Stretching is the name of the game. I like the idea of TiVo, but to qualify as prior art, we need a publication. Simply find a product user manual (non-patent literature). Also, TiVo has many patents that also may disclose the ideas we're looking for.
The TiVo certainly downloads data when it records, where download is the transferring of data (audio and video) from one computer to another. I'd have to look at an early TiVO manual to see how well it meets the channel depth limitation. Further, the pre-defined channel is a tad tricky, but the TiVO box somehow knows what a season of content looks like. Is it pre-defined? Maybe. Maybe even the consistent name of the show from the guide information gives us pre-defined.
So independent claim 1 could probably be knocked out, but dependent claim 3 and its children would be novel limitations over our imagined TiVo art.
So that no one is confused, the key limitations probably are in bold. I have not searched this patent, nor have I looked at the prosecution history. I further am not a registered patent attorney or agent. User takes all risk. Void where prohibited. Batteries not included?
If there is prior art that is slightly different, but the changes are something that are pretty simple, wouldn't that meet the obviousness criteria?
It depends. If the difference is insignificant (e.g., inventor claims a blue button and the prior art indicates a red button, where the color of the button is arbitrary to the invention at hand), then no secondary art needs to be found to teach the insignificant feature. I'm guessing, however, that pretty simple refers to the ease of implementation. Remember that hindsight may not be relied upon. It is easy to add file sizes and track length to an RSS feed, but that has nothing to do with obviousness. To present a case for obviousness (if the bold limitations in my GP post are the ones missing), an ordinary person skilled in the art at the time the invention was made would have needed to combine the channel depth (file size and track length) concept with the podcasting idea. If some reference A about podcasting teaches all the limitations of the claim except for the channel depth, and reference B teaches channel depth in a similar application, and motivation for adding the channel depth can be found, then, and only then, is it an obvious limitation.
I'm kinda feeling lazy right now, but with a fair amount of patent experience under my belt, I'd say the key limitations of '213 Carhart et al. are in bold below:
A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media; receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user; automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.
Finding the old podcast applications and checking for that particular feature takes a bit of work. If anyone happens to have an old version of AmphetaDesk or Radio UserLand, perhaps they include a feature that would read on indicating channel depth. Remember, the prior art needs either to disclose each and every limitation of the claimed invention, or be combined with additional prior art that fills in the missing pieces, along with a motivating rational for combining the art.
The root hubs aren't really discrete hubs like you might plug into a port. They don't supply power, just data. The power, VBUS, is supplied through the motherboard (from your main 5.0 V rail) and has no bearing on the hub, except an over-current limiter signal going back to the root hub. An external, self-powered hub would be limited to the 500 mA as you say, sharing its current among the available ports (and itself).
Your phone may also actually draw more than 500 mA when it is plugged into the charger.
I'm really not sure by what you mean when you say "the 500mA is shared by the hub." There is no host-side current limiting, except to prevent short circuits (e.g., Polyfuse). The device is responsible for limiting its own current draw (such as by not turning on its battery charging circuitry). In this case, your phone is behaving itself and not charging until the software driver says it can. You can look at your phone in Windows Device manager and determine how many units (1 unit = 100 mA) the phone has negotiated to draw.
All the built-in USB ports in modern machines (even laptops) can source the full 500 mA. You'll probably find the limitation in the driver.
You certainly can pull 500 mA from a port without the device asking politely, but it won't be compliant with the spec. From the USB 2.0 spec, 7.2.1, "Devices must also ensure that the maximum operating current drawn by a device is one unit load (100 mA), until configured."
The 5.0 V rail, VBUS, does not monitor the sourced current, making sure that no devices are drawing more than what they've politely asked for. The current limiting is done to protect against a direct short, often limiting a single port to 1 A (or more for ganged ports higher)
While I am not a lawyer, the difference between the two is quite clear. One is an indefinite article, the other is a definite article. Since claims need to be very clear in their meaning (even while the terms are vague, we need to know who does what to whom), we need to know which object we're talking about, the one that was previously mentioned or a new one. Getting back to the articles and my original comment, the change of "a" to "the" was not what Amazon was changing to overcome the art rejection, it merely was to agree with the new limitations. Which shopping cart model? The one that did the displaying of information.
Hmm, never saw the "justiz" reading of my name. I had always thought of JustZisGuy, as in I'm "just zis guy, ya know?", from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm certainly not a lawyer nor do I have any formal legal training (I am a computer engineer, however).
