If the backlog were eliminated, you wouldn't know how many employees to retain, because it would be based entirely on the number of filings you got that day. Having a backlog means that you can keep 6000 examiners on staff and not worry about having to lay them off because you ran out of work for them to do.
Also, the reason we have a patent examination system rather than a patent registration system with examination-upon-litigation is because (a) people would register claims of ridiculous scope and then assert them out-of-court against other people by demanding royalties and threatening to sue, stifling innovation; and (b) patents have value in terms of encouraging venture capital investment, employment, and commercialization, and this value would be eliminated without some up-front checks for validity.
While there was a case a few years back where someone was dipping into customer deposit accounts, I've never heard any reports of examiners being on-the-take to process an application in a certain way. If you've heard something different, feel free to enlighten us.
There is something called a "petition to make special", which in some cases requires a fee, but this is specifically authorized by regulations.
In fact, there are various mechanisms (performance metrics and docketing, both for examiners and their supervisors) which discourage or prevent working on applications out of turn. Examiners do have some flexibility for managing their dockets, but the general push is to work on the earliest-filed applications first.
A bit hypocritical of you, since you're essentially concluding that the US is behind these accusations when you have not one whit of evidence to support that assertion.
This depends entirely on your definition of "responsible". For instance, was Lincoln responsible for the over 600k killed in the American Civil War? And who's responsible for the deaths caused in a suicide bombing in Iraq?
Righthaven has been at this for a number of weeks. Basically, they clearly don't understand how useful people linking to the LVRJ articles are
Actually, they don't care how useful it is. They are in this to extort money from people, regardless of the consequences to the newspapers.
It's the newspapers who don't understand that linking on the tubes is important to them. Instead, they see the promise of a fast buck from Righthaven, and they trip over themselves to get at the money.
Patent law is set up to permit the exact opposite of what you suggest. Dependent claims are there for the express purpose of possibly allowing the patent to stand even when a challenge to the validity of an independent claim results in a finding of anticipation or obviousness. (A lot of patent applicants don't really use dependent claims to good effect, though, and instead just rattle off a bunch of well-known things in the art that would be easily found separately in the prior art and would also be obvious to combine with the invention.)
Patents are an inexact thing. The government doesn't pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to blow on examining each patent (the number is more like hundreds or thousands, depending). Examination is about doing as good a search as possible in the time allotted, and thus drastically reducing the number of lawsuits brought to assert overbroad claims. Thus, there needs to be some amount of flexibility, so that if the examination doesn't dig up obscure prior art that is later presented at trial by a company with millions of dollars on the line, the patentee at least has something to fall back on.
Note that the law only specifies that the penalty is a maximum of $500 per violation, with the government getting half and the relator (a member of the general public suing on behalf of the government) getting the other half.
It's not really clear whether a "violation" is per product or per some larger unit of production. It's also not clear what the appropriate damages are for these cases. The courts have wide discretion to assign damages between the maximum of $500 per violation and an infinitesimal amount of money per violation. So, if the court says so, some company that manufactures a billion units of a product could end up paying out a billionth of a dollar each for a grand total of a dollar.
There are very few of these laws - called "qui tam" laws - on the federal books in the US. The most commonly seen one is the False Claims Act, an old old law meant to allow private citizens to sue government contractors on behalf of the government when those contractors perpetrate fraud on the government, with the relator getting a small portion of any damages awarded to the government.
Sure, I'm completely unsurprised that a statement in which lots of words were changed to other words now has a whole new meaning.
And regardless of whether you believe the US's military actions are invasion or liberation, the plain simple truth is that the actions undertaken by Wikileaks will have no effect in terms of causing the US to stop those actions sooner, but will have at least some impact in-theater that puts lives at further risk.
You're missing the point. The point is that posting a copy of the abstract is not only pointless, but actually detracts from the conversation, because the abstract has absolutely nothing to do with why a patented invention is not anticipated by or obvious in view of the prior art.
So, here's claim 1:
A computer readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for performing a method for shutting down an operating system, the method comprising the steps of:
receiving a command to initiate operating system shut down;
sending a shut down request to a graphical user interface application without a top level window;
receiving no response to the shut down request with a predetermined period of time;
determining that the graphical user interface application without the top level window is not hung;
automatically terminating the graphical user interface application without the top level window;
determining whether any graphical user interface applications with a top level window delay shut down;
prompting a user for a user command to selectively shut down the graphical user interface applications with the top level window that delay shut down after determining that the graphical user interface applications with the top level window delay shut down; and
then after the determining step, automatically terminating all running applications responsive to the user command received from the user that has been prompted.
Wikileaks attacks nasty governments all over the world
So what? So does Al Qaeda. Attacking nasty governments is not inherently a good thing.
