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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.
I was afraid of this kind of nonsense when the America Invents Act switched the US from "First to Invent" to "First to File" on March 16, 2013.
I guess if no one filed for a patent, *some* USPTO officers are interpreting applications preemptively as "the First to File". I'm hoping it's just a snafu, perhaps caused by the application bridging the transition between FtI to FtF.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
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.
Avoid HP products.
Somebody filed a bad patent!
Ah, but USPTO switched over from first-to-invent to first-to-file, so now prior art is completely moot and anything, no matter how obvious, can be patented.
Well then, file a patent on filing patents then sue the patent office into oblivion.
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How do you find such people? And how do you keep them neutral and unbiased, given that you've created their own little fiefdom and almost certainly have conflicts of interest?
Responding to the Slashdot summary:
"non-transitory computer-readable storage medium" is a standard phrase used in patents to avoid a sec. 101 rejection on the basis that a software invention is transitory (thank you very much, Supreme Court".) It's used a lot.
This is more than a reminder message system. It's a system that associates that "article" with a message and delivers it at the same time. It doesn't strike me as much of an improvement over the prior art, but we are talking about something with a priority date of five years ago.
"And just a few minutes of research reveals that QR codes were already used to encode information for reminder messages." Do share with us that research, and perhaps we can agree...
"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." Again, that's standard. They don't have a pile of application software they can run through to identify prior art. They do a search in documentation in databases convenient to the examiner.
If HP ever tries to enforce this thing, the respondent will no doubt find invalidating prior art. HP will probably choose not to enforce it, and merely use it to inflate their reports to stock holders.
It might be interesting to text-mine the patent database to find people who are somehow close (according to some meaningful metrics) to what is being applied for and ask them for input. Something like peer review?
Ezekiel 23:20
Thank god we avoided this cesspool in the EU a decade ago.
That is 100% false. The law changing the system was the America Invents Act. The Wikipedia page on this says:
The law also expanded the definition of prior art used in determining patentability. Actions and prior art that bar patentability under the Act include public use, sales, publications, and other disclosures available to the public anywhere in the world as of the filing date, other than publications by the inventor within one year of filing (inventor's "publication-conditioned grace period"), whether or not a third party also files a patent application.
Prior art has NOT been eliminated.
The problem lies with a understaffed patent office and a badly designed patent law. An application is received, the examiner chooses a few key words, and does a patent search. He finds a few references, usually irrelevant and denies the patent. You explain why the references are irrelevant and the patent is either allowed or more objections are raised. The law requires the filer to disclose the prior art, but they often do not. The problem is that, while the examiners have a technical background, it is often not in the same field. The examiner for this patent could have been a chemical engineer. They are also rated on the volume of their work, not the quality, which does not help. The solution, other than an adequate patent office, is to allow third parties to file objections to published patent applications. While this is subject to abuse, it would allow the raising of undisclosed prior art. Under the current law, the only option is to infringe and wait to be sued. Since the courts are even less technically sound, this is a risky thing to do. Hence the existence of patent trolls.
> Thank god we avoided this cesspool in the EU a decade ago.
Sorry, no.
This is regularly circumvented by your usual legal shell game. Programs "as such" are not patentable, while "CIIs" (aka "Computer-Implemented Inventions") are. Straight from the horse's mouth:
" Patents for computer-implemented inventions: how does society benefit?
Patents as an incentive for innovation
As technology advances and matures, computer-implemented inventions are used increasingly in all fields of technology. In many cases the innovative part of a new product or process may well lie in the method underlying a computer program and/or its computational implementation [...]"
Disgusting, ain't it?
So the EPO has a very idiosyncratic interpretation on what software patents are. And it is granting hand over fist patents on things Dick, Harry, you and me would consider software patents.
There is a better reason that "its all been done"
Patents are there to discourage trade secrets. Features of your public product cannot be a trade secret by definition.
It all went to hell when design patents were thought up. Prior to that, patents were only on manufacturing techniques.
"His name was James Damore."
The Patent Office reviewed HP's application for years...
No that didn't happen at all. They spent less than 24 hours total reviewing that patent application. They just didn't get to it for years.
Please don't mistake Uncle Sam for US citizenry; you insult most people living in the US should you do this. US corporations have no shames and will push all edges until their hands (but preferably wallets) are slapped.
While the EU attempts to reign in corporate misbehavior, it also fails miserably.
