Patent on P3P - W3 Seek Prior Art

Mindphunk wrote to say " Just saw this request for prior art over at the W3C. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today announced that it is investigating the status of a patent claim which threatens open access to privacy protection technology known as the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). To aid in its investigative efforts, W3C is calling on the Web Community for help in locating "prior art," technology whose existence could be relevant to the validity of the patent. " There are growing incompatibilities between patents and open standards; the trend towards filing patents in areas where standards are already underway is cause for both concern and action," stated Daniel J. Weitzner, Technology and Society Domain Leader of W3C. "The Web and developer communities can be instrumental in providing the evidence required to render questionable patents invalid, thereby maintaining an open Web. "

Comments

Seems Like Everything...

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent seems extremely vague to me. What's a "control object", and what's so special about having methods outside of it utilize it?

Can anybody explain why the following is not prior art?

Transmission Control Protocol, the TCP in TCP/IP. My fuzzy memory tells me it works like this: a sender breaks a message up into packets, each with a sequence number. Packets go to receiver. Receiver puts packets together using sequence number, makes requests for any packets that didn't get there. The sequence number (7 of 12 or whatever) seems like a "metadata control object" to me. The receiver and sender share this metadata, the receiver makes requests of the sender based on this data using the TCP code, "methods external to the control object", data is shared and updated appropriately. What am I missing here?

Actually, who says client and server have to be internet hosts? How about any version control system ever? When you sync up your Palm Pilot with your PC, what's going on there? Hell, how about subscribing to a mailing-list? Does anything say the client feedback has to be automated? How about content negotiation, built into HTTP since the early days, where a browser tells the server preferred language, MIME types, etc., and the server responds appropriately? Actually, what about customizing slashdot!?

You could probably argue that a casual conversation between two people is covered by this patent, do the client and server have to be computers?

You get the drift. This is why software patents are stupid. Perhaps some intellectual property lawyer can explain to me what make's Intermind's stuff so new and unique. Then again, perhaps not.

Re:Seems Like Everything...

[werdna]

For the same reason that someone practicing TCP/IP, without more, clearly wouldn't infringe the claims of this patent, TCP/IP would not stand, by itself, as invalidating prior art.

In answer to the qustion, the meaning of a phrase in a patent claim is determined first by the plain language of the claim itself AND by the definition given to that term in the specification. If the plain meaning is not clear and there is no express definition in the spec, the spec is used as a reference to help to understand (construe) the claims.

The meaning of the patent and its claims simply cannot be understood without first studying the specification. You can find the specification for any modern patent at this page of the USPTO web site. There you can also get free printable tiff images of the patent.

So much of this patent's claim langauge cannot be understood merely by examining the claim -- you must also read, at least, the specification. For many claim elements, particularly those written in the form of "means plus function" or "function means" language, the meaning of the claim element is DEFINED by the corresponding portions of the specification.

But this doesn't end the inquiry. Taking a single element out of context, say, the "control object," and noting that there existed a control object in another program or protocol isn't enough. The referenced control object must also meet each and every other limitation set forth in the claim and be used in the context described in the claim.

We nerds are notorious for being way too informal and uninformed about asserting the invalidity of patents. Accordingly, our whinings about the system are generally ignored by the mainstream patent community. It is critical that before we begin to flame on about a particular patent, that we make sure we really have the goods. To do that, we need to read the claims and the specification, and then, and only then, if we really have it licked, use the example to slam the patent and the system.

This patent may be valid, or it may not be valid. If it is valid, live with it and move on to another. If not, slam the sucker and use it to point out weaknesses in the system. Meanwhile, as a community we can help enormously by assisting in these prior art searches.

But we do ourselves no good at all, and a fair amount of harm, merely by waving our hands. It is not enough merely to belittle the claimed invention. The question was asked: "Perhaps some intellectual property lawyer can explain to me what make's Intermind's stuff so new and unique."

