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IBM's But-I-Only-Got-The-Soup Patent
theodp writes "In an Onion-worthy move, the USPTO has decided that IBM inventors deserve a patent for splitting a restaurant bill. Ending an 8+ year battle with the USPTO, self-anointed patent system savior IBM got a less-than-impressed USPTO Examiner's final rejection overruled in June and snagged US Patent No. 7,457,767 Tuesday for its Pay at the Table System. From the patent: 'Though US Pat. No. 5,933,812 to Meyer, et al. discussed previously provides for an entire table of patrons to pay the total bill using a credit card, including the gratuity, it does not provide an ability for the check to be split among the various patrons, and for those individual patrons to then pay their desired portion of the bill. This deficiency is addressed by the present invention.'"
1. Eat food.. 2. Split bill.. 3. ??? 4. IBM Profits!!!
Two burgers and fries: 8$ Two large drinks: 3$ Tax and tip: 1.75$ Getting paid for something most people can just do with simple mental math: PRICELESS.
There really isn't a convenient way to split a check and allow the parties to all still pay with a credit card (at least not in any of the restaurants I've ever been too). We live in a credit card/debit card world now (even the Salvation Army now accepts them) and that sort of thing is actually needed.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In Germany the waiting staff are more than happy to split the bill with you so that each person pays for what they ate and drank separately. I suspect that this is because, unlike in the US, tips aren't expected and aren't at a more-or-less fixed percentage and instead patrons who want to tip usually round up the bill amount.
So if the waiting staff take the time to go through 10 separate payments for each person, they probably get a larger total tip than the tip on one big payment.
And the person who only had a glass of water and a starter is happy he didn't pay for the steak-guzzling alcoholic ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
You'll just have to pay for the pizza. See, IBM holds a patent on splitting the check. Honestly, they do. Don't worry, I'll pay next time. Promise!
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
It's not a business method patent on splitting the bill. It's a device patent for a portable terminal which allows people to split the bill using a credit card.
I still don't think it's patent-worthy -- the idea for the gadget has no doubt been thought of by numerous groups of geeks, and the patent really doesn't disclose anything beyond the idea and basic method of operation. But at least it's not totally silly.
It may sound silly, but this is a first step for IBM to patent and control the world's first Bistromathic drive, as first theorized by Douglas Adams.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
For a second there I thought they were trying to patent soup...talk about prior art...
-=Bang Bang=-
'Though U.S. Pat. No. 5,933,812 to Meyer, et al. discussed previously provides for an entire table of patrons to pay the total bill using a credit card, including the gratuity
Since when has paying a restaurant bill with a credit card for a group been patented? Does this mean that I'm paying royalties every time I treat my friends when we go out to eat??
Separate checks, please!!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Because it is so difficult to tell the waitperson, "Separate checks please" before you order. What's next, a patent on belching words?
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Sure, you people can laugh at it now, but someday this patent will make interstellar travel possible.
Maybe
They are effectively stating that "it is a common procedure in restaurants to split the bill, but no one claimed it yet. We are hereby putting down a flag."
So what is the actual invention? Where is the method or apparatus for splitting a bill? Is anything described in the patent that allows us to do this in a novel way? Or is it just a codification of a practice that is as old as the country of the Netherlands? (I'm Dutch, I can make the joke... ;-) ).
It goes without saying that, if it is just a codification of something that is hundreds, and potentially thousands of years old, it should not be meriting special protection...
Geesh that article has a lot of fluff.
As an industry professional that works on the data-end of about 20 POS systems, I can emphatically state that many systems provide several methods for splitting a check, including splitting the overall cost, assigning individual items, and splitting individual items (so for example on a table of 5, 40% of the wine can go on one check and the other 60% on the other).
Another factor is restaurant policy. Giving the server the ability to split checks is one of many avenues where fraud occurs. Often the restaurant will not let servers use the POS for this, or limit how checks are split, even though the capabilities exist.
Regarding the patent, if this holds up, there's going to be a shitstorm among the Point of Sale industry.
You stereotypers are all the same...
We've done this for quite a while, as long as you consider a mid-tower workstation to be 'portable'.
There are many things I do not understand, and I will put this one among those. I don't know about US but here in Brazil at least, it is common practice when you go to the restaurant to pay only for what you pay. Most places can make different tabs for each costumer on the table, even if not, it is normal to pay part of the value on separate credit cards.
You know, because it is very hard to do simple math, specially because it is not common for any cellphone to have a calculator.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
...until my patent gets approved for filing pointless patents. Holy shit, am I gonna be rich.
Discussing patents on Slashdot is like trying to diagnose mental illness using WebMD. Only with more mental illness.
RTFP, people. And the relevant patent law, while you're at it. The patent examiners did, so it's the least you could do.
The reason for this was part of an effort to develop a Point of Sale (POS) card swipe system for resturants. Many resturants have cash registers that have trouble splitting up a bill in a non-per-seat method.
Case in point:
5 people order a $10 meal each.
$50 dollars.
To split the bill the waitress at the register sets up 5 seats so each person pays their $10.
Tip comes alone and seat one tosses in $2 and seat 4 tosses in $3.
Now Seats 1,2,3 are a family and 4 and 5 are guests.
4 decides to pay for 1/2 seats 1,2,3 on 1 credit card and his own on a second credit card. Seat 5 pays his own on a debit card. The other half of 1,2,3 are begin paid by seat 1.
