To bad the FTC can't get involved. They sued Toysmart.com to prevent Toysmart from disclosing consumer information against their privacy statement. This was settled by a consent decree. From the consent decree:
The Complaint alleges that Toysmart engaged in deceptive acts or practices in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act ("FTC Act"),
15 U.S.C. 45(a), by disclosing, selling or offering for sale personal customer information, contrary to the terms of its privacy policy that personal information would never be disclosed to third parties. [link added]
Note that under 15 USC 45(a), common carriers and air carriers are exempt. Even if they weren't, I'm sure the reality is that the FTC wouldn't pursue it.
... but with the advent of the internet, work can easily be disseminated over a wide geographical area.
I'm in law school. Plagarism there is quite serious, although I seem to recall a prior/. discussion that Senator Biden apparently plagarized a report and seems none the worse for it.
Those professors of mine that have discussed it have this to say (about plagerism from court decisions, at least): It used to be hard to detect plagarism, but now it is easy. They say they can tell when a student has plagerized, as the writing is just too polished, so they go online and type in some text and often can find the match.
I just don't know why anyone would even attempt to copy in this way as you can always cite to something, and thus make it's use proper. Alternatively, just talk to the professor or get the zero - the alternative is risk of expulsion. I believe schools can even recind degrees they've awarded if evidence of wrongdoing comes up.
Speaking of the fast food industry in America, I had a professor last semester who loves the spotlight and is trying to do to the fast food industry what has been finally successful against big tobacco. He apparently was involved against big tobacco since the early days several decades ago. As such, I guess the campaign against "big fat" may take a while, but it is certainly underway.
His website is gaudy, and therefor kindof funny, but does summarize the legal fight against the fast food restaurants.
I'm not familiar with any actual suits which may have been going on with commercial skipping or popup blocking, but this concept bothers me.
First, I defer to any lawyers here and hope to hear any rebuttals they may have to the following. Just having completed a copyright course (and thus having a little dangerous knowledge), I offer the following:
Copyright subsists at fixation (17 USC 102), so, as another poster noted, the shows and commercials are obviously separately copyrighted. If the shows are then fixed with commercials interposed, then a copyright would also presumably exist for the compliation of the shows and commercials. This is likely not how it is done as it would seem that the commercials would be served from a separate source in real time. If this is true, the channel stream viewed by the user would not necessarily have a copyright as a compliation. On the other hand, I would expect, if determination of the order and identity of the shows and interposed commercials is done by a file, the file would be copyrightable and thus protectable. [This follows from a case we studied on the Duke Nukem game in which so-called "MAP" files which had no graphics but which controlled the display of library graphics were basically held copyrightable.]
I think this doesn't matter, however. It is a well-known copyright tenet that derivative works are not created by unfixed alterations of performances/displays. For example, if you hold up pink cellophane in front of a television to make everything appear pink, you have not created a derivative work (the pinkified work was not fixed in any physical medium), although photographing the result would. This example was from Judge Kosinski (spelling?) of the 9th Circuit in the Duke Nukem case referenced previously. This is also why people with sunglasses aren't sued for creating derivative works of everything they see. So, blacking out commercials or skipping them would seem to clearly not create a derivative work.
The most likely way for broadcasters to prevent commercial skipping would seem to be under some form of moral rights. Moral rights protects against mutilation or unauthorized modification of works of art. However, first, the broadcasters would have to prove a television broadcast was a work of art, which seems unlikely (I mean, the shows in combination with commercials interposed). Second, in the US, at the federal level at least, protection of visual works does not extend to movies or television (see the definition of visual art under 17 USC 101). So this fails as well.
I also recall this idea coming up when several lead coffins were discovered. Unfortunately, in the case I recall, either there had been contamination, or the results were inconclusive.
My recollection from a class two years ago is that in the limited case of submarine patents, latches can result in more total consequences. As per the Lemelson case, unreasonable and unexplained delays during prosecution can result in the patent being unenforceable against any infringement.
I always hated the error windows telling the user he or she cannot do something and then requiring "ok" to be clicked.
I always thought it would be neat to write something that would add a "Fuck you!" button or something similar - clicking on it would be the same as clicking on the "ok" button, but at least the user would feel better.
Well, the National Ornament and Electric Light Christmas Association, Inc. should be proud (yes, there is such an organization).
Personally, I don't decorate for Christmas or other holidays - it seems too commercial for me. But I enjoy driving around with my family to see what others do.