But AC's question merely begs the question: No patentable invention needs to be "so new and unique," but merely new, useful and unobvious. No spark of genius is necessary. No fundamental contribution.

Mere novelty suffices -- and that can be done merely by distinguishing the prior art with subtle limitations. If no reference contains the limitations, the device is novel for patent purposes -- that's all that is required. If the prior art is a chair, a claim directed to a chair with arcuate rockers attached to the bottom distinguishes the art, even though a rocking chair is still a chair. Indeed, the vast majority of patent claims begin by reciting prior art structure, adding specialized limitations as improvements.

Obviousness simply refers to a "backstop" to avoid granting patents for minor or trivial new limitations, and applies mostly where the differences between the old art and the new combination are such that those differences could be reconstructed from the prior art by a person of ordinary skill in the art. In the rocking chair example, a rocking stool might well be invalidating prior art under the obviousness standard, even though the refernence does not disclose the structure that distinguishes a stool from a chair (probably just the back), provided that the reference is taken together with a reference describing the structure of a chair and it would be obvious to a person of ordinary skill to combine the references.

Long shot -- but how about X-windows and NeWS??

[Anonymous Coward]

Right...

A network system or architecture where a client (such as a browser) and a server exchange information using a control structure defined by metadata (e.g. expressed in XML) which describes

Now, define the client window in the X server to be the client, and the server to be the client process on the host machine (trivial change in terminology -- this changes nothing). They transfer information using a control structure defined by metadata (instructing the X server what to do with the information it receives -- since it isn't just pixelstreams. The metadata is binary encoded, but still metadata.)

1. how to transfer updated information from the server to the client.

   Obvious -- the client process (the server) must be able to inform the X server (the client) what the updates refer to, and how the information is transmitted

2. how to transfer feedback information, and updates to that information, from the client to the server, and

   X server to client transmissions -- nuff said.

3. how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure.

   As mentioned above

Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure. All that crap in the X server (i.e. the client) that actually puts the stuff on the screen.

For the sake of a few more -- consider JAVA applets, the NeWS system, where the clients use postscript to extend the server.

Re:Would NNTP qualify?

[gavinhall]

Posted by Forrest J. Cavalier III:

Yes, I had some typos....

INN has a file called overview.fmt. This states the order of fields received during an XOVER request, which provides information about the currently available articles in a newsgroup. So this could cover:

The control structure (metadata)

how to transfer updated information from the server to the client

how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure

Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure.

But it doesn't match the claim:

how to transfer feedback information, and updates to that information, from the client to the server
(The information transferred back to the server from the client is in the form of Usenet messages, which is not related to overview.fmt.

What about IMAP? or SNMP for that matter? Lots of RFCs back to 1988 or earlier, but I only feel qualified to comment on NNTP.

Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824
The Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 3000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions,
and applications.

P3P should die!

[AxelBoldt]

Please don't help these people. P3P deserves to die a horrible death. Here's why:

P3P essentially means that you enter all your personal information (name, address, age, profession, hobbies etc.) into your browser, and then specify a policy which says which sites are allowed to access which parts of this information. Those sites can then pull that information from your browser when you visit them without your further intervention.

This does not increase your privacy one bit. Right now, if you don't want to give out personal information, simply don't fill out that form or insert bogus data. Once P3P is in place, lieing will be a lot harder since you will have to change the database in your browser whenever you want to switch between truthful and false information. Refusing to give out data will also be harder: after a while, sites will simply require that you give them access to your P3P database, just like many sites now require that you allow them to place cookies on your disk.

This is evil technology, and it is favored by marketing types, not by privacy types. (Site operators hate collecting personal information using forms, because many people can't be bothered.) Hopefully, patent law can kill this baby dead.

--

Re:P3P should die!

[AxelBoldt]

We should fight software patents on prinicple.

We should also fight for privacy protections on principle. If the two collide, it's up to every individual to decide which principle is the more important one.

