Smartphones Patented — Just About Everyone Sued 1 Minute Later

This week the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a surprisingly (although I guess it shouldn't be) broad patent for a "mobile entertainment and communication device". Upon closer inspection you may notice that it pretty much outlines the ubiquitous smartphone concept. "It's a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, ATT, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others. Amusingly, the company actually first filed the lawsuits on Monday, but realized it was jumping the gun and pulled them, only to refile just past the stroke of midnight. "

Comments

not very smrt

[brian1078]

no "smartphone" required. my 2 year old Verizon LG VX8300 is a "... mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files ..."

Re:not very smrt

[stinerman]

The main problem here is "continuation filings". Using these, you can take longer and longer to amend your patent. Of course, that means that you can amend your patent to cover things that are already in the market. So file in '97 and file enough continuations until 2000 or so and you've just retroactively patented 3 years worth of progress.

What needs to happen is that if you file a continuation, the clock gets reset to that continuation. So file in '97 and file a continuation in 2000 means that anything in '98 and '99 now counts as prior art.

Re:not very smrt

[gravesb]

If you add new matter, its prior art date is of the continuation in part that you filed to add the new matter. Otherwise, all of the adjustments must have support in the original filing. Essentially, what you propose is the way the system works now.

Re:not very smrt

[stinerman]

At the very least, you can be extremely vague in the original filing, and then go "oh, yeah that's what I meant" a few years later.

What I don't Get...

[SerpentMage]

I just roll my eyes and think is the USPO as dumb as the Fed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

The first smart phone was developed way back when. But let's consider a more recent example:

The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia's smartphones starting with the Nokia 9000, released in 1996.

The earlier chained patents was 1997. So I really wonder what pot, and I do mean pot, the people in the patent office are smoking.

Wow is this thing broad

[BigGar']

It details 125 combinations of things in a hand-held device.

Here's the first the rest are an extensive list of variations on the theme:

1. A mobile entertainment and communication device for communicating with the Internet and remotely located telephones, comprising: a housing of a palm-held size; a cellphone provided in said housing, said cellphone adapted for selectively and wirelessly connecting to the Internet and remotely located telephones and adapted for controlling selection of at least one of (1) downloading data or uploading data from or to the Internet, or (2) downloading data to a computer or other electronic device and said cellphone having at least one of (1) voice controlled dialing, (2) a wireless earphone or (3) a wire connection jack earphone with a microphone for operation of the mobile entertainment and communication device; a memory operatively connected to said cellphone; a microprocessor operatively connected to said memory; said microprocessor adapted for storing data to said memory that is received from the Internet or a remotely located telephone; and a display panel operatively connected to said microprocessor, said display panel adapted for reproducing images or other data from at least one of said memory or the Internet, said other data including at least one of moving images, combined sounds and moving images, or music with or without images.

The whole thing looks like the product of a brainstorming session with everything under the sun included in the list.

The patent was filed on Nov 20, 2003. It lists an inventor but they haven't invented anything as far as I can tell only tried to be the first ones to list these items together in a patent application. In going over the list I doubt there's anything to terribly non-obvious in there. I'd be surprised if this isn't challenged rather than just paid out, but that's just an opinion and IANAL.

Re:Prior art?

[jonbryce]

I think the Nokia Communicator 9000 was the first Smartphone, certainly in Europe. It was first introduced in 1996, and presumably in development for some time before that.

And the other patents held...

[bleh-of-the-huns]

I goggled the company that is the holder of the patent, apparently they also hold patents on Seat Belts and Air bags...... wtf!! http://www.gigatec.com/index.asp is the site that lists the other patents.