"Sounds like the same thing" and "is the same thing" can be completely different when you start looking at the details.
I haven't actually looked at the claims, so I can't say if they are or not, but you will have to do better than "sounds like the same thing" if you want to show that this has already been done.
Your definition of "obvious" is based entirely on hindsight, you look at the patent and say that is is obvious. This is not the way the courts have definied the obviousness requirement (Congress writes the laws, the courts interpret them). "Obviousness" in patent law requires documentation that the claims would be obvious, where the documentation includes a known method and teachings which show how to alter the known method to meet the method in the claims.
It is simple enough to call "obvious" which is a disqualifier.
It is nowhere near as simple as you think. The obviousness test has to be backed up by references which give motivations to change previously known methods to meet the requirements of the claims.
You can't just look at something and say: "Yeah, thats obvious". Doing so is called "hindsight" and is not a valid reason to reject a patent.
That is how the law is written, however the courts interpret the law, and according to the courts to establish obviousness one must provide dated references which together contain all parts of the claim and motivation (from at least one of the references) to combine the missing parts of one of the references with the other to form a single system.
Even if you are "one skilled in the art", you can not simply look at something and say that it is obvious (in the context of patent law at least). You must be able to prove that it is obvious using references which have dates prior to the filing date of the application.
Patents are assumed to be allowable unless no dated proof (prior to the filing date) is found that the invention is either:
a) previously known by others b) obvious
where obvious means that there is dated proof that teaches altering previously known methods to achieve the invention in question. Note that there must be motivation contained within the reference to combine it with other previously known references (just because two individual parts are known, does not make the combination obvious).
In this case no such proof was found, therefore the invention was allowed a patent. If you feel that this invention is "obviously totally fivolous", then perhaps you can produce some evidence to back up those claims.
Interesting story you constructed there, but can you prove that doing this method has been known prior to 1999? The current patent laws are setup so that anything with utility (with a few exceptions) can be patented unless it can be proven (with dated references) that it was already known or would have been obvious to do so.
To prove obviousness you must have references which show motivation (ie, you can't make up your own motivation) to alter previously known techniques to create the invention which is stated in the claims.
So what's supposed to be patentable here?
What is supposed to be patentable here is everything thats stated in the claims, and by law, it is assumed to be patentable unless you can find references which show that it is not. So, I now ask you: Why is this not patentable, and where is your proof to back up your conclusions?
If anyone wants to take a look at the actual patent from the EPO, and not just the information which FFII has, go here. Also note that this a divisional application of EP902381 and has an effective filing date of March 17, 1999.
This patent does NOT cover simply ording gifts over the internet, this patent covers:
A method in a computer system for ordering a gift for delivery from a gift giver to a recipient, the method comprising: receiving from the gift giver an indication that the gift is to be delivered to the recipient and an electronic mail address of the recipient; and sending to a gift delivery computer system an indication of the gift and the received electronic mail address, wherein the gift delivery computer system coordinates delivery of the gift by sending an electronic mail message addressed to the electronic mail address of the recipient requesting that the recipient provide delivery information including a postal address for the gift; and upon receiving the delivery information, electronically initiating delivery of the gift in accordance with the received delivery information.
Please remember that the title means nothing, the abstract means nothing, and the description means nothing. The only part that gets legal protection is the claims.
My point is that you aren't going to have much of a chance of getting in the door without a 4 year degree any more, and you can't get valuable work experience without starting somewhere.
Completely agree... a 4 year degree from an accredited institution is quickly becoming the minimum that companies will accept for most white collar jobs. The days of the technical college (or certified, they are basically the same thing) IT worker are long gone.
That is just part of the description and is not what Microsoft is seeking protection over. You have to look at the claims section to see what they are actually trying to patent. For example, claim 1:
1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components, comprising:
a first component for reading a word-processor document stored as a single XML file; a second component that utilizes an XSD for interpreting the word-processor document, and a third component for performing an action on the word-processor document.
It's not that it was merely technically possible, it EXISTED! In the late 80s I could download very low quality (bandwidth limits on my 19.2 modem) video and play it while it downloaded. That's all this Tivo patent covers, though it's stretched to make it look advanced.
That is a system of downloading already encoded video, which is not what the TiVo system does and not what the patent covers (hint: read the claims, does it say anything about downloading encoded video over a network link and playing back the encoded video?). If you would bother to read the patents you might see the difference.
