The patent claims to be innovative in that it applies operators/operations to a composite datatype as opposed to atomic datatypes which reside on a given architecture (int, real, etc.)
If smalltalk supported composite objects, some variant of it optimized object operations, which implies to me an implementation in a VM.
It sounds to me like your venturing more in to 35 USC 103 (obviousness rejections) territory, which is much tricker than it needs to be. To prove obviousness you need to keep in mind a few points:
(A) The claimed invention must be considered as a whole;
(B) The references must be considered as a whole and must suggest the desirability and thus the obviousness of making the combination;
(C) The references must be viewed without the benefit of impermissible hindsight vision afforded by the claimed invention and
(D) Reasonable expectation of success is the standard with which obviousness is determined.
Points (B) and (C) are especially tricky. Basically, you would need to provide dated references which disclose the derisirability to modify the existing prior art to meed the claimed invention. If the reference does not give a good reason why you should change the prior art, then you are pretty much stuck.
For example, about you said "If smalltalk supported composite objects". If composite objects are required by the claim (I haven't read any of the patents in question, so I can't comment on them directly, I am just speaking in a general sense) and smalltalk does not disclose them you would have to provide a reference which discloses the use of composite objects and gives a reason as to why it is desirable to use composite objects. Just because composite objects are known, does not make their use in a specific instance obvious.
For example, saying that smalltalk is known and composite objects are known, therefore it is obvious to use composite objects in smalltalk to produce java is no different (in a legal sense) than saying that steel is known and cement is known, therefore it is obevious to use steel and cement to produce the golden gate bridge. Not that you actually said this, but it follows the typical logic of the average slashdotter.
I quickly perused one of the patents (and got completely lost in the legalspeak; how the hell is anyone supposed to know if they're infringing a patent when you can't even understand WTF the patent means?!); it was dated 1993.
All three patents claim prior back to a previous application from August 21, 1987. That is the date you have to beat, not the 1993 date.
Smalltalk VM is a perfect example of (functionally equivalent) prior art.
I have no opinion whether Smalltak VM would be readable on these patents or not. However, functional equivelancy is not sufficient for overturning a patent. As an admittedly ridiculous example of what I am talking about, the Astoria-Megler Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge are functional equivelants. They both perform the function of transporting cars over bodies of water, however you would be hard pressed to convince a jury that they are the same bridge.
It is possible to implement VM's using vastly different methods just as it is possible to implement bridges using different constrution methods
(1) Anyone have a link to the patent? (2) Software that needs to "ask for help" is way too broad. (3) The judge who granted Kodak the win obviously doesn't know a thing about the software industry. The case is bogus.
Given the first statement it is clear that you have not read the patent in question, and therefore you have no idea what they are actually patenting other than the incredibly broad summary given in the article (i.e. "software that asks for help, statement (2)).
Therefore, I really don't see how you can condemn the Judge of the this case and Sun's lawyers for losing since you obviously don't have 95% of the important facts which are needed to make a fair decision.
Perhaps this will help explain how Kodak came across these patents. From Boston Business Journal:
Three patents once registered to Lowell minicomputer-maker Wang Laboratories could cost Sun Microsystems Inc. $1 billion, following a jury verdict Friday afternoon in Rochester, N.Y.
Jurors ruled that Sun's Java web software infringes the patents, which were acquired by Eastman Kodak Co. in 1997, first reported Friday afternoon in the Rochester Business Journal. The same jury will assign damages, with Kodak asking for $1 billion.
This is slashdot. It's a hell of a lot easier to maintain simple lies to make a more important point than it is to try to explain the difference between a republic and a democracy to the other 90% of idiots who would have jumped on me claiming its a democracy if I had called it a republic in the first place. You should read some of the horribly incorrect crap that gets passed off for facts around here. Sometimes it's easier to just play the game rather than split hairs and get off on worthless tangents.
My point about writing to your representatives if you want to get something worthwhile done still holds though.
