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IBM Wants Patent On Finding Areas Lacking Patents
theodp writes "It sounds like a goof — especially coming from a company that pledged to raise the bar on patent quality — but the USPTO last week disclosed that IBM is seeking a patent for Methodologies and Analytics Tools for Identifying White Space Opportunities in a Given Industry, which Big Blue explains allows one 'to maximize the value of its IP by investigating and identifying areas of relevant patent 'white space' in an industry, where white space is a term generally used to designate one or more technical fields in which little or no IP may exist,' and filling those voids with the creation of additional IP."
My head explodes at the sheer number of possible meta-jokes hidden here...
that's it, its time to patent the act of patenting. and then patent thinking about patenting things. and also patent every number up to a few hundred billion.
- my userid is lower than yours
Isnt that called creativity or something?
Can they really get a patent on that? Really? Wont this start an infinite cascade of similar statements?
Intellectual Property suffers from the exact same problems the real property market does. It is another market that is artificially inflated. Wait and see it all crash and burn within the next 10 years.
So when you see the word Patent simply think Mortgage Backed Security and you will understand
The problem with patents is a great number of them are "junk" and worthless but no one has realised this yet. When the cat gets out the bag its gonna crash down.
The patent that invents itself.
I wonder if IBM's next innovation will be programs that write themselves.
Does a black hole get created when this happens? It seems like the universe would suffer a stack-overflow.
So, if I come up with the concept of a - say a ion powered car - that just the concept is not patentable?
In my other life, I eat cats.
You'd have to come up with a method or process that actually works.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
We're filing them all. Trust us. It will work ok. You just keep writing that stuff openly and let our lawyers take care of the paperwork...
This is my sig.
It's useful. It's novel. It's non-obvious (at least to me, but I don't claim to be an expert).
Unlike so many other business method patents, which fail the last two tests miserably, this one cuts through the implementation details and shows why the whole concept of a business method patent is fatally flawed. I doubt that's what IBM intended however.
That sounds Patently Unpatentable(tm) (patent pending)
My blog
You have to love it when a common joke on Slashdot - that of patenting the process of patenting ideas - has finally come to pass. Reality has become a joke when a joke becomes reality.
After reading TFA it seems the patent application is about going back over things they have already made. Then if they don't hold alot of patents on it they try to find new ways of patenting it. In their mind trying to protect what they see as theirs. You see most new innovations have multiple patents. Take the case of item A, B, and C. A = 2 patents B = 24 patents C = 12 patents Under their suggested method they would identify A as an item that has greater potential to find new patentable features.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
Reality has become a joke when a joke becomes reality.
Or to misquote Arthur C Clarke's 3rd Law :
Any sufficiently advanced joke is indistinguishable from reality.
(Or Maybe shall we say : Any sufficiently advanced reality is indistinguishable from a joke.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Maybe, just maybe if the USPTO grants this patent it'll open up an absurdity rift in the space time continuum and suck all existing and future software/ip patents into a temporal garbage heap where-they-belong. It's a long shot, but let's hope they can pull it off!
... actually this is not a bad idea so long as it is used to support open source rather than to stifle it.
However, the idea of Open Source As Prior Art being used to help just such a patent or use of such a process as this article is about. It shouldn't supprise anyone that IBM is a contributor to this OSAPA.... And IBM being a huge software patent holder.... uh errr FLOSS supporter...
Apparently if you try to help improve the patent system and you support software not being patentable, you then risk screwing yourself.
Stallman was right. The best thing to do is to ignore the patent system as it applies to software. OR Support "End Software Patents", Or better yet help prove Software is not of Patentable nature!
This way mapping open source software for reuse becomes a clear benefit rather than a risk.
I too was on the OSAPA list and contributed in support of open source.... as non-patentable Abstraction Physics.
Uh, you might be more insightful than you think. Russians came up with an invention methodology by analyzing massive numbers of patents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ. It's used mostly for finding solutions in those white spaces, but could be adapted to find the white spaces.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
It sounds like a goof â" especially coming from a company that pledged to raise the bar on patent quality
Taking this approach with patents could be a strategy similar to how the FSF and EFF approach copyright. Stallman was offended by how copyright was being used to rob software of its freedom, so he developed a license enforced by copyright that could protect software freedom. EFF will, to the best of its abilities, enforce open licenses using copyright law to ensure those who incorporate copyrighted Free software is used as intended.
Perhaps IBM has this in mind when patenting a process to find areas of "white space" and locate opportunities for patent applications. IBM is known to be in support of reforms to the patent system to increase quality of submissions, and it has declared for some of its patents that Free software communities would not be subject to royalties, licensing or injunctions. It is a promising track record and hopefully it reflects what they would do with patents issued as a result of their new "invention".
