Like http://www.peertopatent.org/ but with the momentum of the SE platform/network. Good stuff.
Victory Lap for Ask Patents
71–80 of 155 posts
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#72> The number of actually novel, non-obvious inventions in the software industry that maybe, in some universe, deserve a government-granted monopoly is, perhaps, two. Any idea to which two he might be referring?
I sort of like http://www.google.com/patents/US4464650 (Ziv/Lempel compression), which doesn't seem obvious to me
Can't patent algorithms though, so, can't be that.
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#73So, this sounds great and all, but I don't see any proof that it was ask patents that caused the examiner to find this, rather than the examiner's standard search? In fact, the search history, on PAIR (look for 4-11-2013 SRFW Search information including classification, databases and other search related notes) does not say ask patents was used, nor does the search strategy (document code SRNT). It could be the USPTO…
The USPTO explicitly asked us to set up this site to help get the public involved in getting prior art to the examiners. (Press release: http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2012/12-60.jsp. ) So, while it's entirely possible that the examiner might have eventually found this without us, which is far from certain, it seems reasonable to assume that they saw it on the site. Which means that even if you assume they would have f…
I'm aware the USPTO asked you to set up ask patents. The USPTO has a number of pilot programs, and i'm involved in some.
My only question is whether AskPatents was how it got to the USPTO.
I don't see why it's reasonable to assume that they saw it on the site considering most examiners still don't do that sort of thing. Most of them search the USPTO approved databases, internally, and go about their way. This is in fact, what the search strategy/et al says happened. Given that, i think the burden falls on you to show some likelihood here.
For example, do you have anything to say that any significant percentage of examiners (IE > 10%) use askpatents on a regular basis? I would be pleasantly shocked if you did.
The rest is not the argument i am making, the only argument I am making is: "Do you have any evidence that your site is the reason the USPTO found this?"
From what I can tell, your answer is "no".
If you do, great!
No offense meant, of course, my problem is if you declare victory when you were not actually involved, this will actually make things worse - people will think they are helping solve the issue, yet, if the PTO actually isn't using your data heavily, they aren't.
Again, don't get me wrong, i think askpatents is a great idea, and i'd hope and love to find out it's actually being used heavily by the PTO. I can't find any stats on that, and given the history of prior pilot programs/etc, i'm very skeptical.
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#74Idea: Make reading patents a mandatory exercise for students. Assignment: squash a patent application.
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#75How about just increasing the costs for filing and maintaining a patent as a quick way of getting rid of some of the really weak ones? Say double the fees and see what happens.
Any flat increase would just make it less likely that the big guys will have competition in their "most patents filed" competition.
Also, given we just switch from first-invented to first-filed, it is particularly onerous for those garage-based small inventors as a big corp can easily justify the cost.
What might make more sense is to tax intellectual property. We tax physical property with much less value than a "successful" software patent (ahem, Eolas?), why not tax the non-physical property as well? If you make it progressive based on the number of patents owned/controlled, it will also limit the usability of maintaining warchests of patents for controlling markets.
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#76> “Sometimes you have a picture that you want to scale to different resolutions. When this happens, you might want to have multiple versions of the image available at different resolutions, so you can pick the one that’s closest and scale that.” This is basically mip-mapping, and was described in a 1983 paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=801126 .
I read that Lance Williams invented this technique in 1983, but I remember seeing a documentary on Tron where they had to come up with a technique during the lightcycle race to reduce the Moire effect on the grid and I could have swore that they invented mipmapping to do that, even though it was a year earlier.
