportunist]

I do admit that they are attributes. That's all I admit. I will not question that those are attributes, no doubt they are. And fine attributes, they are. I think we can agree that those are attributes anyone should be proud of.

What was the question again?

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[yfarren]

Man I feel like every time anyone says anything about patents we go through the same flame war.

!PATENTS ARE JUST FOR PATENT TROLLS! !PEOPLE JUST PATENT THE SAME NEW IDEA OVER AND OVER!

I wonder if I will get modded insightful or troll for responding.

It goes like this. There are rules for what can be patented. The patent system tries to keep out obvious patents, but there is something difficult about keeping out obvious, which I will get to shortly. You can't patent the same thing twice, though one thing may be in violation of many patents as it may incorporate different patents. You can patent improvements on an already existing idea, and this is a good thing.

Patents do reward novelty. As a society, we decided hundreds of years ago that there are different kinds of intellectual property, and we would like to protect them, in exchange for some public good. As these things go, the patent system with it's up to 17 year monopoly works fairly well, as opposed to the virtual unlimited range of copyright.

Most people who have issue with patents fall have one of 2 major issues:

1. You can go off and patent any old obvious thing.
Some people who don't understand patents, or only read descriptions, and not claims (the description is the full disclosure, and is easier to read. It also isn't where the protection offered by the patent is defined, and will almost always talk about lots of prior art for a variety of legal reasons), might say that lots of patents are on something that already existed. To them I say briefly "show the prior art, the patent gets dismissed ASAP". Mostly though the prior art people talk about is one aspect of the patent.

OK. Obviousness. The patent office has some general guidelines as to what makes something "obvious" and the supreme court just threw a monkeywrench in the process (most people on slashdot would say in a good way) by saying "hey, obvious means, well OBVIOUS. And MAN that is OBVIOUS." But, here is the thing. Obvious is REALLY hard to define. Many new good ideas, which might seem trivial after the fact, but before the idea is described. Well... no-one thought of it. Try your hand at describing, in a legal or mathematical way (they are actually very similar) "obvious". Try making a formula, that you are comfortable applying to all ideas that describes "obvious". Unless you are someone who is against all Intellectual Property, you will find that difficult.

It isn't that people don't recognize there is a problem with obvious. Most people in Patent law do. But, there remains a problem of "how do you fix it"? Just bitching "man that is SOOOOO obvious", without taking the time to consider that "obviousness" is difficult to define, doesnt really help.

2. People patent things not to make them, but to charge others for using them. (Patent Trolls).
I don't have that much to say. I don't like patent trolls. Again, I am not sure I know how to defend against them. See, saying "you don't get IP coverage unless you use your patent." Is also.... Problematic. Many patents are very expensive to use. I can patent something, and then work towards bringing it to market. Or I can patent a process, so I can be the only one to use it. After a fixed period of time my patent will expire. But really, the idea is that I have sole control of the idea, until my patent expires. The courts give someone who is making something a bit of an advantage over someone who isn't using it. But They consider the use of the Idea "owned" (not the idea itself, but the specific incarnations defined in the claims cant be used). Lets say I have a new Idea for the manufacture of Microchips. It is incremental, but very useful. Now I don't have the several hundred million dollars it takes to build a chip manufacturing facility. Are you going to say that because I don't have the money to implement my idea, Intel should be able to come and use it, without licensing it? Currently, if intel used it, without licensing it, the courts probabl

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[RobBebop]

I actually have the patent for "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer". Please cease and desist discussion on the topic or I will have to sue you.

Now, you can license the qualities for a "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer"... but it will cost you. :)

(See, the patent system is working perfectly fine)

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[Smauler]

Reminds me of that engineering maxim (not sure if I've got it exactly right) :

Fast
Good
Cheap
Pick two of the above.

Except with lawyers it'd be more like :
Sleazy
Money grubbing
Honest*
Pick two of the above**.

--

** - We reserve the right to change any aspect of the two picked at any time, for any reason. By picking two of these choices you are entering into a contractual agreement resulting in the donation of your first born child to Litigation Inc. You are not free to disseminate in any form or way the contents of this post, or of this notice. Any violations of this will result in charges of damages of not less than $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) per letter, payable to Litigation Inc.

* - This is not a valid option. Any who pick this option deliberately, and with intent to defraud Litigation Inc. will be charged for time used by Litigation Inc. correcting this, at the cost of not less than $250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) per man/minute.

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[yfarren]

Ok. I don't mean to sound snarky. But, a simple web browser is not prior art for the patent 7,117,443. Now, you refer to the title of the patent. A title, will, most of the time, be more general than the specifics that are claimed by the patent. When you start talking about the specific monopoly rights claimed by the patent, and what you need to find prior art for, to invalidate the patent, you need to look at the claims.

In general, the claims of a patent are structured with 1-4 (although sometimes many more) primary (independent) claims, identifiable (usually) by the phrase "What is claimed is a method..." or "what is claimed is an apparatus" or a description of the apparatus. Then there are subordinate (dependent) claims. Those are characterized by the phrase "the method of claim x" or "the apparatus of claim x" or a description of a method or apparatus of claim x, where x is the number of some claim.

