Troll Patents Lists In Databases, Sues Everyone

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Florida patent troll called Channel Intelligence is suing everyone from Lemonade to Remember the Milk for infringing on patent 6,917,941, which covers storing a wishlist in a database. Amazon and eBay are absent from the list of targets, even though they very likely store users' wishlists in a database. With any luck, perhaps one of the defendants will get to use that precedent PJ found the other day from In re Lintner, which said, '[c]laims which are broad enough to read on obvious subject matter are unpatentable even though they also read on non-obvious subject matter.'"

Comments

Obviously

[the4thdimension]

Wishlists are an obvious toy... used by everyone from little kids doing their Christmas list, to parents on their way to the grocery store. It only serves to follow that web based users wishing to track a list have it be stored on a database... considering there is no where else to reliably store it.

Re:Obviously

[malefic]

You'll notice they're not suing companies with lots of money who might fight back. I imagine the idea is that smaller companies will just pay up because it's cheaper than fighting it.

Re:Obviously

[eyrieowl]

what's sad is that the system is so fscked up that i had to go check that patent number...because it's entirely plausible to me that our glorious patent office would actually pass through a patent like that....

Nonobvious Patent Requirement

[Nymz]

If storing data in a database is considered 'nonobvious' and patent worthy, then someone please tell me the 'obvious' method of storing data.

Re:they don't understand

[locokamil]

patent is quite complementary to their one click "invention."

Fix'd your quoting

Re:Patent Office

[darkmeridian]

Haha! The average patent examiner would have voluntarily quit by the time you finished the paperwork necessary to fire him. The problem is that we underpay and overwork our examiners. Their supervisors yell at them for taking so long to grant patents. Examiners have a set number of hours to consider each patent application, and when that time is up, they get more applications dumped onto their plates regardless of how the original applications are doing. All the applicants know this, so their attorneys flood the examiner repeatedly until the examiner runs out of time. The incentive is to issue patents and get the applicant and his attorneys out of your hair.

You get what you pay for, and we don't pay a lot to our Patent Office and their examiners. We don't treat them well, either. We ought to pay our examiners more so we get professional career patent examiners, and also hire more examiners so there isn't such a huge rush on them to finish.

It's like my idea about paying more money to the IRS to increase enforcement of current tax laws: you get a lot of bang for the buck on investing on relatively unsexy things.