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Patent Infringement Suit Includes Linking URLs In an Email
An anonymous reader points out a report at Groklaw about another new lawsuit from patent firm Intellectual Ventures against Motorola Mobility (they have an earlier patent suit against Motorola underway already). The suit seeks damages from alleged infringement of seven patents, most of which involve wireless communications and Motorola's use of Android. One of the patents, US5790793, is "A method and system for sending and receiving Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in electronic mail over the Internet." Intellectual Ventures' complaint (PDF) says Motorola product that implement MMS violate this patent. PJ at Groklaw thinks this is another patent attack on Android:
"And guess where IV got these patents? Not directly from the USPTO. I'll give you a big hint. Some of them, from what I'm seeing, are from working companies. Don't they call that privateering, when active companies outsource their patents to trolls to do their dirty work? Why yes. Yes, they do. Can you guess one company in this picture? Someone helping Microsoft in its anti-competitive attack on Android and Linux, you say? Yes, one of the companies that seems to have transferred two patents to IV for its holy quest is Nokia, Microsoft's 'partner in crime', as I like to think of them. I know. You are shocked, shocked to know that patents are being used anti-competitively in a court of law."
I was doing this in 1995. I think it's safe to say there's prior art. And it's mine. I'm such an artiste!
Does that mean we can sic the patent trolls on the spammers? Hold on, lemme get some popcorn!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The courts have already ruled that taking something existing and "doing it over the internet" isn't patentable. By extension, taking a URL that could be sent on a printed letter and "doing it over the internet" isn't patentable.
That said, the patent isn't actually about sending URLs in an e-mail, it's about automatically displaying destination content of a URL in the e-mail itself. For example, how gmail has an option to replace any YouTube URLs with the actual YouTube video in the e-mail. While that also doesn't sound patentable to me, I can't point out precedence like I can with the "doing it over the internet" patents.
You are shocked, shocked to know that patents are being used anti-competitively in a court of law.
Don't you tell me what to think now, too.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Technical aspects are being used to commit the sort of large scale larceny mobsters never dreamed up while threatening a shop keeper for a protection racket.
It's all turning into legalized extortion.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And, IIRC, e16 had live preview. And did Win98 have them too?
They are done by using URLs processed through an application.
...go stop spam then.
sarcasm does not become you... you need some more practice, try listening to Rush Limbaugh for a while and refine that sarcasm to something with more of an edge to it.
Those involved in fighting the patent are looking to invalidate via prior art. One claim of special interest is the auto-fetch of data as stated in one of the claims. The amusing thing is that such a capability raises security concerns, so even older software would likely not do such thing, making it difficult to find prior art that performed such a function.
Due to the dates in question, you are also dealing with the following obstacles: software in environments (e.g unix) that today's people do not understand (e.g command-line/batch), software that is no longer in use, developers of old software that still exist and can be found, and/or a verifiable paper/digital trail to establish dates when specific functionality was available.
BTW, the patent claims is not specific to URLs, but anything that specifies the location of some resource. Hence, older, non-URL-based methods that were implemented can be used to establish prior art.
P.S. Posting as AC since I may have some involvement with the case.
I Patent useing the letter E in a URL cost $0.0005 per use
Wow, these guys sure are famous here:
Intellectual Ventures Tied To 1,300 Shell Companies
Intellectual Ventures' Patent Protection Racket
Intellectual Ventures Settles Lawsuits With Asian Memory Companies
Does Recent Goodwill Undo Years of Patent Trolling For Intellectual Ventures?
Nathan Myhrvold Live Q&A
Nathan Myhrvold, Do-Gooder
When Patents Attack — the NPR Version
You can probably ask Nathan Mhyrvold (2876713) directly.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The patent in the article is much more narrow than just sending a URL through an email. A key concept mentioned in the patent is that the email (plaintext or html) contains an URL in some form, and the MUA is recognizing the URL, retrieving the resource and displaying the resource, instead of the actual content of the mail. This is first mentioned in claim 1
"decoding said message by the computer at the second location by retrieving data from the predetermined location, automatically by a single application, without requiring user interaction, into the computer at the second location."
and expanded on in claim 5
"A method according to claim 4, wherein said decoding step automatically retrieves the data from the predetermined location when a user decodes the message without the user requesting the retrieval of the data corresponding to the URL."