On many POS systems you cannot pay 1/2 of a group of seat's bill on a card then pay the other half with another card. In this case many times the resturant would have to process seats 1,2,3 each separately with the CC transaction. And at .5% per transaction lets say (some places pay as high as 1.5% I've heard) this is a horrible hit to profits. This is common also with gift cards. Older POS systems can't take a check for 1/2 and a credit card for the other. aka. The Split Payment Problem. If a computer system can be put in place to help break up the transactions automagically it might cut down on the number of transactions needed.
This patent as far as I can see appears to be targeted towards POS systems (cash registers, etc.) not people splitting a bill. I'm not a patent fan in full disclousure, but this isn't the maddness people would like it to be.
Relax people. Stupid Patent? Perhaps. End of the World? Nope.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Economy is in the toilet, unemployment setting records, hundreds of billions in bailouts, and we've got IBM over here fighting for 8+ years over this?.
Holy....Shit.
IBM deserves more than this patent, but I don't feel like going to jail.
Doesn't sound like it'll pass the Bilski test
I've been saying for a long time: The patent system has collapsed. The wheel was patented about 20 years ago, it's all been downhill from there.
BTW, the patent of the wheel was actually a protest against patent reforms which effectively broke the entire system.
I fail to see where the "invention" is... But alas, IANAL... nor a Patent Troll... ;)
Well, the patent seems to have been filed in 2000. The "Resto" application I wrote for the Newton was doing pretty much the same thing in 1997...
I wonder if I could sue IBM...
Millions here I come!
My knowledge of the credit card payment industry is not complete, but as I recall, the rate that a business pays for CC services is based on average transaction value and number of transactions per day/week/month/quarter. This would have a more than insignificant impact on that rate.
It does however have some far reaching possible effects: If the patrons are paying at the table (no wait staff involved), the value of wait staff is reduced and the likelihood that they could be replaced by robotic wait staff is increased. Already wait staff are paid some of the lowest wages on the planet. If their value decreases, it could be interesting times for restaurant patrons.
I'm not saying that robots could replace waitresses at Hooters, but there are places where robots could be used. It was always the payment end of things that made using robots impossible.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Now there is a way to pay for those patented McDonalds sandwiches.
I once wrote a wxgtk python (might have been PyQt) script for a Zaurus hand-held for an ex-girlfriend who was waiting tables, that did exactly what this patent claims.
All she had to do was create groups by selecting radio buttons beside the items on the bill with the stylus, and then clicking a button "new bill", and it would separate them and create a new bill for each group. The only thing is that she did have to go up to the register and put all this information in, but she was doing that before with paper.
I also have to mention that I am not a real programmer. This is mostly back in the days I was dabbling at it. This isn't rocket science.
once more into the breach
Is there a list somewhere of all the humorous patents that IBM have applied for?
e.g. this one
I know, I got the joke...but I'm taking this opportunity to rail at recent restaurant prices. Mods, fire up that Off Topic label...
[rant]
Now, I'm doubly screwed since the lovely state of Virginia allows a fairly high meal tax (11%) for a state which also has an income tax, but I've been noticing an alarming trend in drink prices.
A large drink at a fast food joint has been creeping up, and unless you're on the dollar menu (what is now termed a "small", though the cup is 22oz) a large is north of $1.79. Go out to a chain restaurant (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Outback, Red Robin etc. - or similar) and the drinks are now over $2. $2.29 the last time, if I remember, and the kids cup is $1.49. This was driven home last summer when I was in NC and it was cheaper for me to get a "happy hour" 12-14 oz premium tap beer for less than the iced tea.
Oh, and just for the record, the last time I wandered into a burger joint where tips are common (that would be Red Robin, though I prefer the local joint at nearly the same price) a burger and fries was just shy of $10. So I suppose for me it's:
Two burgers and fries: 20$ Two large drinks: 4.50$ Tax and tip: 6.50$ Getting paid for something most people can just do with simple mental math: PRICELESS.
[/rant]
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Does anyone realize that this is how Micropayments work?
Now there may be other patents which cover it, IANAPL, but it looks just like what happens when Apple clears out an iTunes Store payment block.
So micropayments is like this.... you let a bunch of people buy things for very low prices (too low to process via Credit Card without the processing fee canceling out the purchase or costing you money).
OTOH this could force Apple for instance to go to a Credit purchasing system like other companies that sell lots of low priced items... where you have to buy a block of credits.
You accumulate those payments until they equal a block large enough to process... then you SPLIT the TAB and pay for it with multiple credit cards via one charge.
Credit card companies allow you to do this. Now IBM has patented a method of carrying it out in an automated fashion.
Now IBM doesn't typically sue companies on this type of thing but they could use it to pressure companies into sharing similar patents via a licensing swap.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I think Denny's may be able to claim prior art here. Denny's has a system that splits the check by seat. Each seat gets a separate section in the bill. One bill is issued for the whole table, but the server can break out any portion of the bill by saying, say, seats 2 and 3 are now a separate bill. The system spits out a new check just for seats 2 and 3, marking those seats on the master bill as paid.
My blog
Really. A 20 second glance at the patent link answered this.
Should they be able to patent this. Not likely...its an obvious idea but they are making something than CAN do something very useful.
BUT, even if you ask for seperate checks up front, this approach is very attractive.
Think about being out with a large group, trying to make it somewhere by a certain time, trying to hunt down the waitstaff because everyone's ready NOW vs. when they came by 20 min ago and one person was still eating, identify who got what, how much to put on what card, wait for them to ring it up, put slips in little balck books, bring em back, hand them out, etc.