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#77> An example might help. Imagine a simple application with these three claims: > 1. A method of transportation > 2. The method of transportation in claim 1, wherein there is an engine connected to wheels > 3. The method of transportation in claim 2, wherein the engine runs on water > Notice that claim 2 mentions claim 1, and narrows it... in other words, it claims a strict subset of things from claim 1. > Now, suppos…
Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty certain that you're wrong. There are 2 types of claims, dependent and independent. dependent are those that refer to a previous claim and expand on it, (2 and 3 above). Claim 1 above is independent. The dependent claims are taken together with those they reference, but the independent claims if accepted are taken independently. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claim_(patent)#Basic_types…
Thanks
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#78Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Shame there's not a way to do the same thing to existing software patents. What's stopping anyone from crowd sourcing a database of prior art for existing patents that would invalidate them if it came to it? A valid defense against patent infringement is to show that the patent shouldn't have been issued in the first place, right? So a database of Ready Made Legal Defense sounds good. Am I missing something?
Showing a patent clerk prior art is much easier than showing prior art in a courtroom. For instance at the minimum you need to bring in an expert witness to explain the prior art. Then you have to contend with the fact that they will bring in their own expert witness to explain how your example is bogus and you both get to cross-examine. etc. etc.
Anyone can file a request for re-examination with the PTO.
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/stats/Reexamination_Information...
Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents
#80somewhat active on Ask Patents. In fact, I've submitted an answer that is pretty sure to kill at least one Google patent application, and possibly another from Uniloc.
A few comments on this article:
1) This is a very unusual case; most answers (and almost all questions) from "lay engineers" completely misunderstand the scope of the patent, since they don't even know what claims are. And even if they do, they are very lax at interpreting claims. And even then, most posters frequently misunderstand the terms used (case in point, Spolsky's very post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6084884). All this leads them to post irrelevant prior art.
That does not mean there are no useful answers at all; there are, but they mostly come from people who are somewhat versed in patent law (such as agents, lawyers and examiners). Some re-wording of claims, such as what Micah Seigel does in his posts, helps, but for the proportion of useful answers to go up, we need more education about how patents work for this to be useful. It's really not that hard; heck I did it!
2) It's wayyy too soon for a victory lap because that was only the first non-final rejection, for which a response has already been filed. Statistically, this application will undergo 2.5 more rejections [1] and (based on my guestimate) at least one Request for Continued Examination (RCE) before being abandoned or (more likely considering the applicant) issued with much narrower claims.
3) Patents are worded so not (primarily) to be obfuscating, but rather because of legal, technical and some silly historical reasons. For instance, pronouns are very rarely used because any indefiniteness can be cause for invalidation. Obfuscation will not help much, because you are not trying to get it past lay engineers, but patent examiners, who have a technical background and are (usually) adept at reading patentese. Complaining about how hard it is to read patents is like a Blub programmer complaining about Lisp. You simply need to learn the language to appreciate what you are reading.
4) Most "software" patents (which can't even be cleanly categorized as such) are not crappy, at least with respect to all other patents. There are studies presenting this view [2, 3], but it's also based on my experience having read hundreds of patents. Almost none are revolutionary, but just as few are really as bad as the media portrays. The PTO has gotten pretty good at finding prior art (interestingly around the same time Google came around), and the really broad patents are dying out.
The "crappy software patents" view is common mostly because tech media routinely publishes uninformed (or disinformed? [4]) rhetoric, mostly because they garner some easy rageviews, and audiences accept it without critical thought. I do think the bar for non-obviousness should be different, but solving that is a difficult, almost-philosophical problem.
5) In response to various comments on this thread regarding pay-for-prior art schemes, initiatives such as Article One Partners already exist.
I am not a patent lawyer or an agent, but I believe in the patent system, as I have actually worked for the mythical small-guy firm that was ripped off by the big guys and almost died, but eventually prevailed with patents. You don't hear these stories much because typically the small guys don't have the PR budget for it [4]. (And also because many of those with patents turn to trolls, who like to keep a low profile.)
I have only recently become personally invested in the patent system, but I want all inventions, including mine, to be truly novel and worthwhile. And I want people to get off their butts and do something rather than complain about patents on HN. This is why I support Ask Patents.
[1] http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml [2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=650921 [3] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=970083 [4] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html