If you want to fight software patents on principle, try to get a law passed that prohibits them. Fighting individual software patents in the courts does nothing to invalidate the concept of software patents in general. I claim that this particular software patent has benefits in that it will slow down or halt adoption of P3P.

I'd rather have it open than closed

I'd rather not have it at all.

In fact, a closed alternative wouldn't be that bad if you think about it: without the blessing of W3C, it wouldn't be implemented in many browsers and marketing types couldn't rely on it being present, which defeats the whole concept. It is no coincidence that the Direct Marketing Association (of junk mail and spam fame) collaborates with W3C in this matter.

--

Re:P3P should die!

[Bruce Perens]

Axel, We should fight software patents on prinicple. If W3C has now concluded that software patents are bad, we should encourage them in that conclusion. If you want to fight P3P, that's a separate issue. I'd rather have it open than closed, so that I can write a browser that sends random data or ignores the protocol. Bruce

Initial Reaction

[Effugas]

OK Folks, we're looking for stuff that fulfills this:

---
A network system or architecture where a client (such as a browser) and a server exchange information using a control structure defined by metadata (e.g. expressed in XML) which describes

how to transfer updated information from the server to the client
how to transfer feedback information, and updates to that information, from the client to the server, and
how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure.
Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure.
---

Off the very top of my head, capability testing apparatuses(such as telnet uses to transmit everything from default username to screen dimensions) would fulfill some of these requirements. This is important, not because telnet is prior art, but that there are sure to be systems, particularly "advanced languages" that never made it big, that attempted to expand on what telent began. Some places to research:

1) Expired patents. Always nice, go to the IBM patent server.
2) History. As far as I know, "tokens" that allow one-to-one marketing thousands of years ago have been successfully used to fight those patents that appear to place ownership on the majority of uses of cookies.
3) Computer Languages. Yes, I'm repeating this--it's very likely that a number of languages could be argued to implement features of these styles. I'd poke around specifically for languages that advertised the ability to interface with other languages.
4) Electronic Commerce Systems. Remember, there have been literally hundreds if not thousands of methods for representing the flow of products and monies. Middleware for converting the protocols of one data flow to another have been around for ages. Lets find specific examples. This is rather powerful, if you ask me. If I remember right, there was a massive move by the industry--DCE?--to move to a standard e-commerce solution. Any solution of this style would have left a wake of protocol conversion software, much of which written by companies as a matter of course. This goes even farther to prove that the systems described by the patent are "obvious to any master of the field".

That's my "off the top of the head" response to Yet Another Preposterous Patent Situation.

Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.

IBM 3270?

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Would an IBM 3270 terminal qualify for this? It had a pretty funky protocol for doing that sort of thing with respects to its window interface.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Would NNTP qualify?

[Lars Arvestad]

Not knowing too much about how NNTP works, but it seems to me to be doing just about what the patent claims. The control structure in this case would be my .newsrc for instance.

Would some expert care to comment?

Lars

Prior art may not be necessary

[Aleatoric]

IANAL, but in looking at the requirements of getting a patent (esp a utility patent, which would apply in this case), the two primary requirements are that the invention being patented be:

(the definitions quoted here are from an overview on patent law at: http://www.nolo.com/PCTM/3overview.html)

1. Novel. "That is, a new development in at least one or more of its constituent elements--as of the date the inventor conceived it or when the patent application was filed."

This is where prior art would apply.

2. Non-obvious. "If the PTO determines that the invention was novel, it then must make another more difficult decision: was the invention nonobvious? To make this determination, the PTO asks this question: Would someone who was skilled in the particular field as of the invention date consider the invention to be an unexpected or surprising development?"

Judging from some of the responses here, it would seem that this patent would fail the non-obviousness test, by the fact that the technique involved is not considered to be an unexpected or surprising development in this field.

