If I properly understand what they propose, it promotes transparency in the media. To pick just one controversial topic in the news, when there is Israeli-Palestinian violence, I read about it from Reuters, Xinhua, CNN, Fox, and Al-Jazeera. Certain facts will be the same in all their stories. Certain phrases will be cleverly swapped depending on the source.
The end result is that I get a far more objective look at what happened and I have a much better idea about which organizations are biasing their reporting, and in which directions. The feature of these aggregation sites, like news.google, is that it provides me with a single jumping off point to the actual stories under discussion from an always-interesting list of sources. It's a step beyond simply going to your same tired old 5 news sites, clicking through their garbage, and trying to compare the reporting. Ya never know, sometimes it's informative or insightful to read the news from your personally most hated media outlet.
Sorry for the double reply, but I thought I had to add this little bit.
No problem. The delicate distinction is between "anyone could have come up with this" and "this is a combination of these well-known ideas, therefore anybody could have come up with this." No matter how simple the concept, if you cannot produce documentation of where the idea came from, it is not legally obvious.
Were it not for that requirement, every expert working at the patent office would declare every invention as something he could have come up with, and every application would end up in the appeals court with everybody pointing fingers and calling the other side idiots. Nothing would get done and patents could easily take 10+ years to issue.
For this very reason, most examiners I've talked with have a copy of books like "How Computers Work" and "How Email Works" and similar books aimed at young children. They know perfectly well how computers work, but when somebody claims "A remote terminal with a three button mouse and a display screen", they have to produce something that shows such a contraption has been done before. Kids' books really drive the point home.
The problem here is wording, and not the actual content of what is being said.
I understand what you're saying, however I really don't think a lawyer (or a patent examiner) could make an airtight case for the obviousness of implementing a paper form on a computer display - especially not circa 1990. While I agree with you that the intended result of both is basically the same, the user-input form on a computer display was so high-tech in those days that any judge would have been bewildered by the details. Bounds checking on your buffers, cleaning your input data, handling keyboard interrupts, double-buffering your video memory to prevent flicker, and you say THIS is an obvious extension of a carbon-copy triplicate form?
The best way to make this argument would be to find a User-Interface design book that emphasizes using real life metaphors for your computer displays, but remember this is in 1990 (I'm actually pretty sure the patent issued in 1987, so filed sometime in 1984-1985). I have a user-interface design textbook that was published in 1993 and it has things like "Scrollbars" in the advanced chapters. Even though X applications might have used a real-world metaphor, the argument would need a reference explaining WHY that is a good idea, and it would need to be before 1990, so we're talking Commodore VIC-20 and IBM PS1 and PS2 days. Best of luck.
Also, back in 1990, the patent office didn't have experts in the areas of software-related inventions, because such things were nonstatutory (nonpatentable no matter what) until about 1995. This patent was probably examined by someone in the computer graphics hardware or memory hardware field, and that probably hindered the ability to form an obviousness argument based on the analogy of software to pen and paper methods.
Intranet is a meaningless word, it is just a network. WHatever borders you put around your network dont make any difference for the network from a technical point of view.
Heh, yes, but we're not talking about technical details. If the attorneys argued that their invention is only for use on a corporate intranet, that can be treated as a limitation of the patent that does not appear in the document itself. The examiner will write a "reasons for allowance", where he can say, "While this is really obvious for computers in general, this invention is specifically directed to use on a trusted computer network where the user input is passed, without security measures, to a remote server. All of the prior art teaches away from this invention by advocating the use of security measures." That would become a permanent part of the patent. It would then be impossible to infringe the patent if you used their method on the internet, with security, or without a remote server. And while "internet" and "intranet" are technically the same hardware, they have distinct definitions that would have to be respected in a courtroom.
The language of law is a natural language, not a precise programming language. The goal isn't to get the patent to "compile", but rather to convey to another person WTF you're talking about. Using the word "intranet" instead of "internet" would not be meaningless.
You see, the problem is that the legal definitions used simply have little to do with the subject matter, and create distinctions between things that are for all practical purposes identical. That is fine for legal hairsplitting, but really does not work well beyond that. A color is a color is a color etc.
It's not even legal hairsplitting. How are you going to convince me that the original GameBoy has a display equivalent to a Nintendo DS? Do they have the same capabilities? If I watched a movie on the DS and on the GameBoy's screen, would they have the same quality? Project the same experience? Would one be more enjoyable than the other?
Please keep in mind that the examples I gave were in the context of 1990 and were not the only possible explanations. My point (which was unclear -
No, the sole fact that something involves a computer does not necessarily make it obvious.
An example of something that IS obvious would be a spell checker in an email client. I could find a legitimate piece of prior art that explains the use of a spell checker in a word processor and I could find a legitimate piece of prior art that explains an email client, including the email composition interface. I would draw an undeniable parallel between the act of creating a document in a word processor and composing an email with the email client, including the undeniable advantages of checking the spelling in the email. I would then explain how the spell checking feature could be combined with the email client, for example as a component of the software that takes the email body as input and checks the spelling as it would a word processor document. Then, and only then, have I built a prima facie case of obviousness. (I've even skipped a few parts of the Graham factual inquiries for a proper obviousness rejection.)
The courts are not concerned with mere allegations that something is obvious. Proving that something is obvious under 35 USC 103 requires clearly documented legal evidence of its obviousness, not somebody swearing that anybody could have come up with the invention.
I don't expect you to understand all of the law, but I think everyone would be wise to recognize the limits of their understanding. It's far better to ask, "Why wasn't this declared obvious?" than "Those idiots didn't know this is obvious?" I do my best to follow this advice as well. I don't mean to single you out as the guy calling people names, but rather I was calling attention to how complicated and misunderstood the concept of obviousness in patents was, and you took the bait.;)
Regardless, the idea is not new in any way and it is basicly the first thing that anyone skilled in the art would think of when having to solve the issue at hand.
However true that may be, it is nonetheless hyperbole and meaningless with regard to the obviousness of the invention. (I wouldn't even agree that it's true without qualification - certainly someone could come up with an equivalent function by some other mechanism.) This does play into the question, "Is this a good implementation?" It has nothing to do with whether or not it was obvious. Obvious under 35 USC 103 means, generally speaking, "the concept was assembled from more than one source," not the dictionary definition of "easy to understand".
How was it not obvious? On one hand, it beats me. The patent was old when I started working in IP. I never had any reason to order the prosecution record, of course, so it might have had nothing to do with the issue of obviousness. It could have been that IBM's attorney's argued that THEIR system was ONLY for use on their corporate intranet, a use for which there was no prior art whatsoever in 1990. Maybe they argued that their system was only for use on 256 color displays, using a shading system that was not available before, and therefore no reasonable argument of obviousness would hold up on appeal. Who knows? You'd have to investigate more than the patent to find out how it got issued.
