From the patent's claim (the thing that needs review as much as the date of the filing, which has priority to a provisional filed in Oct. 2002):
1. A method of playing a game by first and second players, the method comprising:
providing at least first and second toy bases for use by respective first and second players, wherein each toy base comprises multiple components, wherein the multiple components of each toy base are formed as generally-planar pieces, wherein the generally-planar pieces are manually punched out or removed from at least one rectangular panel by at least one of the first and second players, and wherein each of the first and second toy bases represent at least a portion of a vehicle or robot; manually assembling the first toy base by the first player;
manually assembling the second toy base by the second player;
removably securing at least one accessory to a location on the first toy base by the first player, wherein the accessory has use under predetermined rules of play;
removably securing at least one accessory to a location on the second toy base by the second player;
moving the first manually assembled toy base under the predetermined rules of play by the first player;
moving the second manually assembled toy base under the predetermined rules of play by the second player;
generating a first random number and playing the game according to the predetermined rules of play by the first player; upon occurrence of an negative event under the predetermined rules of play and based at least in part on the first generated random number, then either (i) removing the accessory or one of the multiple components of the second toy base, or (ii) replacing the accessory or one of the multiple components of the second toy base with a substitute accessory or substitute component, respectively, wherein the substitute accessory or substitute component represents damage to the accessory or one of the multiple components; and
generating a second random number and playing the game according to the predetermined rules of play by the second player;
upon occurrence of an negative event under the predetermined rules of play and based at least in part on the second generated random number, then either (i) removing the accessory or one of the multiple components of the first toy base, or (ii) replacing the accessory or one of the multiple components of the first toy base with a substitute accessory or substitute component, respectively; and
repeating the generating of random numbers and the removing or replacing of accessories or components, under the predetermined rules of play, until one of the first or second players wins the game at least in part because of the removing of accessories or components from the toy base, or because of the replacing of the accessories or components on the toy base with substitute accessories or substitute components.
US Patent 7039599 - Automatic Placement of Advertising
Highlight: Claim 1. "A method for advertisement selection, comprising: (a) receiving from an advertiser Web site feedback representing user transactions at the advertiser Web site, the user transactions resulting from user response to at least one of a plurality of direct advertisements; (b) receiving a request to display a direct advertisement to a user; and (c) selecting, in response to the request, one of the plurality of direct advertisements for display based at least in part upon the advertiser feedback."
Analysis: This patent has a priority back to 1997 and allows for advertiser feedback from users on a website. Given Google's move into CPA, this patent would clearly provide added leverage to allow more data to flow between the advertiser and Google's system to optimize which ads should be displayed at a publisher.
US Patent 7085682 - Analyzing Website Activity
Highlight: A large number of independent claims covering the tracking and reporting of user activities to provide analysis of event level detail, which includes the addition of the retaining details of users' adding products to shopping carts, and repeat usage of a client site.
Analysis: In addition to the above, Google's analysis and reporting features for a tool like Analytics for a CPA advertiser become even more robust allowing for unique visitor tracking and loyalty. A robust addition to Google Analytics to be sure.
US Patent 5948061 - Delivering, Targeting and Measuring Online Ads
Highlight: What all consumer privacy folks have feared for the last 12 years. The tracking of user specific information and the performance and ongoing management of ad delivery based on user information.
Analysis: Whether we like it or not, Google retains a lot of information about our searches connected to our profiles. This technology does what the original vision of DoubleClick was built on: user-level targeted ads.
Dyson developed and patented a number of concepts on autonomous vacs back to the late 1990's and launched a version in trial about three years ago as mentioned above. Like many players that looked at Roomba-like vacs, the price points they targeted were just too high. As this market develops (and continued in-store placement of Roomba shows that its got staying power), I'd expect Dyson to become a player with a positioning like it has in vacs at the high end.
Roomba has succeeded by being at a much more reasonable priced vac and have done the right things to stay innovative.
Amazon's patent US 5690411 Claim 1 reads (as a refresher)...
1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system, displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system, receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
When reviewing AOL's patent history, here's an interesting example on shopping from their background filed a couple months earlier than the 1-Click, US Patent 5826242 shows:
1. A method of on-line shopping by a customer using a browser running on a client computer, said method comprising the steps of:
sending a first request by said browser to a merchant server for a first HTML document describing a product;
displaying said HTML document on said client computer, said displayed HTML document describing said product;
selecting, by said customer, said product;
sending a second request by said browser to said merchant server in response to said selection made by said customer;
sending a state object from said merchant server to said browser, said state object identifying said product; and
storing said state object on said client computer by said browser.
