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Lawyer Sues To Get a Patent On Marketing
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Lawyer Scott Harris, one of the inventors of the concept of a 'marketing company devoted to selling/marketing products produced by other companies in return for a share of their profits,' is appealing the USPTO's rejection of US Patent Application No. 09/387,823 which was intended to patent that 'invention.' This court action is important because it directly challenges the In Re Bilski ruling, which tightened the rules to get rid of most so-called 'business method' patents. One of Mr. Harris's legal theories is that a 'company is a physical thing, and as such analogous to a machine.' If the name seems familiar, it's because Mr. Harris has a long history of inventive legal maneuverings. I'm honestly surprised that SCO never tried to hire or sue him."
sorry, prior art, no dice
IOW, since the court upheld in Re Bilski, this is another nail in the coffin for business patents.
What I'm waiting on is: What does this mean for software patents? I guess we're about to find out in the Microsoft v. TomTom case. I'm sure we all wait with bated breath.
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The lawyers will obviously need to eat and get haircuts....
Lawyers don't eat food, they consume the souls of their clients and their hair doesn't grow because their dead.
Does this man really have the time and money to waste on something pointless like this?
He's a lawyer. You do the math.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
"A machine is any device that uses energy to perform some activity. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work." Neither a technical nor a vernacular understanding of machinery supports his argument. Only in the twisted logic common to LawyerLandtm could this ever be considered a machine. Lawyers ought to be disbarred for this behavior, as only someone who has an incredibly dishonest character could torture a definition like this.
"Marketing company devoted to selling/marketing products produced by other companies in return for a share of their profits" sounds like what record companies have been doing for almost a century?
He appears to be trying to patent the concept of a marketing company or more specifically a software marketing company .... I suspect these already exist and have done for some time ....
Prior art is every software marketing company in existence ...forget if it can be patented due to it being a process, it has been around so long and is so obvious it cannot be patented
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