HP Patents 'Reminder Messages' (eff.org)

Daniel Nazer reports via the Electronic Frontier Foundation: On July 25, 2017, the Patent Office issued a patent to HP on reminder messages. Someone needs to remind the Patent Office to look at the real world before issuing patents. United States Patent No. 9,715,680 (the '680 patent) is titled "Reminder messages." While the patent application does suggest some minor tweaks to standard automated reminders, none of these supposed additions deserve patent protection. Although this claim uses some obscure language (like "non-transitory computer-readable storage medium" and "article data"), it describes a quite mundane process. The "article data" is simply additional information associated with an event. For example, "buy a cake" might be included with a birthday reminder. The patent also requires that this extra information be input via a "scanning operation" (e.g. scanning a QR code). The '680 patent comes from an application filed in July 2012. It is supposed to represent a non-obvious advance on technology that existed before that date. Of course, reminder messages were standard many years before the application was filed. And just a few minutes of research reveals that QR codes were already used to encode information for reminder messages. The Patent Office reviewed HP's application for years without ever considering any real-world products. Indeed, the examiner considered only patents and patent applications.

Comments

Irresponsibility of the patent offices

[Cigaes]

One of the problems in this story is that the patent offices are not responsible for the patents. If they grant a patent, they cash a yearly fee. If a patent is overthrown in justice, they keep the fees. They have no incentive to screen the applications properly.

One of the first measures to fix the issues would be to make them responsible: if a parent they granted gets overthrown in justice, they should refund all the fees, plus the cost of the prior art research that was obviously botched. That would give them the incentive to do their work.

Re:Irresponsibility of the patent offices

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a bad idea at all. However, the fees should not go to the applicant in order not to give them an incentive just to file bogus patents: They would not have much to lose should their patent be invalidated, but lots to gain. The fees might go to the successful challenger of the patent instead.

Yet, most of this is nothing more than a wet dream of justice. It's not as if patent reform anywhere in the world is probable.

Re:could this be a "First to File" snafu?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can't grant patents on tech that has been in public use for more than a year. And since MS Outlook has had this feature for decades, it's like patenting prior art. Might as well patent the wheel.

What I don't like (or don't understand) is why claims list non-novel stuff:

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions, the instructions when executed by a processor causing the processor to [use a computer to]:

I just want claims to contain new ideas and innovations, not obvious things like using the HDD/flash on your computer to store/run software.