While I can try to understand the contestant winners mentioned by BountyQuest, I'd think something like AOL's patent hit a bit closer to home. Now, in reading a bit, the AOL is narrowed as the description notes "When the customer wants to purchase the products in the virtual shopping basket, the browser sends the corresponding state information to a specified check-out Web page for processing." But in another described embodiment, a broader description is discussed:
"Thereafter, this information is included in the state information which is exchanged between the client and the server in the process of the invention. Accordingly, when the user, during the browsing process, desires to view another publication (e.g., from the same or different publisher) this state information will be transmitted back to the Web server to provide the necessary subscription information (thereby entitling the user to view the publication) without requiring the user to re-enter the necessary subscription information. In this manner, a user may browse from publication to publication on the Web server or a different Web server in the domain without having to re-enter, when seeking a new publication, the necessary subscription information."
Could the idea that you are clicking on a publication's website for premium content, like the New York Times, with a login cookie be considered prior art for 1-click? Worth reviewing.
It'll take a bit of work to assemble everything relevant to cell phones, but we've got a tool that shows which patents are expired or abandoned. Here is a list of expired or abandoned cell phone patents we've got as a starter and will add to it as we go. Some aren't that great, think of it as a 'bargain bin'.:P
I agree that cell phones have many possibilities and we should use the patent system as an advantage for this.
Apple Inc. is a Software Company(?)
Based on a detailed analysis of Apple's patent portfolio, we discovered at a high level that Apple is primarily a software company with roughly 65% of its issued patents being related to software elements like its: operating system; means for displaying information; networking; and image processing. If Apple is evil, then they aren't patenting it like Microsoft.
Evil Unseen - Apple's Growing Patent Application Base
Apple does have a slew of smart applications pending. One of the most interesting patent applications on our watch list, with a priority date reaching back to 2002, reads like this: "A method for synchronizing media contents between a portable media player and a media host... and synchronizing media content between the media player and the media host via the wireless connection..."
Apple may be able to make an iPhone call to Redmond if this one issues as written.
Clearly, they have only received one issued patent and the rest of the application cannot be asserted until the claims are set in stone. They have US Patent 6,988,138 which is currently under review as well. It is a great point that they've got more applications coming and this needs to also be considered.
From the patent: 9. A processor based system, comprising: a processor; a joystick device having a first source voltage; and an interface interfacing said joystick device with said processor, said interface including, a Resistor-Capacitor (RC) network, connected to the joystick device, said RC network having a capacitor that generates an analog joystick position measurement signal; and an interface circuit having a second source voltage that is lower than the first source voltage, including a buffer circuit, in a first operation mode of said interface, receiving said analog joystick position measurement signal, outputting a first logic state as a digital signal before said analog joystick measurement signal exceeds said predetermined threshold, and outputting a second logic state as said digital signal after said analog joystick measurement signal exceeds said predetermined threshold, and a pulse generator generating a pulse based on said digital signal in said first operation mode of said interface, a width of said pulse representing a coordinate position of said joystick device, and outputting said pulse to said processor, wherein the capacitance value of said capacitor is a function of said predetermined threshold that prevents deviation of the width of said pulse from expected values.
As has been mentioned on a few posts above, this relates to performing a low voltage analog response and this claim doesn't require a manual input joystick.
WRF highlights four patents (seen here: 1, 2, 3, 4) on their technology website dating back to 1996 covering a range of rf technology advances.
They all cover building inventions on "...a useful device and method for receiving and tuning RF signals, with quadrature mixing to a near baseband passband performed in continuous-time and image rejection and translation to baseband performed in discrete-time. The device may also be adapted to transmit RF signals if desired."
Scherling Corp appears to hold the key patent impacted by this one. Work arounds aren't about destroying the value of the patent system, many companies employ work-around techniques to mitigate the value of a potential license and drug companies, or any company, need to account for their pricing with the potential ramifications of activities like this.
www.patentmonkey.com
Apple has had this on the board for a couple years
on
Inside Apple's iPhone
·
· Score: 3, Informative
In reading published US patent application 20060268528 filed back in 2004 - Handheld Computing Device - Apple
In the description, section 0111 "In one embodiment, the device is or includes functionality for supporting cellular or mobile phone usage. In this embodiment, the device includes processors, transmitters, receivers, and antennas for supporting RF, and more particularly GSM, DCS and/or PCS wireless communications in the range of about 850 to about 1900 MHz."