No, I'm saying that you are unfamiliar with what is necessary to establish obviousness under 35 USC 103. While I personally agree with your reasoning, I'm playing the part of a lawyer.
1. You have anecdotal evidence of what a car salesman did in 1950.
2. A car salesman hands the customer an ink pen - are we to assume the combination formed in your rejection under 103 includes a computer user with an inkpen?
3. What on earth does selling automobiles have to do with programming computers? Do computer programmers also talk you into buying the Tru-Coat? These are completely different disciplines.
The allegation that you have established a prima facie case of obviousness is laughable.
Again, I agree with your line of reasoning, but I'm pointing out that there are at least 3 fatal flaws in your case as would be seen by an attorney.
This all should be considered prior art as meant by 102.
None of your are even remotely suggests a computer system. (I'm sorry that I can't find the actual patent in question. The search at uspto.gov sucks.)
The fact that the form is displayed on a screen instead of on a piece of paper does not make it non obvious, it is a matter of applying a known idea in a very obvious way that is functionally and conceptually identical to the prior art.
This has absolutely no basis whatsoever in the law. Please see MPEP 2141-2144 to understand what the term "obvious" means as used in 35 USC 103. You are using the dictionary meaning of the term "obvious" which has basically no bearing on 35 USC 103.
Sorry - in case the other response was vague - I haven't had an earlier discussion with Bruce Perens. You can read my recent posts, however, and deduce that I do work in IP.
Uh, good call, I guess, except that's hardly "obscure bits of patent law from the USPTO". What I have quoted is not law and it is required knowledge for anybody with a agent's registration number. What I have revealed is that I probably work in patents, perhaps as an agent, an attorney, or hey why not a patent examiner.
From my evaluation of your evaluation of my ability to hide myself, you leap to conclusions.:)
If you cannot achieve this, you fail to prove that the patent is obvious. "Obvious", as defined by the dictionary, is meaningless in the context of prior art.
He said it recently expired, so it would have had a 17 year term from the date it issued. Let's be generous and figure that it was filed in 1990. All you have to do is provide the necessary references that predate June 1989 and comply with the MPEP sections I've cited. (June 1989 because the it's trivial to file an affidavit and move your priority date back by 6 months.)
Of course, "Wow, that's a lot more complicated than I thought," is a perfectly acceptable response.
In practical terms, claims define nonstatutory processes if they:
- consist solely of mathematical operations without some claimed practical application (i.e., executing a "mathematical algorithm"); or
- simply manipulate abstract ideas, e.g., a bid (Schrader, 22 F.3d at 293-94, 30 USPQ2d at 1458-59) or a bubble hierarchy (Warmerdam, 33 F.3d at 1360, 31 USPQ2d at 1759), without some claimed practical application.
There is far, far more discussion of this in MPEP 2106. Please see the link and at least skim the material before responding (I'll understand if you don't read the whole thing - it's long and boring.)
Another poster has replied with some very informative material.
What you are talking about is the difference between "constructive reduction to practice" and "actual reduction to practice". There are a number of extremely valid reasons why the US patent system requires constructive, not actual reduction to practice. Between this story and the one about Sony's patents for projecting sensory data, I believe I have written 4 posts today on this topic. Forgive me for referring to my recent posts rather than rehashing it.
If you're curious, here is the relevant part of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure: MPEP 2138.05
If you have any suggestions on how to adequately explain this topic in an approachable way to the Slashdot audience, I'm all ears. This concept is fundamental to the structure of the US patent system yet widely misunderstood.
Patent protections need to start reflecting their original intention - to grant to that PERSON the right to solely benefit from their invention.
Uh, right, like making a profit by selling the rights to their invention. Not everybody has an industrial complex in their backyard. Good call. +1 Insightful for sure.
Jeeze, everybody is an expert around here. I hope there's an alternate universe where IP professionals bitch and moan on an internet bulletin board about how IT professionals are idiots who can't perform their duties.
No, they didn't. They came up with an *idea* of how someone *might* do it. There is a huge difference between inventing something, and coming up with an idea on *how* to invent something.
That is the difference between constructive reduction to practice and actual reduction to practice. Actual reduction to practice is not a requirement to secure patent protection for a number of extremely valid reasons, most notably to facilitate small entities without mountains of capital to risk on prototypes.
Sony's claims recite "projecting sensory data in a part of a human brain" and it cannot be denied that the apparatus does so - it appears to bombard the victim, eh, user with acoustic energy. (I would be interested in how these claims satisfied 35 USC 101, especially in regard to concrete results in at least the case of a deaf person.) They recite an apparatus that clearly achieves that purpose.
I don't want to be flippant, but I fail to recognize where you're talking about "an *idea* of how someone *might* do it" as opposed to what they have patented. Could you please quote the patents so I know exactly what you're referring to? A cotton gin is how someone might remove the cotton from the stalk, and using a cotton gin to do so is a method of removing cotton from the stalk. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much what Sony has here, except their technology seems infinitely less useful. (I'm sincerely not trying to flame, but I really don't see what you're talking about.)
My only question is why didn't they submarine these suckers.
Because it is no longer feasible to do so. Patent applications are published within 18 months of filing as Pre-Grant Publications, a policy adopted as part of international patent harmonization in compliance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
It is possible to request nonpublication for a US national stage patent application, however this request must be rescinded if you intend to pursue patent protection in another country. In this age of global economies, very few companies in the electronics field consider it sensible to achieve patent protection in one country, therefore they cannot reasonably prevent their patent applications from being published.
In summary, it is no longer possible to submarine a patent application unless you restrict the patent protection to a single PCT participating country. I would consider this relatively well known and required knowledge to have a meaningful discussion about the US patent system. No personal offense intended, but I would have moderated your post as overrated had I the points today.
Glory almighty, this is the first post I've read on Slashdot regarding prior art that wasn't complete crap. You are entirely correct and deserve all the Informative moderation points you receive.
Keep up the good work and continue to spread the wisdom.
No. In the US, patents last 17 years from the date the patent is granted.
Patents last 20 years from the date they were filed unless the patent term is adjusted by a terminal disclaimer. They used to be 17 years from the date they issued, but that changed sometime in the last couple of years.
That would be my guess. So much for "promoting the useful arts and sciences".
Care to elaborate? If it's a dumb idea that doesn't work, what's the harm? If it's a great idea that does work, apparently Sony's R&D team came up with it first and they have a Constitutional right to a temporary monopoly on their work.