Device shows check.
You can select the items you had through the touchscreen interface.
It gives a total.
You pay your part.
You FN leave.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
If they put a phone number and bill number at the bottom of the check, each patron could call the number, enter the bill number, and pay his portion of the check by amount and credit card # (CC# possibly encoded in the phones memory, passwd for security, etc..). I'm sure application software can make it work on even the smallest cell phone lcd. Oh dam! Public disclosure. Now I lost my patent!
Is it patent worthy? I don't know. But I sure like to such a device in restaurants. It really gets messy when you are at a table with >10 friends. It's really a hassle to hand 10 credit cards to the waiter. It never happens that everyone ( or even most of the people ) have cash. Picking your items on a touch screen, enter a tip percentage, swipe your card - sounds really convenient to me.
The patent should be applied for in Holland, they have the experience.
Ernst
The cost of royalties for these devices will be included in the price of the device from the vendor. I highly doubt there is a large enough percentage that will be passed onto consumers. This is about as worrisome as a cloudy day on the reality scale.
On the stupidity scale, stating "separate checks" before you start your relationship with a vendor who bought one of these devices should negate the need for trickle down costs, because the patent was not followed. We'll probably never know the difference, however. There is a small chance the royalties/payment will not even change the POS landscape, aside from not allowing NCR (and other POS device manufacturers) to duplicate the process in their POS devices.
Vendors have a choice to say "screw you", and simply not purchase the process. A calculator seems to fill niche more than adequately.
There's already a method of paying at the table and it does include splitting the bill between as many patrons as you like. They call it "cash".
In Europe, wait staff hand you a wireless device to swipe your card, then enter your PIN. Afterwards you select the gratuity.
Meanwhile here in the USA, my local Denny's restuarant leaves a check that has subtotals by each 'seat #' including tax.
If IBM can make a device that could be passed around the table so each person or sub group can pick their items off the check, including equal share of a bottle of wine, then swipe or leave cash, it would make it easier for larger group meals.
I for one would enjoy not having to drop 'another' twenty because someone didnt contribute their share.
Yeah... I actually thought of this back in the mid 90's, when going out to lunch with fellow I.T. co-workers. At that time, everyone said "Wow... why DON'T restaurants have that already, anyway??"
To this day, it seems they still don't.
Long ago, I decided the problem was one of the expense of the hardware, vs. one of people "coming up with the idea".
Almost all restaurants use Point of Sale systems provided to them under contract by one of only a handful of providers out there (IBM being one of them). My buddy works for one such company right now, and they definitely have a little market niche. The touch-screen terminals and software are proprietary, and although large users manuals may be provided for modifying the software, 99% of people in the restaurant business have no time or inclination to tackle doing all of that themselves. Therefore, they're stuck paying huge hourly fees for changes every time they re-price some things or change around menu items, or ??
I can see, now, how tough a "sell" it would be to convince a small restaurant they should pay for a secure wireless network and all of these proprietary card readers for EACH table, PLUS however much money for a corresponding software upgrade to the PoS software back-end.
They're going to say "No obvious bottom line cost savings? Just something to save my waiter or waitress from doing an extra little bit of work? Umm.... no."
A guaranteed way of evenly splitting a Restaurant Bill (note: the patent may have even wider applicability !) will help ensure that restaurant patrons will not, in these economically troubled times, be driven to ramp down their much-needed demand for the professional hospitality industry due to irrational and unjustified fears over how to divide the bill. Its importance cannot be overestimated and forms the basis for the continued economic viability of a branch of industry with a rich history which America can rightly be proud of.
In principle IBM would be within its rights to take the view that restaurants are responsible for unlicensed use of this invention on their premises and to demand a license fee for this invention from each and every restaurant on US soil. As an added benefit, after obtaining a license, restaurants would be empowered to apportion the fees payable for the use of IBM's Invention for apportioning restaurant bills by their clientele, to their clientele using IBM's patented invention.
In addition IBM would be in a position to institute RIAA-like proceedings against any restaurant that fails to promptly obtain a proper license for IBM's ground-breaking technology. Failure to properly license this technology would raise the gravest questions about the good-faith intentions of these establishments. I am certain we can all agree that unlicensed use of this intellectual property is Theft, and should be met with a zero-tolerance policy.
However, I urge IBM not to do this. On the contrary, I firmly believe that it is IBM's patriotic duty to make this patent available for general use for all restaurant bills that are generated by patrons who meet to discuss Open Source issues on the premises and who are prepared to publish their Restaurant Bills in the public domain under the GPL license.
I trust that IBM, given its commitment to the use of Open Source world-wide, will assume its responsibility in this matter and allow individual restaurants to refrain from charging license fees for the use of this Invention if they are satisfied that the issues discussed on their premises consist for at least 75% of the time of Open Source topics. Restaurants are in a position to verify this through the simple expedient of having their waiters listen in to conversations where those waiters currently do not record such proceedings. Following precedents set in the telecommunications industry, it is clear that it is only fair and reasonable to require Restaurants to keep logs of topics discussed and the time allotted to each topic.
Restaurants who are in compliance with this monitoring scheme should then be allowed to pro-actively deduct the fees payable from the annual licensing plan.