Also the requirements which I am attempting to get you to understand are the exact same requirements which the court will look at when deciding the validity of the patent, because they are the requirements as written into the laws and as upheld in every court case to date. If new prior art is introduced it will be analyzed to see if it is analogous art and whether or not it teaches changes to the current state of the art at the time the patent was filed to produce the system as described in the claims, assuming that the new piece of prior art is not factually (ie, directly states every part of the claims) equivelant to the TiVo case. If it is factually equivelant then it will hold as a rejection under 35 USC 102, but as stated above, every part of the claims must be directly shown in the reference and absolutely nothing can be assumed for any reason. Note that computers DO NOT fit under this category unless the reference says that they are used for the exact purpose which TiVo is claiming and complete the exact same method as written (ie, downloading encoded video and recieving NTSC signals and encoding them are not the exact same thing, sorry).
If these stockholders see your posts, where you gush over this patent, they might actually believe that Tivo stands a chance in court and push for an early settlement
I have not once said whether I think this is a good or bad patent, or whether or not the patent should have been granted. All I have tried to do is to explain to you where you are wrong in your reasoning and how to properly claim the obviousness of a patent, because it seems that you don't have the slightest notion other than some vague recollection of the word "obvious" of how it is actually done.
Oh, I see, in order to have an opinion, I *must* write a document detailing where every one of their methods came from and a philosophical treatise on why they'd consider combining this method instead of that one?
No, you can have any opinion that you want, it just won't have a shred of chance of holding up in a court of law, and will, as far as the law is concerned, be completely wrong.
PCs could do *exectly* what a Tivo could
As I stated before, just because it is technically possible to create a functional equivelant at the time of filing doesn't mean anything as to the obviousness of a patent. To call a patent obvious you must have some kind of proof, which so far you have offered absolutely none of. I suggest reading this AC post to learn about some of the impermissable reasons for combining references.
Why don't you actually do something useful and read the patent and tell me what part you think IS patent worthy. Surely there must be something you can point to and say it's not bleeding obvious.
And as for combined in a new way, that's being abused left and right.
Read claim 1 in its entirety. Just because the parts of a claim individually were well known the combination can still be novel. Saying that combinations of already known devices can not be novel is like saying that there are no possibile novel innovations in the world of processors or memory because they just consist of transistors, and transistors have been around for years.
That's why we got a rash on late-90s patents that take an existing process (transfer digital data, etc1) that tack on "over a packet-switched network"
What patents have added just "over a packet-switched network"? I have yet to see any.
If that is the case then you should easily be able to produce some proof that shows the system as stated in their claims in use prior to the filing date. Keep in mind that it must have all parts that are listed in the clams either directly, or you must show another system which contains the missing parts and give motivation to combine the two systems (with the motivation coming from the second reference which contains the missing parts, either implicitly or explicitly). Also keep in mind that you must use references which are in some way related, and that if a part is listed as performing a specific function (say recieving a TV channel in NTSC format) your reference must have a part that performs the exact same function or provide motivation (from a reference, not made up by you) for altering the references original part to perform the function as stated in the claims, for exampe if you have a video input which recieves VGA signals instead of NTSC you must provide motivation (from a reference of some kind, not made up by you) for replacing the VGA input with a NTSC input. All references must have a provable date prior to the filing date (April/July 2000) and must have been published in a publicly known medium (something you remember your uncle once doing does not count unless it was publicly published).
It is also important to note that just because a system is technically capable of performing as a functional equivelant of the invention, if the reference (or another related reference) does not give a motivation for using the system to perform the same function, it does not count as a rejection.
Since you so vehemently claim that this patent is blatently obvious and should never have been allowed, the above exercise should be very simple for you. I look forward to reading the evidence that you produce.
Chances are they wouldn't understand the hindsight argument or the requirements for motivation. I keep trying to convince one of them to attempt it, but they never off anything more than "Of course its obvious, just look at it!".
Reading a patent and stating that the parts of it are obvious because each part has already been done individually and therefore would have been obvious when combined is called hindsight. Hindsight rejections do not stand up in court.
What did they invent?
What they invented was a method of using MPEG and data caching for a specific purpose, not MPEG or data chaching on its own. In order to properly reject a patent you must show dated proof that the complete invention, not just its individual parts, was already known in the art.