Anyway, we're getting so carried away here that we're forgetting that this story is no about the patent per se, or patents in general, but the sleight-of-hand used to reinstate the 1-Click patent
Where is the slight of hand here? Amazon's patent lawyers are trying to add additional limitations to overcome the art rejection set forth by the patent examiner. That's how patents work (not simply software patents). The inventor comes up with a new widget, broadly defines the widget in a series of claims, and through a back and forth with the Patent Office, settles upon how broad the claims can be and still be novel and non-obvious over the prior art.
Where is the abuse of the system here? Amazon is playing by all the rules set forth by Congress and the Patent Office. If prior art is found that reads on their claim, they amend the claim by adding more limitations (making it more specific) so that the claim overcomes the art rejection. The new limitations generally come from the dependent claims and must have adequate written description in the original patent application.
The/. posting is very misleading. First, the claim was amended with a further limitation "purchasable through a shopping cart model," to an already lengthy claim. The change of "a" to a "the" cleans up the antecedent basis problem (i.e., which shopping cart model is the last line referring to, the same one of line 3, or a different one). Second, this claim is still not in condition for allowance! The patent examiner looked at the new limitation and agreed that it probably overcomes the art currently rejecting the claim. He still gets to closely re-read the art of reference and conduct additional search before he can determine whether the claim is allowable.
And finally, I want everyone to look at the claim, not the title of the patent, and then, without impermissible hindsight, get to work finding prior art to read on the claim. Just saying that a single click of the mouse is obvious makes you look dumb. That's your homework for this week, now get to work!
Security has never been and never will be absolute. There is an inverse relationship between security and convenience. The Java client can be changed (are you checking the code every time your browser downloads it?); your web browser can be compromised; your operating system can have a (software) key logger; your computer can be tampered with. We're not going to even get into physical security avenues of attack. At some point you have to cut your losses and begin to trust someone/something.
Hang on while I don my tin-foil hat. Or is that the way *they* amplify the brain-scanning waves...
The dissident in the totalitarian country is always used to justify anonymous systems, but that is not what we're talking about here. Hushmail is not giving up records on users spreading The Word(tm) from Burma/Myanmar. They're complying with the British Columbia Supreme Court, in Canada (not a totalitarian state), which doesn't routinely cooperate with these scummy regimes.
This is not an unreasonable search & seizure; the law enforcement had to present proper evidence to a court (series of courts, really) and only then did Hushmail cooperate. Kudos to the CTO for being so upfront and honest about the situation.
This is all old news that was spelled out in a much more detailed article on Wired last week. To subvert those that don't RTFA, I'll answer your questions here on/.:
Hushmail was served with a court order issued by the British Columbia Supreme Court (the Feds in Bakersfield, CA had to forward their request to the Canadian government)
Hushmail glosses over the vulnerability to private key capture in their non-Java based web client, but it is mentioned. The Java client never transmits the private key (you still must trust the client, source code is available; compare the hashes)
No, Hushmail's TOS do not prevent them with complying with a legal court order. Their users also must not break the law, per the TOS.
Hushmail followed Canadian law perfectly.
So what can we learn from this? First, don't do illegal things (and use Hushmail or anything else). Second, while their non-Java client is convenient for avoiding the bulk of your traffic getting sucked up by programs like Carnivore, use the Java client and not even Hushmail can hand anything over (they never received the private key, even for an instant).
Wow, someone who seems to understand the meets and bounds of the claim and proposes actual potential prior art. Now we just need to obtain some dated documentation. Great job!
It's hard to blame the examiner for not knowing about an obscure audio program that wouldn't turn up under more generalized searches. This is why the Peer to Patent project has some potential at fixing the problems with software patents.
102. Conditions for patentability; novelty
(a) Novelty; Prior Art.—A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained if—
(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use or on sale—
(A) more than one year before the effective filing date of the claimed invention; or
(B) one year or less before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, other than through disclosures made by the inventor or a joint inventor or by others who obtained the subject matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor;
With the exception of the inventor publishing something and then filing for his patent in less than one year from publishing (e.g., publishes a paper with the IEEE), the public domain material would qualify as prior art under (a) (1).
That is the way claims are written. A good patent attorney will write out a broad range, causing the examiner to reject some, but hopefully not all of his claims. The species reads on (is prior art and therefore rejects) the genius.
My pocket knife is a piece of metal with a sharp edge where it can be inserted into other objects. While it doesn't read on your claim 4 (we won't get into the problem with claiming uses), it did read on claims 1-3. Therefore, you'd have to combine all 4 claims together to get around my prior art of a pocket knife. Any more specific claims (say dependent claims 4-8, written in a similar fashion) only matter so much as they will still give the inventor of the nail some rights to his invention (5. The manufacture of claim 4 wherein the piece of metal has a helical grove running along its length) after someone produces a thumbtack during an infringement case.
