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Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google Chase 'Got Milk?' Patents
theodp writes "Among the new iOS 5 features is Reminders, which Apple explains this way: 'Say you need to remember to pick up milk during your next grocery trip. Since Reminders can be location based, you'll get an alert as soon as you pull into the supermarket parking lot.' But does Reminders infringe on a newly-granted patent to Amazon for Location Aware Reminders, which covers the use of location based reminders to remind a user 'to purchase certain items such as, for example, as milk, bread, and eggs'? Or could Reminders run afoul of Google's new patent for Geocoding Personal Information, which covers triggering a voice reminder or making a computing device vibrate when a user approaches a location if 'one of the user's events is a task to pick up milk and bread'? Not to be left out of the 'Got Milk?' patent race, Apple also has a patent pending for Computer Systems and Methods for Collecting, Associating, and/or Retrieving Data, which covers providing a reminder to a user whose 'to do' list includes 'get milk' when the user's location matches 'a store that sells the item "milk."' (Continues, below.)
theodp continues: "That should not be confused with Microsoft's pending patent for Geographic Reminders, which allows users to specify reminders such as 'pick up milk if I am within a ten minutes drive of any grocery store.' That all four tech giants chose to pursue remember-the-milk patents — and the USPTO is considering and granting them — is all the more remarkable considering that Microsoft suggested location-based reminders were obvious in a 2005 patent filing, which informed the USPTO that 'a conventional reminder application may give the user relevant information at a given location, such as 'You're near a grocery store, and you need milk at home.' So much for that immediate patent quality improvement promised by the America Invents Act!"
To the strongest lawyers go the spoils
This is where out US patent group, judicial branch, executive branch, I don't know who exactly, needs to step in and say "YOU DID NOT INVENT REMINDING PEOPLE TO DO STUFF!" and prevent these companies from spending (wasting) money and time on winning the patent to do it. Their struggle to win that patent is not value adding for the country in any way whatsoever, but they'll do it anyway for their own gain. It's wasted money that could better go into R&D, for example.
So tell them now, level the field... and prevent all that wasted effort.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
How exactly does one get a patent on location-based reminders? I know I'm not the only one who has considered that idea and the actual implementation should be fairly straightforward (when you consider that APIs and hardware required for it all exist, hell even if you go the "IN THE CLOUD" route it would be relatively easy to figure out (Track position constantly, periodic "pings" to "The Cloud" that pass along your approximate coordinates, in return you get a JSON/XML reply with any nearby reminder positions which are cached locally, if/when you are close enough to a reminder position your device reminds you, new reminders are automagically submitted to the same "Cloud server", for local storage you just skip "The Cloud" and store everything locally)).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
We are already all criminals anyway in one way or another. Why not just ignore these patents and keep living life? We're the peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
So now a location-based reminder is a fucking patentable thing? What's next, a patent on something that remembers phone numbers for you?
This shit has got to stop...
Should such obvious, humanly logical things be patented at all? What if someone patents, say, "To submit form press OK." The whole civilization may stop.
Someone discovered you can make money much easier if you suffocate the competition using the law than producing better products.
I don't need a reminder on what to get, I need a reminder on what I forgot to get. Let's say I'm baking bread and I put down that I need flour. However, I forgot that used up my yeast when I last baked two weeks ago and I forgot to put that down on my list. The "you forgot to get" feature would look at my past purchasing history and tell me, hey you might want to check if you have enough yeast since you last purchased yeast 6 months ago. Maybe even it could see if a phone is currently located in the house where you live, is one of your families phones and send a text message asking them to check and see if there is any yeast in the cupboard.
However, I really think a majority of software patents are STUPID and COMPLETELY FUCKING OBVIOUS.
The large companies have to stop making money using this magical method.
Then they'll call the lobbyists off and the government can finally obey like the good puppets they are.
So unless there's a nuclear war, society collapses, or zombies rise up - probably never.
Someone in a position of authority in Government has got to wake up and say STOP! This shit has gone so far beyond ridiculous, I doubt that there is a word or phrase to describe it other than FUBAR. (Change the meaning of "R" from recognition to recovery)
this sure seems to reek of obvious. The fact that multiple companies are racing to patent essentially the same thing--which is just seemingly logical extension of an existing idea (reminders)--seems to underscore that.
Right now, you can patent anything, and if you can get it past the USPTO, you're a winner: you can collect royalties as long as you keep your demands below what it would cost to strike down your patent. There is almost no risk or downside (at worst, you lose what you paid for getting the patent, maybe $10k).