However, being somewhat of a geek and in lawschool, I had to search to see if any people like the good boss here were ever sued for being a Public Nusiance. I came up with the following:
Osborne v. Power (Ark, 1994) - guy ordered to reduce his amount of lights so as to not attract the large numbers of sightseers coming to the neighborhood.
Rodrigue v. Copeland (La., 1985) - from the case: "Defendant is enjoined from erecting and operating a Christmas exhibition which is calculated to and does attract an unusually large number of visitors to the neighborhood." The court also spent some time arguing that this limitation did not infringe his rights of free speech.
Klein v. Copeland (La., 1986) - followup suit from the previous - the guy apparently didn't comply.
Copyright infringement, by federal statute, is the violation of any one or more of a copyright owner's exclusive rights in a copyrighted work. 17 USC 106 lists most of them. It includes making copies (this is a very old right which helped originate the term copyright). Other rights in 17 USC 106 include the right of distribution, the right of public performance, the right of public display, and the right of adaptation (the right to make derivative works). 17 USC 602 also adds a right of import in certain circumstances.
Not sure if you intended to support the grandparent or not.
Your observation does raise a corollary though. As the system gets more "accurate", false postives will be generated less, and so most people will not have first, second, or third hand knowledge of any false positives. The natural result will be that anyone caught by this, including false postives, will be more quickly and thoroughly damned.
I've got an idea for those who don't like this - use copyright law against them. Paint or otherwise create something original (it would help if you were a professional and had established market values on your work, I would think), and then carry it around. Any time a camera catches you and the signal is recorded, that's a classic infrigement of the right of reproduction. If enough people do it (sue, I mean), supporting the system would be to expensive. The obvious problem I see is that I'm sure congress would act quite quickly to amend the copyright laws to allow this somehow, though.
If this program receives any significant use, it will lead to a lawsuit sooner or later (what doesn't in America?).
This immediately reminded me of one case which sticks in my mind - a case about a cat, "The Cat in a Hat". A parody was written in the style of Dr. Seuss which made fun of the O.J. Simpson trial. The parody was entitled "The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice".
The case involved copyright claims among others. The defendants argued their work was a parody and thus qualified as fair use. The court affirmed an injunction against the distribution of the parody. In so finding, the court cited several definitions of parody, noting that an important component of parody is mimicry of style (to conjure up the original) for purposes such as comment or ridicule.
[To qualify for fair use, a four part balancing test is used.
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work]
The court compared rather extensive amounts of both The Cat in the Hat and The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice. The court found that all four factors weighed against a finding of fair use (though in my view, it did some handwaving when discussing the 3rd factor). Two quotes seem relevant here:
"Although The Cat NOT in the Hat! does broadly mimic Dr. Seuss' characteristic style, it does not hold his style up to ridicule. The stanzas have "no critical bearing on the substance or style of" The Cat in the Hat." (i.e. the style was copied but not for parody)
and
"The Cat in the Hat is not conjured up by the focus on the Brown-Goldman murders or the O.J. Simpson trial. Because there is no effort to create a transformative work with "new expression, meaning, or message," the infringing work's commercial use further cuts against the fair use defense." (i.e. the content was not parodied)
With Kurzweil's invention, it seems the outcome would be similar. Kurzweil might even be in a worse situation than the writers of "The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice" as
(1) it would be hard to claim that the output of Kurzweil's program was a parody of a prior poet's work - at least the writers argued that the "The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice" was a parody as it contrasted the horror of O.J.'s actions against the puerile acts of the Cat in Dr. Seuss' work.
(2) factor 4 for Kurzweil would likely be weaker - the poems produced by the program are, in being the same style, arguably targeted to the same audience as the one which finds the original poet enjoyable, thus constituting competition (potentially).
Along these lines, what I would like to see, now that Sally Hemmings' descendents have been proven to have the Jefferson Y chromosome, is to have them tested against both Randolph and Thomas Jefferson's DNA.
I didn't see a reference to this so far in the discussion. For what it's worth, the Embrio isn't the first motorized unicycle concept. I rememeber seeing a picture of a Popular Mechanics magazine which had a motorized unicycle on the cover - probably 1950s era IIRC.