In order to ensure fair dealing, Restaurants would of course agree to accommodate un-announced spot-checks on the topic of conversation of patrons of their establishments, either in person by designated IBM personnel, or remotely through audio-pickups to be installed at every table.
its a patent electronic device that allows all diners to pay for their bills separately with only one check for the waiter to deal with.
Its a damn good idea and would speed up customers getting seated at resturants.
No no, this is really a cost-cutting measure!
From now on, IBMers can legally get their guests to pay for their food ("royalty fee", capice?). Better watch out if an IBMer invites you to dinner!
"Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe." -- Douglas Adams
This kind of application has existed in Izakayas (a bar and grill style restaurant) in Japan since at least 2003. Using a tablet PC you are able to order whatever/whenever you want, pay at the table, and split up the check however you need. Does prior art apply if it's outside the United States?
I don't think it is that big a deal...I've gotten used to no split checks in New Orleans, most restaurants I go to do not split checks.
Simple...you add in the 20% tip to the total, split that evenly amongst the people there...pay and go.
The only time you usually have a problem with this, is if you have a table full of chicks, who insist on whipping out the calculators and separating everything out to the penny.
I mean geez...if you can't afford to go out to eat with the group, don't go. Sure sometimes you pay a little more...some times a little less..but, it adds up in the end.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
...is like Microsoft as the OS savior.
When I worked for IBM (admittedly, about 6 years ago), they'd brag annually about how many patents they'd gotten, and how IBM's patent portfolio was so much larger than anyone else's.
Sure, times changed a little, but IBM's new policy is clearly a marketing stunt to cover up a systematic effort to patent everything and anything. Just like MS's "Secure Computing" initiative was a marketing initiative used to paper over bad code.
Don't be fooled--IBM is run by the marketers and "career executive" spin control people, not the technologists. They'd rather stick a shiny label on something than try something new. The evidence is right there in front of you.
If IBM hasn't already patented the below, I sure plan to!
//here is the inovative part!!!!!!
private decimal IBMPatentValue()
{
Patent newPatent;
foreach (Patent oldPatent in PatentOffice.Patents)
{
newPatent = oldPatent.Clone();
newPatent.Text += " with a computer.";
newPatent.Submit();
}
return decimal.MaxValue;
}
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
You sound like a sexist, but I can vouch that this does happen. There was one girl I used to go to breakfast with on Sundays and she would get out the calculator to figure out how much was hers and how much was mine. Then she would find out 20% of the total and divide that in half and add it to each of our totals. Since I usually spent less on breakfast than her, I ended up paying well over 20% on tip. I tried to get her to calculate 20% on each of our totals, but she insisted that that wouldn't add up right to 20% of the check. Of course, I was just a BS in Engineering while she was a lofty business major dropout, so what do I know?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Somebody's light.
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rj
Blendtec(R)
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
If the waiter isn't willing to produce individual checks, I wouldn't be willing to produce a 20% tip. How hard is it to hit "Print" in-between each item ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I mean geez...if you can't afford to go out to eat with the group, don't go. Sure sometimes you pay a little more...some times a little less..but, it adds up in the end.
No it doesn't. Some of my friends pound back 9$ drinks through a meal, others drink water. Some order steak EVERY time, others order a chicken salad, or a club sandwich.
And there is no reason someone who orders 25$ worth of food should have to split the bill evenly with the guy who had a $30 entree and another $50+ in booze. And when we go out to dinner -again- it won't even out, it will just get further out of balance. Because we consistently pick the same items and drink choices.
Sigh. I should file a patent of my ass wiping method
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/p-convention.html
Well, to be fair...MOST of the restaurants in NOLA are not chain restaurants, many are old, small, family owned (and the BEST)...and often work on hand written checks, etc. So, there is no computer or print button.
But even so...many places with computers just have it as tradition in the city that you don't have separate checks. Heck, there are still a large number of restaurants down here that are cash only, no credit cards at all...so, you remember to bring cash, or use the ATM they have there (I don't like this, charges too much to get my money out).
But, don't assume that all places have a "Print" button on a POS system. That is mostly chain restaurants, which I pretty much detest anyway. I'd rather cook at home than eat those pre-made, frozen, Cisco prepared meals. When I go out, I want stuff make pretty much from scratch with quality local products...and service. But that's another thread...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Anyway, we all eat about the same amount give or take....and I'm not gonna argue $5 here or there..that's pocket change. Most everyone I hang with eats and drinks about the same anyway. And if it is dinner with friends...ok, usually we can take turns with buying wine, etc. Then again....at night in a fine dining situation, it is rarely with more than 4 people, so divvying it up is pretty easy. When I order, I keep a running general tab of what I had in my head, that isn't rocket science...and if it comes to not splitting the check evenly...I know how much to throw in. I just hate doing that usually...because often people don't tip enough....or calculate tax.
But, in general...with me at least, large groups are lunches, we all eat about the same, booze isn't in the quotient, and we all just pitch in evenly, unless we are treating someone for a B-Day or something..in which case...we divide the check by one less and that person doesn't pay.
I just can't stand dining with cheapskates tho...if someone bitches about $1-$5...they don't generally get asked to go eat with the group again. If you have to worry about that little money...you should probably consider cooking at home, and bringing your lunch (which I actually do 99% of the time. I'd rather not eat fast food, and when eating out, eat somewhere nice.).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That was in one of the blogs. Many wait-staff will refuse separate checks arguing inconvenience or low-class.
I'd be more worried that she couldn't add a few simple numbers together, or divide them up again after, without the help of a calculator.