Congratulations on finding something obvious in hindsight . The problem is that this line of reasoning has been repeatedly thrown out in court as being insufficient to claim that a patent is obvious. According to the law, to find a patent obvious you must find documented proof dated before the application date that shows how to complete the invention in question. Arguing that the invention is obvious once you have seen it proves absolutely nothing, you need to come up with actual dated proof.
Have they considered a work stoppage? (You know, like a strike) Or perhaps just doing a decent job on each patent and letting political pressure from the companies involved spur congress into giving them a larger budget?
I believe it is written into their contract that strikes are illegal, and if they take too much time per patent they get promptly fired. People do quite the patent office at alarming rates, but there are always new people waiting to get in so it doens't concern the office that much.
Boeing can't decide that five years is long enough to work on a plane and release it, expecting it to pass testing and sell, just because they need to release a plane to make money.
Boeing also can't spend forever perfecting their planes before they are released, eventually they will run out of money if they do not release a product. They are working within a budget the same as the patent office is. The patent office bitches a lot more than you think about Congress taking their money for other matters, but because you don't follow any of the budget proceedings, and since nobody really cares about how the patent office operates, it doesn't get very much public news coverage and you don't hear about it.
Besides, this isn't a legal issue.
How is this not a legal issue? The law is written and interpreted in a certain way, and TiVo is using the law to attempt to get damanges for infringement from another company. This is entirely a legal issue.
Also the patents (as interpreted the way they are writtent and as dictated by US law) in question are not simply for a file-cache system. I suggest you actually learn how to properly read and interpret a patent, and then read the patent in question.
The problem is that there is a lot more little quirks in the law that make it harder than just saying that a dual head hard drive is capable of writing and reading at the same time, therefore this invention could have been done using such a system.
You must show that a system using such a dual head hard drive, which included a TV input, a video encoder to encode the video to an MPEG stream, a video splitter to write the audio/video seperately, a reader to then read the encoded audio/video and recombine it to an MPEG stream and a video decoder to decode the MPEG stream back to an NTSC/PAL signal existed before the file application date, or that there was sufficient motivation to create one based upon the prior art.
This motivation may come in something like the form of an article saying that the digital vcrs of the future will use computers that act as buffers for the video that convert it to a digital stream, store it and then decode it before sending it out to the TV allowing the operation of pausing live TV. Just having a dual head hard drive that can read/write at the same time does not provide motivation the part of the claims that specifically state the video encoding/decoding.
Patents are rejected based upon have they been done, or has the motivation for inventing them already been publicly known at the time of filing, not was it technically feasabile to use already invented components to make create the invention at the time of filing.
If patents actually meant something then people might believe Tivo. Unfortunately, junk patents are trivial to obtain and if you want to be believed you need to show some evidence that your patent isn't on the most obvious method.
That simply is not the way that the law is written. TiVo does't have to show a damn thing to prove that their patent is not obvious. The law states that "patents will be granted unless" they can be proven to have already existed or be obvious (where obvious means that their is documented evidence in video recording art that the invention would have not required an inventive step to complete based upon the current state of the art).
How handy. I don't have time to do my job so I'm going to do a half-assed version.
How about they simply let patents pile up and spend the appropriate ammount of time on them? That way they wouldn't let crap patents through and stick legitimate businesses with the costs of fighting patent spam.
Unfortunately we don't live in a fantasy world, and everything that is done has time limits, it is a simple economic reality. The patent office can not afford to spend weeks examining every single patent that comes through the office any more than Boeing can spend 100 years on the design of a single plain so that it will be bug free or RedHat can spend 10 years on a single release to near perfect code.
Even looking to the PC world it may have been difficult to prove this is was obvious because of the differences in the arts. In order to bring in art from a different area you have to show motivation for looking in that area, otherwise it could be ruled as unrelated art and not applicable to the case in question. There is also the possibility that this might fall under "unexpected results" in which old methods/systems can be applied to new areas, and if they produce "unexpected results", they can be allowable even though all of the basic parts are already well known. Patent law has lots of little quirks like this that nobody outside of it really know about which makes some of these patents seem a lot simpler to reject than they actually are.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sounds like the same thing" and "is the same thing" can be completely different when you start looking at the details.
I haven't actually looked at the claims, so I can't say if they are or not, but you will have to do better than "sounds like the same thing" if you want to show that this has already been done.
