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.

Sets reminder to self:

[Harold Halloway]

Avoid HP products.

Re:First to file

[stealth_finger]

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.

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.

Whoopee-doo

[American Patent Guy]

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.