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Federal Appeals Court Tosses Spam Patent
Zordak writes "US patent 6,631,400 claims a method of making sure enough people get your spam. A federal district court had overturned the patent as anticipated and obvious, and not drawn to patentable subject matter. The Federal Circuit, the appeals court which hears patent matters, upheld the finding of obviousness, thus invalidating the patent."
I want to patent my intellectual Idea of "Keep going until I reach my destination"
?
If only they had offered eggs with their Spam...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
For the one time that an obvious bogus patent is actually useful (hooray, no more spam!), they toss it!
...to assign the patent to an anti-spam organization, then watch as they sue spammers into oblivion for patent infringement!
The primary purpose of patents is to *STOP* the competition from doing whatever it is you are patenting (yes, I know this isn't the stated purpose, but it is the purpose-in-effect). The secondary purpose is to collect money from people who do what you patented, so you can make money without doing it yourself.
In both cases, once you patent something, there is a net loss in the number of people doing it. We have observed this time and time again in the industry.
So why in the world would you REJECT a spam patent? By all means, GRANT THE PATENT! Let the spammers sue each other into oblivion and reduce the total amount of spam generated.
Sheesh.
Of course if it was granted, it would be licensed so it would not stop spam. But......
the licensee of the patents would be identifiable, hopefully allowing the identification of the spammers.
Fight Spammers!
Moseley et al, Mastering Microsoft Office 97 professional edition, 1997, SYBEX Inc., 2nd edition, p. 811-816.* .
Can anyone explain what a spam-propagation method has to do with MS office 97?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The district court held that the patent did not claim patentable subject matter and was anticipated by prior art, but the Federal Circuit did not address those aspects of the appeal. The Circuit court confined its opinion to the issue of obviousness. To wit:
I think they were the one's really pushing for this patent.
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The one time I want a patent issued to help retard things and the system does the right thing and rejects it on obviousness. Well maybe they just forgot they could do that and from now on obviousness *will* matter.
Yeah... and the guy who owns this (now invalidated) patent is saying to himself, "Dang-it! And I was going to use that patent to sue all of those spammers -- who somehow keep getting through my filters -- right out of existence! Curses! Foiled again!"
A story is posted about somebody being awarded a patent. It is tagged "corruption."
A story is posted about somebody not being awarded a patent. It is tagged "communism."
MAKE UP YOUR MIND.
The patent is basically for an electronic mail distribution system that tracks if emails have been opened, etc. It does specify that the subscribers should be members of an opt-in list, which would preclude UCE. Of course it could be used to nefarious ends by having a spammer submit the addresses as if they were opted in, but it's initial purpose doesn't seem to be one of sending UCE.
[citation needed] pretty sure most spam is not illegal.
Citation: CAN-SPAM Act
The purpose of patents is to be owner from your invention,
Let it be so a spam patent.
visit my website www.onlycatsanddogs.com
I really wish Michael Moore would stop trolling Slashdot.
The primary purpose of patents is to *STOP* the competition from doing whatever it is you are patenting (yes, I know this isn't the stated purpose, but it is the purpose-in-effect).
Not really. Not even a purpose-in-effect. The stated - and effective - purpose is to prevent others from doing it for a short while and ensure that after that time has passed the whole society can benefit from it.
The secondary purpose is to collect money from people who do what you patented, so you can make money without doing it yourself.
Well, another way to see is that is that in most cases this gives you the incentive to allow the rest of the society benefit from your invention even during the protected period in a lot larger scale than you personally could.
In both cases, once you patent something, there is a net loss in the number of people doing it. We have observed this time and time again in the industry.
Until you invent something, there is not a single person doing it. When you patent it, there will be at least some people doing it and after the protected time has ended, there will be loads of people doing it. As opposed to you just inventing it, being the only one who can do it, having to always guard your secret and then taking it to the grave with you.
I'm getting pretty bored of this "Patents are evil!" attitude. History has taught us that patents are necessary (read some material about the origins of the system). There are two reasons to argue against that. "Most patents aren't about new inventions!" and "They slow down our progress". Okay, MS submits 3000 new patents each year and IBM has even more patents and yeah, many of those probably aren't about new inventions that weren't obvious. But we are talking about companies that spend billions of dollars to research - they really do invent a lot of new stuff.
The problem is mainly in the area of medicine and Computer Science as these have advanced so much in so little time. But in a decade or so, thousands of CS related patents will be released to public domain each year. Nobody can repatent them (if you have a patent that covers what you are doing and has been released to public domain, the other side has no chances at all in court). I would imagine that numerous new companies and business ideas will spawn from non-utilized MS patents alone. Person X might never have been able to invet them and MS might not have came up with a good way to utilize them but when the person X goes through MS patents, he might come up with an idea about utilizing them.
This would also really thwart the business plans of the big corporate patent trolls - their plan is to create a huge patent portfolio and sell it as "protection" to be used as a club against anybody who comes after them. Usually big companies acquire large patent portfolios as a form a mutually assured destruction - never used, unless they are attacked. The joy of a bunch of working stiff geeks owning the evil patents is that you can't threaten a working stiff with patent violations.
So go forth, file patent evil and save the world!
This patent isn't about "spam" per say, but rather bulk e-mails. While spam is completely unsolicited, bulk mail may include necessary mailings, such as companies who e-mail your w-2's or something along those lines for tax time. Also, the article suggests using e-mail lists, while many spammers just generate random e-mail addresses. This patent would be much further reaching than just spammers, but rather affect every single company that sends out e-mails to its consumer lists (ie. pretty much every company that you uncheck the box that says "e-mail me with upcoming promotions and events")
In the interest of full disclosure, I work for a company that sends out e-mails with an opt-in list that we maintain tirelessly in order to ensure that we don't get in trouble for spamming.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Maybe they should try to patent "A method of being the biggest asshole to the most people in the most efficient manner" instead, at least it would be more truthful.
A method for managing bulk e-mail distribution can include the steps of matching a target recipient profile with a group of target recipients; transmitting a set of bulk e-mails to the target recipients in the matched group; and, calculating a quantity of e-mails in the set of bulk e-mails which have been successfully received by the target recipients. If the calculated quantity does not exceed a prescribed minimum quantity of successfully received e-mails, the matching, transmitting and calculating steps can be repeated until the calculated quantity exceeds the prescribed minimum quantity. Notably, in the preferred embodiment, the group of target recipients is an opt-in list.
For once, a software patent that actually does involve a novel idea!