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.'"

Comments

Bad summary

[russotto]

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.

Re:Actually that's not a bad idea

[Lumpy]

You must go to crappy restaurants.. I do it all the time with coworkers.

either that, or the waitstaff there are complete morons and cant figure out the credit card machine.

Re:For everything else, there's the patent office

[Hacksaw]

Making a wry comment based on someone else's poor interpretation of an article: $0.02.

Making a joke in a cliched format you didn't invent: $0.00

Reading the damned source article all the way before you make a fool out of yourself in public: Well, I wouldn't call it priceless, but something like that.

The patent describes a device for accepting credit card payments at the table of the patron, allowing them to pick their amounts paid, and therefore saving the patrons and the waitrons from the hassle of communicating all this back and forth and dealing with the subsequent mistakes.

Re:Actually that's not a bad idea

[ThosLives]

I would argue that if in 5 years we're all using electric cars, then there's most likely been a patentable advance in electric car technology, bringing down costs and increasing efficiency.

And I wouldn't have a problem with that type of patent at all. I agree that sometimes commercial success is an indicator of non-obviousness. Most of the time commercial success a better indicator of changing values though.

I'd be willing to bet that the credit-card accepting POS is patented.

Probably, but note I put "on the basis of combining a credit-card reader with a POS terminal" in there. I wouldn't have a problem with a patent if there was some trick to get a POS terminal and a credit-card reader to work together and the patent covered that invention. If the patent is "let's put these two things in the same box" then it's kind of ridiculous. The "at the table POS" thing that it sounds like the IBM patent represents, while it is a piece of hardware, probably shouldn't be patented on that basis alone (legal ability to obtain a patent aside).

In general I don't have a problem with patents that provide new technologies; patents which just cover novel applications of existing technology are the ones that concern me: I don't believe that you should be able to patent a particular use of a technology, just a particular technology. It is a subtle distinction, and I appreciate that sometimes it is indeed difficult to differentiate between new technologies and new uses of technology.