I agree that this is a pretty screw-ball field of science, but I don't see any evidence that the USPTO did anything wrong. It's not their job to issue patents for good ideas - it's their job to issue patents for new ideas. Check out 35 USC 101, 102, and 103. There's nothing in there whatsoever about screening out the crazies.
I would argue that maybe you don't have to actually build one, but you need to throw down a lot of proof that you know it could work, and if things don't work out that way then you haven't yet patented whatever you've just created, and you need to patent the proper method.
You are absolutely correct. This concept is called "constructive reduction to practice". There are several ways of satisfying this concept, most preferably being a US patent application that complies with 35 U.S.C. 112. Other examples that would typically be accepted as constructive reduction to practice would be blue prints for a machine, source code for a software related invention, or the lab procedure to make a chemical compound.
Many people who don't work around patents get caught up in whether or not "a person of ordinary skill in the art" actually could make and use the invention as disclosed in a patent application. Unfortunately for their arguments, this is an almost trivial condition to meet. If a person of ordinary skill in the art swears in an affidavit that he could reasonably make and use the invention, that's pretty much where this inquiry ends. Neither the courts nor the USPTO are interested in "Nuh-uh, Uh-huh" arguments about whether or not the patent application is fubared.
The patent holder, on the other hand, does. If you try to litigate with a patent for insanity, the defense will tear you apart. You might be able to GET a patent with a silly affidavit, but you won't be able to ENFORCE it very well.
In this case, it appears that Sony has disclosed an apparatus and claimed the method of using it. NOWHERE is it guaranteed to work well, which is one of the safest patents to issue. If it doesn't work well, the chances are REALLY slim that anybody is going to infringe it. This isn't legal analysis, but it looks to me like Sony has paid the USPTO to provide them with some really expensive wallpaper.
I seriously got the impression here on Slashdot that the EU was a reasonable, progressive, and moral government, and that it was the United States that was corrupt and doomed for destruction.
Are you kidding me? What, pray tell, convinced you that the EU was the shining city on the hill that split from all known history? I always figured it was a bunch of people trying to broker power for their own benefit, that power being granted in turn for keeping some decorum of law and order. Maybe I was the cynic?
I'm hardly an anachist, but show me the government that hasn't fallen and I'll show you a young government.
I hope Europeans can stop complaining about our corrupt government, and Americans can stop whining about European governments in general, and we can all collectively recognize the lameness of basically all big world powers.
And then what? We'll all enroll in Philosophy 101 and get stoned? Ya know, they don't call the Empire an empire for nothing. Enjoy whatever moral superiority you suppose you have. I'll enjoy my days as part of the Empire, and afterwards, we'll see who had a better time.
In other news, I noticed that Google News now lets me reorganize the sections on the front page with the "Edit this customized page" link in the upper right corner. It says it is "new", but I don't know how new it is and I've never noticed it before.
I'm not that impressed by the configurability, but I was impressed by the functionality Google is getting out of a web browser. The configuration tool is drag and drop within the web page. That is pretty spiffy to me.
For me, 1280x960 is crap. The best my video card and monitor can do at that resolution is 60 Hz. At 1280x1024 I get a decent sync and by fiddling with the sizing the pixels are square too.
I can't use a higher resolution since my video card can't handle it without reducing the color quality (not enough memory), and reducing the resolution to 1024x768 or even 1152x864 just to get a 4:3 ratio would be silly.
And that has been "Storlek's Inane Inner Dialogue" for Wednesday, March 30. Tune in next time to hear a play-by-play of Storlek putting on his shoes. Will he go with Velcro or laces? Tune in to find out!
My impression has always been that that the requirement is there to encourage innovation by focusing on implementations. You cannot patent the one line product specification summary "a machine to clean cotton". This allows competition to design products with similar specifications while at the same time discouraging the copying of novel implementations. This pits inventors against each other in that they need to devise novel solutions to the same technical problem. A focus on the implementation rather that the specification ensures this competition.
I'm not sure that I clearly see the boundaries of what you're describing. I can say that the Constitution grants the inventor the broadest patent protection he can possibly achieve, however he must have invented something in "the sciences and useful arts". 35 USC 101 defines that term as a machine, a method, a composition of matter, a product of manufacture, or an improvement of those five. This is why an implementation is required to achieve patent protection.
However, if nobody had EVER thought of "a machine to clean cotton", and you made one, the Constitution says you are indeed entitled to the patent claim "a machine to clean cotton". This does NOT mean you have patent protection on ALL cotton cleaning machines, however. In an infringement suit, your competitor would be burdened with proving that his "cotton cleaning machine" is patentably distinct from your disclosed embodiments. If your machine, in all its disclosed varations, picks through the cotton with a comb-like device, while your competitor's uses a centrifuge, they clean cotton by fundamentally different processes. They would be seen as patentably distinct inventions, and it would be VERY unlikely that the competitor is found infringing your patents. It DOES mean, however, that HIS patent claims would have to read something like, "A machine for cleaning cotton wherein the cotton is cleaned by a centrifuge" to clearly define that his machine has a distinct and separate patent protection from yours.
It basically comes down to the alleged infringer saying, "Hey, the patent holder never thought of this, I came up with doing it this way, and the difference is a non-obvious improvement (something other than changing the color or using cheaper parts)."
Just for completeness, the only other possible justification for this limitation that I can think of, is that it is to limit the patenting of concepts to things which are implementable with today's technology. But if this were the case, why would choosing a different implementation avoid violation of the patent? If a specification sheet is patentable so long as it has an implementation attached, then any vibrating controller violates the non-obvious part of the patent.
There are sections of the MPEP and case law loosely related to the ability to patent only the implementations which "are known with today's technology", etc., but they generally don't carry much weight. The reason is that a new and improved ball bearing could be added to almost any invention that uses a ball bearing and improve it. However, using a never-before-known ball bearing to improve something that uses a ball bearing is really obvious. References abound for using better ball bearings where better ball bearings are available. Where these laws and rulings DO hold weight is where someone tries to literally claim every conceivable implementation of something. In legal language, this only occurs if you claimed "means for cleaning cotton", but not "a machine for cleaning cotton". When you claim "a machine", it means you only get patent protection for what you disclosed and the obvious improvements thereof. When you claim "means for", you are indeed trying to claim the abstract notion of "something" that cleans cotton. (This is an entirely separate kettle of fish from what we've been talking about thus far. There are about 29 different reasons why the claim "means for cleaning cotton" isn't patentable, none of which reall
Regarding maturity, I've been in a rather fiesty mood recently, but I do try not to be too trollish. You don't seem like a bad fellow. Such a pitty you don't see things my way. On a related note, if you cannot make a joke without a smiley, you need to work on your writing skills.