In the claims, they detail the invention as a handheld computing device that is a cell phone made of a non-plastic material to have better wireless signal reception (claims 1, 6, 7).
A very important consideration is that the patent's independent claims all discuss "a housing for location at least partly between a first finger and a thumb of a user's hand...a contoured step having a first face for generally providing a rest location for the first finger of the user's hand...".
US Patent 6,850,221
I see in US Patent 6,970,070 that RSA has an issued patent on a "a blocker device may comprise a mobile telephone, a portable computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a hardware-based authentication token such as an RSA SecurID.TM. token commercially available from RSA Security Inc..."
Don't see it referenced on A HREF="http://www.rsasecurity.com/node.asp?id=1155" >their site.
Interestingly, Google does a lot of reindexing using existing searches and then builds upon a search listing and a page indexing review. For example in US Patent 6,526,440, "The search engine obtains an initial set of relevant documents by matching a user's search terms to an index of a corpus. A re-ranking component in the search engine then refines the initially returned document rankings so that documents that are frequently cited in the initial set of relevant documents are preferred over documents that are less frequently cited within the initial set."
I agree that they are doing a lot of things to avoid computational load.
Slashdot Mirror
Key DoubleClick assets from a recent post we did:
US Patent 7039599 - Automatic Placement of Advertising
Highlight: Claim 1. "A method for advertisement selection, comprising: (a) receiving from an advertiser Web site feedback representing user transactions at the advertiser Web site, the user transactions resulting from user response to at least one of a plurality of direct advertisements; (b) receiving a request to display a direct advertisement to a user; and (c) selecting, in response to the request, one of the plurality of direct advertisements for display based at least in part upon the advertiser feedback."
Analysis: This patent has a priority back to 1997 and allows for advertiser feedback from users on a website. Given Google's move into CPA, this patent would clearly provide added leverage to allow more data to flow between the advertiser and Google's system to optimize which ads should be displayed at a publisher.
US Patent 7085682 - Analyzing Website Activity
Highlight: A large number of independent claims covering the tracking and reporting of user activities to provide analysis of event level detail, which includes the addition of the retaining details of users' adding products to shopping carts, and repeat usage of a client site.
Analysis: In addition to the above, Google's analysis and reporting features for a tool like Analytics for a CPA advertiser become even more robust allowing for unique visitor tracking and loyalty. A robust addition to Google Analytics to be sure.
US Patent 5948061 - Delivering, Targeting and Measuring Online Ads
Highlight: What all consumer privacy folks have feared for the last 12 years. The tracking of user specific information and the performance and ongoing management of ad delivery based on user information.
Analysis: Whether we like it or not, Google retains a lot of information about our searches connected to our profiles. This technology does what the original vision of DoubleClick was built on: user-level targeted ads.
This announcement was easy to see coming.
Dyson developed and patented a number of concepts on autonomous vacs back to the late 1990's and launched a version in trial about three years ago as mentioned above. Like many players that looked at Roomba-like vacs, the price points they targeted were just too high. As this market develops (and continued in-store placement of Roomba shows that its got staying power), I'd expect Dyson to become a player with a positioning like it has in vacs at the high end.
Roomba has succeeded by being at a much more reasonable priced vac and have done the right things to stay innovative.
When reviewing AOL's patent history, here's an interesting example on shopping from their background filed a couple months earlier than the 1-Click, US Patent 5826242 shows:
While I can try to understand the contestant winners mentioned by BountyQuest, I'd think something like AOL's patent hit a bit closer to home. Now, in reading a bit, the AOL is narrowed as the description notes "When the customer wants to purchase the products in the virtual shopping basket, the browser sends the corresponding state information to a specified check-out Web page for processing." But in another described embodiment, a broader description is discussed:
Could the idea that you are clicking on a publication's website for premium content, like the New York Times, with a login cookie be considered prior art for 1-click? Worth reviewing.
It'll take a bit of work to assemble everything relevant to cell phones, but we've got a tool that shows which patents are expired or abandoned. Here is a list of expired or abandoned cell phone patents we've got as a starter and will add to it as we go. Some aren't that great, think of it as a 'bargain bin'. :P
I agree that cell phones have many possibilities and we should use the patent system as an advantage for this.