The Independent claims are ussually worded to be as broad as possible, to cover as much IP space as possible. Then, the dependent claims get more and more specific. To find prior art for a patent, is essentially, to invalidate the claims of the patent.

Invalidating a claim, by prior art, means you have to find something which has, or some description of something which has, all the elements of that claim. If something has MOST of the elements of the claim, or something has some of the elements of that claim, or 2 things have all of the elements of the claim, but neither alone has all the elements of the claim, then you haven't invalidated the claim, by prior art (if you find 2 things which independently have all the elements of a claim, you may be able to argue obviousness, but that is an uphill battle once the patent has been issued. Not unwinnable, just harder.).

Now, in the case of patent 7,117,443, lets look at the first independent claim:

A graphical user interface for use in association with a network browser, comprising: a network browser window associated with a network browser for displaying Internet content associated with uniform resource locators (URLs) during network browsing; a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed; wherein a user is allowed to pre-select one of the identifiers which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs; wherein, after the pre-selection, selected content associated with at least one of the URLs displayed during use of the network browser is correlated with the pre-selected identifier in a manner that is dependent on a selection of the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs, and stored; wherein the user is allowed to manually enter the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs.

So, what are the elements of this claim?
1. A gui to be used in network browsing that has:
a. A window for displaying network content associated with a URL (so far, just a web-browser)
b.a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed
(one or more identifired, NEXT to the web browser) these identifiers allowing the user to:
i. select the identifier, and change the information in the browser in some manner, based on which identifier was chosen

now, why is this identifier interesteting, and what value is added (what is the USEFULNESS of the added identifier and its associated functionality?) does the identifier give, and how does that identifier, and pre-selecting it, thereby altering the content of the web browser in some manner prove useful? I don't really know I haven't bothered to read the whole patent. But a simple web browser doesn't have the added functionality of the pre-selectable, url independent identifiers which alter the presentation. So a simple web browser is NOT prior art.

Now, to invalidate the patent completely, you would have to go through all t

Well imagine if

[Anonymous Coward]

they got an injuction against apple. Everyone would have to download an update that would remove the keyboard. No more "I'm posting this from my iphone posts."

Not really a loss. Maybe they could bring back the thumb keyboards.

Re:Well imagine if

[bjourne]

Well, it is pretty obvious that they were using touch screen keyboards in Star Trek: TNG, they even blip when you press them. Not sure if it counts as prior art since the setting is the 24th century, but still.

Re:Well imagine if

[TheJasper]

No, this isn't prior art. It's future art. Since the courts will at some time extend patents into infinity, this obviously has great implications. Obviously paramount should be sued for using technologies they should've anticipated would be patented. They have an obligation to search out the antecedents of the lawye...inventors who wil patent the idea and pay them their fair share.

For those who will point out that the laws in Star Trek probably don't include patents...It's fiction man, get over it.

Great

[JamesRose]

Another great call for slashdot

Ending an eventful day on a note of sanity, a judge today threw out the jury verdict on Alcatel-Lucent vs. Microsoft and Microsoft no longer has to pony up $1.5 billion. another judge overruled the jury, doesn't democracy give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

If you keep bailing out the patent system by having judges rescue the companies with the power you are gonna get stupid hypocrites like Apple's recent statement that the system is fine and no one will change it.

Re:Great

[fastest fascist]

Without knowing any details in the relevant case, I'd like to note that the application of laws is not and should not be a democratic process. Democratic processes are not impartial.

Re:Great

[TheJasper]

What do juries have to do with democracy? Juries are not inherently democratic nor do democracies imply juries. In fact, I personally have little to no trust in jury based decisions.
Judges have in fact been overriding juries for centuries. Appeals courts don't always tend to have juries and the higher you go the less juries you find.
Your last statement makes the least sense of all. This case isn't about the small fry against the big corporate monster. It's two big corporate monsters. So why would the judge prefer M$ to Lucent? well, unless you're implying a directer form of corruption.

It's up to you, unless I don't agree

[Joebert]

What the hell's the point of a Jury verdict if the Judge can just throw it out ?

Re:It's up to you, unless I don't agree

[TheRaven64]

The idea behind a jury trial is that you are tried by a jury of your peers. The problem with the current implementation of the system is that you are actually tried by a load of random, often uninformed, people. In cases hinged on domain-specific information, there should be an understanding that your peers must be people who understand the subject matter. A good jury for the SCO vs. IBM case would have been selected from kernel developers for QNX, BSD, etc (no System V or Linux developers, to prevent a conflict of interest). In the case of a copyright infringement case between two songwriters, a jury of other composers would have been able to make an informed decision.

The difficulty with implementing this kind of system is that if you do it in a way that allows people to volunteer for jury service in a specific case then you undermine the system even more.