Filing a patent application is probably the most iron-clad "prior-art" that one could provide, so anything that would make it easier for "good guys" to file patents would probably help. I do wish, however, that tactics like those used by "big corporate" IBM were being employed by the EFF or some neutral foundation or other organisation. Big corporate legal depts. are not altruistic and always act in the self interest of the company to some degree. The best idea would be to establish an "anti-troll" corporation as a foundation that would accumulate patents and offer them up under a Free-software-like license.
Sometimes fire really is best fought with fire...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It sounds like a goof especially coming from a company that pledged to raise the bar on patent quality.
That IS raising the bar on patent quality. Golly, you have a lot to learn about how business works.
Uh, no.
If that were the case, then a huge fraction of patents would be invalidated because as we all know, stuff doesn't work.
One doesn't have to show up at the patent office with a working model. Sorry.
But once you do patent something, remember that patents aren't valid in perpetuity-- although there's quite an effort to make them that way.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I want a patent on the generation of patents created by large companies. Top that, blue!
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
around the lawyer-class necks we so desparately need?
Someone crank up the rpms; this reality is ready to shatter.
... its the licensing terms that matter. Go ahead, patent everything. But license it under GNU/OSS-like terms.
Have gnu, will travel.
Just today, to my delight i found out that some chap in australia has patented the wheel back in 2001 and won the prestigious IgNobel Prize for it too.
Oh what other marvellous things have we forgotten to patent still, IBM will you enlighten us ?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
So, they patented a method of figuring out what to patent. Well, I'm going to file for a patent on the method of getting patents on ideas concerning how to patent things. Or maybe even just cut to the chase, and get a patent on patenting methods of patenting ways to generate things to patent.
Wait, can we just define this as a recursive function, and patent that, therefore patenting all conceivable levels of meta-patent-analysis in one fell swoop?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Namely to stop patent trolling once and for all.
;)
I'm all sure they're "just" a company too, but they indeed Think Different in a way that i can not yet fully grasp, but which shows. Everyone can clearly see that patent trolling (in the described form of "looky there's nothing invented here yet; let's make a patent, bring it through USPTO, do nothing with it and sue people to death") is not good for general business and the market as a whole.
It definitely makes me feel a lot better that IBM has filed this patent and not Microsoft, SCO, and/or other scourges
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
"if we could write a software to find out all the areas lacking patents and suggesting patents for that area"
:)
The software would also recursively generate ever more patents as it searches the patent idea trees, until its patented everything and the value of all patents worldwide = $0.00
Then again, if it was a really smart program, it would see it was undermining the value of patents by flooding the world with ever more patents and so it would then have to invent an entirely new patent system, which it could then start to sell new patents from.
You could then get it generating ever greater generations of patenting systems, and ever smarter versions of its own program, until all computing power on the planet gets used up by its searches, until it achieves the Technological Singularity and all patents become worthless.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Department of Redundancy Department
I always thought it was the Department of Redundancy Reduction Department.
Quit jabbering on the phone while driving. You are not that important.
Is that this would be a patent on finding whitespace.
Look, as an ethnic white person, our ethnosocial rights to our own space are under attack by IBM, the Big Blue.
If this is allowed to go forward, the entire world will be blue, and then our meals will look really really yucky.
Well, except for the blueberries. Those are good.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Simply ignore software patents.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
First, you can't patent something that is already public knowledge. Since people have been inventing things for millennia, and patenting for centuries, this is an absurd fear.
/. fashion, someone read the title and assumed that was a good summary of the patent. I don't know how many patents I've read with the title 'semiconductor device' - does that mean the inventor claimed a patent on all semiconductors? No, of course not.
Second, just because you run to the patent office with your money in hand doesn't mean you get to patent 'the wheel' or 'automobiles' or 'the page down key'. In typical
The patent application describes one particular novel system that could be used to identify areas with little patenting activity. This has been done for decades in many ways, so to get a patent IBM will have to prove that THIS method is substantially different from ALL OTHER ways that people have disclosed doing it in the past. If successful, IBM gets a patent on this and ONLY this system.
Before we trash the patent system (and it has its flaws), we should have at least a grasp of how the system works first.
Aren't I a clever multinational?
Won't fly unless they pay me royalties big time.
I've allready patented the patenting of patents involving technologies that deal with patents.
Yeah, I'm rich!
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Ever hear of design patents? All I need is a DETAILED DRAWING.