The thing about this unicycle was, the rider sits inside the wheel, over the engine, rather than above the wheel. The obvious disadvantage is that there is no visibility ahead of the driver where the wheel blocks his or her sight. Maybe with modern technology, this design could be used by incorporating a camera and screen to improve the visibility.
Am rushing to school, so don't have time to search for a link. If interested, the term velocipede might bring it up.
As a past examiner, I can speak to how things were a few years ago. From what freinds tell me, things don't seem to have changed much.
As you guessed, examiners are measured by performance. Depending on their level and the field of art they examine in, each examiner has a certain number of "counts" they must make each week (actually, it is measured by biweeks).
Each application has two counts. The first count is granted for the first substantial "office action" on the merits of the case. As a side note, there are sometimes initial things that can/need to be done which do not get the first count as they are not the first action on the merits (such as a restriction of the claims - which is done when two or more inventions are being claimed in the same application). A second count is given when the application is disposed of. Disposal usually happens either by issue, abandonment, or by final rejection (usually this is when a previous office action rejecting at least one claim is repeated because the applicant did not overcome the first office action's rejections).
Note - if an examiner issues the case in the first action, he or she recieves 2 counts (for very little work). In over 4 years at the PTO, I never got to do this, though others did it fairly often.
Most examiners have a pretty stressful time. Their bosses can make life almost unbearable if they so choose. Imagine, searching a full day to get good prior art (when you know you need to do a count every 6 hours or so - so you're already behind), and another hour or two to write up the office action. Then after turning it in, your boss says he doesn't like the prior art and makes you do it over.
Then there are the jumbo cases - applications with 50, 60, even over 100 claims. For those who don't know, the protection a patent gives is defined by claims, which are legal descriptions of the invention. Each claim in a patent sets forth a differnt embodiment of the invention. Each claim must be dealt with in the office action (and rejections of different claims may involve different prior arts). Quite often, after writing up the office action in such a jumbo case, it comes back from the applicant and the examiner realizes one claim was not dealt with properly (happens, examiners are human). Guess what? Another office action, but no count as the office action cannot be made final - a freeby for the applicant.
And something which might not occur to those outside. When someone gets fired or quits, all their cases must be reassigned. If their cases were not properly done, then a freeby office action is required (they already got the first count) to fix the case.
The PTO has a lot of problems. For what it is worth, in my experience, most examiners took pride in their work and tried to do the best they could within the limits of the system and their boss.
... They can't patent an invention without public disclosure...
I think you're basically right. The Patent Office has whole art units who examine secret applications. It has been a while since I worked at the PTO, but from what I remember, they examine a case for as long as they can in secret and then stop. I think this would be up to allowance and just before issue, the issuance of the patent waiting for the classified status to be lifted. As I recall, allowed applications are classified for 1 year at a time, and this status can be renewed indefinitely.
There was an amazing case some 4 years ago, probably. It was likely discussed on/. as well. It was a guy's patent which finally had been made public - some 65 years later.
Just found the patents (there are two). The inventor was William Friedman. His patent Cryptographs was filed in 1936 and issued in 2000. His patent Cryptographic system was filed in 1933 and issued in 2000.
On the other hand, the government sometimes screws up, it seems. Around 1965 or so, IIRC, the CIA was developing a dart gun. The 'bullet' was a needle-shaped item made from powderized metals held together with a water soluable bonding agent and was also impregnated with poison. It was made with a center of gravity off to one end so that it flew stably without needing to spin. When it entered a person, the 'bullet' dissolved, leaving little or no evidence and the person died of the poison. For some reason, the CIA filed for a patent on the gun, and it issued. From an article I once read, the CIA was a bit worried over the potential exposure.
Applications filed with the PTO are subject to being classified for security purposes. However, this has been successfully fought in court in some cases, though. I recall that a man succeeded in this for an invention which I believe enabled communication by modulating phase angles.
I was going to mod some others up in this discussion (especially the post about identity-theft not being theft but illegal-copying - that was funny), but your post caught my eye.
You could probably try and find out (if you do sue) how much they make selling info per person...
Not only that, but how much the application-sender-in gets per application. They would do this during the pretrial phase of discovery/interrogatories.
IANALY, but am in law school. In Torts we learned something which likely applies here. The credit card company (CCC) will, of course, claim that the guy who fished the application out of the trash and sent it in was acting contrary to policy (thus the CCC will claim no responsibility). If the reward for an approval is indeed $50 this is very strong evidence that, while the CCC officially had a policy against submission of info without consent, they actually were encouraging it. To the extent that submitting info against the consumer's will is illegal, they will likely be held liable if the reward is high.
