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Inventor Has Waited 43 Years For Patent Approval
An anonymous reader writes "If you think the average wait of 28.3 months for a patent to be approved is ridiculous, don't complain to Gilbert P. Hyatt. The 76-year-old inventor has been waiting over forty years for a ruling on whether his electronic signal to control machinery should be granted a patent. 'It's totally unconscionable,' said Brad Wright, a patent lawyer with Banner & Witcoff in Washington who specializes in computer-related applications and isn't involved in Hyatt's case. 'The patent office doesn't want to be embarrassed that they might issue a broad patent that would have a sweeping impact on the technology sector. Rather than be embarrassed, they're just bottling it up.'"
Haven't carried out a detail search on the said patent, but if TFA's description is to be believable
electronic signal to control machinery
...that gonna be one heck of a very broad and very VERY valuable patent !!
'The patent office doesn't want to be embarrassed that they might issue a broad patent that would have a sweeping impact on the technology sector. Rather than be embarrassed, they're just bottling it up.'
Oh sure! With the issuance of that patent now many manufacturers / users of devices that use that technology may start receiving lawyer's letter demanding $$$, if that patent ended up being sold to some patent trolls.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
But they'll let Amazon patent "one-click" shopping?
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
... was not telling him to bugger off 43 yeasrs ago. That was in 1971. As a trainee I was working on aligning servo motor controls in 1967 - it used them thar new-fangled transisitor things {bloody wickless wonders}
As Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#Gilbert_Hyatt) says:
Gilbert Hyatt was awarded a patent claiming an invention pre-dating both TI and Intel, describing a "microcontroller".[9] The patent was later invalidated, but not before substantial royalties were paid out.[10][11]
And from http://www.intel4004.com/hyatt...:
"This patent was later invalidated in a patent interference case brought forth by Texas Instruments, on account that the device it described was never implemented and was not implementable with the technology available at the time of the invention. "
I know that 1990 (when that microprocessor patent was granted) is pre-Slashdot, but srsly, what's happening when patent trolls' whinging is front page news here?
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
What value has this man added to a single piece of equipment sold in the last 40 years? What part of these machines relied on his effort or ingenuity? If his patent had never been filed, are we to seriously believe that progress would have been held back by so much as an hour.
Let drop this passive-aggressive geek myth of the vital "small-guy" inventor and the civilization changing ideas which supposedly emerge from his superior brain. It is far, far easier, and far, far better for society as a whole to simply regard all patent holders as parasites, and simply stop issuing them. Inventors can start their own companies or get a job like everyone else.
Reward belongs to those who add value. To those who produce things; produce wealth. it does not belong to the people who "thought" of doing so, or who had some "bright idea" sometimes in the 1970s. It belongs to the three generations of people since who put their -- unpatented -- ideas into action and made them a reality. To the people who competed based on the merits of their results, and not the entitlement they felt their intellects deserved.
It's time to put patents away. All patents. Our society will make better progress without them. Inventors are not worth the price being paid to parasites.
May the Maths Be with you!
was waiting in line at the damn post office to mail the application in.
Well, it can be valid if it covers a set of methods relating to how to use relays.
This guy seems to only want the patent so he can sell it to patent trolls. It seems that the patent office doesn't want to deny the patent because they know that as soon as they do he'll sue (again). I wouldn't call this guy an inverter, I would call him another part of the patent troll machine.
Just because that's the topic the patent is related to doesn't mean he's trying to patent the entire topic.
This guy invented the microprocessor, holds over 70 patents, is a self made millionaire (maybe billionaire) and has successfully sued the state of California for nearly $400 million because they tried to extort taxes he didn't owe out of him. So far, everything he's done relating to tech has been righteous imo, let's cut him some slack.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/...
The guy submits wildy broad patents and wants to use them to sell to patent trolls. Fuck cutting him some slack, just reject the damn patents already.
It wouldn't do you any good anyway. It is under the old laws where everything is confidential until/unless a patent actually issues on the application.
The new laws were actually put in place because of this guy's actions and the 1990 microprocessor patent (and Lemelson's claims covering all of machine vision of course).
No, he didn't.
From browsing the list of his patents it looks like most of them are written with overly generalized broad claims which don't actually describe anything that wasn't obvious at the time. This gem filed in 1972 describes a "Machine control system operating from remote commands". Whoopty do. Remotely operable computers existed before the filing date. Why the USPTO awarded him so many patents on obvious things is beyond comprehension.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
He did not invent the microprocessor.
He filed a fanciful patent application describing the possibility, waited until someone else figured out how to make it reality, then sued them.