I highly suggest you re-read what patents one can obtain and what they entail, because you're obviously missing a lot of stuff. And as a patent holder, I can easily say you're DEAD WRONG - you do not need an actual product. You can atent a METHOD of making something - you don't need the actual end-product to obtain the patent on the manufacturing process of said product.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I believe that this is just further evidence that Americans have ceased to value hard work as the means by which to create wealth. Wealth is now appropriated by gaming of the system in order to tax the value of work performed by others. This is much in the same way that a parasite pilfers its sustenance from the result of effort invested by others.
"One doesn't have to show up at the patent office with a working model. Sorry."
Actually, I never said that. But I wasn't clear, so I'll make a second attempt. My point was that you cannot patent mere hypothetical concepts. Like a "process by which a time machine works." Your patent should be able to actually work, if it does not, there is no actual process or method that you patented. Thus, unless it can actually work, the patent is invalid.
The most famous of such a patent involved patents over the automobile. Henry Ford was sued by George Baldwin Selden who held patents on the automobile. Ford's lawyers argued that the patents were nonsense and were not physically possibly to implement. The judge ordered Selden and his lawyers to prove the patents were valid by actually implementing them in a real world design. It did not fully work so Ford eventually won.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
You cite a case where a design actually was forced to be proven through litigation. This comes after the patent was granted. One merely has to prove that the patentable object not just an idea, that it's unique, and that it hasn't been done before within legal constraints, and that it doesn't somehow occur in nature. It must be described in this way as well. Ford won the litigation, and had the patent invalidated subsequently, to my recollection.
Still, the object of a patent application doesn't have to be demonstrated or proven to get a patent grant. Indeed, it can be challenged, but the patent can be granted for things that don't work at all. As an example, you don't need to go into the patent office with your PC and working algorithm to have that algorithm patented.
Lots of inventions that don't work and can never work, have been granted patents. This is a part of the problem. More often than you think might be the case, patent applications are drawn where the object is in progress, and is theoretical-- to beat the competition. The legality of this, or its ability to withstand additional scrutiny (whether through litigation or not) is dubious. But it's done. Lying about prior art happens all the time, as well.
Inventing science fiction things when they truly are fiction is an abuse of the system. But more than one fictional item has been made into reality when challenged. The fact that it didn't quite exist at the time of filing then becomes a point of contention as your research has shown.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"Still, the object of a patent application doesn't have to be demonstrated or proven to get a patent grant."
Once again, I must not be making myself clear, because I never said that. I'll just say it again, in a slightly different way... If your patent cannot be physically implemented in reality, and if someone challenges it, the patent will almost certainly be found invalid. This is done a posteriori, not a priori. There is simply no way the examiners can implement each and every patent for such a determination.
"The legality of this, or its ability to withstand additional scrutiny (whether through litigation or not) is dubious. But it's done."
Very true indeed!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Reprogram those old algorithms for synthetic mortgage derivatives and voila -- instant synthetic patents. Hooray for higher math.
Coming next: Synthetic Patent Pool Bonds and Intellectual Property Default Swaps!
Charles Stross would be elated to hear that someone of power at IBM took his novel and made it real. The next step is their Cell Processor AI array (Sure it exists!) starts auto creating meta-corporations based on their new "whitespace" ventures.
Free downloadable book
http://www.accelerando.org/
oh bollocks, I just told the world and am now ineligible. oh wo is me. This is confidential so if you read this you owe me big $$$ I have a p4t3nt. f34r m3.
Of course, half of /. posts, elaborating how to patent patenting (for 4. Profit!!), might qualify as prior art...
The ampersand slashbug strikes again.
Today, there exists a great untapped opportunity that, for mysterious reasons, is still awaiting those pioneers who will man its papery frontiers: I refer, of course, to patenting ideas that do not nor ever shall exist. This area has been called "the ultimate white space."
I do not mean ideas that should not exist -- the so-called Cthulhu Codex (see Cox, J., Von Wolfgut, T., "The Patent Out Of Time," Journal of Patents, Vol. 27, No. 4).
No, far sexier and lucrative are those patents that haven't been devised yet because the ideas at their root are in a highly theoretical state of pre-existence.
Exploiting these synaptic absences is a vast project going forward. Moreover, it is timely. As the American economy reels from the devastating evaporation of fictitious wealth on Wall Street, new imaginary sources of wealth generation are clearly needed if our economy is to return to a robust delusional grandeur.
It is unknown exactly how much wealth can be derived from ideas that do not exist, but it is believed the sum is nearly incalculable, or, alternatively, "huge."