For all the Americans out there, we live in a democracy where "all decisions are made by representatives who act by [our] consent". However, it is incredibly difficult for an elected representative to follow his/her constituent's wishes if they are not informed of which bills they should vote for by their constituents.
A simple letter (here or here or here or here) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your electedrepresentatives to inform them of your concerns and certain billswhichtheyshouldsupport.
Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.
Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.
A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate.
What high innovation rate? Software is doing the same shit today that it was doing back in '95, we just have prettier interfaces now. I'd hardly call that innovation.
I keep hearing that the computer world is special because of the high turnover rate of products, but outside of the hardware world I really don't see it. Most people I know have been using the same basic software since at least 2000 but have upgraded their mobo/proc at least twice during that period of time.
The only "innovation" I have seen out of software is various bug fixes which shouldn't be there in the first place, but since the software writers are held to ridiculously low standards for quality control they can release the same piece of software 5 times and say: "Look at our high rate of innovation". Perhaps someone can point out all the great software innovations that have occured over the last 10 years. Since there is such a high rate of innovation it should be a trivial excersize for the typical slashdot reader.
"My concerns stem from the fact that we do not want to waste our time with dead-end APIs as we are vastly under-resourced, so we must choose carefully."
So? Does he expect Microsoft to change what it is doing because they don't have the budget to port everything they are releasing? If you don't feel like it is a priority then fine, but I fail to see how that should factor into a analysis/review of the software itself.
Then again it seems to be increasingly rare for people to make unbiased decisions these days, so I guess I shoudln't expect anything less.
There is no quota (with an "a": QUOTA) for allowed applications. From what I've heard the quotas deal with number of applications processed (either allowance or rejection, doesn't matter which). The quotas were institued as part of the compact prosecution initiative when the USPTO moved from granting patents for a term of 17 years from the issue date under the old system to 20 years from the filing date under the new system. The idea is to allow or reject the applications quickly so if they issue the applicants still have a majority of the patent grant term remaining.
Also the supervisors don't make the determination of patentability, the examiners do.
As I know people who have actually worked for the USPTO I am willing to trust them as a source of information much more than you.
While USPTO charges $770 for filing a "regular" patent application, USPTO stands to receive $6,220 as maintenance fees during the life of a patent. Since USPTO is now a fee-supported agency, even an idiot like myself will tend to think that USPTO will be more interested in issuing patents than doing even a pro forma examination.
Maybe USPTO's incompetence is simply a smoke screen to hide their true interest in generating more incomes by issuing more patents.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the examiners who make the decisions on patentability in the USPTO don't see any difference in their salaries based upon the amount of money that the USPTO brings in each year. It's like the scene from office space:
Peter: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now, if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? And here's another thing, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now!
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter: Eight, bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my real motivation - is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job, but y'know, Bob, it will only make someone work hard enough not to get fired.
Since the examiners don't have any motivation to bring in more money for the USPTO I don't see how that maintanance fees would factor into their decisions when deciding patentability.
Sure your "constitutional" rights are not violated if you don't mind spending hours, instead of a few minutes if you use IE, to download those patent images.
No, your constituional rights are not violated in either case because there is no constitutional right to download patents using mozilla on linux. Sorry, but I suggest you reread the constitution.
USPTO's IE-only policy is only the tip of the iceberg. Beginning August this year, if you want to take advantage of the electronic filing procedure, you have to use another Microsoft product--Microsoft Office, to convert your specification including the claims into an XML file.... Are our constitutional rights violated? IMNSHO, not as a clear cut as the IE-only policy.
Is the USPTO denying you the right to file in otherways than using Microsoft Office? No.
Can you not mess up filing the claims the first time and get them published the correct way without needing to do any amendments? Can you write your own program to create the correctly formatted XML file? Yes you can.
As long as alternate ways to file applications are availible there is nothing denying you your "constitutional rights".