And no, I didn't say I was anti-capitalist, only that corporations are charged to have no morals, and no conscience, only shareholder return. The corporate shield permits them to live not unlike warriors in the 1500s.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"Non-transitory computer readable medium" means its a software claim. Since software is not a statutory class of invention, you pretend that they are patenting a storage medium, which just happens to carry out instructions to perform XYZ.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
"Indeed, the examiner considered only patents and patent applications."
This article could have been written 15 to 20 years ago, word for word except the details of the patent itself. The PTO ONLY looks at their own database. The basic requirements of checking for preexisting art, obviousness, etc, just beyond them. That's not their job. 1) they're not paid enough, 2) the PTO is "in the business of selling patents", according to a former head.
Look at it this way: if you pass a patent, you're done. You don't need to deal with it anymore. It is up to the courts and lawyers to argue about obviousness and preexisting and all that crap and you don't have to deal with it.
However, if you fail a patent, YOU have to appear before the company's appeal to defend why you rejected it.
The incentive is to pass it and go home and not care. Until that changes, or until software patents are invalidated universally, this status quo will remain as it has for the entire history of /. posting about it.
Nothing has changed since I first signed on almost 20 years ago.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Then all of you will owe me big time!
More seriously, I'm wondering if you could get the patent office to approve such a patent with the explicit goal of embarrassing the office and hopefully getting some of its grant happy officers fired.
I was afraid of this kind of nonsense when the America Invents Act switched the US from "First to Invent" to "First to File" on March 16, 2013.
I guess if no one filed for a patent, *some* USPTO officers are interpreting applications preemptively as "the First to File". I'm hoping it's just a snafu, perhaps caused by the application bridging the transition between FtI to FtF.
No, first-to-file has nothing whatsoever to do with that, nor are Examiners "interpreting applications preemptively as the 'first to file'. First to file does away with a practice called an interference, where two inventors separately file applications on the same exact invention, and there's a mini-trial held to determine which one really invented it first. Even slight differences in the invention, and there's no interference proceeding: as a result, they typically only occur when two inventors work together, have a falling out, and then file identical applications. Out of half a million applications filed each year, there were 20 interference proceedings on average. And they were hideously expensive and time consuming. The change to first to file simply means that whichever of them filed first wins. It affects only those 20 applications a year.
And while I haven't done a prior art search or even reviewed the claims of this application, the file history is public on the USPTO's PAIR system. It was not only not automatically accepted, it was rejected twice by the Examiner, and then went to appeal before a board of three judges, who reversed the Examiner. There was no simple rubber stamping here.
In addition to failing to consider real products, the Patent Office gives little weight to common sense and takes an extremely rigid approach to evaluating whether or not a patent application is obvious.
Yes, because of the constitutional requirement of due process: the Patent Office can't simply use gut feelings and hindsight, but have to support their conclusion that an invention is not new or is obvious with evidence in the form of prior art. You could just as validly complain that courts give little weight to common sense when judging someone to be guilty or not guilty, instead taking an extremely rigid approach that requires consideration of evidence, rather than whether the defendant "looks bad".
It's very easy to say, after the fact, that something is obvious. Most engineering students could diagram a simple internal combustion engine on a napkin. The question for the patent office is whether they can prove something to be obvious without relying on gut feelings and hindsight using information only found in the patent application. Sure, the "common sense" approach would be a lot faster, but so would finding defendants guilty because they aren't the "right" color.
If you put several man-years into developing an algorithm, then it should be patentable. A concept anyone could come up with while have beer with nerd friends? Not so much. In this case, I seems like anybody with a smart phone could provide evidence of prior art. One of the tweeks I'd like to see made to the patent system is to make the length of patent protection proportional to the time and money needed to develop the idea. I.e. a drug patent for something that requires multimillion dollar drug trials should last longer than "Do something people have been doing for decades, but on a COMPUTER!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
>Ah, but USPTO switched over from first-to-invent to first-to-file, so now prior art is completely moot and anything, no matter how obvious, can be patented.
I see this repeated a lot on /., but I don't understand what they mean. Prior art still matters (assuming the patent office is being run competently, which is a separate matter). There's nothing in first-to-file that inherently invalidates prior art. Where are people getting this?
They're pulling this little pearl of wisdom from the same place as most other Internet "facts" -- out of their ass.
"If you put several man-years into developing an algorithm, then it should be patentable"
You could merely be slow & lazy. No patent for you.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Sorry, but the govt long ago granted themselves immunity from patents.
Did they file a patent on it? File one for being immune to patents and fucking have them.
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