And some douchebag (A good friend's 'plus one', probably) doesn't select those three drinks they had, and someone still gets stuck with something that's not theirs.
Fail.
Just go dutch, you cheap fuckers
I'd rather cook at home than eat those pre-made, frozen, Cisco prepared meals.
That would be Sysco .
I don't think anyone, not even people on Slashdot, would eat premade, frozen routers.
I thought of an idea some time ago to get rid of obvious patents, like the (not-so) Amazing One-Click. It would mean less work for the PTO (Patent/Trademark Office), too. The case of prior art might be considered a special case of "obvious" (or known) patents. See what you think:
When someone submits a patent, claiming to have found (let's say) A Wondrous Way For Customers to Order What They Want By Clicking The Mouse Only Once, the PTO would publish the claim. Not the contents of the patent, simply the claim itself, the problem that the patent claims to solve. They would give the general public some set time, say 30 days, to come up with some way to solve this problem. "We have a patent application claiming to offer A Wondrous Way For Customers to Order What They Want By Clicking The Mouse Only Once. Can anyone come up with how this might be done? If someone gets a valid submission in within 30 days, then this patent will be considered obvious."
People who would be motivated to work hard to look for a solution within the allotted time would include, besides the Slashdot crowd, firms who have a vested interest NOT to pay licensing fees every time they want to use the invention. They would have some idea what sort of patent apps might be coming down the pipeline. PTO doesn't have to figure out whether a patent is obvious (which is good seeing as how they're doing a pretty lousy job of it). As for prior art, if the public can come up with a way to solve the desired problem using prior art, then that's another sign that the patent is obvious! Of course, these submissions tbhemselves of "that patent is so obvious even I could come up with something in 30 days" would be published and be available to the public.
Some patents, including algorithmic software patents, are worth patenting. The MP3 algorithm, for example, was the result of hard work and research. If the PTO had given the public a chance to come up with "A Way to Compress Sound Files With Unnoticeable Loss", people might not have been able to produce a solution in 30 days, showing that the MP3 patent is not so obvious. Someone might have come up with a different solution (Vorbis, FLAC, etc.), and that would be okay but the MP3 patent would be granted. (Of course, then large firms might have used Vorbis instead of paying the MP3 fees.)
What do you think?
(I posted this comment before, but too late to generate any discussion. I'm reposting it to see whether you think this would be a valid test of whether a patent is "obvious".)
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
everyone out of N persons pays 1/N of the bill, resulting in the paradoxical increasing of value for money: The more you eat, the less you pay!
Oh, and don't forget to give a contempting glance down to those cheapy miserables who have the face expression of '...but I only got a diet Coke... :-('
Why do IBM continuously chase new patents? It's not because they plan to license all unapproved uses of their patents. Rather it's to give IBM leverage in acquisitions of companies. With so many patents owned by IBM, many companies are bound to infringe on some patent owned by IBM.
where you _have_ to split the check and provide full documentation
if you want to expense it (and your share better not exceed $35 either).
Just undoing a mistake moderation.
Here's a "me too" on the "thought of this exact same thing years ago". Like, 7 or 8 years ago.
I'd have shelled out the money (not a whole hell of a lot) to create a prototype if I'd thought it was patentable, but I just figured it was so obvious that it couldn't possibly be, and assumed some trendy, expensive restaurant somewhere was already using something similar anyway.
Add it to the list, I guess. If I'd had any idea that it'd be so easy to patent, "doing task that could VERY OBVIOUSLY be done with a computer... WITH A COMPUTER!" or "doing task that involves a large number of records... WITH MYSQL!" 10 years ago, I'd be rich.
We live in a credit card/debit card world now {...} and that sort of thing is actually needed.
Are the US credit card readers anyway special ? Do they force you to pay only the exact amount which was transmitted from the billing machine ?
Here in Europe they are simple machine with a key pad. The waiter can type some arbitrary sum of money on the pad and they you put your card and said amount is transferred to the restaurant.
(Shops and stores, on the other hand, have a mechanism to copy paste an amount from the billing machine to the card reader to avoid re-typing the number in simple situations).
It the exact same procedure as taking an arbitrary amount of cash from your purse and handing it to the waiter.
Paying bills split in a complex manner isn't any more complicated that having different patron handing varied amount of cash :
Just debit each one's card in turn - exactly the same way as you would get the cash handed by each one.
The only difference is the speed of the procedure (slower because of all the typing/server communication/signature or pin check required).
In fact this system is much more versatile than IBM's patent :
the current system allows completely arbitrary sums to be transfered. A "checkbox to select what you pay" limits you to only 1 person paying 1 item.
Here around it's often customary to split the bill for the wine among all drinkers, but then each one pays only what he/she ate. This can't be done with a checkbox interface, except if the interface becomes much more complicated. But then it will be several orders of magnitude slower and more complicated than simply doing the math mentally and giving arbitrary sums.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Don't forget "...on the internet" and "...on a mobile phone".
. . . well, duh, if I was a Patent Attorney at the USPTO, and this one wandered across my desk, I would have screamed to my colleagues, "Dudes! Free Lunch for the price of a soup!"
. . . and then delayed the process for as long as possible.
Do you believe that?
No, I don't either, but given this story, nothing seems to make sense.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Laziness or an inability to calculate on the part of my friends should not affect the size of my restaurant bill. I mean, Jesus, all you have to do is look at the bill and add up your items. It's not diff-eq. If I go out and eat a salad, I'm not paying for some asshole's lobster thermidor. Fuck!