In the case of Wikileaks, the short-term political goal of discrediting the United States is being pushed forward without consideration for the long-term effects on the state of the world. I mean, come on. The US isn't going to pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan (or avoid its next military confrontation, for that matter) just because of Wikileaks. Making the US mission more difficult through leaks of classified information only increases the cost in blood of these military actions. It's the same preposterous logic that Iraqi anti-US insurgents have held, that continuing to blow people up will somehow make the US leave sooner rather than later. Just accept that the US is doing these things, and it will be over a lot sooner and with a lot less pain.
I agree. If you already have this much separation anxiety, you're asking for nothing but grief and stress in your life by being apart from your family for so long.
Not only can you patent an ink recipe as a method, but you can also patent the ink itself as a composition of matter. Really, this is the sort of thing that patents have traditionally covered for hundreds of years. The real question is whether there's prior art out there that didn't come up during examination.
No, they'll always find a way to make money. They may bitch and moan the whole time about how much more money they wish they were making, but they'll make more than their fair share, all the same.
Keep in mind that this is just a preliminary injunction. The case itself still has to be tried, but the injunction prevents funding for embryonic stem cell research so that the trial can be completed. I'm not a lawyer, but I think that issuing a preliminary injunction requires a finding that the moving party would suffer irreparable harm and that there's a likelihood of success at trial. There may be other factors involved, so if there's a Slashlawyer around here, feel free to fill in the blanks.
There are lots of alternatives to oil. Some of them are even renewable.
The only real alternative to helium (for some applications) is to make more helium. But the processes for helium manufacture are pretty much (a) nuclear fusion of deuterium, which would be great if we had a sustainable way to do this, and (b) nuclear decay involving the release of alpha particles, which is really where most of our current supplies of helium actually came from in the first place.
Would running out of helium mean rioting in the streets? Well, no, probably not. The uses for helium really aren't all that key to Joe Sixpack's daily life. Running out of oil today probably would cause mass rioting, but fortunately, we have technology within our grasp to achieve the elimination of oil as a fuel source long before we actually burn it all - the only remaining question is whether the world's governments will do what it takes to cause worldwide adoption of those alternatives.
Yeah, we get software-related applications all the time, and usually, those applications are routed to people who examine that sort of thing nearly every day. We search them and reject them against the prior art the same as any other application. The requirements for patent eligibility under 35 USC 101 and the associated case law prevent the direct patenting of software, because software is not a method, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. But there are ways to write the claims so that they're not directed to the software itself.
As for searching, we mostly use a searchable database of all 7.7 million issued patents plus all the application publications since 2001 (when publication of applications started). For non-patent literature, Google Scholar is a good tool, although we also have subscriptions to various other searchable databases for that stuff. We also have a few other databases more relevant to foreign patents, but a lot of those are abstract-only.
On a side note, the threshold for obviousness is not that a "domain expert" would find the invention to be obvious. Rather, it's that a person having ordinary skill in the art would find it obvious in view of the prior art. That's a higher threshold for obviousness than the skill of a "domain expert", because a person having only ordinary skill in the art would presumably find less stuff to be obvious, being less well-versed in the more sophisticated realms of the relevant art. Also - and this is why the Slashdotters' technique for patent examination doesn't fly - we can't just assert obviousness without showing evidence. We have to make at least a prima facie case of obviousness (such that the burden of proof shifts to the applicant, who then has to show why it isn't obvious), and that means citing references to cover every limitation in the claim and providing a rationale for the combination of those references. That's a pretty complex subject in itself, far more so than I could cover here. The controlling case law on the subject is the Supreme Court's KSR v. Teleflex, which draws heavily from their earlier decision in Graham v. John Deere.
Of my 15 granted US patents, I think only 3 or 4 went through without at least one non-final rejection.
Looking at this from the other side, the first-action allowance rate is even lower than that. Probably much lower. Virtually every application has *something* wrong with it, and most of them get prior art rejections.
Examiners and attorneys both usually dislike first-action allowances in general. For examiners, it suggests that the search might have been incomplete, and rumors persist that first-action allowances are a red flag to our quality control people. For attorneys, it suggests that they weren't aggressive enough in writing their claims and that they missed out on some claim scope they otherwise could have obtained. However, there are some cases where the applicants aren't interested in claim scope at all (especially when the application is assigned to the federal government) and they file really really detailed claims for which no prior art rejections are possible.
Slashdot Mirror
You're probably still covered until you run out of teeth. Remember to brush and floss!
unborn fetuses
Thank goodness the born fetuses are safe.
If the backlog were eliminated, you wouldn't know how many employees to retain, because it would be based entirely on the number of filings you got that day. Having a backlog means that you can keep 6000 examiners on staff and not worry about having to lay them off because you ran out of work for them to do.