He might be the patent troll patient zero.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This sounds a lot like a submarine patent. The idea is that you file a patent on some generic idea, not necessarily realisable, and then continue it for years, sometimes decades, until the state of the art has advanced to the point where it can be realised. At that point your submarine patent emerges and you've now patented a field that others have spent years developing for you. The notorious Jerome Lemelson made a billion-dollar business out of this.
Nevada's Supreme Court would have sufficed then. I guess some people like typing in all caps...
Really? Is Gilbert P. Hyatt just a pseudonym used by Jack Kilby?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This guy invented the microprocessor
Under dispute. Actually, he eventually lost his patent, but not until after he managed to extract millions in licensing fees from it. An anti-Hyatt page.
successfully sued the state of California for nearly $400 million because they tried to extort taxes he didn't owe out of him
Whether he owes them or not is still not settled. He won money from California on the basis of a Nevada jury for California's auditory process. The bottom line is that he moved to Las Vegas to avoid California taxes from his license windfall.
So far, everything he's done relating to tech has been righteous imo, let's cut him some slack.
From the article: "While some of Hyatt's patents predate or are contemporary with those granted to executives at Intel and Texas Instruments Inc., those companies made products that changed the world, Bassett said.
"I respect Gilbert Hyatt's work -- the process of engineering is difficult," Bassett said in a telephone interview. "But innovations are more than ideas. The broader context matters. If Gilbert Hyatt had never existed, I believe the microprocessor would have developed in the same way that it did.""
The patent for the Teletype machine was issued in 1907, any variation thereof, up to and including paper punch cards would probably invalidate the patent.
moox. for a new generation.
Actually, delaying the approval or denial of his patent is the injustice here. Justice should relate to the proper execution of the law, not about whether or not someone thinks it's good or bad for society. We are a nation of laws, and that is the foundation of justice - a consistent set of rules by which we live.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Horse shit. The microprocessor was the work of people like Bill Shockley, Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Jay Last, etc. This guy patented some overly broad concept and tried to use those rights to patent troll.
...sounds suspiciously like what (Baudot) teletypes had been doing for decades around 1970, the approximate date TFS indicates.
Seems broad, all right... and obvious, and like there would be prior art.
But since it's secret... who knows.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yeah, you're right. I think they prefer to be called "single-input NAND gates" these days. Political correctness gone mad, I tell ya...
If this guy's really been at it for 43 years without ever appealing a patent office rejection, he doesn't really want a patent. He's another Lemelson looking for somebody to sue.
Article seems to be talking about patent application 05/302771, and the status of the case is miles away from the way it's described in the article. This patent has been through several levels of non-final and final rejections, appeals, and court actions. Through the USPTO's public PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval) system, you can access hundreds of pages of information and history on the case, including what are now several hundred pending claims. Even if the application itself hasn't been published, the file history is ripe with lots of information. You can see the patent examiners' rejections and there's a 494-page appeal brief filed on behalf of the Applicant, from which you can see many of the pending claims. The patent office rejections appear mainly under section 112 on the basis that the claims aren't adequately supported by the patent disclosure. It's not as if he just applied for the patent and waited 43 years - he's been trying hard not to take NO for the answer.
In addition, there appear to be about 150 additional patent cases filed as continuations on dates between 1977 and 1995 - some still pending and some abandoned. Most of them aren't accessible under the public PAIR system because of the pre-1995 filing dates. Presumably there's no continuations filed after 1995 because under the post-1995 rules, the application would expire 20 years from the earliest filing date, so they'd expire before granting. If many of these continuations have hundreds of claims like the parent case, there could be tens of thousands of claims that he's trying to get granted.
This asshole is running a standard 'Submarine Patent' play. Fiddle with the application until everything is using the tech and it's firmly embedded in daily use (lasers and UPC codes are other classic submarine patents) then sue everyone when the patent is finally granted.
Fuck this guy.
From http://www.intel4004.com/hyatt.htm The Gilbert Hyatt Patent
A patent on the microcontroller, predating the only two Intel patents related to the MCS-4, was granted to Gilbert Hyatt in 1990. This patent described the architecture and logic design of a microcontroller, claiming that it could be integrated into a single chip. This patent was later invalidated in a patent interference case brought forth by Texas Instruments, on account that the device it described was never implemented and was not implementable with the technology available at the time of the invention.
So he made a patent without means or know how to implement it. Essentially like a patent for cold fusion even though you don't know how it would be done you patent it.
Well - yes and no.
The fundamental problem with the patent system is that it gives patents to 'actual engineers that create things'.
This wouldn't be a problem - but for a major fundamental flaw in the system.
Patents were originally granted (amongst other less noble reasons) to foster innovation and encourage the spread of knowledge, rather than having ideas locked up as trade secrets and lost.
Unfortunately, it should be clearly obvious to anyone that if:
An averagely skilled engineer, faced with the same problem could solve the problem in under the time it takes to do a full patent search, and apply for the patent including all the time to write the patent and get it through all the steps - patents are not actually fostering innovation at all.
