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Software Patents Not So Abstract When the Lawsuits Hit Home

Posted by timothy on from the complaints-department dept.

no_such_user writes "It's easy to ignore the controversy surrounding software patents, especially if you don't have the passion for technology which Slashdot readers do. But as Dana Nieder discovered, it's not all about major corporations and obscure patent trolls. Her daughter uses a comparatively inexpensive assistive communication app on their iPad, which is being threatened by the makers of a multi-thousand-dollar hardware device."

12 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Bit more info by maxdread · · Score: 5, Informative

    A link to the actual complaint for anyone to read over (legal speak makes my head hurt so don't count on me to read it).

    http://news.priorsmart.com/semantic-compaction-systems-v-speak-for-yourself-l5vv/

    1. Re:Bit more info by Svartalf · · Score: 5, Informative

      They're suing over a dynamic interface keyboard that's on-screen or otherwise.

      That's what they're suing them over.

      They have prior art that they've not contemplated here. This program existed in it's earliest form in 1996. Which was a dynamic interface keyboard for assistive purposes.

      I tire of this bullshit. What was done to "reform" patents did nothing of the sort.

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
    2. Re:Bit more info by kanweg · · Score: 5, Informative

      That is not Novelty destroying, I think. The first claim says that they keys contain polysemous symbols. Not being a native speaker, I had to look that word up. This is what Wikipedia says:

      A polyseme is a word or phrase with different, but related senses. Since the test for polysemy is the vague concept of relatedness, judgments of polysemy can be difficult to make. Because applying pre-existing words to new situations is a natural process of language change, looking at words' etymology is helpful in determining polysemy but not the only solution; as words become lost in etymology, what once was a useful distinction of meaning may no longer be so. Some apparently unrelated words share a common historical origin, however, so etymology is not an infallible test for polysemy, and dictionary writers also often defer to speakers' intuitions to judge polysemy in cases where it contradicts etymology. English has many words which are polysemous. For example the verb "to get" can mean "procure" (I'll get the drinks), "become" (she got scared), "have" (I've got three dollars), "understand" (I get it) etc.

      The program you linked to only shows letters on the keys.

      Bert

  2. Money wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In our (North American at least) justice system, it is money that wins the day. If you cannot afford to do legal battle, you lose. Very sad, but until we change it, it is the way things are.

    My only suggestion is if you need the app, make sure you have it and a backup on your ipad. The company may stop producing and supporting it, but if you already have it and it is working, then keep it. (ps. Don't screw around with that ipad, in case you corrupt something and lose the 'irreplacebale' app.

  3. Patent links by CapitalR · · Score: 5, Informative

    And here are links to the patents in question:
    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5748177.PN.&OS=PN/5748177&RS=PN/5748177
    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5920303.PN.&OS=PN/5920303&RS=PN/5920303

    1. Re:Patent links by timholman · · Score: 5, Informative

      anybody that speaks "patent" know if they have a decent patent or can "we" rip these patents apart like Mouse Dresden does to Vampires??

      (just for "fun" lets see if we can come up with prior art and such)

      You're wasting your time. Prior art can be found for the great majority of patents. (I do this part-time as a consultant.)

      But prior art is irrelevant unless you can afford a couple of good attorneys who bill at $500 / hour, and are willing to devote months if not years of your life to a legal battle. Is it worth $100,000, or even $1,000,000, to invalidate the plaintiff's patent? You can win the battle but lose the war when your small business goes bankrupt from the legal costs.

    2. Re:Patent links by Svartalf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most of the litigators I know that're good in this space happen to bill at $350/hr. The only bunch I know of that charge $500/hr are people from places like Cravath. Most of the companies that hire those sorts of lawyers don't bother with idiot lawsuits like this one.

      As for months of a legal battle, it depends on the "big company" as to whether or not they're willing to piss $100k-1mil on the floor and lose the patent that they spent some $20-50k on getting, along with possibly losing a countersuit if one's filed.

      In this case, though, there's a dead-on, you lose piece of prior art involved- Apple patented the base concept in 1992. This isn't some almost item. It's the same concept/implementation- all that's differing is the verbiage in the patent copy for what they're doing and why. I'd put up a fight and counter-sue for damages due to this BS for bringing a frivolous lawsuit (Because it is...).

      --
      I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  4. Patents in question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The patents in question, from USPTO website.