I really don't see how your rights are being violated here. It's not like using IE is the *only* possible way you have of obtaining patents. Just use one of the other many options availible to get a copy of the patents.
If the USPTO disallowed obtaining the patents by any other method than using IE you might have a case. However, as it stands they are other ways to get the needed patents for you to responded to the action.
Do you plan to repost this in every story remotely related to patents and web browsers?
If it is so much of a problem for you, why not just use pat2pdf which is a "script [which] fetches the pages of a U.S. patent document from the USPTO patent database and converts them into a single PDF file." which "is reported to run on Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS/X." (according to the homepage).
If you wish you can complain to the USPTO about no having a linux/mozilla version of whatever software it is you are talking about. Chances are they will tell you about the many other ways availible to obtain the patents you are looking for.
However, the idea that the USPTO is somehow denying your constitutional rights by not having a version of that software for linux/mozilla is asinine.
The USPTO only considers prior patents to be prior art.
Untrue. Any published document with a provable date or product with a provable date of first sale or public use is considered prior art. Hell, if you look at the art cited in the 6,785,865 patent you will see a few web pages and books listed along with prior patents.
The hassle of extensions isn't worth paying $39 to get rid of to me. Plus I don't see anything natively in opera to block ads like the adblock filter in firefox. So I'd have to install an extension anyways, on top of paying $39 (plus whatever a third party program/extension for opera to block ads would cost). Basically the added features in opera aren't worth $39 to me.
meh.. firefox is free without any catches. Plus, it has a very nice adblocking extension that makes browsing much less painful.
Just browsing the features listed on the Opera page I don't see much that firefox doesn't offer natively or by installing an extension, so I see no real reason to switch and a few good resons not to.
It is not a patent! This is a published patent application which use the format YYYY#######. Thus this is the 156,192th patent application to be published in the year 2004. Granted patent numbers are (mostly) sequential and they are somewhere around 6,750,000 right now.
The register didn't bother to do any research before green lighting this story.
Oh that's a fact, huh? Do you know what a PCT patent is or why there is an entire section of fees devoted to it? Are you aware that the USPTO is entirely fee-funded and spends not a single cent of tax-collected funds? How on earth could the USPTO pay the salaries that they pay (among the highest in government work) for $6,220 per application? It's really astounding that you would continue this argument in light of reality.
Also, I think that when you came up with the ~$6000 number, perhaps you thought that extra claims are covered under the single fee stated on the schedule. In fact, they are paid for on a per claim basis. You're right that examiner's don't handle this, so I won't claim the amounts.
From my original post: "At the most, $6,220.00 will be paid over the lifetime of a patent in maintenance fees."
$6,220.00 = $910.00 (Maintenance fee due at 3.5 years) + $2,090.00 (Maintenance fee due at 7.5 years) + $3,220.00 (Maintenance fee due at 11.5 years).
I specificaly said that $6,220 would be paid in maintenance fees over the lifetime of a patent, not that $6,220 is the most that would be paid in total for a single patent. PCT applications don't get patent rights until they enter the national stage (i.e. a 371 application). Even then their national stage filing fees are comparable to the filing of patent applications which do not go through the PCT process prior to filing. Also, once a 371 of a PCT issues, I'm pretty sure it would pay the same maintenance fees as a normal application would, so I fail to see what PCT applications have to do with this discussion.
As far as the issue of the potential of the USPTO being completely fee funded solely from ~$6,000 per issued patent it is possible if they receive enough patents each year. It is not true, but it is entirely possible.
The fact remains that the USPTO executes the laws created by Congress and applies the court decisions as delivered by the appeals courts. The "bureacracy at the USPTO" is a statement that I consider grossly unsubstantiated
I have never argued anything about the "beuracracy at the USPTO" (seriously.. go back through this thread and find a single post by me that complains about beuracracy). If you have a problem with original parents (which is not me) view on things I suggest you take it up with him/her. I was merely posting to correct the utterly incorrect statement you previously made that "Applying for a patent costs between $1000 and $5000 typically, some of the maintenance fees can go over $100,000". I'll even admit to you that with excess claim fees added in a patent can cost over $1,000, but it does not have to if you keep the number of claims under 3 for independents and 20 total. How you manage to get maintenance fees over $100,000 is a complete mystery to me though. Perhaps you can clear that up.