Claim 4 clarifies that the data found at the target of the URL is not included within the email
"A method according to claim 1, wherein: said reference to a predetermined location is a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and said step of creating creates the message without including data corresponding to the predetermined resource referenced by the URL."
Also claim 7 narrows down the type of data found at the target of the URL.
"A method according to claim 1, wherein said step of creating creates the message so that the reference to a predetermined location corresponds to at least one of company information, a catalog, new product information, a manual, a correction to the manual, an order, complaint information, and a questionnaire."
While titles of patents might be very broad, the content often isn't, and it's not helpful to the patent debate to pretend every single (software) patent out there is a glaringly obvious thing. The described process certainly was not obvious in 1995, in particular the automatic retrieval of the URL target and displaying it instead of the email, turning the email into a simple reference transmission.
It seems that slashdotters think that the title of a patent IS the patent. For any patent title "A method for doing X," it does not mean that any method for doing X is covered by the patent. The patent describes the specific method of doing X. Now, sometimes the specific method is still totally obvious, not novel, and/or has plenty of prior art. But just because the title says "Method and system to create, transmit, receive and process information, including an address to further information" does not mean or imply that it covers every method for doing so.
Now that said, based on the abstract this is still likely a bullshit patent, I'm just sayin' don't assume so based only on the title because there are plenty of legit, novel patents that are titled in this manner. Of course, this is still just based on the abstract, I'm not gonna read the whole patent.
Abstract
A method and system for sending and receiving Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in electronic mail over the Internet. An electronic mail document containing a URL may have several different types. If the message type indicates a URL, when the received URL type document is read or browsed using a multimedia Internet browser, the URL is looked up so that the information corresponding to the URL is displayed without necessarily displaying any portion of the received message. If the received document is of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) type, the document may be displayed and a user may "click" on the URL to look up the information corresponding to the URL. If the received document is of the text type, the text may be converted to the HTML format and the HTML format document displayed so that a user may "click" on the URL in order to look up the information corresponding to the URL without the need to type in the URL address.
The spirit of the law committed suicide.
Everyone at IV with their own office needs to be lined up and gut shot.
.
.
.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
"You are shocked, shocked to know that patents are being used anti-competitively in a court of law."
Well, not really since that is the whole idea behind patents. DUH! That is why they exist in the first place. Thrown in a "frivolent", "unjust" or "claimless" in there and you might have something.
You are shocked, shocked to know that patents are being used anti-competitively in a court of law.
I know you're all about the moral outrage etc, but, given what Patents ARE, and why they were created, and what their purpose is, isn't "being used anti-competitively in a court of law" (or at least, the threat of that) the only thing that you can actually do with one?
-AC
Pat, I'd like to solve the puzzle.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Fuck this fucking fuck
This is the actual material being contested:
1. A method of communicating between computers, comprising the steps of:
creating a message at a first computer, said message including a reference to a predetermined location;
transmitting, by the first computer, said message to a second location; and
receiving said message by a computer at the second location;
decoding said message by the computer at the second location by retrieving data from the predetermined location, automatically by a single application, without requiring user interaction, into the computer at the second location.
So actually this looks like a dandy malware vector. Send an email with a link; the receiver then downloads the content from the link without human intervention.
I'd be upset if my email client was doing this.
The ghost of the spirit of the law is now haunting the patent office, waiting on the Mystery Van to trap it and do the big reveal to show that it's actually...
to cease allowing software patents.
That larceny is being done by Bill Gates, along with his partner, Nathan Myhrvold. Bill Gates owns stock in Intellectual Ventures. He is a somewhat silent partner.
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold wrote a really, really poor book together, The Road Ahead. People bought the book thinking it would have useful information. But it seems as though several editors must have examined the book very carefully to make sure it had nothing of value. In my opinion, it was fraud, a way of stealing from people who bought the book because they assumed they would learn something.