Is that an invitation to adopt your style of creatively spelling "implementation" at whim? I noticed you got it right at least once, bravo!
With the apparent partial exception in biotechnology, patents at least notionally must be on implementations of devices, not on general ideas.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. What I believe you are referring to as "the idea of a vibrating controller" is known as "constructive reduction to practice" and is preferably achieved by a patent application disclosure which complies with the written description and enablement requirement of 35 USC 112. It is and has always been possible to come up with the idea for "a vibrating controller", so long as the patent application includes disclosure of an embodiment of such a device that can be made and used by a person of ordinary skill in the art. When it comes to claiming the invention, there are exactly 0 statutes that preclude the inventor from claiming to have invented "a user-input device that vibrates". The ONLY thing that would prevent such a patent claim would be the prior art. I reiterate that you do not understand the meaning of "obvious" as defined by 35 USC 103 and the surrounding case law. It has nothing to do with "how hard it was" to think something up.
I agree with you that the means by which the controller is made to vibrate is very obvious, but I don't trust that you understand why. "Making something vibrate with a rotating mass" is a documented technique that is known to MEs. That, and only that, is why it is obvious.
I've never seen a vibrating desk lamp, I presume that there is no prior art for a vibrating desk lamp, and if I were to create a vibrating desk lamp, I would use a spinning mass to make it vibrate. The entire idea of vibrating desk lamps is up for grabs in terms of patent protection. Think up a good reason why you would want one, describe a way to make and use it, and the patent is yours.
On a related note, none of the few patents that I've looked at have had non-patent references.
I encourage you to look at these two patents: 6,424,333 6,275,213
You may recognize these patents as "The patents owned by Immersion that Sony allegedly infringed, prompting this entire discussion on Slashdot". Careful inspection of these patents reveals something on the order of 100 non-patent literature citations.
This speaks of a myopia on the part of the patent office.
It would speak to a myopia on the part of the patent office if it were remotely true rather than a laughably unsubstantiated allegation put forth by someone who admits to having glanced at only a few patents. Indeed, it announces with the authority of Moses delivering the Commandments to the tribe of Israel the breadth of your knowledge and experience with the patent system, to say nothing of your efforts to "not be trollish".
I hope that clears some things up for you regarding both the patent office as well as the caliber of your clever wit.
I appreciate your attempt to clarify. I'm happy to try to share what I know about the patent system with those sincere enough to try to approach the topic maturely. Already you're far ahead of the pack at Slashdot.;)
It isn't possible to patent the idea of a vibrating controller. This is explicitly forbidden, and IMNSHO, for good reason.
Hm, care to elaborate? Is there a particular statute or case law you're referring to? If so, I think you're mistaken. If you are the first person to come up with the idea of a cotton gin (vibrating controller) and file a patent that's broad enough to cover "cotton gin" ("vibrating controller"), then you get the patent for it. I'm aware of no statute that forbids such a patent, and indeed this is precisely what the system was designed to protect.
What you are not entitled to are every improvement upon that cotton gin (vibrating controller). In your disclosure, which covers how to make and use a cotton gin (vibrating controller), you can toss in some other embodiments (It might be pink, it might be made of plastic, it might have flashing LED lights) but you do not have patent protection for the non-obvious improvements that were not disclosed by your patent (a fundamentally better vibrating mechanisim, those little fans that cool your sweaty hands while you play, or a vibrating controller with a more "pleasing" form factor.)
Such methods are esoteric because they are more expensive and/or less inheriently reliable.
Not necessarily - they would simply need to argue and prove that their method is a non-obvious improvement or otherwise not disclosed by your patent. I'm not an ME, but it could be as simple as a different design for the weight that allows greater control over the vibration output. Perhaps a motor with two driveshafts and two weights could produce irregular vibration patterns. Heck just about anything so long as it is not something disclosed by your patent.
Apparently, you can attach an idea too general to be patented to an implimentation too obvious to be patented, and get a patent. I find this absurd, and believe it demonstrates a certain lack of thought on the part of the patent office.
Uh, really? The Patent Office is not part of the legislative branch of government; the Patent Office does not create the laws that define what can and cannot be patented. The Patent Office doesn't even get to decide HOW patents should be examined - the Patent Office is subjected to the rulings of the judicial branch of govnernment whenever these infringement suits are produced by judges or when a patent application reaches the board of appeals, federal circuit, or Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Patent Office just follows the laws and previous court rulings to try to be consistent and legal.
Additionally, I still don't think you fully appreciate that "obvious" as regards to patents has almost nothing to do with "obvious" in the dictionary. I've provided the following links as a highly condensed taste of the beginning of what "obvious" means regarding patents. This is like learning Computability Theory (my expertise) in 10 minutes.
MPEP 2141 See especially "Basic considerations which apply to obviousness rejections". I stress basic.
My thoughts on this Immersion v. Sony thing? Woah. I can't believe Sony was found infringing. I have no idea what went on during the prosecution of Immersion's patents - attorney arguments could have gutted or amplified the weight of the patent claims, but you and I have no idea until we read the prosecution history. The USPTO can only afford to do a $1000 prior art search, and both of these patents have roughly 50 references cited. The examiner doesn't appear to be asleep at the wheel, but we really have no idea what rejections were made during pros
According to the dictionary, but are you familiar with the term "obvious" as defined by 35 U.S.C. 103 and therefore how the term is used in relation to patentability? It is a completely different concept.
What sort of dope wouldn't think of a spinning eccentric mass.
A spinning mass to induce vibration may be an obvious detail of implementation, however the idea of a vibrating controller is not. For evidence of that, arcade games, home console games, handheld computer games, and PC computer games have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years of experience without any sort of "force feedback" or vibrating controller.
The patent office does need overhauled, because the examiners are either idiots or they assume that everybody else is.
What would make someone an idiot? Shooting off at the mouth about a topic you don't understand? I'm sincerely interested in your response.
Both of those patents have more than a page of cited references. You could order the prosecution history to see what rejections the examiner made and how the applicant's attorneys responded to those rejections - including allegations of obviousness based upon the cited references. (Oh yes, obviousness based upon cited references is a requirement of 35 U.S.C. 103, but not a requirement of the dictionary definition of the same term.)
I can definitely respect your opinion of the mechanical details of the invention because I could reasonably presume that you're a ME. Your knowledge of the equally complicated field of IP law appears to be none.
This is probably one of the best arguments against this type of textbook FUD.
