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Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

inventropy.us

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Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#31

Post by austincheney »

carrotleads wrote: post #26
austincheney wrote: post #19

I included a full language specification with my patent application. Reading boring specifications can also be a drag, so I even wrote a version that sorts information by color. Its all available on http://mailmarkup.org/ If you are aware of any prior art please do the right thing. I have not been able to find any, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.

Can you tell us in 2-3 sentences the application of this patent and then it would easier to come up with prior art examples. Like hosay said is it like a "novel" bus ticket design but for emails.

The intended goal of this thing is to fully describe email threads in a manner that is durable. To my knowledge, even today, there are no structures or grammars that are capable of describing email content and fully retaining their original definitions after full exposure the various software of the email platform. Rich text format comes close, though.

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#32

Post by analog31 »

alok-g wrote: post #12
elliotanderson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filing a patent application costs around $180-$280 [1], not including the other Patent Office fees for Examination/Maintenance. Add onto that the legal fees for marking up the claims, charged out in the $XXX/hr range and you are looking at a few thousand easily. A quick search turned up a 2011 American Intellectual Property Law Association survey suggesting a median cost of $10k [2]. Having in house legal team to tak…

Keep in mind that this is the costs for filing in one country. Each country where the invention needs to be protected needs its own filing, though this would generally be cheaper since much of the work (patent attorney fees) is already done when filing the first one. I have heard that big companies end up something half-a-million dollars for pursuing, what they consider worthy inventions, in all significant economies…

A patent holder only needs to make your life miserable in one country. At one place where I worked, we used to patent in:

1. USA 2. The main competitor's home country

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#33

Post by hosay123 »

austincheney wrote: post #27
hosay123 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I saw it, it's some crazy XML schema for an e-mail message that nobody has ever used. That's like me patenting some bus ticket design I got carried away making on a rainy afternoon. So that's why I'm asking, what makes your approach worth protecting? It looks like just another XML schema from this angle

Anybody can protect an invention. The average 8K-18K in average lawyers fees is trivial. Building a team and acquiring the necessary funding to launch a business investment based upon an invention is a far greater challenge. Not everybody is at a stage where quitting their job to work on such things full time to build a product complete enough to present to angle investors is a viable option. If it were so simple the…

That's what I find so perplexing about this patent in particular – email is only useful due to interoperability, so patenting the underlying representation of an email is a non-starter for general purpose use.

I really hope you don't have general purpose use in mind, I'm guessing you're hoping it's more for something along the lines of EDI applications between governments, or something else. I just don't get what it's for.

At risk of going blue in the face, where is the value in this patent that I'm not seeing?

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#34

Post by cushychicken »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #29
dropit_sphere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, patent obfuscation is baldly contrary to the purpose of patents, which is to make the knowledge contained in them available to the public. Were someone to start a startup where users got paid-by-the-view for making educational videos, that would not be too far off from the original intent of patents .

Most of today's patents don't contain any valuable knowledge that could be useful for the public. Also the invention does not. So it is not that bad. Of course, there are some patents that could contain some valuable information, but today's patent attorneys are drilled to hide any valuable information from public.

That is actually part of the purpose of a patent attorney - to mention enough information about how the idea works that shows it's novel, but not enough that you can build a competitor. (According to a patent attorney I discussed this with a long time ago.)

Bass-ackwards, I know.

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#35

Post by entendre »

andrewfong wrote: post #21
robotys wrote: post #4

Why on earth i did not have read anywhere about USPTO officials return a letter to this so called patent troll with simple reply: "Explain this pattern in layman language." USPTO officials should have the power to inquire pattern applicants about their pattern until complete understanding, not to work alone and try to understand it by them self. It is hard to understand something technical, and it is utmost difficult…

They sort of do. Each patent has both a description, written in more or less understandable terms (and often including diagrams) and the claims, which is what the post references (e.g. "a system or method ..."). The point of the legalese in the claims is to explicitly define the boundaries of the patent. By way of analogy, imagine if you had to describe the boundaries of a piece of land you owned, but the land wasn't…

(((((Let me give you an unironic bouquet of parentheses)))))

Like a golf ball each facet of the American government has a beautiful and unique center when you scrape off the aerodynamic divits.

I'm sure "helping" the USPO is just as fascinating as redesigning the triscallion for DOT.

Or helping disenfranchised voters find their polling place "round back the municipal building where they got the hog shows."

I heard Tufte was giving a speech at a local coffee shop owned by some new ycombinator startup next week after Eric S. comes by to make sure everyone's in line with Google's new coffee brand.

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#36

Post by beepp »

austincheney wrote: post #19

I included a full language specification with my patent application. Reading boring specifications can also be a drag, so I even wrote a version that sorts information by color. Its all available on http://mailmarkup.org/ If you are aware of any prior art please do the right thing. I have not been able to find any, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.

I have a few thoughts:

- Your patent application is much more readable than most. That's a good start.

- hosay123 has already said basically what I would've - you may have found something that no one else has done 100% before, but it is clearly very similar to HTML in email with a few minor differences. Here are a few examples that I think would bring both the idea's novelty and non-obviousness into question: http://www.boutell.com/wusage/8.0/eml.html

http://petewarden.com/2008/10/15/an-xml-format-for-email/

https://www.google.com/patents/US7970842?dq=electronic+mail+...

My question to you is: what will happen if you are granted this patent? You've been working on this for 4 years at least, judging by the 2009 date on the application, so my main argument would simply be that you could've probably found a more interesting use for your time. It pains me to say this, since I can tell you've spent a lot of time on your application, but honestly I would feel worse if I didn't say anything.

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#37

Post by monochromatic »

elliotanderson wrote: post #8
vishaldpatel wrote: post #2

Does it cost a large company more to file a shitty patent than it does the community to crush it?

Filing a patent application costs around $180-$280 [1], not including the other Patent Office fees for Examination/Maintenance. Add onto that the legal fees for marking up the claims, charged out in the $XXX/hr range and you are looking at a few thousand easily. A quick search turned up a 2011 American Intellectual Property Law Association survey suggesting a median cost of $10k [2]. Having in house legal team to tak…

> $180-280

That's just for the basic filing fee. You also have to pay the search fee and the examination fee.

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#38

Post by PythonicAlpha »

cushychicken wrote: post #34
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of today's patents don't contain any valuable knowledge that could be useful for the public. Also the invention does not. So it is not that bad. Of course, there are some patents that could contain some valuable information, but today's patent attorneys are drilled to hide any valuable information from public.

That is actually part of the purpose of a patent attorney - to mention enough information about how the idea works that shows it's novel, but not enough that you can build a competitor. (According to a patent attorney I discussed this with a long time ago.) Bass-ackwards, I know.

I also have my information from real patent attorneys.

This little example just shows, how distorted the whole patent system has already become. (and it is not the only example)

Re: Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

#39

Post by PythonicAlpha »

robotys wrote: post #4

Why on earth i did not have read anywhere about USPTO officials return a letter to this so called patent troll with simple reply: "Explain this pattern in layman language." USPTO officials should have the power to inquire pattern applicants about their pattern until complete understanding, not to work alone and try to understand it by them self. It is hard to understand something technical, and it is utmost difficult…

The problem is deeper. The USPTO just does not want to ask further questions.

The reason: It is funded from granted patents. If patents are not granted, the funds are down. And no director will like it to say at the end of the year, that US companies are less innovative than in the last year -- or worse, less innovative than ... (name a country).

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