Your definition of "obvious" is based entirely on hindsight, you look at the patent and say that is is obvious. This is not the way the courts have definied the obviousness requirement (Congress writes the laws, the courts interpret them). "Obviousness" in patent law requires documentation that the claims would be obvious, where the documentation includes a known method and teachings which show how to alter the known method to meet the method in the claims.
You can't just look at something and say: "Yeah, thats obvious". Doing so is called "hindsight" and is not a valid reason to reject a patent.
That is how the law is written, however the courts interpret the law, and according to the courts to establish obviousness one must provide dated references which together contain all parts of the claim and motivation (from at least one of the references) to combine the missing parts of one of the references with the other to form a single system.
Even if you are "one skilled in the art", you can not simply look at something and say that it is obvious (in the context of patent law at least). You must be able to prove that it is obvious using references which have dates prior to the filing date of the application.
Patents are assumed to be allowable unless no dated proof (prior to the filing date) is found that the invention is either:
a) previously known by others
b) obvious
where obvious means that there is dated proof that teaches altering previously known methods to achieve the invention in question. Note that there must be motivation contained within the reference to combine it with other previously known references (just because two individual parts are known, does not make the combination obvious).
In this case no such proof was found, therefore the invention was allowed a patent. If you feel that this invention is "obviously totally fivolous", then perhaps you can produce some evidence to back up those claims.
To prove obviousness you must have references which show motivation (ie, you can't make up your own motivation) to alter previously known techniques to create the invention which is stated in the claims.
What is supposed to be patentable here is everything thats stated in the claims, and by law, it is assumed to be patentable unless you can find references which show that it is not. So, I now ask you: Why is this not patentable, and where is your proof to back up your conclusions?
No it doesn't, because that doesn't involve contacting the recipient to fill in the missing information.
If anyone wants to take a look at the actual patent from the EPO, and not just the information which FFII has, go here. Also note that this a divisional application of EP902381 and has an effective filing date of March 17, 1999.
This patent does NOT cover simply ording gifts over the internet, this patent covers:
A method in a computer system for ordering a gift for delivery from a gift giver to a recipient, the method comprising:
receiving from the gift giver an indication that the gift is to be delivered to the recipient and an electronic mail address of the recipient; and
sending to a gift delivery computer system an indication of the gift and the received electronic mail address, wherein the gift delivery computer system coordinates delivery of the gift by
sending an electronic mail message addressed to the electronic mail address of the recipient requesting that the recipient provide delivery information including a postal address for the gift; and
upon receiving the delivery information, electronically initiating delivery of the gift in accordance with the received delivery information.
Please remember that the title means nothing, the abstract means nothing, and the description means nothing. The only part that gets legal protection is the claims.
The one-click patent does not cover the motion of 'clicking'.
certifications != work experience
My point is that you aren't going to have much of a chance of getting in the door without a 4 year degree any more, and you can't get valuable work experience without starting somewhere.
Completely agree... a 4 year degree from an accredited institution is quickly becoming the minimum that companies will accept for most white collar jobs. The days of the technical college (or certified, they are basically the same thing) IT worker are long gone.
That is just part of the description and is not what Microsoft is seeking protection over. You have to look at the claims section to see what they are actually trying to patent. For example, claim 1:
1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components, comprising:
a first component for reading a word-processor document stored as a single XML file;
a second component that utilizes an XSD for interpreting the word-processor document, and
a third component for performing an action on the word-processor document.
That may be your definition of obviousness, but it is not the definition that is defined by law.
Also the requirements which I am attempting to get you to understand are the exact same requirements which the court will look at when deciding the validity of the patent, because they are the requirements as written into the laws and as upheld in every court case to date. If new prior art is introduced it will be analyzed to see if it is analogous art and whether or not it teaches changes to the current state of the art at the time the patent was filed to produce the system as described in the claims, assuming that the new piece of prior art is not factually (ie, directly states every part of the claims) equivelant to the TiVo case. If it is factually equivelant then it will hold as a rejection under 35 USC 102, but as stated above, every part of the claims must be directly shown in the reference and absolutely nothing can be assumed for any reason. Note that computers DO NOT fit under this category unless the reference says that they are used for the exact purpose which TiVo is claiming and complete the exact same method as written (ie, downloading encoded video and recieving NTSC signals and encoding them are not the exact same thing, sorry).