And patents last 20 years from filing if they are fully renewed.
One minor correction with the parent's post, the open source publisher (or anyone else for that matter) cannot look at unpublished (still kicking around at the USPTO) patent applications. There's usually an 18 month delay between filing and the application (not the patent) to be published. There's no good way I can think of around this situation. The inventor needs time to file his/her applications in other countries, and therefore the patent office can't be immediately publishing those applications.
If you can manage to steal someone's idea, sign the oath saying you invented whatever it is, and obtain the patent, it will probably still fall apart in court when you go to enforce it. 35 U.S.C. 102(f) bars you from obtaining a patent for something you didn't invent.
Moving to a first to file system would do away with the issue of someone publishing an idea into the public domain and less than a year afterwards, another person filing a patent application for the same idea (along with an affidavit establishing prior inventorship. Currently, you may not obtain a patent if
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.
Part (a) may be overcome as previously mentioned, but (b) is a statutory bar.
Now if you want to place something into the public domain (good for you!), make sure it is readily searchable and has a solid date of publishing attached (i.e., the Internet Archive can archive it).
Whoa there, mister! This is/., you must be new here.
We don't take kindly to people distinguishing between patents and published applications. Why, you couldn't even make fun of the USPTO for them (not that there isn't plenty of ammunition elsewhere).
While you can file a provisional patent application, in order to claim that priority date (the date that prior art must beat), the provisional must still disclose the entirety of the claimed invention. It's really just a cost saving tool. From the USPTO website,
the written description and any drawing(s) of the provisional application must adequately support the subject matter claimed in the later-filed non-provisional application in order for the later-filed non-provisional application to benefit from the provisional application filing date. Therefore, care should be taken to ensure that the disclosure filed as the provisional application adequately provides a written description of the full scope of the subject matter regarded as the invention and desired to be claimed in the later filed non-provisional application. There is no requirement that the written description and any drawings filed in a provisional application and a later-filed non-provisional application be identical, however, the later-filed non-provisional application is only entitled to the benefit of the common subject matter disclosed in the corresponding non-provisional application filed not later than 12 months after the provisional application filing date. Additionally the specification shall disclose the manner and process of making and using the invention, in such full, clear, concise and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which the invention pertains to make and use the invention and set forth the best mode contemplated for carrying out the invention. See 35 U.S.C. 112, 1st paragraph.
Sure it is. Their patent, while invalid, is still published and ready to be used against new patent applications. The invalidation does not wipe away the knowledge.
The Federal Courts and Congress are responsible for defining what is exactly obvious. The current standard was decided by the Supreme Court in Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966):
(A) Determining the scope and contents of the prior art;
(B) Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims in issue;
(C) Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art; and
(D) Evaluating evidence of secondary considerations.
And finally,
To establish a prima facie case of obviousness, three basic criteria must be met. First, there must be some suggestion or motivation, either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art, to modify the reference or to combine reference teachings. Second, there must be a reasonable expectation of success. Finally, the prior art reference (or references when combined) must teach or suggest all the claim limitations.
This may change depending on a current case up for review by the Supreme Court. More detail about the motivation requirement is available here.
The inventor/applicant must file the patent application no later than exactly 1 year from the first disclosure of the invention (i.e. printed publication, patent, public use, or offered for sale). It's a statutory bar, meaning that you can't get around it.
A person should be entitled to a patent unless--
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States
I thought the process of working out the bugs is what beta-labeled software is for. You and I should expect all the major issues to be worked out by the time it hits gold.
Slashdot Mirror
Stretching is the name of the game. I like the idea of TiVo, but to qualify as prior art, we need a publication. Simply find a product user manual (non-patent literature). Also, TiVo has many patents that also may disclose the ideas we're looking for.
The TiVo certainly downloads data when it records, where download is the transferring of data (audio and video) from one computer to another. I'd have to look at an early TiVO manual to see how well it meets the channel depth limitation. Further, the pre-defined channel is a tad tricky, but the TiVO box somehow knows what a season of content looks like. Is it pre-defined? Maybe. Maybe even the consistent name of the show from the guide information gives us pre-defined.
So independent claim 1 could probably be knocked out, but dependent claim 3 and its children would be novel limitations over our imagined TiVo art.
So that no one is confused, the key limitations probably are in bold. I have not searched this patent, nor have I looked at the prosecution history. I further am not a registered patent attorney or agent. User takes all risk. Void where prohibited. Batteries not included?
If there is prior art that is slightly different, but the changes are something that are pretty simple, wouldn't that meet the obviousness criteria?
