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| Authored by: Kilz on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 07:17 AM EST |
| Please mention the mistake in the title of your post. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Kilz on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 07:20 AM EST |
For all posts that are not on topic. Please make all links
clickable.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Samsung struggles to block iPhone function for the blind - Authored by: tiger99 on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 07:59 AM EST
- What ever happened to that Hercules Case? - Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 12:00 PM EST
- Android gets there first - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 01:59 PM EST
- Off Topic - FDA petitioned to put additives into Milk, and not have to list on label? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 02:35 PM EST
- Is Your Cat Sending You Spam? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 04:43 PM EST
- linux servers hacked (maybe discussed before ?) - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 05:00 PM EST
- Personal Website - Jobs, Interesting Stuff - Best Solution? - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 05:07 PM EST
- Deutsche Bank had known for years that their commodity speculation drove up food prices - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 11:37 PM EST
- The cyber age demands new rules of war? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 12:43 AM EST
- Zombie (Picking your brains) Sub-thread - Authored by: hardmath on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 12:06 PM EST
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| Authored by: Kilz on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 07:21 AM EST |
Please mention the news stoy's name in the title of the top
post. A link back to the story may be helpful for when it
falls off the Home page.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Kilz on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 07:26 AM EST |
Please leave all transcriptions of Comes exhibits here for
PJ. Please post the
html in Plain Old Text mode so she may
easily copy it.
Please see the
Comes
Tracking Page to find and claim
PDF files that still need to be
transcribed.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 08:09 AM EST |
She really should have stopped the whole mess at that point.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jesse on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 08:25 AM EST |
It is likely they don't ask the inventor what was meant because the inventor
didn't write the patent.
A lawyer does.
An inventor would use the "normal" language of the art/field of the
patent. Not the legalese used by patents.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 08:28 AM EST |
| "Others get a headache after a half hour of chess and leave to get a
hamburger......"
Recipe [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: lnuss on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 08:55 AM EST |
An excellent job, and truly appreciated.
---
Larry N.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tknarr on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 10:39 AM EST |
What I don't understand is why the inventor defining the words isn't
already required? The patent's supposed to say what's being patented, and
how can it say that if you don't know what the words it's using mean? If I were
a judge, I'd rule that any patent that required a Markman hearing was prima
facie invalid due to ambiguousness, the patent doesn't say what it's a patent on
therefore it can't be valid. Put the burden on the filer to say what they're
trying to patent right in the patent and be done with it. That's what patent law
currently requires, isn't it? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 11:54 AM EST |
Say what?
That would appear to cover pretty much any software more complex than
"Hello World."
Disgusting.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: macliam on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 11:56 AM EST |
PJ wrote:
Obviously, it matters a lot what a judge decides.
What I've never been able to figure out is why they don't make the inventor
explain the key words himself, so we don't have to go through this exercise in
all the patent cases. Why don't they make them fill out a form when applying for
a patent, as in "When I say 'inventory' I mean books, papers, blah, blah, but
not T shirts."
IANAL. However in reading around the 101
patent eligibility cases, I found on the web the Petitioner's
brief in In Re Benson (CCPA) (i.e., the case that was appealed to the
Supreme Court in Gottschalk v. Benson. This brief contains the documents
from the prosecution of the patent at the Patent Office. This sheds a fair
amount of light on the process.
In patent law, "The name of the
game is the claim" (Judge Giles S. Rich).
The applicant submits a
document containing diagrams, a description outlining the usefulness of the
invention, the state of the prior art, a description of the principles of the
invention, and one or more embodiments of the invention. This completes the
patent specification. Then follows the list of claims. If the patent issues,
the claims are in effect the title deeds defining the extent of the monopoly
that has been granted to the patentee. What happens afterwards is a "game
of words" focussed on the claims. The patent examiner will check that the
claims are drawn to eligible subject matter under Section 101 of the statute.
The examiner also verifies that the claims are not "indefinite", and
that the specification describes a process, manufacture, machine or composition
of matter that matches the claims with sufficient detail and clarity that a
PHOSITA (person having ordinary skill in the art) can carry out or make the
invention.
If the examiner is satisfied that the claims are of the
prescribed form, that the applicant is in possession of the invention, and has
described the invention with sufficient clarity, then there will be a search for
prior art. As I understand it, this is not simply a search for an invention
that matches that of the applicant. The test is made claim by claim, and
involves determining whether the claim reads directly on prior art, or whether
the examiner can make out a case for obviousness of an invention matching the
claims, in view of the prior art (sections 102 and 103). If the examiner can
find prior art that is consistent with the claim, then the claim will be
rejected, irrespective of whether or not the invention in the prior art
resembles or has the same purpose as the applicant's
"invention".
But the applicant will be granted a certain
number of opportunities to amend the claims, to ensure that they claim
patentable subject matter, read on her own invention, and do not read on any
invention in (or are otherwise "obvious" from) the prior art. After
years of patent prosecution, the patent application may be finally rejected, or
it may issue, but with claims that may well differ substantially from those in
the initial application. But (it would seem from looking at the history of the
patent prosecution in Benson), the applicant can neither amend the
specification itself nor add claims for new subject matter.
For example,
in the case of the Benson application, the examiner found at one stage
that the amended claims read on a device for converting analog signals to
digital bits very different in structure and purpose from Benson's re-entrant
shift register device. The claims were therefore rejected.
