I see a broadly titled patent like this one as a mechanism scaring small companies into settling. I wonder if it is worth building systems anymore.
Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
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Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#42I should get a patent on "making money by asserting patents". Then I would only grant myself a license and hence have the only patent left that can make money. Seriously. The way out is a blanket "No software patents" statement from congress; or along the line of what Twitter is doing where all inventors have to agree if their patent is used offensively (although lawyers at my company tell me that such a restriction…
Too late ( https://www.google.com/patents/WO2004095226A2?cl=en&dq=%22pa... ). Dude beat you to it by several years.
Aww man! I had this idea too.
Are they doing anything with this patent?
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#43Sometimes I think that obviously ridiculous patents like this are a good thing. They're so absurd that they're nearly satire, and satire is often an excellent critical weapon. How out-of-control does the system get before judges and lawmakers clearly see that it's not operating as intended? Not much further.
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#44The title's of patents are often misleading. Also, prior art allows this patent to be easily (and cheaply) fought in a lawsuit
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#45Bollocks! Ok, if one has to defend against this patent, how to go about it?
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#46I should get a patent on "making money by asserting patents". Then I would only grant myself a license and hence have the only patent left that can make money. Seriously. The way out is a blanket "No software patents" statement from congress; or along the line of what Twitter is doing where all inventors have to agree if their patent is used offensively (although lawyers at my company tell me that such a restriction…
Too late ( https://www.google.com/patents/WO2004095226A2?cl=en&dq=%22pa... ). Dude beat you to it by several years.
They should start using that against patent trolls.
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all, only that it's not what people are going to think it is by looking at the title.
I assumed that nobody could think that the title could be what was patented ;)
As someone not familiar with how patenting really works, that's exactly what I thought at first, and reading patents isn't exactly a clear way to understand what is "actually patented" either. In this case when I read it I understood, but sometimes reading them leaves me MORE confuses.
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#48Question: If I build a start up here in Bolivia, it gets big among Latinamerican users - can I take a huge giant shit on the US patent system? Or does the patent system apply if my website application code is hosted on US servers?
I'm curious about this too. Do patents only apply to US owned/registered companies or can companies/people from other countries get in trouble for hosting patent-infringing code on Amazon/etc
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#49This is another example of a patent with a specific scope being given an incredibly broad title. This patent is actually on selling web site commenters the ability to have their comment appear in some kind of distinctive format, which might be a different font, or it might be appearing before the other comments.
Are you trying to imply that claim 1 has anything, and I mean anything , inventive? BTW this was filed in 2011, not in 1996...
I'm not aware of any existing examples of websites that let you pay for comment bling on individual comments, letting you preview your bling to get the style you prefer as described in section (b) of claim 1. So yes, it does seem novel (which is different to "inventive" but is the criteria required for patents).
There are plenty of comment engines that offer avatars or paid subscriber adornments but few of these are per comment, none are pay-per-comment, none offer different prices depending on the chosen style (the "dynamically adjustable" in the claim) and none let you preview the adornment at upgrade time (instead of at comment time).
The question is not whether the idea is good, whether the idea is radically different -- but whether you've seen this specific set of steps used before.
Re: Patent US8296192 – Method for making money on the internet
#50I should get a patent on "making money by asserting patents". Then I would only grant myself a license and hence have the only patent left that can make money. Seriously. The way out is a blanket "No software patents" statement from congress; or along the line of what Twitter is doing where all inventors have to agree if their patent is used offensively (although lawyers at my company tell me that such a restriction…
Too late ( https://www.google.com/patents/WO2004095226A2?cl=en&dq=%22pa... ). Dude beat you to it by several years.
Does that really matter? It apply for a patent and you can patent stuff that is clearly not patentable and sue people left and right. :-/
It is sad this serious problem has been so poorly addressed for so long. If we are lucky in the next couple of years at least the most egregious attacks on business using a broken patent and legal system will be reduced, though even that may fail to be done :-(