Since lawyers are ultimately driving this, maybe we can fix it by giving lawyers an incentive: create laws that allow companies to be sued for damages if they obtain patents if they should reasonably have known about prior art. This might restore some balance to the patent system, and companies would think twice about filing bad patents if they incur potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in liability.
I know a Surinamese citizen who is kind of proud of their 1982 "kill a few lawyers" coup, they said it went pretty well for the rest of the country:
http://www.worldrover.com/history/suriname_history.html
Excuse me. The idea to combine geographic positions with specific messages to the user is *not new*.
... it makes my (remaining) hair hurt just thinking about how stupid this "patent race" is becoming.
-- john
And the only reason that this hasn't been patented in the past is that nobody honestly believed that the USPTO could be so freaking stupid. Boy did we underestimate THAT...
Some billboards are art. Pretty sure they're location based too.
rewriting history since 2109
Can someone who is shed some light on what would need to happen for this quagmire to end?
A gradually increasing restriction on granting new silly, obvious patents. A gradual raising of the bar in what it takes to defend a patent successfully.
The real problem is: any shock to the status quo will make the people with money nervous, they'll feel uncertain about the future and less confident in predicting how they are going to turn their giant pile of cash into a more giant pile of cash, and in the face of that uncertainty, they'll just sit on their piles and watch them shrink slowly instead of putting the money at risk (in use).
Patents are a big part of that security blanket for investors, it makes them feel warm and fuzzy knowing how they can strike back at other kids who might try to steal their lunch money, it's kind of like that line "God created man, but Mr. Smith & Wesson made all men equal." A smaller version of nuclear detente'. If you have access to a sufficient nuclear arsenal of patents, you can go up against much larger companies and hold your own with a threat of mutual annihilation.
I put part of the blame on the .com bubble - investors were feeling all warm and fuzzy then, and the patent office was helping them feel that way by granting them patents on whatever they wanted. Change the rules quickly, and you'll have negative economic consequences.
The more interesting data mining is currently implemented as trade secrets. Apparently, the credit card companies can predict, with 99% accuracy, if you are going to get a divorce within the next two years.
They could do useful little tricks like reminding you about the yeast at the checkout counter, but that would be creepy to most people and not as profitable for the company with the data.
Any time an exceedingly obvious patent is filed by a company, it should be immediately placed in the public domain, and the company that filed it should be forced to pay royalties to the government. Not only would this reduce the amount of stupid patent filings and court battles, it would get our national debt paid off within a year or two.
So if you're looking for prior art to go patent busting on these big companies, a good place to start would be in the wearable computer projects in the 90's. A lot of these guys published in the journal of the ACM, too. Apple, Google and Amazon think their balls are all shiny and they're doing something new, but they're not.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I can't take it anymore! What has become of this planet?
Please do not confuse USA with the rest of the world!
I thought patents were based on the method and not the product/service in and of itself. Everyone could implement their method slightly differently (that's the trick part) and be scot-free.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Except that many patents these days are so broad as to not include any way of implementing what they describe (which means they are no better than a trade secret) AND the "limited time" isn't even applicable anymore when you realize just how long that time frame is and how fast the technology is progressing.
I'm not an expert on patents in the 19th and early 20th centuries to know for certain if they did in fact encourage invention at that time or not (I suspect it was really a bit of a mixed bag). But I am quite certain that by the end of the 20th century and in the early 21st century they do no such thing, and in fact actively stifle innovation to large degree. At this point there is no way to invent ANYTHING without running afoul of one patent or another. Even something new and novel that nobody has ever even dreamed of is likely to run afoul of one patent or another on the shape of it's case, the method of powering it, or the user interface to run it (among other ridiculous things).
Patents today are badly broken. They protect mega-corps at the expense of small time inventors. they protect exactly the people who need it least against those who would require it the most. It's time they were abolished, or at the very least, subjected to a MAJOR overhaul.
This behavior is perpetrated by the corporate executives who don't want any businesses to be able to compete. The lawyers are gun, but the executives are the hand that fires it.
http://www.notmilk.com/
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Ah, you mean like Germany where the Samsung Tab got banned because it was a rectangle? I know people love saying "well, that's just them", but the reality is everyone is being affected by stupid laws like this. ACTA, anyone?
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I see no problem with three companies having patents for location aware reminders, remember patents are supposed to protect an implementation. To use a car analogy, how many patents are their for carburetors.
The problem stems from overly broad patents. It breaks down to "I have a patent for location aware reminders now no one else can do it." is bad, while "I have a patent for doing location aware reminders in this way." is good;.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.