So, you take issue with people who value money? I don't care if one dollar isn't very much money, that doesn't mean I'm just going to start giving cash away to arrogant fuckers who want me to pay for their lunch. I'd probably be happy not being invited back. I probably would have dreaded going to lunch with you in the first place. I hate you.
product idea, cool and yes itd be awesome
but is this patentable? I disagree
new? perhaps, arguable.
novel? no; takes well known things
non-obvious: fail; its called a calculator. The computer isn't doing any operation we don't know how to do. Many waiters / waitressess already do this kind of thing in their heads, or through check splitting. If they don't someone at the table pulls out a cellphone w/ a calculator and we do this ourselves.
All this patent really does is add very obvious things to other EXISTING patents / prior art. Basically this is taking the automated checkout from the grocery store and sticking it at your table.
Cool idea? yes.
would i like to see some form of it deployed in restaurants here and there? sure
but is it truly patentworthy? I really don't think so; and more than anything else firmly believe that the IP captured in this patent does nothing but preventing someone from doing something they already know how to do. This smells a lot like patenting an algorithm / implementation.
Sadly this probably just decreases the liklihood we'll ever see it because licensing will probably just raise the costs of such a device.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
Look, I'm not paying for Charlie's six beers when I didn't drink and that guy had a meal that cost 3 times what mine did. I'm not splitting this check evenly moron!
They're actually not that bad with enough Frank's Hot Sauce on them.
But even I won't lower myself to chewing on a PIX box.
Just another ignorant American.
You guys really know how to keep lawyers employed in the U.S.
OK, so let's imagine someone submits the MP3 algorithm as "a way to compress sound files with unnoticeable loss." In an attempt to prove it's not obvious, someone else submits the AAC algorithm. Now, the MP3 patent is granted, but what about AAC?
It would seem like we'd have to do the same process for AAC. We'd have an infinite regress of people trying to debunk others' patents, and worse still, there'd be a time limit. This could really screw up business plans, where we'd have to divert resources to solving the same problem over and over again to prevent "obvious" patents.
The other alternative would be to make AAC public domain, but then there would be no incentive to submit your own solutions when you could just patent them later.
It's an interesting idea, but I think the problem I've outlined is pretty significant. Or maybe you don't see it as a problem, but it would certainly change how businesses operate.
Went to visit TJ Watson a while back, people were twiddling their thumbs. Now I understand they don't need to work, the money is coming in anyways.
Why do Americans refer to bills/invoices as "checks"?
-b
myselfmusic
IBM - Idiotic Blundering Morons
There are plenty which are hooked into the POS system, though, so it's not guaranteed.
Ah, ok. Hence the "POS should be able to split bills" problem.
I see better now, thanks.
There are only two problems with this:
1) armchair "experts" on slashdot would flood the patent office with lots of poorly thought out bogus attempts to nullify patents
2) there is no incentive for true experts to attempt to nullify patents, unless they have a personal interest in doing so or their company pays them to do so
The solution to this is to charge a small fee to submit a patent nullification, and there would be a bounty if you do so successfully. This would be paid partly from the fees, as well as partly through a payment required from the submitter of a nullified patent, to discourage filing obvious patents (or those easily nullified via prior art)
Indeed it seems that this could revolutionize the field of Bistromathics!
No existe.
Think about being out with a large group, trying to make it somewhere by a certain time, trying to hunt down the waitstaff because everyone's ready NOW vs. when they came by 20 min ago and one person was still eating, identify who got what, how much to put on what card, wait for them to ring it up, put slips in little balck books, bring em back, hand them out, etc.
Most major restaurant point-of-sale systems handle this by clicking a couple of buttons. It's a feature we set up for our clients all the time. Does this mean that all these POS companies are required to pay IBM for something they already do?
...'n' before you reiterate "no, we meant AT the table..." there're wireless versions of the POS system I have in mind. Transaction happens right there at the table. I'm not gonna shill, so you'll have to check yourself to see who took over NextPOS...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
The last time I went with the split-the-bill-evenly, I paid about twice as much as I consumed. I don't drink, I don't take after-dinner additions and my meat of preference is chicken. Combine bottles of wine, 5$ cups of coffee and steak entrees that cost 50% more than mine...
I've got this idea for a patent:
A system for obtaining sexual pleasure without a partner by manipulating your genitals with your own hands.
But then, I realized it was slashdot.
Prior Art. Period.
I hope Apple follows IBM's lead.
- (void) ApplePatentValue:(NSPatentArray *) IBMPatentArray
{
NSEmumerator *pEnum = [IBMPatentArray enumerator];
NSPatent *anIBMPatent;
while((anIBMPatent = [pEnum nextObject]) != NULL){ //here is the inovative part!!!!!!
NSPatent *newApplePatent = [[NSPatent alloc] initWithPatent:anIBMPatent];
[newApplePatent appendTextWith:@" with a MultiTouch(TM) capable screen."];
[newApplePatent submitTo:@"USPTO"];
[newApplePatent release];
}
}
private decimal IBMPatentValue()
{
Patent newPatent;
foreach (Patent oldPatent in PatentOffice.Patents) //here is the inovative part!!!!!!
{
newPatent = oldPatent.Clone();
newPatent.Text += " with a computer.";
newPatent.Submit();
}
return decimal.MaxValue;
}
with a computer.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
I mean geez...if you can't afford to go out to eat with the group, don't go. Sure sometimes you pay a little more...some times a little less..but, it adds up in the end.