It depends. If the difference is insignificant (e.g., inventor claims a blue button and the prior art indicates a red button, where the color of the button is arbitrary to the invention at hand), then no secondary art needs to be found to teach the insignificant feature. I'm guessing, however, that pretty simple refers to the ease of implementation. Remember that hindsight may not be relied upon. It is easy to add file sizes and track length to an RSS feed, but that has nothing to do with obviousness. To present a case for obviousness (if the bold limitations in my GP post are the ones missing), an ordinary person skilled in the art at the time the invention was made would have needed to combine the channel depth (file size and track length) concept with the podcasting idea. If some reference A about podcasting teaches all the limitations of the claim except for the channel depth, and reference B teaches channel depth in a similar application, and motivation for adding the channel depth can be found, then, and only then, is it an obvious limitation.
I'm kinda feeling lazy right now, but with a fair amount of patent experience under my belt, I'd say the key limitations of '213 Carhart et al. are in bold below:
Finding the old podcast applications and checking for that particular feature takes a bit of work. If anyone happens to have an old version of AmphetaDesk or Radio UserLand, perhaps they include a feature that would read on indicating channel depth. Remember, the prior art needs either to disclose each and every limitation of the claimed invention, or be combined with additional prior art that fills in the missing pieces, along with a motivating rational for combining the art.
The root hubs aren't really discrete hubs like you might plug into a port. They don't supply power, just data. The power, VBUS, is supplied through the motherboard (from your main 5.0 V rail) and has no bearing on the hub, except an over-current limiter signal going back to the root hub. An external, self-powered hub would be limited to the 500 mA as you say, sharing its current among the available ports (and itself).
Your phone may also actually draw more than 500 mA when it is plugged into the charger.
I'm really not sure by what you mean when you say "the 500mA is shared by the hub." There is no host-side current limiting, except to prevent short circuits (e.g., Polyfuse). The device is responsible for limiting its own current draw (such as by not turning on its battery charging circuitry). In this case, your phone is behaving itself and not charging until the software driver says it can. You can look at your phone in Windows Device manager and determine how many units (1 unit = 100 mA) the phone has negotiated to draw.
All the built-in USB ports in modern machines (even laptops) can source the full 500 mA. You'll probably find the limitation in the driver.
You certainly can pull 500 mA from a port without the device asking politely, but it won't be compliant with the spec. From the USB 2.0 spec, 7.2.1, "Devices must also ensure that the maximum operating current drawn by a device is one unit load (100 mA), until configured."
The 5.0 V rail, VBUS, does not monitor the sourced current, making sure that no devices are drawing more than what they've politely asked for. The current limiting is done to protect against a direct short, often limiting a single port to 1 A (or more for ganged ports higher)
While I am not a lawyer, the difference between the two is quite clear. One is an indefinite article, the other is a definite article. Since claims need to be very clear in their meaning (even while the terms are vague, we need to know who does what to whom), we need to know which object we're talking about, the one that was previously mentioned or a new one. Getting back to the articles and my original comment, the change of "a" to "the" was not what Amazon was changing to overcome the art rejection, it merely was to agree with the new limitations. Which shopping cart model? The one that did the displaying of information.
Hmm, never saw the "justiz" reading of my name. I had always thought of JustZisGuy, as in I'm "just zis guy, ya know?", from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm certainly not a lawyer nor do I have any formal legal training (I am a computer engineer, however).
Where is the abuse of the system here? Amazon is playing by all the rules set forth by Congress and the Patent Office. If prior art is found that reads on their claim, they amend the claim by adding more limitations (making it more specific) so that the claim overcomes the art rejection. The new limitations generally come from the dependent claims and must have adequate written description in the original patent application.
The /. posting is very misleading. First, the claim was amended with a further limitation "purchasable through a shopping cart model," to an already lengthy claim. The change of "a" to a "the" cleans up the antecedent basis problem (i.e., which shopping cart model is the last line referring to, the same one of line 3, or a different one). Second, this claim is still not in condition for allowance! The patent examiner looked at the new limitation and agreed that it probably overcomes the art currently rejecting the claim. He still gets to closely re-read the art of reference and conduct additional search before he can determine whether the claim is allowable.
And finally, I want everyone to look at the claim, not the title of the patent, and then, without impermissible hindsight, get to work finding prior art to read on the claim. Just saying that a single click of the mouse is obvious makes you look dumb. That's your homework for this week, now get to work!
Security has never been and never will be absolute. There is an inverse relationship between security and convenience. The Java client can be changed (are you checking the code every time your browser downloads it?); your web browser can be compromised; your operating system can have a (software) key logger; your computer can be tampered with. We're not going to even get into physical security avenues of attack. At some point you have to cut your losses and begin to trust someone/something.