What would it cost to stick with your tried and true closed source software while paying a small number of guys (1 to, say, 15 depending on the size of your organization) to spend a portion of their work week (10-20%) devoted to seeing what they can do with FS/OSS? You could probably budget it as R&D for your IT department, and after those guys come through with one or two big wins (StarOffice, OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird) the investment would either pay for itself, begin to pay for itself, or look REALLY good to your investors.
Whaddya know, it would probably increase the job satisfaction of your IT staff, a notoriously frustrating job, and could contribute to a geek-friendly atmosphere at your company, making it easier to hire and retain more qualified IT workers.
I'm being realistic here - for most companies, it simply isn't reasonable to expect them to ditch Microsoft or whatever closed source vendor they're using overnight. Just being honest here, a lot of FS/OSS doesn't work very well, but some does.
That said, nearly everybody deals with spam, Windows/ActiveX/Outlook/IE exploits/viruses, and the high cost of dealing with these vendors. FS/OSS isn't an entirely free lunch - big deal. You'd be an idiot to say that FS/OSS is going to solve all your problems overnight, but you'd be a bigger idiot to deny that there is a lot of potential in FS/OSS. You'll look like a real ass when your competition has researched, invested in, and profited from FS/OSS while you're still using Windows 2000 and IE 5.0 because "it's trusted and secure" or whatever the FUD of the week is.
Slashdot Mirror
If I properly understand what they propose, it promotes transparency in the media. To pick just one controversial topic in the news, when there is Israeli-Palestinian violence, I read about it from Reuters, Xinhua, CNN, Fox, and Al-Jazeera. Certain facts will be the same in all their stories. Certain phrases will be cleverly swapped depending on the source.
The end result is that I get a far more objective look at what happened and I have a much better idea about which organizations are biasing their reporting, and in which directions. The feature of these aggregation sites, like news.google, is that it provides me with a single jumping off point to the actual stories under discussion from an always-interesting list of sources. It's a step beyond simply going to your same tired old 5 news sites, clicking through their garbage, and trying to compare the reporting. Ya never know, sometimes it's informative or insightful to read the news from your personally most hated media outlet.
No problem. The delicate distinction is between "anyone could have come up with this" and "this is a combination of these well-known ideas, therefore anybody could have come up with this." No matter how simple the concept, if you cannot produce documentation of where the idea came from, it is not legally obvious.
Were it not for that requirement, every expert working at the patent office would declare every invention as something he could have come up with, and every application would end up in the appeals court with everybody pointing fingers and calling the other side idiots. Nothing would get done and patents could easily take 10+ years to issue.
For this very reason, most examiners I've talked with have a copy of books like "How Computers Work" and "How Email Works" and similar books aimed at young children. They know perfectly well how computers work, but when somebody claims "A remote terminal with a three button mouse and a display screen", they have to produce something that shows such a contraption has been done before. Kids' books really drive the point home.
I understand what you're saying, however I really don't think a lawyer (or a patent examiner) could make an airtight case for the obviousness of implementing a paper form on a computer display - especially not circa 1990. While I agree with you that the intended result of both is basically the same, the user-input form on a computer display was so high-tech in those days that any judge would have been bewildered by the details. Bounds checking on your buffers, cleaning your input data, handling keyboard interrupts, double-buffering your video memory to prevent flicker, and you say THIS is an obvious extension of a carbon-copy triplicate form?
The best way to make this argument would be to find a User-Interface design book that emphasizes using real life metaphors for your computer displays, but remember this is in 1990 (I'm actually pretty sure the patent issued in 1987, so filed sometime in 1984-1985). I have a user-interface design textbook that was published in 1993 and it has things like "Scrollbars" in the advanced chapters. Even though X applications might have used a real-world metaphor, the argument would need a reference explaining WHY that is a good idea, and it would need to be before 1990, so we're talking Commodore VIC-20 and IBM PS1 and PS2 days. Best of luck.
Also, back in 1990, the patent office didn't have experts in the areas of software-related inventions, because such things were nonstatutory (nonpatentable no matter what) until about 1995. This patent was probably examined by someone in the computer graphics hardware or memory hardware field, and that probably hindered the ability to form an obviousness argument based on the analogy of software to pen and paper methods.
Intranet is a meaningless word, it is just a network. WHatever borders you put around your network dont make any difference for the network from a technical point of view.
Heh, yes, but we're not talking about technical details. If the attorneys argued that their invention is only for use on a corporate intranet, that can be treated as a limitation of the patent that does not appear in the document itself. The examiner will write a "reasons for allowance", where he can say, "While this is really obvious for computers in general, this invention is specifically directed to use on a trusted computer network where the user input is passed, without security measures, to a remote server. All of the prior art teaches away from this invention by advocating the use of security measures." That would become a permanent part of the patent. It would then be impossible to infringe the patent if you used their method on the internet, with security, or without a remote server. And while "internet" and "intranet" are technically the same hardware, they have distinct definitions that would have to be respected in a courtroom.
The language of law is a natural language, not a precise programming language. The goal isn't to get the patent to "compile", but rather to convey to another person WTF you're talking about. Using the word "intranet" instead of "internet" would not be meaningless.
You see, the problem is that the legal definitions used simply have little to do with the subject matter, and create distinctions between things that are for all practical purposes identical. That is fine for legal hairsplitting, but really does not work well beyond that. A color is a color is a color etc.
It's not even legal hairsplitting. How are you going to convince me that the original GameBoy has a display equivalent to a Nintendo DS? Do they have the same capabilities? If I watched a movie on the DS and on the GameBoy's screen, would they have the same quality? Project the same experience? Would one be more enjoyable than the other?
Please keep in mind that the examples I gave were in the context of 1990 and were not the only possible explanations. My point (which was unclear -
An example of something that IS obvious would be a spell checker in an email client. I could find a legitimate piece of prior art that explains the use of a spell checker in a word processor and I could find a legitimate piece of prior art that explains an email client, including the email composition interface. I would draw an undeniable parallel between the act of creating a document in a word processor and composing an email with the email client, including the undeniable advantages of checking the spelling in the email. I would then explain how the spell checking feature could be combined with the email client, for example as a component of the software that takes the email body as input and checks the spelling as it would a word processor document. Then, and only then, have I built a prima facie case of obviousness. (I've even skipped a few parts of the Graham factual inquiries for a proper obviousness rejection.)
The courts are not concerned with mere allegations that something is obvious. Proving that something is obvious under 35 USC 103 requires clearly documented legal evidence of its obviousness, not somebody swearing that anybody could have come up with the invention.