Unless you are the dude who doesn't buy the expensive drinks because you don't like them or the expensive meals because you are vegetarian and so end up subsidizing others' eating by $5 a pop every time. As you say, it adds up in the end.
If they can't be bothered to itemise the bill, why do they deserve a 20% tip?
Ahh, so you are the guy who orders the most expensive meal, plus dessert, and then expects everyone else to pay for it. Funny how it is always you dudes who don't want to fairly pay for their meal.
They dont, If the wages of such staff were decent there would be no need for tipping. Why should someone get paid for doing their job, for which their employer pays them.
I have never needed to tip anyone in Australia
it is virtually unknown.
Thank you for your comments (as well as those of your sibling posters). I do think I can address both of your concerns with almost no modification to my proposed system of Allowing the Public To Test for Obviousness.
For the patent on "A Way to Compress Sound Files With Unnoticeable Loss": In the first case, suppose someone submits something quite different from the MP3 method; the MP3 patent is granted. That itself is not a problem; I'm all for rewarding inventors who come up with non-obvious ways to solve problems. What happens next is that the software engineer says, "Gee, I want to compress my music, but I can't afford to pay patent license fees. Why was there a patent on MP3? It seems *obvious* to brilliant old me! Didn't anyone submit any 'That Is So Obvious' submissions?" Then, on checking, the engineer finds that someone submitted the Vorbis counterexample. "Oh, joy! I will use the Vorbis solution instead of MP3." So, although the MP3 patent was not obvious enough to be invalidated, it was obvious enough for someone else to submit something similar, and thus the world is not forced to pay MP3 fees.
Someone else might feel that Vorbis is not so good, and MP3 is the way to go, and this person might perhaps feel that it's worthwhile to pay the licensing fees. But it wouldn't be all or nothing. And, in particular, not every method of solving the problem is considered to be covered by the patent, but only that particular way,, since using Vorbis to compress sound has been shown to be "obvious".
In the second case, where the MP3 method is considered to be obvious you fear that now the PTO has to keep track of what is obvious and what is not. But that's not true either. Let's say someone else submits a patent for Windows Media Audio format; suppose the patent examiner happens to be a Slashdot editor who can't recognize dupes (<insert smilie here>). The examiner just follows the usual procedure and says, "Here's a 'Way to Compress Sound Files'. Anyone know an obvious way to do this?" And then 200 people would submit the Vorbis solution, saying, "You asked that already, silly!" And that would be the end of that.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
No, he probably meant Cisco's cafeteria food.
Douglas Adams:
The Bistromathic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances without all that dangerous mucking about with Improbability Factors.
Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an absolute but depended on the observerâ(TM)s movement in space, and that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observerâ(TM)s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observerâ(TM)s movement in restaurants.
The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.
The second non-absolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of maths, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Elseâ(TM)s Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the bill, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table, and what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a sub-phenomenon in this field.)
The baffling discrepancies which used to occur at this point remained uninvestigated for centuries simply because no one took them seriously. They were at the time put down to such things as politeness, rudeness, meanness, flashness, tiredness, emotionality, or the lateness of the hour, and completely forgotten about on the following morning. They were never tested under laboratory conditions, of course, because they never occurred in laboratories - not in reputable laboratories at least.
And so it was only with the advent of pocket computers that the startling truth became finally apparent, and it was this:
Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.
This single fact took the scientific world by storm. It completely revolutionized it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure and the science of maths was put back by years.
Slowly, however, the implications of the idea began to be understood. To begin with it had been too stark, too crazy, too much what the man in the street would have said, âoeOh yes, I could have told you that,â about. Then some phrases like âoeInteractive Subjectivity Frameworksâ were invented, and everybody was able to relax and get on with it.
The small groups of monks who had taken up hanging around the major research institutes singing strange chants to the effect that the Universe was only a figment of its own imagination were eventually given a street theatre grant and went away.
Read from http://www.tudy.ro/2007/07/10/the-bistromathic-drive/
If you are a man, this is why most of us here don't have wives or girlfriends, but if you're a women, forget what I just said
How about this scenario - which happens to me quite a lot: You're out of town on a business thing, staying at a hotel. That means eating at a restaurant each night. I'm usually with coworkers, but they may be from different parts of the corp. We each have our corporate credit card and we each have an allowance for dinner each day. My choices are either to eat at a restaurant that will split the bill or not eat with my coworkers. And sometimes (say at a conference) the people I would like to eat dinner with might not even be from my own company. Either way, I need to bring home a bill that accurately (more or less) represents what I had - and more importantly is for the right amount. And no, I'm not going to start paying for it out of my own pocket - they don't pay me that well. Just as well we don't do tipping here (Denmark - not that nobody gives tips, but I've never needed to tip - other than to show actual gratitude for above-standard service).
It's not unique at all, just automated in a different way than others have automated it in the past. I was at a restaurant a while back and my friend used his iPhone to calculate the bill and how much each of us owed based on what we ate. Pretty sure there's probably already an iPhone app that lets you do this. Perhaps IBM can patent mental arithmetic next.
Nobody can guarantee what's going to happen tomorrow, not even an admiral from the future.
In your concerns you cite above, it seems to me that what you consider to be "valid" patents are obvious by my criteria.
