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Victory Lap for Ask Patents

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#61

Post by mattip »

jackschultz wrote: post #43

> How cool would it be if Apple, Samsung, Oracle and Google got into a Mexican Standoff on Ask Patents? If each of those companies had three or four engineers dedicating a few hours every day to picking off their competitors’ applications, the number of granted patents to those companies would grind to a halt. Wouldn't the result of this be that the company who finds out that they have the earliest implementation of…

The first publisher of an invention has a year to file a patent on it. Because of the length of time taken to get to a filing, by the time this prior-art shootout takes place more than a year will have gone by and the prior art will actually disallow anyone from patenting the invention, including the original inventor.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#62

Post by kbenson »

silvestrov wrote: post #14
jasonkester wrote: post #11

Pure Awesome. Shame there's not a way to do the same thing to existing software patents. There are plenty (~40k/year according to the article) of bad, obvious nonsense patents already out there. It'd be nice if there were a simple process to appeal and invalidate them with similar demonstrations of prior art and obviousness. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some Wikipedia-level-OCD focused on this site to sto…

One thing missing in the patent system is that the patent seeker should pay a "fee" of $1000 if it is patentlyobvious that prior art exists. That would enable "Amazon Mechanical Turk"-style killing of most patents with prior art.

if it is __patentlyobvious__ that prior art exists

That's worth a chuckle.

(In truth, if it were patently obvious, this would be a much easier problem...)

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#63

Post by seldo »

pandler wrote: post #55
seldo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "prior disclosure" here. They filed a patent application: those are supposed to be public. The prior art Joel used was the documentation of the Win32 API from 5 years previously (and I'm pretty sure we've been using variable-resolution apps since earlier than 2008, and not just in Windows -- this was just an example). Could you clarify what the problem is?

I'm not 100% sure what you are confused about, but let me take a stab at it. Prior disclosure is public disclosure of the invention prior to the patent application. The one year rule states that once you publicly disclose an invention, you have one year from that date to file a patent application. Otherwise, your invention is considered public domain and cannot be patented. Does that clarify? The problem I think you…

I understand how prior disclosure works, my confusion is that nothing like that seems to have happened here. The patent was invalidated on the basis of documentation of a different piece of software with the same features released 5 years prior (albeit by the same company).

However, having read the ruling, I see it explicitly cites the prior-disclosure rule. So the bad patent system has invalidated a bad patent, but in a bad way.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#64

Post by casenelson »

jaydles wrote: post #54
DannyBee wrote: post #21

So, 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…

Is it the examiners who post some of the requests for prior art? If so, it would be nice if their accounts or requests could be badged so other users can be reasonably sure that the research they do will be seen by the USPTO.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#65

Post by shabble »

Does anyone know whether participating in a public forum like this could used in future proceedings against the user or their employer as evidence of 'willful infringement'?

I vaguely recall something about large corporations discouraging engineers from reading potentially relevant patents due to the possibility of greater damages if they were later proved infringing, since demonstrating that they didn't take any inspiration or details from the patent is quite difficult.

Not wanting to spread FUD or anything, but it strikes me as a potential exploit for patent trolls to discourage participation if it's a significant risk.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#67

Post by roc »

sutro wrote: post #53
roc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the Patent office generates net revenue for the US Government, you don't have to worry about that.

Actually you do have to worry about that. Since the USPTO is financed by patent application fees it has a perverse incentive to continue promiscuously granting as many patents as possible.

You may have to worry about the incentives, but you don't have to worry about any cost in tax dollars of rejecting applications.

Unless somehow they began rejecting so many applications, and those rejections all cost more than the fees collected from those applications, so as to total more in losses than the surplus revenue of the rest of the PTO (all other patent and trademark activity, including renewals) over its costs.

Which Isn't Going To Happen.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#68

Post by ncallaway »

shabble wrote: post #65

Does anyone know whether participating in a public forum like this could used in future proceedings against the user or their employer as evidence of 'willful infringement'? I vaguely recall something about large corporations discouraging engineers from reading potentially relevant patents due to the possibility of greater damages if they were later proved infringing, since demonstrating that they didn't take any ins…

I have been asked by my employer (a large software company) to avoid looking at patents in any form. It is precisely because, as you cite, it exposes the entire company to willful infringement claims around any patents that I were to view.

Re: Victory Lap for Ask Patents

#70

Post by ReidZB »

neilk wrote: post #57

It would be great if others could attach bounties to certain patents. Of course then the patent examiner would have to pick "winners", answers that helped the most. Also, like Quora, does the StackExchange system allow one to register one's fields of expertise, to have questions suggested to you? (I'm not a big participant on SE but I know it may be hiding that feature from me, because it slowly reveals features base…

StackExchange has a "favorite tags" feature which will highlight specific tags on the front page (and for busier sites, it may even bias its display on them, though I'm not sure about that).

There is also an advanced "filters" functionality (visible at stackexchange.com/filters) which apparently lets you filter out all but certain tags, as well as have 15-minute/3-hour/daily emails with new questions in that tag. I have never used it, but it sounds like what you're aiming for.

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