Hang on while I don my tin-foil hat. Or is that the way *they* amplify the brain-scanning waves...
The dissident in the totalitarian country is always used to justify anonymous systems, but that is not what we're talking about here. Hushmail is not giving up records on users spreading The Word(tm) from Burma/Myanmar. They're complying with the British Columbia Supreme Court, in Canada (not a totalitarian state), which doesn't routinely cooperate with these scummy regimes. This is not an unreasonable search & seizure; the law enforcement had to present proper evidence to a court (series of courts, really) and only then did Hushmail cooperate. Kudos to the CTO for being so upfront and honest about the situation.
- Hushmail was served with a court order issued by the British Columbia Supreme Court (the Feds in Bakersfield, CA had to forward their request to the Canadian government)
- Hushmail glosses over the vulnerability to private key capture in their non-Java based web client, but it is mentioned. The Java client never transmits the private key (you still must trust the client, source code is available; compare the hashes)
- No, Hushmail's TOS do not prevent them with complying with a legal court order. Their users also must not break the law, per the TOS.
- Hushmail followed Canadian law perfectly.
So what can we learn from this? First, don't do illegal things (and use Hushmail or anything else). Second, while their non-Java client is convenient for avoiding the bulk of your traffic getting sucked up by programs like Carnivore, use the Java client and not even Hushmail can hand anything over (they never received the private key, even for an instant).Wow, someone who seems to understand the meets and bounds of the claim and proposes actual potential prior art. Now we just need to obtain some dated documentation. Great job!
It's hard to blame the examiner for not knowing about an obscure audio program that wouldn't turn up under more generalized searches. This is why the Peer to Patent project has some potential at fixing the problems with software patents.
With the exception of the inventor publishing something and then filing for his patent in less than one year from publishing (e.g., publishes a paper with the IEEE), the public domain material would qualify as prior art under (a) (1).
That is the way claims are written. A good patent attorney will write out a broad range, causing the examiner to reject some, but hopefully not all of his claims. The species reads on (is prior art and therefore rejects) the genius.
My pocket knife is a piece of metal with a sharp edge where it can be inserted into other objects. While it doesn't read on your claim 4 (we won't get into the problem with claiming uses), it did read on claims 1-3. Therefore, you'd have to combine all 4 claims together to get around my prior art of a pocket knife. Any more specific claims (say dependent claims 4-8, written in a similar fashion) only matter so much as they will still give the inventor of the nail some rights to his invention (5. The manufacture of claim 4 wherein the piece of metal has a helical grove running along its length) after someone produces a thumbtack during an infringement case.
And patents last 20 years from filing if they are fully renewed.
What changes in moving to a first to file is the removal of interferences (figuring out who invented what, when) and swearing back of a reference. See MPEP 715 and 2300.01 for details.
One minor correction with the parent's post, the open source publisher (or anyone else for that matter) cannot look at unpublished (still kicking around at the USPTO) patent applications. There's usually an 18 month delay between filing and the application (not the patent) to be published. There's no good way I can think of around this situation. The inventor needs time to file his/her applications in other countries, and therefore the patent office can't be immediately publishing those applications.
If you can manage to steal someone's idea, sign the oath saying you invented whatever it is, and obtain the patent, it will probably still fall apart in court when you go to enforce it. 35 U.S.C. 102(f) bars you from obtaining a patent for something you didn't invent.
Moving to a first to file system would do away with the issue of someone publishing an idea into the public domain and less than a year afterwards, another person filing a patent application for the same idea (along with an affidavit establishing prior inventorship. Currently, you may not obtain a patent if
Part (a) may be overcome as previously mentioned, but (b) is a statutory bar.Now if you want to place something into the public domain (good for you!), make sure it is readily searchable and has a solid date of publishing attached (i.e., the Internet Archive can archive it).
Whoa there, mister! This is /., you must be new here.
We don't take kindly to people distinguishing between patents and published applications. Why, you couldn't even make fun of the USPTO for them (not that there isn't plenty of ammunition elsewhere).
Sure it is. Their patent, while invalid, is still published and ready to be used against new patent applications. The invalidation does not wipe away the knowledge.
The inventor/applicant must file the patent application no later than exactly 1 year from the first disclosure of the invention (i.e. printed publication, patent, public use, or offered for sale). It's a statutory bar, meaning that you can't get around it.
According to 35 U.S.C. 102 (b):
I thought the process of working out the bugs is what beta-labeled software is for. You and I should expect all the major issues to be worked out by the time it hits gold.