I don't expect you to understand all of the law, but I think everyone would be wise to recognize the limits of their understanding. It's far better to ask, "Why wasn't this declared obvious?" than "Those idiots didn't know this is obvious?" I do my best to follow this advice as well. I don't mean to single you out as the guy calling people names, but rather I was calling attention to how complicated and misunderstood the concept of obviousness in patents was, and you took the bait. ;)
Regardless, the idea is not new in any way and it is basicly the first thing that anyone skilled in the art would think of when having to solve the issue at hand.
However true that may be, it is nonetheless hyperbole and meaningless with regard to the obviousness of the invention. (I wouldn't even agree that it's true without qualification - certainly someone could come up with an equivalent function by some other mechanism.) This does play into the question, "Is this a good implementation?" It has nothing to do with whether or not it was obvious. Obvious under 35 USC 103 means, generally speaking, "the concept was assembled from more than one source," not the dictionary definition of "easy to understand".
How was it not obvious? On one hand, it beats me. The patent was old when I started working in IP. I never had any reason to order the prosecution record, of course, so it might have had nothing to do with the issue of obviousness. It could have been that IBM's attorney's argued that THEIR system was ONLY for use on their corporate intranet, a use for which there was no prior art whatsoever in 1990. Maybe they argued that their system was only for use on 256 color displays, using a shading system that was not available before, and therefore no reasonable argument of obviousness would hold up on appeal. Who knows? You'd have to investigate more than the patent to find out how it got issued.
No, I'm saying that you are unfamiliar with what is necessary to establish obviousness under 35 USC 103. While I personally agree with your reasoning, I'm playing the part of a lawyer.
1. You have anecdotal evidence of what a car salesman did in 1950.
2. A car salesman hands the customer an ink pen - are we to assume the combination formed in your rejection under 103 includes a computer user with an inkpen?
3. What on earth does selling automobiles have to do with programming computers? Do computer programmers also talk you into buying the Tru-Coat? These are completely different disciplines.
The allegation that you have established a prima facie case of obviousness is laughable.
Again, I agree with your line of reasoning, but I'm pointing out that there are at least 3 fatal flaws in your case as would be seen by an attorney.
None of your are even remotely suggests a computer system. (I'm sorry that I can't find the actual patent in question. The search at uspto.gov sucks.)
The fact that the form is displayed on a screen instead of on a piece of paper does not make it non obvious, it is a matter of applying a known idea in a very obvious way that is functionally and conceptually identical to the prior art.
This has absolutely no basis whatsoever in the law. Please see MPEP 2141-2144 to understand what the term "obvious" means as used in 35 USC 103. You are using the dictionary meaning of the term "obvious" which has basically no bearing on 35 USC 103.
Sorry - in case the other response was vague - I haven't had an earlier discussion with Bruce Perens. You can read my recent posts, however, and deduce that I do work in IP.
From my evaluation of your evaluation of my ability to hide myself, you leap to conclusions. :)
Then comply with 35 USC 103 and prove it is obvious.
35 USC 103
Here's some guidance.
MPEP 2141
Also see MPEP 2141.01 through 2144.09.
If you cannot achieve this, you fail to prove that the patent is obvious. "Obvious", as defined by the dictionary, is meaningless in the context of prior art.
He said it recently expired, so it would have had a 17 year term from the date it issued. Let's be generous and figure that it was filed in 1990. All you have to do is provide the necessary references that predate June 1989 and comply with the MPEP sections I've cited. (June 1989 because the it's trivial to file an affidavit and move your priority date back by 6 months.)
Of course, "Wow, that's a lot more complicated than I thought," is a perfectly acceptable response.
Algorithms are not patentable in the US.
MPEP 2106 specifically states:
There is far, far more discussion of this in MPEP 2106. Please see the link and at least skim the material before responding (I'll understand if you don't read the whole thing - it's long and boring.)
What you are talking about is the difference between "constructive reduction to practice" and "actual reduction to practice". There are a number of extremely valid reasons why the US patent system requires constructive, not actual reduction to practice. Between this story and the one about Sony's patents for projecting sensory data, I believe I have written 4 posts today on this topic. Forgive me for referring to my recent posts rather than rehashing it.
If you're curious, here is the relevant part of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure:
MPEP 2138.05
If you have any suggestions on how to adequately explain this topic in an approachable way to the Slashdot audience, I'm all ears. This concept is fundamental to the structure of the US patent system yet widely misunderstood.
I hope that helps.
Uh, right, like making a profit by selling the rights to their invention. Not everybody has an industrial complex in their backyard. Good call. +1 Insightful for sure.
Jeeze, everybody is an expert around here. I hope there's an alternate universe where IP professionals bitch and moan on an internet bulletin board about how IT professionals are idiots who can't perform their duties.
That is the difference between constructive reduction to practice and actual reduction to practice. Actual reduction to practice is not a requirement to secure patent protection for a number of extremely valid reasons, most notably to facilitate small entities without mountains of capital to risk on prototypes.
Sony's claims recite "projecting sensory data in a part of a human brain" and it cannot be denied that the apparatus does so - it appears to bombard the victim, eh, user with acoustic energy. (I would be interested in how these claims satisfied 35 USC 101, especially in regard to concrete results in at least the case of a deaf person.) They recite an apparatus that clearly achieves that purpose.
I don't want to be flippant, but I fail to recognize where you're talking about "an *idea* of how someone *might* do it" as opposed to what they have patented. Could you please quote the patents so I know exactly what you're referring to? A cotton gin is how someone might remove the cotton from the stalk, and using a cotton gin to do so is a method of removing cotton from the stalk. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much what Sony has here, except their technology seems infinitely less useful. (I'm sincerely not trying to flame, but I really don't see what you're talking about.)
Because it is no longer feasible to do so. Patent applications are published within 18 months of filing as Pre-Grant Publications, a policy adopted as part of international patent harmonization in compliance with the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
It is possible to request nonpublication for a US national stage patent application, however this request must be rescinded if you intend to pursue patent protection in another country. In this age of global economies, very few companies in the electronics field consider it sensible to achieve patent protection in one country, therefore they cannot reasonably prevent their patent applications from being published.
In summary, it is no longer possible to submarine a patent application unless you restrict the patent protection to a single PCT participating country. I would consider this relatively well known and required knowledge to have a meaningful discussion about the US patent system. No personal offense intended, but I would have moderated your post as overrated had I the points today.
Keep up the good work and continue to spread the wisdom.
Patents last 20 years from the date they were filed unless the patent term is adjusted by a terminal disclaimer. They used to be 17 years from the date they issued, but that changed sometime in the last couple of years.
That would be my guess. So much for "promoting the useful arts and sciences".
Care to elaborate? If it's a dumb idea that doesn't work, what's the harm? If it's a great idea that does work, apparently Sony's R&D team came up with it first and they have a Constitutional right to a temporary monopoly on their work.