The problem with the patent system in the US lies fully with the patent attorneys and the court system. Examiners love to reject patents because then they never end up in the news. Slashdot is populated by dimwits who can update Internet Explorer but can't understand the basic procedures of the USPTO - none of which is my problem.
For the record I completely agree with that statement. I have often tried to get someone on slashdot to respond to simple arguments (hindsight, no motivation for combination, non-analogous art, failure to show all claimed features) which often come up during the prosecution of a patent application. So far, not one of them has managed to come back with a reasonable convincing response that would have a chance in hell of being signed off on by a SPE (much less getting affirmed at the board).
Good job with the fee schedule. Go see how much it would cost you to file 374 claims (16 independent) (this is very similar to the last patent I saw make Slashdot's front page) as a PCT application (meaning that it seeks international protection), pick half a dozen or so of the m
Only if you have 3 or fewer independent and 20 or fewer dependent claims, or you do not file an extension of time (extremely rare), you do not file an IDS (I'm sure you know what that is), or any of the other numerous fees the USPTO charges.
Technically the basic filing fee remains the same no matter the number of claims you file. However, with greater than 3 independent claims or more than 20 claims (there is no distinction of dependent claims for this fee, reread your MPEP) additional fees are added. Also there is no fee for filing an IDS (information disclosure statement for the general publics information) as long as it is done before the first action is mailed by the office. Of course their are other fees which can be added if you want to make things difficult, but rarely will the filing fee approach the $5000 max stated above.
That's good advice for someone I know, and I think you know whom I'm talking about! Thanks.
Every number I stated was correct (with the exception of a small typo: $3200 should be $3220), which is alot more than the parent of my previous message can say.
I'm an examiner at the USPTO. Thanks for playing. Have a good weekend.
Congratulations. However examiners rarely deal with figuring out which fees the applicant is charged with (there is one exception where they do and that exception has nothing to do with the filing and maintenance fees), so I'm not sure how much weight that adds to any of your statements.
Slashdot Mirror
If smalltalk supported composite objects, some variant of it optimized object operations, which implies to me an implementation in a VM.
It sounds to me like your venturing more in to 35 USC 103 (obviousness rejections) territory, which is much tricker than it needs to be. To prove obviousness you need to keep in mind a few points:Points (B) and (C) are especially tricky. Basically, you would need to provide dated references which disclose the derisirability to modify the existing prior art to meed the claimed invention. If the reference does not give a good reason why you should change the prior art, then you are pretty much stuck.
For example, about you said "If smalltalk supported composite objects". If composite objects are required by the claim (I haven't read any of the patents in question, so I can't comment on them directly, I am just speaking in a general sense) and smalltalk does not disclose them you would have to provide a reference which discloses the use of composite objects and gives a reason as to why it is desirable to use composite objects. Just because composite objects are known, does not make their use in a specific instance obvious.
For example, saying that smalltalk is known and composite objects are known, therefore it is obvious to use composite objects in smalltalk to produce java is no different (in a legal sense) than saying that steel is known and cement is known, therefore it is obevious to use steel and cement to produce the golden gate bridge. Not that you actually said this, but it follows the typical logic of the average slashdotter.
I quickly perused one of the patents (and got completely lost in the legalspeak; how the hell is anyone supposed to know if they're infringing a patent when you can't even understand WTF the patent means?!); it was dated 1993.
All three patents claim prior back to a previous application from August 21, 1987. That is the date you have to beat, not the 1993 date.
Smalltalk VM is a perfect example of (functionally equivalent) prior art.