Re:It's up to you, unless I don't agree

[Torodung]

The idea behind a jury trial is that you are tried by a jury of your peers. The problem with the current implementation of the system is that you are actually tried by a load of random, often uninformed, people. In cases hinged on domain-specific information, there should be an understanding that your peers must be people who understand the subject matter. That's an interesting thought, but the Bill of Rights only mentions a "jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." "Peers" is the traditional paraphrase of that, but it really only refers to people who are geographically near you. The Constitution says nothing of "competent jurors," or "equals," which is what you seem to wish (me too!).

The basic (and antiquated) concept is that you should be judged by people who know you, which is about the exact opposite of what modern voir dire jury selections produce. A "jury of peers," as I read the intent, is pretty much dead law. You now get a bunch of folks from your rough geographic area (if no venue games are being played!), which meets the letter, but not the intent, IHMO.

I think expert juries make a lot of sense too, especially in civil cases, and especially one's that would have power to instruct the judge when the judge was not himself a competent expert, but that would require new law. It might require a new system altogether, in fact.

--
Toro

SP Tech's patent

[Al_Lapalme]

For those who haven't bothered reading the SP tech. patent on touchscreen keyboards - it's basically an "improvement" on existing touchscreen keyboards. The "improvement" is that the keyboard is not resizable, movable, minimizable, etc. It appears on the screen in one location and cannot be removed or hidden (until it is no longer needed, at which point it could disappear). The patent includes sample Visual Basic code - also absolutely horrible!! Read on for brief entertainment. 1. choose patent at random 2. remove some functionality 3. patent "improvement" 4. sue 5. Profit?? Shit.. that didn't work.

morse code

[apodyopsis]

slightly off topic, I apologize.

..but does anybody know what happened to the "morse code" mobile texting input people were discussing a few years ago? after all it is well proven that morse code is a lot faster then texting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4

..and on topic I know there are some patents in this area..

http://www.engadget.com/2005/03/12/nokia-files-pat ent-for-morse-code-generating-cellphone/

While the US sues itself into irrelevancy...

[slashbart]

Seeing all this crap going on in "the land of the Free", I really urge all of us that are not under its jurisdiction to make damn sure there is no IP rights harmonization, converting our more sensible laws into something benefitting the American lawyer population.

Seriously, keep a sharp eye on proposed laws in your own country, that are being pushed by the U.S... In Europe we've managed to beat them once with the software patents legislation, but they keep pushing. They in this case is US goverment/Microsoft; awfully enough there is no difference, Our ms. Kroes has stated her annoyance a being approached by US ambassadors to go easy on M$. She's got some big brass ones though, and I don't see her being pushed around at all.

Bart

Re:Misplaced blame?

[TheRaven64]

The problem with this kind of idea is that it makes the lawyer into a judge. While a lawyer is supposed to exercise some discretion in the cases they accept, it is fundamental to a fair judiciary that anyone who feels that they are wronged should be able to seek legal recourse. It's then up to the courts to decide whether they were actually wronged, as defined by the law of the land. If you start making lawyers accountable for taking cases that don't have merit, then they are going to start effectively trying cases long before they get to court, at which point there is little need to even have a court system. Lawyers are already held accountable it they take cases which are illegal (e.g. barratry) in a number of jurisdictions. Holding them accountable for frivolous lawsuits would be a dangerous precedent to set.

I would much rather see a simplification of the legal system to the state where you don't need a law degree to understand it (after all, you're expected to follow it, whether you have a law degree or not), making the whole profession obsolete.

Re:So where's mine?

[virtualchoirboy]

Dear Sir,
I represent the American Safety Razor Company and am writing to inform you that you are being sued for the infringement of our product "Burma Shave". You should be receiving a packet of information shortly on where to send the $2,098,720,923US in compensation that our legal team has determined to be the current damages.

Thank you,

Lowell Dewey
Dewey, Cheatum & Howe
Attorneys at Law
1 Ripoff Lane
Scumville, DC 12345

RTFP

[bflynn]

RTFP - Read The Friendly Patent. The claim is for a keyboard that comes back in the same place every time. The claimed problem is that people move their keyboard around and then can't figure out how to use it. So, their innovation is that the keyboard is always in the same place. You can't move the iPhone keyboard because it takes up the entire screen. There's no place to move it to.

I wish I could say that I don't understand how this patent was ever granted in the first place, but we all know how it happens.

What irritates me about patents like this is that they fail not just tests of obviousness and novelty, but tests of history. Years ago, I used a program that had a statically placed pop-up keyboard. The keyboard always came up in a location that blocked data behind it. Didn't the patent examiner realize that the ability to move the keyboard around WAS AN INNOVATION IN THE FIRST PLACE?! Removing an added feature hardly qualifies as something worthy of a patent.

I'm not a fan of the iPhone, but I really hope this patent gets squashed with prejudice.

Brian

Re:So where's mine?

[AMSRay]

And the lawyers from the "Car Talk" radio show will be in touch with you shortly to discuss your unauthorized use of their trademark. The Dewey, Cheatem & Howe offices are in Cambridge Massachusetts, not DC.