Reminds me of a one-panel cartoon I read at least 10 or 15 years ago.
The setting is that some evidently wealthy and sophisticated elderly couple is relaxing in their den expecting a delightful evening listening to some piece of classical music. The caption said something to the effeect 'In order to prevent copying of tonight's broadcast of [some classical work], brief intermissions of barking seals will be interjected randomly throughout the program.'
Trying to see if this cartoon might have made it's way onto the Internet, this slashdot discussion came up: Interesting Way To Protest Napster (guy inserting animal sounds in shared songs).
Reading all the descendant posts to the parent, two things struck me.
(1) I will probably get modded down for this, but here goes. Regarding the 'fast food made me fat' suits, I happen to be taking a course from one of the major attorneys pushing this field. He apparently was a also major player in the early part of the tobacco suits as well. He uses these frivolous-seeming suits, as well as media attention, to try and further public issues.
Taken one by one, suits such as the "McDonald's made me obiese" suits certainly appear frivolous and laughable, but they're not going to stop. It took decades of suits against the Tobacco industry before the government got involved and the industry settled. Something like this will probably happen to the fast food chains - either the government will get involved with regulation or something or the industry will pre-emptively change. Either way, the public interest, in the view of these lawyers at least, will have been served.
You may not agree with their goals, I don't always, either. At the bottom, these suits are just another tool for change.
(2) Regarding the hot coffee suit. I'm curious that more attention isn't given to the cups themeselves. Sometimes cups and lids are difficult to put together, the lid was not put on right, or the lid is looser than they should be. Perhaps part of the problem originated there.
The death of Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii. (Archival photograph by Sean Linehan, courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
Documentary photographers on 18th century exploring ships?
Here in Arlington, my local library has different hours each day which is annoying. Fridays it closes at 5:00 pm and it is closed Sundays. The computers have a signup and are usually booked around 2 hrs in advance, at least for the hour terminals. Not the best place to learn computing.
If you can get to the library of congress, it's open till 9:00 pm three days a week, and closed Sundays as well. The nice thing about the LOC is that printing is free.
George Mason University, NOVA, and American University don't check - anyone can come in. Not sure if the computers are accessible, except that I did browse somewhat at NOVA.
George Washington University, OTOH, won't let you in without a card. Even then, the law school requires a login to access the internet, although the undergrad library allows Internet access on some computers without logging in.
So, even in the same area, and for the same kind of institutions, there is variation.
Wrong. At least according to the news accounts I've read. See this for example. Quoting from that article:
... Microsoft could wind up paying $1.1 billion if all of the claims are filed which, historically, is not the case. Statistically only about 1/3 of the people and businesses who qualify for similar voucher actually get their share, but the settlement takes that into account too by dividing the unclaimed cash: Microsoft will get to keep 1/3 while the remaining 2/3 will go to California Public Schools in the from of free Microsoft software and grants.
Thus, if these predictions are correct, M$ will pay to users 1/3 of the settlement in actual claims. M$ can then keep 1/3 of what's left. This would leave M$ keeping (1/3)*(2/3)*($1.1 billion) = $244,444,444. This is, I guess, more than enough to pay the lawyers to try and keep this number as big as possible.
D.C. has this, but they have it from E to W. Then for N and S they have letters. For example, there is a N. D street and a S. D street. Once, before I realized the implications of this, I was looking for something at I and 3rd. Unfortunately I forgot which ones... And, as ususal, I was late.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that under 15 USC 45(a), common carriers and air carriers are exempt. Even if they weren't, I'm sure the reality is that the FTC wouldn't pursue it.
I'm in law school. Plagarism there is quite serious, although I seem to recall a prior /. discussion that Senator Biden apparently plagarized a report and seems none the worse for it.
Those professors of mine that have discussed it have this to say (about plagerism from court decisions, at least): It used to be hard to detect plagarism, but now it is easy. They say they can tell when a student has plagerized, as the writing is just too polished, so they go online and type in some text and often can find the match.
I just don't know why anyone would even attempt to copy in this way as you can always cite to something, and thus make it's use proper. Alternatively, just talk to the professor or get the zero - the alternative is risk of expulsion. I believe schools can even recind degrees they've awarded if evidence of wrongdoing comes up.