I have no opinion whether Smalltak VM would be readable on these patents or not. However, functional equivelancy is not sufficient for overturning a patent. As an admittedly ridiculous example of what I am talking about, the Astoria-Megler Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge are functional equivelants. They both perform the function of transporting cars over bodies of water, however you would be hard pressed to convince a jury that they are the same bridge.
It is possible to implement VM's using vastly different methods just as it is possible to implement bridges using different constrution methods
(1) Anyone have a link to the patent?
(2) Software that needs to "ask for help" is way too broad.
(3) The judge who granted Kodak the win obviously doesn't know a thing about the software industry. The case is bogus.
Given the first statement it is clear that you have not read the patent in question, and therefore you have no idea what they are actually patenting other than the incredibly broad summary given in the article (i.e. "software that asks for help, statement (2)).
Therefore, I really don't see how you can condemn the Judge of the this case and Sun's lawyers for losing since you obviously don't have 95% of the important facts which are needed to make a fair decision.
This is slashdot. It's a hell of a lot easier to maintain simple lies to make a more important point than it is to try to explain the difference between a republic and a democracy to the other 90% of idiots who would have jumped on me claiming its a democracy if I had called it a republic in the first place. You should read some of the horribly incorrect crap that gets passed off for facts around here. Sometimes it's easier to just play the game rather than split hairs and get off on worthless tangents.
My point about writing to your representatives if you want to get something worthwhile done still holds though.
For all the Americans out there, we live in a democracy where "all decisions are made by representatives who act by [our] consent". However, it is incredibly difficult for an elected representative to follow his/her constituent's wishes if they are not informed of which bills they should vote for by their constituents.
A simple letter (here or here or here or here) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your elected representatives to inform them of your concerns and certain bills which they should support.
Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.
Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.
A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate.
What high innovation rate? Software is doing the same shit today that it was doing back in '95, we just have prettier interfaces now. I'd hardly call that innovation.
I keep hearing that the computer world is special because of the high turnover rate of products, but outside of the hardware world I really don't see it. Most people I know have been using the same basic software since at least 2000 but have upgraded their mobo/proc at least twice during that period of time.
The only "innovation" I have seen out of software is various bug fixes which shouldn't be there in the first place, but since the software writers are held to ridiculously low standards for quality control they can release the same piece of software 5 times and say: "Look at our high rate of innovation". Perhaps someone can point out all the great software innovations that have occured over the last 10 years. Since there is such a high rate of innovation it should be a trivial excersize for the typical slashdot reader.
Why are these two in court exactly? It would be nice to provide some basic background for those of us out there who don't religiously follow HardOCP.
Makes for a great headline, but it is not true at all, not even close.
No, it is true. However, it is also highly misleading, but that doens't make it false.
"My concerns stem from the fact that we do not want to waste our time with dead-end APIs as we are vastly under-resourced, so we must choose carefully."
So? Does he expect Microsoft to change what it is doing because they don't have the budget to port everything they are releasing? If you don't feel like it is a priority then fine, but I fail to see how that should factor into a analysis/review of the software itself.
Then again it seems to be increasingly rare for people to make unbiased decisions these days, so I guess I shoudln't expect anything less.
There is no quota (with an "a": QUOTA) for allowed applications. From what I've heard the quotas deal with number of applications processed (either allowance or rejection, doesn't matter which). The quotas were institued as part of the compact prosecution initiative when the USPTO moved from granting patents for a term of 17 years from the issue date under the old system to 20 years from the filing date under the new system. The idea is to allow or reject the applications quickly so if they issue the applicants still have a majority of the patent grant term remaining.
Also the supervisors don't make the determination of patentability, the examiners do.
As I know people who have actually worked for the USPTO I am willing to trust them as a source of information much more than you.
Maybe USPTO's incompetence is simply a smoke screen to hide their true interest in generating more incomes by issuing more patents.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the examiners who make the decisions on patentability in the USPTO don't see any difference in their salaries based upon the amount of money that the USPTO brings in each year. It's like the scene from office space:
Since the examiners don't have any motivation to bring in more money for the USPTO I don't see how that maintanance fees would factor into their decisions when deciding patentability.