Apple Inc. is a Software Company(?)
Based on a detailed analysis of Apple's patent portfolio, we discovered at a high level that Apple is primarily a software company with roughly 65% of its issued patents being related to software elements like its: operating system; means for displaying information; networking; and image processing. If Apple is evil, then they aren't patenting it like Microsoft.
Evil Unseen - Apple's Growing Patent Application Base
Apple does have a slew of smart applications pending. One of the most interesting patent applications on our watch list, with a priority date reaching back to 2002, reads like this: "A method for synchronizing media contents between a portable media player and a media host... and synchronizing media content between the media player and the media host via the wireless connection..."
Apple may be able to make an iPhone call to Redmond if this one issues as written.
Clearly, they have only received one issued patent and the rest of the application cannot be asserted until the claims are set in stone. They have US Patent 6,988,138 which is currently under review as well. It is a great point that they've got more applications coming and this needs to also be considered.
From the patent:
9. A processor based system, comprising:
a processor;
a joystick device having a first source voltage; and
an interface interfacing said joystick device with said processor, said interface including,
a Resistor-Capacitor (RC) network, connected to the joystick device, said RC network having a capacitor that generates an analog joystick position measurement signal; and
an interface circuit having a second source voltage that is lower than the first source voltage, including
a buffer circuit, in a first operation mode of said interface, receiving said analog joystick position measurement signal, outputting a first logic state as a digital signal before said analog joystick measurement signal exceeds said predetermined threshold, and outputting a second logic state as said digital signal after said analog joystick measurement signal exceeds said predetermined threshold, and
a pulse generator generating a pulse based on said digital signal in said first operation mode of said interface, a width of said pulse representing a coordinate position of said joystick device, and outputting said pulse to said processor, wherein the capacitance value of said capacitor is a function of said predetermined threshold that prevents deviation of the width of said pulse from expected values.
As has been mentioned on a few posts above, this relates to performing a low voltage analog response and this claim doesn't require a manual input joystick.
WRF highlights four patents (seen here: 1, 2, 3, 4) on their technology website dating back to 1996 covering a range of rf technology advances. They all cover building inventions on "...a useful device and method for receiving and tuning RF signals, with quadrature mixing to a near baseband passband performed in continuous-time and image rejection and translation to baseband performed in discrete-time. The device may also be adapted to transmit RF signals if desired."
Scherling Corp appears to hold the key patent impacted by this one. Work arounds aren't about destroying the value of the patent system, many companies employ work-around techniques to mitigate the value of a potential license and drug companies, or any company, need to account for their pricing with the potential ramifications of activities like this.
www.patentmonkey.com
In reading published US patent application 20060268528 filed back in 2004 - Handheld Computing Device - Apple
In the description, section 0111
"In one embodiment, the device is or includes functionality for supporting cellular or mobile phone usage. In this embodiment, the device includes processors, transmitters, receivers, and antennas for supporting RF, and more particularly GSM, DCS and/or PCS wireless communications in the range of about 850 to about 1900 MHz."
In the claims, they detail the invention as a handheld computing device that is a cell phone made of a non-plastic material to have better wireless signal reception (claims 1, 6, 7).
A very important consideration is that the patent's independent claims all discuss "a housing for location at least partly between a first finger and a thumb of a user's hand...a contoured step having a first face for generally providing a rest location for the first finger of the user's hand...". US Patent 6,850,221
From reading US Patent 6704607,
"...allows series or parallel interconnection between multiple cells and provides for high thermal conductance to improve cooling the solar cells."
While the PVC has some improvements, cooling the panels seems to help in the collection process along with proper orientation to the sun.
I see in US Patent 6,970,070 that RSA has an issued patent on a "a blocker device may comprise a mobile telephone, a portable computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a hardware-based authentication token such as an RSA SecurID.TM. token commercially available from RSA Security Inc..."
" >their site.
Don't see it referenced on A HREF="http://www.rsasecurity.com/node.asp?id=1155
Interestingly, Google does a lot of reindexing using existing searches and then builds upon a search listing and a page indexing review. For example in US Patent 6,526,440, "The search engine obtains an initial set of relevant documents by matching a user's search terms to an index of a corpus. A re-ranking component in the search engine then refines the initially returned document rankings so that documents that are frequently cited in the initial set of relevant documents are preferred over documents that are less frequently cited within the initial set."
I agree that they are doing a lot of things to avoid computational load.