His website is gaudy, and therefor kindof funny, but does summarize the legal fight against the fast food restaurants.
First, I defer to any lawyers here and hope to hear any rebuttals they may have to the following. Just having completed a copyright course (and thus having a little dangerous knowledge), I offer the following:
Copyright subsists at fixation (17 USC 102), so, as another poster noted, the shows and commercials are obviously separately copyrighted. If the shows are then fixed with commercials interposed, then a copyright would also presumably exist for the compliation of the shows and commercials. This is likely not how it is done as it would seem that the commercials would be served from a separate source in real time. If this is true, the channel stream viewed by the user would not necessarily have a copyright as a compliation. On the other hand, I would expect, if determination of the order and identity of the shows and interposed commercials is done by a file, the file would be copyrightable and thus protectable. [This follows from a case we studied on the Duke Nukem game in which so-called "MAP" files which had no graphics but which controlled the display of library graphics were basically held copyrightable.]
I think this doesn't matter, however. It is a well-known copyright tenet that derivative works are not created by unfixed alterations of performances/displays. For example, if you hold up pink cellophane in front of a television to make everything appear pink, you have not created a derivative work (the pinkified work was not fixed in any physical medium), although photographing the result would. This example was from Judge Kosinski (spelling?) of the 9th Circuit in the Duke Nukem case referenced previously. This is also why people with sunglasses aren't sued for creating derivative works of everything they see. So, blacking out commercials or skipping them would seem to clearly not create a derivative work.
The most likely way for broadcasters to prevent commercial skipping would seem to be under some form of moral rights. Moral rights protects against mutilation or unauthorized modification of works of art. However, first, the broadcasters would have to prove a television broadcast was a work of art, which seems unlikely (I mean, the shows in combination with commercials interposed). Second, in the US, at the federal level at least, protection of visual works does not extend to movies or television (see the definition of visual art under 17 USC 101). So this fails as well.
Washington Post Article
I also recall this idea coming up when several lead coffins were discovered. Unfortunately, in the case I recall, either there had been contamination, or the results were inconclusive.
My recollection from a class two years ago is that in the limited case of submarine patents, latches can result in more total consequences. As per the Lemelson case, unreasonable and unexplained delays during prosecution can result in the patent being unenforceable against any infringement.
I always thought it would be neat to write something that would add a "Fuck you!" button or something similar - clicking on it would be the same as clicking on the "ok" button, but at least the user would feel better.
Personally, I don't decorate for Christmas or other holidays - it seems too commercial for me. But I enjoy driving around with my family to see what others do.
However, being somewhat of a geek and in lawschool, I had to search to see if any people like the good boss here were ever sued for being a Public Nusiance. I came up with the following:
Osborne v. Power (Ark, 1994) - guy ordered to reduce his amount of lights so as to not attract the large numbers of sightseers coming to the neighborhood.
Rodrigue v. Copeland (La., 1985) - from the case: "Defendant is enjoined from erecting and operating a Christmas exhibition which is calculated to and does attract an unusually large number of visitors to the neighborhood." The court also spent some time arguing that this limitation did not infringe his rights of free speech.
Klein v. Copeland (La., 1986) - followup suit from the previous - the guy apparently didn't comply.
Copyright infringement, by federal statute, is the violation of any one or more of a copyright owner's exclusive rights in a copyrighted work. 17 USC 106 lists most of them. It includes making copies (this is a very old right which helped originate the term copyright). Other rights in 17 USC 106 include the right of distribution, the right of public performance, the right of public display, and the right of adaptation (the right to make derivative works). 17 USC 602 also adds a right of import in certain circumstances.
Your observation does raise a corollary though. As the system gets more "accurate", false postives will be generated less, and so most people will not have first, second, or third hand knowledge of any false positives. The natural result will be that anyone caught by this, including false postives, will be more quickly and thoroughly damned.
I've got an idea for those who don't like this - use copyright law against them. Paint or otherwise create something original (it would help if you were a professional and had established market values on your work, I would think), and then carry it around. Any time a camera catches you and the signal is recorded, that's a classic infrigement of the right of reproduction. If enough people do it (sue, I mean), supporting the system would be to expensive. The obvious problem I see is that I'm sure congress would act quite quickly to amend the copyright laws to allow this somehow, though.
The text of the case is here.
This immediately reminded me of one case which sticks in my mind - a case about a cat, "The Cat in a Hat". A parody was written in the style of Dr. Seuss which made fun of the O.J. Simpson trial. The parody was entitled "The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice".
