'Troll' Loses Cloudflare Lawsuit, Has Weaponized Patent Invalidated (arstechnica.com)

A federal judge in San Francisco has unequivocally ruled against a non-practicing entity that had sued Cloudflare for patent infringement. From a report: The judicial order effectively ends the case that Blackbird -- which Cloudflare had dubbed a "patent troll" -- had brought against the well-known security firm and content delivery network. "Abstract ideas are not patentable," US District Judge Vincent Chhabria wrote in a Monday order. The case revolved around US Patent No. 6,453,335, which describes providing a "third party data channel" online. When the case was filed in May 2017, the invention claims it can incorporate third-party data into an existing Internet connection "in a convenient and flexible way."

Comments

Oh please please please

[Anonymous Coward]

"Abstract ideas are not patentable"

Oh, please let this be a strong precedent in nullifying crappy patents.

SO many patents are "a system and methodology for doing something kinda like this, which is an analog for a real world scenario we have, but with a computer and a network".

I would love to know how many patents would be vacated under this, because a patent should not encompass "doing something we do every day but with a computer".

Re:Oh please please please

[bluefoxlucid]

Wouldn't that be "obvious"? I have a socket wrench and an impact wrench, both of which can remove lug nuts. Now I've patented a method of removing lug nuts from a car's wheel, but using an impact wrench.

A method of achieving a certain outcome with a computer is novel if the usual way of achieving that outcome involved a different process. For example: if you were to mix paints, you would get colors. On a computer, you ... can't do that. Somebody at some point worked out an algorithm for taking two colors and mixing them via mathematical computations not used when mixing physical paints, generating similar results--this would be a new process, and patentable.

When you walk into a physical store, you make a selection of products, take those products to a check-out, and then pay for them. A patent on an e-commerce store which allows a user to select products and then pay for them all in a single batch is analogous to this process. There's nothing actually special about doing this--it's all basic programming, tracking data objects and keeping state--and it attempts to allow the real-world task of "shopping" but on a computer. Nothing here is novel or interesting; it's all obvious, done in the most-obvious way. That's not patentable.

One-click was an odd patent. When I go to a vending machine, I put in money and buy one product in one go. I have to make another transaction to buy another product; I can't "fill a cart" and make one purchase. That looks like one-click. In the context of business, this was non-obvious (nobody did this during the years and years of many e-commerce stores); on the other hand, what's the invention here? We don't allow patenting of the way you do business, and One-Click doesn't create some kind of new tool or process aside from allowing users to instant-buy one thing without emptying their cart.

Re:Oh please please please

[sinij]

To Whom It May Concern,

Cease and deists, your actions are in violation of patent #23942, "Sensible Correspondence on the computer", that my firm owns. The royalties are 1 MILLION DOLLARS for each post you critical of patent system you make.

Sincerely Yours,
Patent Trolls

Re:Oh please please please

[sconeu]

Dear "Patent Trolls",

We have determined that your claim is invalid, due to your failure to raise your pinkie to your mouth when requesting "1 MILLION DOLLARS".

Sincerely,

Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, Attorneys at Law

USPTO should be punished

[Gravis Zero]

USPTO keeps validating these bullshit patents because their system rewards passing patents but never punishes passing bad patents. The result is that just about anything can be patented and is expensive to fight in court. If you're lucky, you will win and by win I mean you will have spent millions of dollars fighting a bad patent and get nothing in return.

This is a serious problem.

Re:USPTO should be punished

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

This is not true.

Our company has filed two patents for my work. Very difficult paper work. The patent examiners are actually good. When the lawyers went through the work and rewrote it in legalese it took me weeks to understand all the import of what the application says. But the examiners got it, got to the crux of the matter and raised valid and relevant objections. They cited proper prior art. I was actually impressed by the quality of the patent examiners. After all, Albert Einstein started out as patent examiner, just saying.

We were able to explain the differences, and what was the invention and what was prior art. They made us reduce some of the expansive language added by our lawyers. So they are not all bad.

It makes me suspect if these companies game the system by filing multiple similar patents, dropping the ones that get assigned to competent examiners and pursuing the ones assigned to the weak ones.

It is like terrorism. The terrorists have to succeed only once. The law enforcement has to succeed every time.

Re:USPTO should be punished

[Ogive17]

This is a serious problem.

Not for the people who write, file, and defend the patents.

Summary Service

[Anonymous Coward]

For those too lazy to read the article and patent, it's a patent on intercepting traffic with a device (e.g. proxy) and altering the data based on third party settings, like changing a 404 page to an ad.

It was tossed out because it was broad enough to basically say "intercept stuff and change it."

And not it's time to sue the PTO as well

[Sebby]

Specifically, the "examiner(s)" that ultimately approved the "patent", causing waste of taxpayer money in not only the worthless approval process, but also in the resulting pointless court case (though I guess you could argue the case has the merit of proving the PTO is run by a bunch of rubber-stamping monkeys).