I have not once said whether I think this is a good or bad patent, or whether or not the patent should have been granted. All I have tried to do is to explain to you where you are wrong in your reasoning and how to properly claim the obviousness of a patent, because it seems that you don't have the slightest notion other than some vague recollection of the word "obvious" of how it is actually done.
Read claim 1 in its entirety. Just because the parts of a claim individually were well known the combination can still be novel. Saying that combinations of already known devices can not be novel is like saying that there are no possibile novel innovations in the world of processors or memory because they just consist of transistors, and transistors have been around for years. What patents have added just "over a packet-switched network"? I have yet to see any.
A patent is not obvious if it is only 90% obvious, only if it is 100% obvious. As far as obviousness goes for patents, its all or nothing.
If that is the case then you should easily be able to produce some proof that shows the system as stated in their claims in use prior to the filing date. Keep in mind that it must have all parts that are listed in the clams either directly, or you must show another system which contains the missing parts and give motivation to combine the two systems (with the motivation coming from the second reference which contains the missing parts, either implicitly or explicitly). Also keep in mind that you must use references which are in some way related, and that if a part is listed as performing a specific function (say recieving a TV channel in NTSC format) your reference must have a part that performs the exact same function or provide motivation (from a reference, not made up by you) for altering the references original part to perform the function as stated in the claims, for exampe if you have a video input which recieves VGA signals instead of NTSC you must provide motivation (from a reference of some kind, not made up by you) for replacing the VGA input with a NTSC input. All references must have a provable date prior to the filing date (April/July 2000) and must have been published in a publicly known medium (something you remember your uncle once doing does not count unless it was publicly published).
It is also important to note that just because a system is technically capable of performing as a functional equivelant of the invention, if the reference (or another related reference) does not give a motivation for using the system to perform the same function, it does not count as a rejection.
Since you so vehemently claim that this patent is blatently obvious and should never have been allowed, the above exercise should be very simple for you. I look forward to reading the evidence that you produce.
Chances are they wouldn't understand the hindsight argument or the requirements for motivation. I keep trying to convince one of them to attempt it, but they never off anything more than "Of course its obvious, just look at it!".
How is this not a legal issue? The law is written and interpreted in a certain way, and TiVo is using the law to attempt to get damanges for infringement from another company. This is entirely a legal issue.
Also the patents (as interpreted the way they are writtent and as dictated by US law) in question are not simply for a file-cache system. I suggest you actually learn how to properly read and interpret a patent, and then read the patent in question.
The problem is that there is a lot more little quirks in the law that make it harder than just saying that a dual head hard drive is capable of writing and reading at the same time, therefore this invention could have been done using such a system.
You must show that a system using such a dual head hard drive, which included a TV input, a video encoder to encode the video to an MPEG stream, a video splitter to write the audio/video seperately, a reader to then read the encoded audio/video and recombine it to an MPEG stream and a video decoder to decode the MPEG stream back to an NTSC/PAL signal existed before the file application date, or that there was sufficient motivation to create one based upon the prior art.
This motivation may come in something like the form of an article saying that the digital vcrs of the future will use computers that act as buffers for the video that convert it to a digital stream, store it and then decode it before sending it out to the TV allowing the operation of pausing live TV. Just having a dual head hard drive that can read/write at the same time does not provide motivation the part of the claims that specifically state the video encoding/decoding.
Patents are rejected based upon have they been done, or has the motivation for inventing them already been publicly known at the time of filing, not was it technically feasabile to use already invented components to make create the invention at the time of filing.
Unfortunately we don't live in a fantasy world, and everything that is done has time limits, it is a simple economic reality. The patent office can not afford to spend weeks examining every single patent that comes through the office any more than Boeing can spend 100 years on the design of a single plain so that it will be bug free or RedHat can spend 10 years on a single release to near perfect code.
Even looking to the PC world it may have been difficult to prove this is was obvious because of the differences in the arts. In order to bring in art from a different area you have to show motivation for looking in that area, otherwise it could be ruled as unrelated art and not applicable to the case in question. There is also the possibility that this might fall under "unexpected results" in which old methods/systems can be applied to new areas, and if they produce "unexpected results", they can be allowable even though all of the basic parts are already well known. Patent law has lots of little quirks like this that nobody outside of it really know about which makes some of these patents seem a lot simpler to reject than they actually are.