Sure your "constitutional" rights are not violated if you don't mind spending hours, instead of a few minutes if you use IE, to download those patent images.
...
No, your constituional rights are not violated in either case because there is no constitutional right to download patents using mozilla on linux. Sorry, but I suggest you reread the constitution.
USPTO's IE-only policy is only the tip of the iceberg. Beginning August this year, if you want to take advantage of the electronic filing procedure, you have to use another Microsoft product--Microsoft Office, to convert your specification including the claims into an XML file.
Are our constitutional rights violated? IMNSHO, not as a clear cut as the IE-only policy.
Is the USPTO denying you the right to file in otherways than using Microsoft Office? No.
Can you not mess up filing the claims the first time and get them published the correct way without needing to do any amendments? Can you write your own program to create the correctly formatted XML file? Yes you can.
As long as alternate ways to file applications are availible there is nothing denying you your "constitutional rights".
I really don't see how your rights are being violated here. It's not like using IE is the *only* possible way you have of obtaining patents. Just use one of the other many options availible to get a copy of the patents.
If the USPTO disallowed obtaining the patents by any other method than using IE you might have a case. However, as it stands they are other ways to get the needed patents for you to responded to the action.
Do you plan to repost this in every story remotely related to patents and web browsers?
If it is so much of a problem for you, why not just use pat2pdf which is a "script [which] fetches the pages of a U.S. patent document from the USPTO patent database and converts them into a single PDF file." which "is reported to run on Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS/X." (according to the homepage).
If you wish you can complain to the USPTO about no having a linux/mozilla version of whatever software it is you are talking about. Chances are they will tell you about the many other ways availible to obtain the patents you are looking for.
However, the idea that the USPTO is somehow denying your constitutional rights by not having a version of that software for linux/mozilla is asinine.
The USPTO only considers prior patents to be prior art.
Untrue. Any published document with a provable date or product with a provable date of first sale or public use is considered prior art. Hell, if you look at the art cited in the 6,785,865 patent you will see a few web pages and books listed along with prior patents.
The hassle of extensions isn't worth paying $39 to get rid of to me. Plus I don't see anything natively in opera to block ads like the adblock filter in firefox. So I'd have to install an extension anyways, on top of paying $39 (plus whatever a third party program/extension for opera to block ads would cost). Basically the added features in opera aren't worth $39 to me.
meh.. firefox is free without any catches. Plus, it has a very nice adblocking extension that makes browsing much less painful.
Just browsing the features listed on the Opera page I don't see much that firefox doesn't offer natively or by installing an extension, so I see no real reason to switch and a few good resons not to.
I thought it was a general rule that the less valid and argument is the more likely it is idiots will be convinced by it.
Also, I think theres a corollary to that rule that states something like calling someone gay is the ultimate rebuttal to any argument.
In an article on TechnologyReview.com, Simson Garfinkel spells out the real-world consequences of this mathematical conundrum.
Was anyone else wondering why Simon and Garfunkel were writing about P=NP?
Where is the source for this information? Please provide a link otherwise it amounts to nothing but hearsay and conjecture.
It is not a patent! This is a published patent application which use the format YYYY#######. Thus this is the 156,192th patent application to be published in the year 2004. Granted patent numbers are (mostly) sequential and they are somewhere around 6,750,000 right now.
The register didn't bother to do any research before green lighting this story.
Oh that's a fact, huh? Do you know what a PCT patent is or why there is an entire section of fees devoted to it? Are you aware that the USPTO is entirely fee-funded and spends not a single cent of tax-collected funds? How on earth could the USPTO pay the salaries that they pay (among the highest in government work) for $6,220 per application? It's really astounding that you would continue this argument in light of reality.