If people don't realize there is a problem to be solved, the PTO can publish "The Problem To Be Solved" (P2BS) in a more general manner. In fact, we could make it so that the submitter of the patent application submits the wording for the P2BS. For example, if people have taken for granted that they must (let's say) line up to buy tickets, and the submitter wants to say, "My idea is that we don't have to line up at all, but I don't want to give it away," then s/he can submit the P2BS as "the problem of frustration when buying tickets" etc. Then other people submitting Counterexamples Of Obviousness (COO) might come up with ways to make the queue move faster, but not hit on a way to dispense with the queue altogether. But this makes the P2BS rather vague, and I'm not sure that the patent is particularly valid.
Perhaps this cuts closer to where you and I differ. If the public submits a COO within the time frame, the patent "still might very well be inventive", but it's obvious and should not be granted. This happens all the time in software. There is a special situation that needs special algorithms, which are quite inventive, but if someone else can easily come up with the same inventive algorithm, I don't think you can justify granting a patent that will lock other people out of using your obvious inventive invention for the next X years. I mean, you see inventive solutions generated all the time --just go to any library and take a glance at books on "How To Stimulate Your Creativity" etc. In fact, someone on Slashdot provided a link to a web site that provides such inventive ideas:
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/priorart.cgi?ref=Prior_art_by_Mindcontrolled
Here is an example of the antithesis of an inventive suggestion. In this economic climate, you think that the answer to the upswell of patent trolls is to throw more money at the PTO? Tell the PTO to work even harder? I guess throwing more money at a problem can be a solution to any problem. I was looking more for ways to harness the energy of the motivated public, and make it easier for any given size of PTO.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Anyone noticed former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and his wife Sheila (left & center) as one of those "Caltech physicists" in that Onion article mentioned in TFA?
I've heard this point from Australians before and it is annoying and pointlessly self-righteous. Waitstaff often make excellent wages with tips in US (and other places with tipping)--considerably better for a good worker on a good night than they would make without the practice. The gripe about "decent wages" is almost entirely a matter of accounting.
Not every worker prefers security of income over the opportunity to make more at the expense of security. To make one or the other practice out to be normatively superior is to declare the wish to lord it over others by substituting your preferences for theirs. NOTE: I am not saying the practice of tipping is normatively superior either. I'm sure there are waitstaff who would prefer to do without it. (All the same, I know plenty of waiters and waitresses who would be appalled by the idea that you or some other do-gooder wants to do them a "favor" by replacing their AWESOME income with merely "decent wages.")
Finally, to emphasize how this sort of payment practice is ultimately a matter of accounting: I rather like the fact that the waitstaff is being paid by ME for doing ME a service. Why should he/she be paid by the middleman who happens to own the establishment?? By what rationale would that be any morally superior?? (Remember, you don't get to substitute your preferences for income security for others' decisions. These people are grown-ups who can choose for themselves.)
OK, so you've just implicitly responded to my post. You've essentially said the counter-submissions would be public domain. So, what is the incentive to make counter-submissions?
It seems the major incentive is to keep the method open for your own use (or maybe the use of others, but that would essentially amount to charity). The problems here is, I don't think many companies will (1) realize within the 30-day time limit that they may, at some point, want to use this method; and (2) have the resources to actually create a counter-submission. At the very least, they are going to have to dedicate more resources to this new process.
Another AC suggested giving financial reward, though the idea there seemed to be a pool from counter-submission payments. But how many people would be submitting? If nobody else does, you get nothing. If a hundred other people do, you might get a substantial sum. Such a "lottery" would make it even harder to use business sense when deciding how many (if any) resources to dedicate to the counter-submission.
I would suggest the fee should come from the patent submitter themselves, which would decrease the likelihood of them filing a patent. Maybe a nominal fee from the counter-submitters, but only to discourage spammers, not to build the pot in a significant way. So the patent submitter is saying, "By submitting this patent, I'm betting $10,000 (say) that its an original invention." Even then, though, counter-submitters might have to split the pot, which would make for uncertainty on their part when allocating resources.
But while we're on the topic of dumping more money into the process, another poster suggested increasing PTO staff as an alternative, but you were quick to say that that amounted to "throwing money at the problem." I'd like to suggest that, while you've come up with a clever solution, some amount of money is going to be thrown at the problem. This comes from (1) the patent submitter's "bet" (unless you have a better suggestion for incentive); and (2) re-organizing corporations to adapt to this new process (e.g. catching wind of new patents, devoting resources to counter-submissions).
I guess what I'm driving at, ultimately, is that if we're going to be throwing money at the problem anyway, imitating a patent system that is proven to work is probably better than throwing money into an unproven system. I really do like your proposal insofar as it promotes the idea of more people coming up with solutions to problems, though.
Well now that's surprising (to me), because nearly every respectable restaurant where I live has at least some form of electronic cash register. The notable exceptions are the noodle houses, but they are highly suspected of dodging taxes anyway...
The big problem with hand-written paperwork is that it's near impossible to verify. The only way to know if your cash balances or not, is to manually add up all the amounts and hope you haven't lost a receipt (or ten). How can you know your staff isn't robbing you blind ? It's a very common problem, and don't try to tell me family-run businesses aren't at risk - it's all-too common!
The other great benefit (or not, if you're a crook) is automatic accounting. That alone is often well worth the rather low cost of a basic computer-based point-of-sale system, unless your accountant likes to tally your receipts for free :P
So frankly, in this day and age, if someone is "unable" or unwilling to produce one total per person upon request, I consider it pathetic and lazy. It's not rocket science...
-Billco, Fnarg.com