Also, the reason we have a patent examination system rather than a patent registration system with examination-upon-litigation is because (a) people would register claims of ridiculous scope and then assert them out-of-court against other people by demanding royalties and threatening to sue, stifling innovation; and (b) patents have value in terms of encouraging venture capital investment, employment, and commercialization, and this value would be eliminated without some up-front checks for validity.
While there was a case a few years back where someone was dipping into customer deposit accounts, I've never heard any reports of examiners being on-the-take to process an application in a certain way. If you've heard something different, feel free to enlighten us.
There is something called a "petition to make special", which in some cases requires a fee, but this is specifically authorized by regulations.
In fact, there are various mechanisms (performance metrics and docketing, both for examiners and their supervisors) which discourage or prevent working on applications out of turn. Examiners do have some flexibility for managing their dockets, but the general push is to work on the earliest-filed applications first.
He wouldn't bother to tweet out "Aaargh", he'd just say it. Which is why he really needs voice-to-text on his cell phone.
These words were spoken in 1932 by Adolf Hitler.
I wonder.... If it were one day revealed that Hitler was a huge fan of macaroni and cheese, would it put Kraft out of business?
So much for all the propaganda and bullshit, eh?
A bit hypocritical of you, since you're essentially concluding that the US is behind these accusations when you have not one whit of evidence to support that assertion.
This depends entirely on your definition of "responsible". For instance, was Lincoln responsible for the over 600k killed in the American Civil War? And who's responsible for the deaths caused in a suicide bombing in Iraq?
Righthaven has been at this for a number of weeks. Basically, they clearly don't understand how useful people linking to the LVRJ articles are
Actually, they don't care how useful it is. They are in this to extort money from people, regardless of the consequences to the newspapers.
It's the newspapers who don't understand that linking on the tubes is important to them. Instead, they see the promise of a fast buck from Righthaven, and they trip over themselves to get at the money.
So you're saying, make it look like WarGames?
Patent law is set up to permit the exact opposite of what you suggest. Dependent claims are there for the express purpose of possibly allowing the patent to stand even when a challenge to the validity of an independent claim results in a finding of anticipation or obviousness. (A lot of patent applicants don't really use dependent claims to good effect, though, and instead just rattle off a bunch of well-known things in the art that would be easily found separately in the prior art and would also be obvious to combine with the invention.)
Patents are an inexact thing. The government doesn't pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to blow on examining each patent (the number is more like hundreds or thousands, depending). Examination is about doing as good a search as possible in the time allotted, and thus drastically reducing the number of lawsuits brought to assert overbroad claims. Thus, there needs to be some amount of flexibility, so that if the examination doesn't dig up obscure prior art that is later presented at trial by a company with millions of dollars on the line, the patentee at least has something to fall back on.
Note that the law only specifies that the penalty is a maximum of $500 per violation, with the government getting half and the relator (a member of the general public suing on behalf of the government) getting the other half.
It's not really clear whether a "violation" is per product or per some larger unit of production. It's also not clear what the appropriate damages are for these cases. The courts have wide discretion to assign damages between the maximum of $500 per violation and an infinitesimal amount of money per violation. So, if the court says so, some company that manufactures a billion units of a product could end up paying out a billionth of a dollar each for a grand total of a dollar.
There are very few of these laws - called "qui tam" laws - on the federal books in the US. The most commonly seen one is the False Claims Act, an old old law meant to allow private citizens to sue government contractors on behalf of the government when those contractors perpetrate fraud on the government, with the relator getting a small portion of any damages awarded to the government.
Sure, I'm completely unsurprised that a statement in which lots of words were changed to other words now has a whole new meaning.
And regardless of whether you believe the US's military actions are invasion or liberation, the plain simple truth is that the actions undertaken by Wikileaks will have no effect in terms of causing the US to stop those actions sooner, but will have at least some impact in-theater that puts lives at further risk.
You're missing the point. The point is that posting a copy of the abstract is not only pointless, but actually detracts from the conversation, because the abstract has absolutely nothing to do with why a patented invention is not anticipated by or obvious in view of the prior art.
So, here's claim 1:
A computer readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for performing a method for shutting down an operating system, the method comprising the steps of:
receiving a command to initiate operating system shut down;
sending a shut down request to a graphical user interface application without a top level window;
receiving no response to the shut down request with a predetermined period of time;
determining that the graphical user interface application without the top level window is not hung;
automatically terminating the graphical user interface application without the top level window;
determining whether any graphical user interface applications with a top level window delay shut down;
prompting a user for a user command to selectively shut down the graphical user interface applications with the top level window that delay shut down after determining that the graphical user interface applications with the top level window delay shut down; and
then after the determining step, automatically terminating all running applications responsive to the user command received from the user that has been prompted.
Wikileaks attacks nasty governments all over the world
So what? So does Al Qaeda. Attacking nasty governments is not inherently a good thing.