Should patents be abolished - no.
But - patents should only be granted for inventions that take - at the very least - several months for the averagely skilled engineer in the same field to come up with a solution to the same problem.
Patents should be for the benefit of society.
If society is burdened by patents - innovation and business is slowed, competition is harder - and advances in technology are slower - why do we have them?
In their current state, they are broken.
https://www.google.com/patents... - is the most recent english patent I can find.
It describes - broadly - something very similar to NTP - and is basically the same way any sensible engineer approaching the problem would do it.
The problem is it has a lot of superfluous crap implying it's special to one tiny area - and hence as it's not been patented before - it gets a patent.
This helps _nobody_.
There is no inventor in the conventional sense in this patent - as there isn't in most patents.
If you claim there is - you need to claim that every 4 year-old faced with the problem of making a lego model that looks like something is an inventor.
It's plugging obvious blocks together in obvious ways.
May sometimes the blocks be hard to fit together, and require a bit of thought - sure.
This doesn't make the arrangement of blocks not likely to be replicated in 17 (or more) years if anyone else hits the problem.
I think independent invention should be proof of obviousness.
Really? Newton and Leibniz independently developed calculus. Are you seriously going to claim that was proof of obviousness? Two of the finest minds humanity has ever had, came to the same ideas roughly concurrently but that does not remotely imply that it was obvious to anyone with "ordinary skill in the art". You have to examine what the state of skill in the art is before you can come to any conclusions about what is obvious to most.
FYI, anybody who allegedly owes the state of California over $50 million in taxes earned way more than that. The maximum income tax rate in California in 1990 was 9.3% for individuals (although I'm not sure if individual income tax is the rate that would apply). We're looking at about $500 million in earnings for which he was allegedly dodging a $50 million tax. Not to mention that those $500 million he got was from a patent granted in 1990 for microprocessors, long after they were invented by someone else and in common use. Don't feel too sorry for him.
Damnit people, why doesn't anybody realize that the government is the people? A nearly $400 million dollar judgement paid out from the state of California is $400 million dollars in tax hikes (or college tuition hikes, or delayed infrastructure maintenance, or funding cuts for public schools, police departments, state parks, etc.) for everyone else that doesn't have $500 million in ill-gotten patent license deals to pay for lawyers.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Looka t his inventions and their timing.
1996 - Patents the Kernel
1989 - Patents the microprocessor.
A little late to the game, don't you think?
Oh, but when he gets denied, it turns into a large court case where he continually files for appeal, WHILE collecting royalties. And then when he loses he stop collecting royalties; which he doesn't have to pay back.
Go here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtm...
Search for this:
in/Hyatt AND Gilbert
Read some of his patents. He is the original patent troll. One who submits patent for things that exists, and then extract royalties from companies while it's "Patent Pending".
This Licensing = trolling is a ridiculous definition of patent troll. One that got the patent office to change in a way that is far worse for the small time no money inventor.,
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm not assuming either right or wrong. What I am assuming is that he clearly moved to Las Vegas to avoid paying California taxes. Whether it was legal or not is one thing, but it's a shady tactic either way.
One of my arguments was Jefferson's, so you are bizarrely dishonest in claiming that it was based on any fallacy of mine. You are also incorrect in identifying said fallacies.
If patents prevent competition, as you assert, then why is it that Apple is not the first smartphone inventor, nor Microsoft the first OS inventor, nor Dell the PC inventor? I would be harder pressed to find markets that were dominated by a single entity by virtue of patents; perhaps you can suggest some. In the strict sense though I am afraid the case is unassailable, since unless a potentially-infringing party is competing there is no case to be made for infringement. One may force an entity to cease infringing, but you can't prevent it. Even getting an injunction during a lawsuit can be tricky, as evidenced by the Apple/Samsung litigations. I am not the world's most ardent capitalist by any means, but a for-profit, government-granted monopoly is a hard thing to justify in any circumstances.
I admit you didn't say explicitly what I ascribed to you. Your example however utilized in the positive sense an inventor and as adversary a MegaCorp, which is a strong case for patents but not the common one. The example you chose was one where patents were a good thing for the "little guy". Far more often, patents are held by "big guys", who need much less help in dealing with their competition. Even if it were not the usual case for patents to be used abusively, there's no use pretending they are not a two-edged sword. Disputing one with any entity having a $100M patent portfolio would be risky no matter how righteous your cause.
If you have the time, you might attempt a real response, but I suspect that you will have to succumb to a more nuanced view on patents; Jefferson makes a compelling case, the more so because he served as the first Patent Commissioner. I will also suggest that you might not need to ask why people require explanations of these things, if you actually read the counterarguments.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.