    #5748177 Dynamic keyboard and method for dynamically redefining keys on a keyboard

    A dynamic keyboard includes a plurality of keys, each with an associated symbol, which are dynamically redefinable to provide access to higher level keyboards. Based on sequenced symbols of keys sequentially activated, certain dynamic categories and subcategories can be accessed and keys corresponding thereto dynamically redefined. Dynamically redefined keys can include embellished symbols and/or newly displayed symbols. These dyanmically redefined keys can then provide the user with the ability to easily access both core and fringe vocabulary words in a speech synthesis system.

    #5920303 Dynamic keyboard and method for dynamically redefining keys on a keyboard

    pe1 A dynamic keyboard includes a plurality of keys, each with an associated symbol, which are dynamically redefinable to provide access to higher level keyboards. Based on sequenced symbols of keys sequentially activated, certain dynamic categories and subcategories can be accessed and keys corresponding thereto dynamically redefined. Dynamically redefined keys can include embellished symbols and/or newly displayed symbols. These dynamically redefined keys can then provide the user with the ability to easily access both core and fringe vocabulary words in a speech synthesis system.

    ---
    Seems a bit broad IMO, allowing such dynamic functionality across key redefining, and then pasting on 'as it applies' to "a speech synthesis system".

    For what it's worth, seeing as a few hundred dollar iPad app is allowing a little girl to speak vs. a $9000 piece of hardware from the suing company, I hope this goes viral to the point that the Semantic Corporation (plaintiff) is forced to drop the lawsuit just to save PR face.

  5. Re:Common sense? by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The dead obvious clause "readily apparent to one skilled in the art" or somesuch, has been ignored for about 20 years now...

  6. It's emotional testimonies that make terrible laws by sco08y · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We already know that patent laws are fucked up.

    We don't need more emotional testimony dumped into our political and legal processes. It's already fucked up enough from this nonsense. "My cute wonderful 3 year old sweetie who is disabled and just found a way to speak and now a company wants to take that away for profit!"

    The moment someone says that such and such a law has "hit home" is the moment we need to tune them out.

    Because they're now useless as an even remotely objective source of information. Our worst laws are, by and large, the most popular, usually mandates that accomplish the opposite of what they're intended to do or simply fail miserably with terrible side effects. Which then stirs up another emotional mob that tries to fix the new problem!

    We think there are cigar smoking villains in back rooms writing our laws when in fact the real authors are nitwit staffers transcribing the rantings of mobs of emotional idiots. We think that rich villains buy politicians, when, by the numbers, it's almost entirely a case of politicians purchasing voters.

    We seriously need to take a deep fucking breath, rip out about 90% of our laws, and start over.

  7. Re:Yes this is horrible but... by GPierce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This isn't a solution, but it is something to think about. (It's not totally accurate, but it's a reasonably close description - and there were actually several enclosure acts, not just one.) It could be argued that the enclosure acts were the beginning of our modern concept of "property".

    In the 18th century, our then Lords and Masters took over by passing the Enclosure Acts which ran the peasants off of the commons - producing three generations of property-less rabble. They also passed rules regarding privately held land. If you wanted to establish title to the ground that your family had "owned" for several hundred years, you had to enclose your property with a fence or a hedge. The catch was that the cost of the enclosure was ten times the value of the land.

    The smart peasants sold their land for a few bucks, got on a boat and came to the "new world". Their goal was to get a chunk of land, draw a circle around it and not have any one screw with them again. The Native Americans never had a chance.

    Just as the European nobility "invented" property, our current nobility has invented "intellectual property" and is in the process of producing new generations of property-less rabble.

     

    --

    When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
  8. Prior art by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wrote, and my company shipped, a free icon/text configurable speech generation system for the Amiga that does essentially what the iPad app in question here does at least two years before the date of the patent in question (the complaint dates the patents 1995 and 1997 -- Talkboard hails from 1993 and before, though I can only document it to 1993 -- that's the copyright date in the archive.) The application is called "Talkboard" and is still available from our company's historical archive.

    Talkboard presented a layered interface pretty much just like the one in the iPad app, It used a synthesized voice and provided for unusual phonetic construction so as to obtain the best clarity (the Amiga's text-to-speech could be.... quirky.) You could load and save phrase banks, and one phrase bank could partially replace another or completely replace another. Single words or short phrases or entire complex sentences could be stored for 1-click or multiple click retrieval. The phrase could be represented by any shorthand that was convenient. It came with presets, but was really intended to be customized by the end user - what a kid has to say and an adult has to say tend to not be the same things in most cases. It could also be driven from ARexx, a system-wide scripting facility, and could dynamically change definitions based upon whatever criteria you needed it to.

    As far as I can tell, there's nothing unique, new or even interesting in the two patent claims.

    Hopefully that's of use to the EFF or the defending party.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.