I agree that this is a pretty screw-ball field of science, but I don't see any evidence that the USPTO did anything wrong. It's not their job to issue patents for good ideas - it's their job to issue patents for new ideas. Check out 35 USC 101, 102, and 103. There's nothing in there whatsoever about screening out the crazies.
You are absolutely correct. This concept is called "constructive reduction to practice". There are several ways of satisfying this concept, most preferably being a US patent application that complies with 35 U.S.C. 112. Other examples that would typically be accepted as constructive reduction to practice would be blue prints for a machine, source code for a software related invention, or the lab procedure to make a chemical compound.
Many people who don't work around patents get caught up in whether or not "a person of ordinary skill in the art" actually could make and use the invention as disclosed in a patent application. Unfortunately for their arguments, this is an almost trivial condition to meet. If a person of ordinary skill in the art swears in an affidavit that he could reasonably make and use the invention, that's pretty much where this inquiry ends. Neither the courts nor the USPTO are interested in "Nuh-uh, Uh-huh" arguments about whether or not the patent application is fubared.
The patent holder, on the other hand, does. If you try to litigate with a patent for insanity, the defense will tear you apart. You might be able to GET a patent with a silly affidavit, but you won't be able to ENFORCE it very well.
In this case, it appears that Sony has disclosed an apparatus and claimed the method of using it. NOWHERE is it guaranteed to work well, which is one of the safest patents to issue. If it doesn't work well, the chances are REALLY slim that anybody is going to infringe it. This isn't legal analysis, but it looks to me like Sony has paid the USPTO to provide them with some really expensive wallpaper.
Are you kidding me? What, pray tell, convinced you that the EU was the shining city on the hill that split from all known history? I always figured it was a bunch of people trying to broker power for their own benefit, that power being granted in turn for keeping some decorum of law and order. Maybe I was the cynic?
I'm hardly an anachist, but show me the government that hasn't fallen and I'll show you a young government.
I hope Europeans can stop complaining about our corrupt government, and Americans can stop whining about European governments in general, and we can all collectively recognize the lameness of basically all big world powers.
And then what? We'll all enroll in Philosophy 101 and get stoned? Ya know, they don't call the Empire an empire for nothing. Enjoy whatever moral superiority you suppose you have. I'll enjoy my days as part of the Empire, and afterwards, we'll see who had a better time.
In other news, I noticed that Google News now lets me reorganize the sections on the front page with the "Edit this customized page" link in the upper right corner. It says it is "new", but I don't know how new it is and I've never noticed it before.
I'm not that impressed by the configurability, but I was impressed by the functionality Google is getting out of a web browser. The configuration tool is drag and drop within the web page. That is pretty spiffy to me.
I can't use a higher resolution since my video card can't handle it without reducing the color quality (not enough memory), and reducing the resolution to 1024x768 or even 1152x864 just to get a 4:3 ratio would be silly.
And that has been "Storlek's Inane Inner Dialogue" for Wednesday, March 30. Tune in next time to hear a play-by-play of Storlek putting on his shoes. Will he go with Velcro or laces? Tune in to find out!
I'm not sure that I clearly see the boundaries of what you're describing. I can say that the Constitution grants the inventor the broadest patent protection he can possibly achieve, however he must have invented something in "the sciences and useful arts". 35 USC 101 defines that term as a machine, a method, a composition of matter, a product of manufacture, or an improvement of those five. This is why an implementation is required to achieve patent protection.
However, if nobody had EVER thought of "a machine to clean cotton", and you made one, the Constitution says you are indeed entitled to the patent claim "a machine to clean cotton". This does NOT mean you have patent protection on ALL cotton cleaning machines, however. In an infringement suit, your competitor would be burdened with proving that his "cotton cleaning machine" is patentably distinct from your disclosed embodiments. If your machine, in all its disclosed varations, picks through the cotton with a comb-like device, while your competitor's uses a centrifuge, they clean cotton by fundamentally different processes. They would be seen as patentably distinct inventions, and it would be VERY unlikely that the competitor is found infringing your patents. It DOES mean, however, that HIS patent claims would have to read something like, "A machine for cleaning cotton wherein the cotton is cleaned by a centrifuge" to clearly define that his machine has a distinct and separate patent protection from yours.
It basically comes down to the alleged infringer saying, "Hey, the patent holder never thought of this, I came up with doing it this way, and the difference is a non-obvious improvement (something other than changing the color or using cheaper parts)."
Just for completeness, the only other possible justification for this limitation that I can think of, is that it is to limit the patenting of concepts to things which are implementable with today's technology. But if this were the case, why would choosing a different implementation avoid violation of the patent? If a specification sheet is patentable so long as it has an implementation attached, then any vibrating controller violates the non-obvious part of the patent.
There are sections of the MPEP and case law loosely related to the ability to patent only the implementations which "are known with today's technology", etc., but they generally don't carry much weight. The reason is that a new and improved ball bearing could be added to almost any invention that uses a ball bearing and improve it. However, using a never-before-known ball bearing to improve something that uses a ball bearing is really obvious. References abound for using better ball bearings where better ball bearings are available. Where these laws and rulings DO hold weight is where someone tries to literally claim every conceivable implementation of something. In legal language, this only occurs if you claimed "means for cleaning cotton", but not "a machine for cleaning cotton". When you claim "a machine", it means you only get patent protection for what you disclosed and the obvious improvements thereof. When you claim "means for", you are indeed trying to claim the abstract notion of "something" that cleans cotton. (This is an entirely separate kettle of fish from what we've been talking about thus far. There are about 29 different reasons why the claim "means for cleaning cotton" isn't patentable, none of which reall
Is that an invitation to adopt your style of creatively spelling "implementation" at whim? I noticed you got it right at least once, bravo!
With the apparent partial exception in biotechnology, patents at least notionally must be on implementations of devices, not on general ideas.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. What I believe you are referring to as "the idea of a vibrating controller" is known as "constructive reduction to practice" and is preferably achieved by a patent application disclosure which complies with the written description and enablement requirement of 35 USC 112. It is and has always been possible to come up with the idea for "a vibrating controller", so long as the patent application includes disclosure of an embodiment of such a device that can be made and used by a person of ordinary skill in the art. When it comes to claiming the invention, there are exactly 0 statutes that preclude the inventor from claiming to have invented "a user-input device that vibrates". The ONLY thing that would prevent such a patent claim would be the prior art. I reiterate that you do not understand the meaning of "obvious" as defined by 35 USC 103 and the surrounding case law. It has nothing to do with "how hard it was" to think something up.