The case involved copyright claims among others. The defendants argued their work was a parody and thus qualified as fair use. The court affirmed an injunction against the distribution of the parody. In so finding, the court cited several definitions of parody, noting that an important component of parody is mimicry of style (to conjure up the original) for purposes such as comment or ridicule.
[To qualify for fair use, a four part balancing test is used.
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work]
The court compared rather extensive amounts of both The Cat in the Hat and The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice. The court found that all four factors weighed against a finding of fair use (though in my view, it did some handwaving when discussing the 3rd factor). Two quotes seem relevant here:
"Although The Cat NOT in the Hat! does broadly mimic Dr. Seuss' characteristic style, it does not hold his style up to ridicule. The stanzas have "no critical bearing on the substance or style of" The Cat in the Hat." (i.e. the style was copied but not for parody)
and
"The Cat in the Hat is not conjured up by the focus on the Brown-Goldman murders or the O.J. Simpson trial. Because there is no effort to create a transformative work with "new expression, meaning, or message," the infringing work's commercial use further cuts against the fair use defense." (i.e. the content was not parodied)
With Kurzweil's invention, it seems the outcome would be similar. Kurzweil might even be in a worse situation than the writers of "The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice" as
(1) it would be hard to claim that the output of Kurzweil's program was a parody of a prior poet's work - at least the writers argued that the "The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice" was a parody as it contrasted the horror of O.J.'s actions against the puerile acts of the Cat in Dr. Seuss' work.
(2) factor 4 for Kurzweil would likely be weaker - the poems produced by the program are, in being the same style, arguably targeted to the same audience as the one which finds the original poet enjoyable, thus constituting competition (potentially).
Along these lines, what I would like to see, now that Sally Hemmings' descendents have been proven to have the Jefferson Y chromosome, is to have them tested against both Randolph and Thomas Jefferson's DNA.
The thing about this unicycle was, the rider sits inside the wheel, over the engine, rather than above the wheel. The obvious disadvantage is that there is no visibility ahead of the driver where the wheel blocks his or her sight. Maybe with modern technology, this design could be used by incorporating a camera and screen to improve the visibility.
Am rushing to school, so don't have time to search for a link. If interested, the term velocipede might bring it up.
As you guessed, examiners are measured by performance. Depending on their level and the field of art they examine in, each examiner has a certain number of "counts" they must make each week (actually, it is measured by biweeks).
Each application has two counts. The first count is granted for the first substantial "office action" on the merits of the case. As a side note, there are sometimes initial things that can/need to be done which do not get the first count as they are not the first action on the merits (such as a restriction of the claims - which is done when two or more inventions are being claimed in the same application). A second count is given when the application is disposed of. Disposal usually happens either by issue, abandonment, or by final rejection (usually this is when a previous office action rejecting at least one claim is repeated because the applicant did not overcome the first office action's rejections).
Note - if an examiner issues the case in the first action, he or she recieves 2 counts (for very little work). In over 4 years at the PTO, I never got to do this, though others did it fairly often.
Most examiners have a pretty stressful time. Their bosses can make life almost unbearable if they so choose. Imagine, searching a full day to get good prior art (when you know you need to do a count every 6 hours or so - so you're already behind), and another hour or two to write up the office action. Then after turning it in, your boss says he doesn't like the prior art and makes you do it over.
Then there are the jumbo cases - applications with 50, 60, even over 100 claims. For those who don't know, the protection a patent gives is defined by claims, which are legal descriptions of the invention. Each claim in a patent sets forth a differnt embodiment of the invention. Each claim must be dealt with in the office action (and rejections of different claims may involve different prior arts). Quite often, after writing up the office action in such a jumbo case, it comes back from the applicant and the examiner realizes one claim was not dealt with properly (happens, examiners are human). Guess what? Another office action, but no count as the office action cannot be made final - a freeby for the applicant.
And something which might not occur to those outside. When someone gets fired or quits, all their cases must be reassigned. If their cases were not properly done, then a freeby office action is required (they already got the first count) to fix the case.
The PTO has a lot of problems. For what it is worth, in my experience, most examiners took pride in their work and tried to do the best they could within the limits of the system and their boss.