Quote from the Wikipedia page:
It appears to me that Bill Gates is using "philanthropy" to find ways to make more money. He discovers difficulties people have, asks for ideas for technology to fix those difficulties, and then turns those ideas into money-making projects for Intellectual Ventures.
To read more about how they use business to do what many regard as evil, read the August 21, 2012 article, Inside Intellectual Ventures, the most hated company in tech.
Nobody's using the gnn.com domain (expires next year), and the patent makes reference to it. I wonder if we can claim that domain, publish stuff that contradicts its references in the patent, then sue the patent holders for violating the information published in the first place.
Show me the date of the patent and, I'll show you a personal email with a hyperlink in it that predates it.
This is what happens when the USPTO tries to be expert at everything (and nothing).
The ghost of the spirit of the law is now haunting the patent office, waiting on the Mystery Van to trap it and do the big reveal to show that it's actually...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They also claim:
Intellectual Ventures I is informed and believes, and thereon alleges, that
Motorola Mobility has directly infringed and continues to directly infringe, literally and/or under
the doctrine of equivalents, at least claim 9 of the ’392 Patent by making, using, selling, offering
to sell and/or importing products that implement and/or are compliant with the 802.11n Wi-Fi
standard, including but not limited to the Photon Q 4G LTE, Atrix HD and Electrify M.
The '392 patent is a "System and Method For Ordering Data Messages Having Differing Levels of Priority For
Transmission Over A Shared Communication Channel,”
Life are complete failures some how are judges.
Rich mommy and Daddy bought them everything but sense.
Email clients should not be covered by this claim, as email involves third and potentially fourth computers in between the first and second (Email servers). That claim is describing a peer to peer method of communication, as there are only two computers involved, and if you consider that the first computer may be a web server and the single application on the second computer a web browser, there would have been sufficient prior art in 1995 to invalidate that claim.
In patent law, the term "consisting of" is close-ended, while "comprising" is open-ended. So, a claim of "consisting of A, B, and C" would mean a combination of only A, B, and C; while a claim of "comprising A, B, and C" means A, B, C, and anything else. This particular claim uses comprising, and could have added computers (in italics) as:
1. A method of communicating between computers, comprising the steps of:
creating a message at a first computer, said message including a reference to a predetermined location;
transmitting, by the first computer, said message to a second location by transmitting the message to a third intermediate location with a third computer, said third computer transmitting the message to fourth intermediate location with a fourth computer, said fourth computer transmitting the message to the second location; and
receiving said message by a computer at the second location;
decoding said message by the computer at the second location by retrieving data from the predetermined location, automatically by a single application, without requiring user interaction, into the computer at the second location.
Since such a method involving the third and fourth computers would still meet each and every element of the patented claim, and the patented claim is open ended, it would still infringe.
Note - this is simply a description of how the law works. If you disagree with that, then your disagreement is with Congress and the courts, not me.
In my opinion, it is much, much worse than we are saying. Read the linked articles. Read about "the most hated company in tech".
The complaint can be found here:
https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Florida_Southern_District_Court/0--13-cv-61358/Intellectual_Ventures_I_LLC_et_al_v_Motorola_Mobility_LLC/1/
The court docket is here:
https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Florida_Southern_District_Court/0--13-cv-61358/Intellectual_Ventures_I_LLC_et_al_v_Motorola_Mobility_LLC/
Disclosure: I run this site.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
When I type or paste a URL into an Outlook message, or MS Word, or Excel, or PowerPoint, Microsoft automatically converts that URL into a hyperlink even if I didn't ask it to do so. Does that mean Microsoft is guilty of patent infringement?
Late to the party, but I've got plenty of email from 1994 with urls in them, eg:
From XXX Thu Sep 29 15:57:01 1994
Subject: Re: your mail
To: XXX@XXX.uk (XXX)
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 15:57:01 +0100 (BST)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 197
Status: RO
> What is the URL for the worldwideweb server on XXXX?
http://xxxxxx.uk/
regards,
--
Illtud XXX...
I understand that the patent may cover automatic downloading of the url, and I don't have any html-formatted email from 1994, but nobody had html email clients then, thank ghod.