Also, I think that when you came up with the ~$6000 number, perhaps you thought that extra claims are covered under the single fee stated on the schedule. In fact, they are paid for on a per claim basis. You're right that examiner's don't handle this, so I won't claim the amounts.
From my original post: "At the most, $6,220.00 will be paid over the lifetime of a patent in maintenance fees."
$6,220.00 = $910.00 (Maintenance fee due at 3.5 years) + $2,090.00 (Maintenance fee due at 7.5 years) + $3,220.00 (Maintenance fee due at 11.5 years).
I specificaly said that $6,220 would be paid in maintenance fees over the lifetime of a patent, not that $6,220 is the most that would be paid in total for a single patent. PCT applications don't get patent rights until they enter the national stage (i.e. a 371 application). Even then their national stage filing fees are comparable to the filing of patent applications which do not go through the PCT process prior to filing. Also, once a 371 of a PCT issues, I'm pretty sure it would pay the same maintenance fees as a normal application would, so I fail to see what PCT applications have to do with this discussion.
As far as the issue of the potential of the USPTO being completely fee funded solely from ~$6,000 per issued patent it is possible if they receive enough patents each year. It is not true, but it is entirely possible.
The fact remains that the USPTO executes the laws created by Congress and applies the court decisions as delivered by the appeals courts. The "bureacracy at the USPTO" is a statement that I consider grossly unsubstantiated
I have never argued anything about the "beuracracy at the USPTO" (seriously.. go back through this thread and find a single post by me that complains about beuracracy). If you have a problem with original parents (which is not me) view on things I suggest you take it up with him/her. I was merely posting to correct the utterly incorrect statement you previously made that "Applying for a patent costs between $1000 and $5000 typically, some of the maintenance fees can go over $100,000". I'll even admit to you that with excess claim fees added in a patent can cost over $1,000, but it does not have to if you keep the number of claims under 3 for independents and 20 total. How you manage to get maintenance fees over $100,000 is a complete mystery to me though. Perhaps you can clear that up.
The problem with the patent system in the US lies fully with the patent attorneys and the court system. Examiners love to reject patents because then they never end up in the news. Slashdot is populated by dimwits who can update Internet Explorer but can't understand the basic procedures of the USPTO - none of which is my problem.
For the record I completely agree with that statement. I have often tried to get someone on slashdot to respond to simple arguments (hindsight, no motivation for combination, non-analogous art, failure to show all claimed features) which often come up during the prosecution of a patent application. So far, not one of them has managed to come back with a reasonable convincing response that would have a chance in hell of being signed off on by a SPE (much less getting affirmed at the board).
Good job with the fee schedule. Go see how much it would cost you to file 374 claims (16 independent) (this is very similar to the last patent I saw make Slashdot's front page) as a PCT application (meaning that it seeks international protection), pick half a dozen or so of the m
Only if you have 3 or fewer independent and 20 or fewer dependent claims, or you do not file an extension of time (extremely rare), you do not file an IDS (I'm sure you know what that is), or any of the other numerous fees the USPTO charges.
Technically the basic filing fee remains the same no matter the number of claims you file. However, with greater than 3 independent claims or more than 20 claims (there is no distinction of dependent claims for this fee, reread your MPEP) additional fees are added. Also there is no fee for filing an IDS (information disclosure statement for the general publics information) as long as it is done before the first action is mailed by the office. Of course their are other fees which can be added if you want to make things difficult, but rarely will the filing fee approach the $5000 max stated above.
That's good advice for someone I know, and I think you know whom I'm talking about! Thanks.
Every number I stated was correct (with the exception of a small typo: $3200 should be $3220), which is alot more than the parent of my previous message can say.
I'm an examiner at the USPTO. Thanks for playing. Have a good weekend.
Congratulations. However examiners rarely deal with figuring out which fees the applicant is charged with (there is one exception where they do and that exception has nothing to do with the filing and maintenance fees), so I'm not sure how much weight that adds to any of your statements.