I think you're basically right. The Patent Office has whole art units who examine secret applications. It has been a while since I worked at the PTO, but from what I remember, they examine a case for as long as they can in secret and then stop. I think this would be up to allowance and just before issue, the issuance of the patent waiting for the classified status to be lifted. As I recall, allowed applications are classified for 1 year at a time, and this status can be renewed indefinitely.
There was an amazing case some 4 years ago, probably. It was likely discussed on /. as well. It was a guy's patent which finally had been made public - some 65 years later.
Just found the patents (there are two). The inventor was William Friedman. His patent Cryptographs was filed in 1936 and issued in 2000. His patent Cryptographic system was filed in 1933 and issued in 2000.
On the other hand, the government sometimes screws up, it seems. Around 1965 or so, IIRC, the CIA was developing a dart gun. The 'bullet' was a needle-shaped item made from powderized metals held together with a water soluable bonding agent and was also impregnated with poison. It was made with a center of gravity off to one end so that it flew stably without needing to spin. When it entered a person, the 'bullet' dissolved, leaving little or no evidence and the person died of the poison. For some reason, the CIA filed for a patent on the gun, and it issued. From an article I once read, the CIA was a bit worried over the potential exposure.
Applications filed with the PTO are subject to being classified for security purposes. However, this has been successfully fought in court in some cases, though. I recall that a man succeeded in this for an invention which I believe enabled communication by modulating phase angles.
Here is the homepage of Thomas, for future reference.
You could probably try and find out (if you do sue) how much they make selling info per person ...
Not only that, but how much the application-sender-in gets per application. They would do this during the pretrial phase of discovery/interrogatories.
IANALY, but am in law school. In Torts we learned something which likely applies here. The credit card company (CCC) will, of course, claim that the guy who fished the application out of the trash and sent it in was acting contrary to policy (thus the CCC will claim no responsibility). If the reward for an approval is indeed $50 this is very strong evidence that, while the CCC officially had a policy against submission of info without consent, they actually were encouraging it. To the extent that submitting info against the consumer's will is illegal, they will likely be held liable if the reward is high.
The setting is that some evidently wealthy and sophisticated elderly couple is relaxing in their den expecting a delightful evening listening to some piece of classical music. The caption said something to the effeect 'In order to prevent copying of tonight's broadcast of [some classical work], brief intermissions of barking seals will be interjected randomly throughout the program.'
Trying to see if this cartoon might have made it's way onto the Internet, this slashdot discussion came up: Interesting Way To Protest Napster (guy inserting animal sounds in shared songs).
(1) I will probably get modded down for this, but here goes. Regarding the 'fast food made me fat' suits, I happen to be taking a course from one of the major attorneys pushing this field. He apparently was a also major player in the early part of the tobacco suits as well. He uses these frivolous-seeming suits, as well as media attention, to try and further public issues.
Taken one by one, suits such as the "McDonald's made me obiese" suits certainly appear frivolous and laughable, but they're not going to stop. It took decades of suits against the Tobacco industry before the government got involved and the industry settled. Something like this will probably happen to the fast food chains - either the government will get involved with regulation or something or the industry will pre-emptively change. Either way, the public interest, in the view of these lawyers at least, will have been served.
You may not agree with their goals, I don't always, either. At the bottom, these suits are just another tool for change.
(2) Regarding the hot coffee suit. I'm curious that more attention isn't given to the cups themeselves. Sometimes cups and lids are difficult to put together, the lid was not put on right, or the lid is looser than they should be. Perhaps part of the problem originated there.
The death of Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii. (Archival photograph by Sean Linehan, courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
Documentary photographers on 18th century exploring ships?
If you can get to the library of congress, it's open till 9:00 pm three days a week, and closed Sundays as well. The nice thing about the LOC is that printing is free.
George Mason University, NOVA, and American University don't check - anyone can come in. Not sure if the computers are accessible, except that I did browse somewhat at NOVA.
George Washington University, OTOH, won't let you in without a card. Even then, the law school requires a login to access the internet, although the undergrad library allows Internet access on some computers without logging in.
So, even in the same area, and for the same kind of institutions, there is variation.
Thus, if these predictions are correct, M$ will pay to users 1/3 of the settlement in actual claims. M$ can then keep 1/3 of what's left. This would leave M$ keeping (1/3)*(2/3)*($1.1 billion) = $244,444,444. This is, I guess, more than enough to pay the lawyers to try and keep this number as big as possible.
I believe I hit it on the 4th try.