In the case of Wikileaks, the short-term political goal of discrediting the United States is being pushed forward without consideration for the long-term effects on the state of the world. I mean, come on. The US isn't going to pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan (or avoid its next military confrontation, for that matter) just because of Wikileaks. Making the US mission more difficult through leaks of classified information only increases the cost in blood of these military actions. It's the same preposterous logic that Iraqi anti-US insurgents have held, that continuing to blow people up will somehow make the US leave sooner rather than later. Just accept that the US is doing these things, and it will be over a lot sooner and with a lot less pain.
I agree. If you already have this much separation anxiety, you're asking for nothing but grief and stress in your life by being apart from your family for so long.
Handwriting is not a necessary skill any more.
I would argue that handwriting is still a necessary skill. Penmanship, on the other hand, is outdated.
Note that "clear conscience" actually means "sufficient warning given to client to avoid liability in eventual malpractice lawsuit".
According to an old Geocities page, they are things that fly around in the sky.
I am to understand that they occasionally flip out and kill people.
Nah, those are Ninjas, not UFOs
Arrr, they be Pirates, not Ninjas, ye landlubber!
Not only can you patent an ink recipe as a method, but you can also patent the ink itself as a composition of matter. Really, this is the sort of thing that patents have traditionally covered for hundreds of years. The real question is whether there's prior art out there that didn't come up during examination.
No, they'll always find a way to make money. They may bitch and moan the whole time about how much more money they wish they were making, but they'll make more than their fair share, all the same.
Keep in mind that this is just a preliminary injunction. The case itself still has to be tried, but the injunction prevents funding for embryonic stem cell research so that the trial can be completed. I'm not a lawyer, but I think that issuing a preliminary injunction requires a finding that the moving party would suffer irreparable harm and that there's a likelihood of success at trial. There may be other factors involved, so if there's a Slashlawyer around here, feel free to fill in the blanks.
There are lots of alternatives to oil. Some of them are even renewable.
The only real alternative to helium (for some applications) is to make more helium. But the processes for helium manufacture are pretty much (a) nuclear fusion of deuterium, which would be great if we had a sustainable way to do this, and (b) nuclear decay involving the release of alpha particles, which is really where most of our current supplies of helium actually came from in the first place.
Would running out of helium mean rioting in the streets? Well, no, probably not. The uses for helium really aren't all that key to Joe Sixpack's daily life. Running out of oil today probably would cause mass rioting, but fortunately, we have technology within our grasp to achieve the elimination of oil as a fuel source long before we actually burn it all - the only remaining question is whether the world's governments will do what it takes to cause worldwide adoption of those alternatives.
Yeah, we get software-related applications all the time, and usually, those applications are routed to people who examine that sort of thing nearly every day. We search them and reject them against the prior art the same as any other application. The requirements for patent eligibility under 35 USC 101 and the associated case law prevent the direct patenting of software, because software is not a method, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. But there are ways to write the claims so that they're not directed to the software itself.
As for searching, we mostly use a searchable database of all 7.7 million issued patents plus all the application publications since 2001 (when publication of applications started). For non-patent literature, Google Scholar is a good tool, although we also have subscriptions to various other searchable databases for that stuff. We also have a few other databases more relevant to foreign patents, but a lot of those are abstract-only.
On a side note, the threshold for obviousness is not that a "domain expert" would find the invention to be obvious. Rather, it's that a person having ordinary skill in the art would find it obvious in view of the prior art. That's a higher threshold for obviousness than the skill of a "domain expert", because a person having only ordinary skill in the art would presumably find less stuff to be obvious, being less well-versed in the more sophisticated realms of the relevant art. Also - and this is why the Slashdotters' technique for patent examination doesn't fly - we can't just assert obviousness without showing evidence. We have to make at least a prima facie case of obviousness (such that the burden of proof shifts to the applicant, who then has to show why it isn't obvious), and that means citing references to cover every limitation in the claim and providing a rationale for the combination of those references. That's a pretty complex subject in itself, far more so than I could cover here. The controlling case law on the subject is the Supreme Court's KSR v. Teleflex, which draws heavily from their earlier decision in Graham v. John Deere.
Of my 15 granted US patents, I think only 3 or 4 went through without at least one non-final rejection.
Looking at this from the other side, the first-action allowance rate is even lower than that. Probably much lower. Virtually every application has *something* wrong with it, and most of them get prior art rejections.
Examiners and attorneys both usually dislike first-action allowances in general. For examiners, it suggests that the search might have been incomplete, and rumors persist that first-action allowances are a red flag to our quality control people. For attorneys, it suggests that they weren't aggressive enough in writing their claims and that they missed out on some claim scope they otherwise could have obtained. However, there are some cases where the applicants aren't interested in claim scope at all (especially when the application is assigned to the federal government) and they file really really detailed claims for which no prior art rejections are possible.