Since IANAL, it is possible that there is some aspect to the definition of non-obviousness that I'm missing, but on the face of it, this patent does fail in this regard.

This is simply Kerberos.

[arivanov]

The metatata is the ticket. And the rest is just a kerberos authenticated service (for the simplest V4 case).

And this has existed befor the internet has gone public ;-)

Re:I must be confused about patents....

[werdna]

A patent claim may be directed to an apparatus, a process, an article of manufacture or any new and useful improvement on any of those. 35 U.S.C. s. 101.

Accordingly, you can find claims directed to any or all of the following:

• A general purpose computer for doing . . .
  programmed with a fixed store encoded to follow the steps of: . . .
  
• A process (or method) for doing . . . comprising the steps of: . . .
  
• A magnetic medium upon which is stored a computer program comprising the steps of: . . .
  
• A propagated signal encoding a program comprising the steps of: . . .
  
• 
  
  along with any other example that defines an apparatus, article of manufacture or process.
  

Re:The claims the thing . . .EDI?

[werdna]

I don't see it, but here's how you can prove it. Build a claim chart, which is just a chart with two columns, one for the claim and one for EDS. In the rows will be each element of the claim, on the right, you identify the corresponding EDI activity. If you have a 1:1 correspondence between each and every limitation, you have proved your point. If you don't, you haven't.

Re:But if a computer program is speech?

[werdna]

The message took an interesting twist. I had thought the inquiry was whether patents directed to software would be unconstitutional for First Amendment reasons. I think this is unlikely, as similar issues have been well-litigated under Copyright law, which, particularly because of the fair use exception, is NOT generally deemed to be a law infringing free speech, even though it provides civil and criminal remedies for certain types of speech.

Patents won't come close to those issues. You can write a computer program in source code without infringing a patent, so long as you don't "make, use, sell or offer for sale" the patented invention. Since a patent cannot be directed to printed matter, it is highly unlikely that the writing and distribution of souce code can raise meaningful infringement, and hence First Amendment issues.

Running the program, that's another matter. Moreover, the recent Bernstein opinion was expressly limited in its holding -- focusing on the expressive, and not the functional aspects of using source code to share fundamental research. It is unlikely the same result would have occurred had the regulation merely precluded distribution of object code or the execution of object code under certain circumstances.

Re:The claims the thing . . .

[werdna]

Sorry, I hit the wrong key before the post was ready.

While general art discussing the technology may be useful, the killer reference will be one describing each and every limitation of the claims of the patent. Accordingly, care should be taken not to paraphrase too much the claim language. One illustrative claim is Claim 20, defining:

A computer-based communication system comprising:

• a provider memory storing information including provider information;
  
• a consumer memory storing information including consumer information;
  
• association means for
  
  • creating metadata associating portions of said information and
    
  • defining a control structure for processing at least at said consumer memory to associate with
    
  • said metadata processes for controlling the communication of said associated information,
    said metadata including data exchange metadata associating a process for controlling the transfer of feedback information,
    
  • said feedback information including at least a portion of said consumer information,
    to said provider memory;
  
  

transfer means for transferring said information, including said metadata defining said control structure, from said provider memory to said consumer memory;

feedback transfer means for transferring said feedback information from said consumer memory to said provider memory; and

processing means for executing instructions external to said control structure to perform said processes to control communications of said information.


To infringe this patent claim, one must practice each and every element and limitation reciting in the invention, either directly or equivalently. The absence of even one element or limitation would result in a noninfringement.

Invalidation of a patent works the same way. To invalidate the claim, a reference should recite or teach each and every element and limitation recited above, either directly or inherently. Such killer art is rare for any patent, whose claims are usually drafted precisely to distinguish the prior art by adding some limitation not present there. On the other hand, two or more references may sometimes be combined to "fill in the gaps," provided that the references have a hint that teaches or suggests the combination.

If you have something close, by all means report it, because close (while no cigar) often leads to closer. However, you should all know for what you are looking.