I agree with you that the means by which the controller is made to vibrate is very obvious, but I don't trust that you understand why. "Making something vibrate with a rotating mass" is a documented technique that is known to MEs. That, and only that, is why it is obvious.
I've never seen a vibrating desk lamp, I presume that there is no prior art for a vibrating desk lamp, and if I were to create a vibrating desk lamp, I would use a spinning mass to make it vibrate. The entire idea of vibrating desk lamps is up for grabs in terms of patent protection. Think up a good reason why you would want one, describe a way to make and use it, and the patent is yours.
On a related note, none of the few patents that I've looked at have had non-patent references.
I encourage you to look at these two patents:
6,424,333
6,275,213
You may recognize these patents as "The patents owned by Immersion that Sony allegedly infringed, prompting this entire discussion on Slashdot". Careful inspection of these patents reveals something on the order of 100 non-patent literature citations.
This speaks of a myopia on the part of the patent office.
It would speak to a myopia on the part of the patent office if it were remotely true rather than a laughably unsubstantiated allegation put forth by someone who admits to having glanced at only a few patents. Indeed, it announces with the authority of Moses delivering the Commandments to the tribe of Israel the breadth of your knowledge and experience with the patent system, to say nothing of your efforts to "not be trollish".
I hope that clears some things up for you regarding both the patent office as well as the caliber of your clever wit.
It isn't possible to patent the idea of a vibrating controller. This is explicitly forbidden, and IMNSHO, for good reason.
Hm, care to elaborate? Is there a particular statute or case law you're referring to? If so, I think you're mistaken. If you are the first person to come up with the idea of a cotton gin (vibrating controller) and file a patent that's broad enough to cover "cotton gin" ("vibrating controller"), then you get the patent for it. I'm aware of no statute that forbids such a patent, and indeed this is precisely what the system was designed to protect.
What you are not entitled to are every improvement upon that cotton gin (vibrating controller). In your disclosure, which covers how to make and use a cotton gin (vibrating controller), you can toss in some other embodiments (It might be pink, it might be made of plastic, it might have flashing LED lights) but you do not have patent protection for the non-obvious improvements that were not disclosed by your patent (a fundamentally better vibrating mechanisim, those little fans that cool your sweaty hands while you play, or a vibrating controller with a more "pleasing" form factor.)
Such methods are esoteric because they are more expensive and/or less inheriently reliable.
Not necessarily - they would simply need to argue and prove that their method is a non-obvious improvement or otherwise not disclosed by your patent. I'm not an ME, but it could be as simple as a different design for the weight that allows greater control over the vibration output. Perhaps a motor with two driveshafts and two weights could produce irregular vibration patterns. Heck just about anything so long as it is not something disclosed by your patent.
Apparently, you can attach an idea too general to be patented to an implimentation too obvious to be patented, and get a patent. I find this absurd, and believe it demonstrates a certain lack of thought on the part of the patent office.
Uh, really? The Patent Office is not part of the legislative branch of government; the Patent Office does not create the laws that define what can and cannot be patented. The Patent Office doesn't even get to decide HOW patents should be examined - the Patent Office is subjected to the rulings of the judicial branch of govnernment whenever these infringement suits are produced by judges or when a patent application reaches the board of appeals, federal circuit, or Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Patent Office just follows the laws and previous court rulings to try to be consistent and legal.
Additionally, I still don't think you fully appreciate that "obvious" as regards to patents has almost nothing to do with "obvious" in the dictionary. I've provided the following links as a highly condensed taste of the beginning of what "obvious" means regarding patents. This is like learning Computability Theory (my expertise) in 10 minutes.
MPEP 2141 See especially "Basic considerations which apply to obviousness rejections". I stress basic.
MPEP 2143 Also read through 2143.03
My thoughts on this Immersion v. Sony thing? Woah. I can't believe Sony was found infringing. I have no idea what went on during the prosecution of Immersion's patents - attorney arguments could have gutted or amplified the weight of the patent claims, but you and I have no idea until we read the prosecution history. The USPTO can only afford to do a $1000 prior art search, and both of these patents have roughly 50 references cited. The examiner doesn't appear to be asleep at the wheel, but we really have no idea what rejections were made during pros
According to the dictionary, but are you familiar with the term "obvious" as defined by 35 U.S.C. 103 and therefore how the term is used in relation to patentability? It is a completely different concept.
What sort of dope wouldn't think of a spinning eccentric mass.
A spinning mass to induce vibration may be an obvious detail of implementation, however the idea of a vibrating controller is not. For evidence of that, arcade games, home console games, handheld computer games, and PC computer games have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years of experience without any sort of "force feedback" or vibrating controller.
The patent office does need overhauled, because the examiners are either idiots or they assume that everybody else is.
What would make someone an idiot? Shooting off at the mouth about a topic you don't understand? I'm sincerely interested in your response.
Both of those patents have more than a page of cited references. You could order the prosecution history to see what rejections the examiner made and how the applicant's attorneys responded to those rejections - including allegations of obviousness based upon the cited references. (Oh yes, obviousness based upon cited references is a requirement of 35 U.S.C. 103, but not a requirement of the dictionary definition of the same term.)
I can definitely respect your opinion of the mechanical details of the invention because I could reasonably presume that you're a ME. Your knowledge of the equally complicated field of IP law appears to be none.
What would it cost to stick with your tried and true closed source software while paying a small number of guys (1 to, say, 15 depending on the size of your organization) to spend a portion of their work week (10-20%) devoted to seeing what they can do with FS/OSS? You could probably budget it as R&D for your IT department, and after those guys come through with one or two big wins (StarOffice, OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird) the investment would either pay for itself, begin to pay for itself, or look REALLY good to your investors.
Whaddya know, it would probably increase the job satisfaction of your IT staff, a notoriously frustrating job, and could contribute to a geek-friendly atmosphere at your company, making it easier to hire and retain more qualified IT workers.
I'm being realistic here - for most companies, it simply isn't reasonable to expect them to ditch Microsoft or whatever closed source vendor they're using overnight. Just being honest here, a lot of FS/OSS doesn't work very well, but some does.
That said, nearly everybody deals with spam, Windows/ActiveX/Outlook/IE exploits/viruses, and the high cost of dealing with these vendors. FS/OSS isn't an entirely free lunch - big deal. You'd be an idiot to say that FS/OSS is going to solve all your problems overnight, but you'd be a bigger idiot to deny that there is a lot of potential in FS/OSS. You'll look like a real ass when your competition has researched, invested in, and profited from FS/OSS while you're still using Windows 2000 and IE 5.0 because "it's trusted and secure" or whatever the FUD of the week is.