Thus the
claims that finally issue may well differ substantially from anything that the
inventor or her patent attorney might have written. And, in attempts to
invalidate the patent, and in litigation, as we have seen (e.g., Oracle v.
Google) the proceedings will be a duel of wits between lawyers for the
patent owner and the alleged infringer, where the owner seeks to interpret the
claims broadly enough to prove that they have been infringed, and the alleged
infringer will attempt either to have the claims construed narrowly enough to
ensure that they have not been infringed by litigant, or else broadly enough to
read on some prior art reference that would invalidate the patent. Given the
importance of the exact words of the patent claims in the litigation, the aim of
the Markman hearing (as I understand it) is to get the meanings of the
words tied down before serious motion practice, and long before the matter is
put to a jury.
As I have stated before, IANAL, I have never submitted a
patent, or been involved in any way with patents. The above is based entirely
on my own reading undertaken to try to understand the background behind the
pending cases at SCOTUS, CAFC etc. It is thus far from authoritative. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 02:55 PM EST |
She's learning, but a slow learner. I'd give Alsup 2 grades above her,
and he whacked Oracle-Google down from 132 claims to three,
and from 120 prior art defences to eight.
Prediction: another wrung jury. [Juries are never wrong,
but if the Hogan jury hadn't been wrong it would have been hung.]
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 03:02 PM EST |
It is a reflection of that old saw, "What the meaning of "is"
is..."! :rolleyes: I'm just glad that I have a great
attorney, and we fully engage in quid-pro-quo - I fix his
computer problems, and he fixes my legal ones! So far, it has
pretty much worked out to be a wash, time and material wise.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tz on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 04:31 PM EST |
<i>each side may file a five-page critique (double-spaced, 12-point Times
New Roman font, no footnotes, and no attachments)</i>
Oops, she didn't specify that they couldn't play with the justification and the
kerning. Or abbreviation.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 06:38 PM EST |
Often programmers want to distinguish things that happen exactly at the same
time from things that may happen at almost the same time. Decades ago, I found
out about the convention that "simultaneous" means at exactly the same time
(e.g. an instruction from one CPU or one core of a CPU may execute
simultaneously with an instruction from another CPU or another core of the same
CPU) and "concurrent" for two time intervals that overlap (e.g. a loop in one
thread may run concurrently with the same or another loop in another thread,
regardless of whether any instructions are simultaneous. Of course, no
instructions of two threads are simultaneous if there's only one single-core
CPU.).
I don't know how widespread this convention is.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: globularity on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 08:43 PM EST |
The inventor would be unable to explain the meaning of the words in a patent as
issued aside from the issue of language, they had little or no role in the
actual process of issuing the patent.
The examiner is the only person with first hand knowledge of why the patent was
issued and what the words mean. The inventor may have described something that
was not eligible for a patent and the examiner subsequently misinterpreted the
patent application to be for something that was eligible for a patent.
It should not be up to the patent system to modify the meaning of the patent
post grant as the current arrangement will do if there is any miscommunication
between the inventor and the examiner.
Hauling the examiners before the court to explain what they thought the words
meant would solve the problem and may discourage them from issuing so many
patents. Of course it is unlikely the examiner would recall a patent issued many
years ago but the inventors memory of a precess that they had little role in is
unlikely to be any better.
---
Windows vista, a marriage between operating system and trojan horse.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 02:31 AM EST |
7,577,757, Multimedia synchronization method and device:Systems,
methods and computer readable media for synchronization tasks and
non-synchronization tasks being executed concurrently.
TITLE 35
> PART II > CHAPTER 10 > Sec. 101. - Inventions
patentable:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful
process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful
improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and
requirements of this title
35 USC § 100 -
Definitions:(b) The term “process” means process, art or method, and
includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of
matter, or material.
So, what is the 7,577,757 patent; a machine
or a method?
From the report:Samsung’s
proposed language: “device that resides in viewing and/or listening area”...
Apple proposed language: “device that resides in a room or similar
location”
35 USC §101 makes it clear that this invention is
neither a new machine nor an improvement of an existing machine, because a
specific machine is not claimed. The invention can only be (from 35 USC § 100) a
new use of a known machine. In this case, the machine claimed is actually a
'system': a collection of interworking machines. The design of the machines in
the system is irrelevant to the invention. There is no need to give examples of
software that could make the machines work.
According to §100, a
method invention is a method used by people and Bilski confirms that a method
must have significant post process activity: the method must be a novel way of
achieving something useful. How can the invention claim as part of its inventive
concept, where the method is used.
Each machine and
interworking method in the system employed by the method is defined only in
outline. Specific machines are not claimed. The patent has to be invalid because
the invention claimed is the use of the system and the absolute location
of the machines in the system are not claimed. The relative location of the
machines (together or apart, on land or in a yacht) cannot be an element of an
inventive concept in a use of a system.
The manufacture,
distribution, selling, making available as a service or use of the machines that
can form the system cannot infringe on the patented use of the system. For
instance, the provision of one of the machine components (e.g. the multimedia
server) as a service cannot infringe on the protected use.
There is no
significant post-process (aka, 'method') activity. The synchronisation of
multimedia is a perceived effect and not a useful process or method. The
multimedia is not defined. The synchronisation of indefinite multimedia to
achieve a perceived effect is an abstract idea. The invention is judicially
excluded from being statutory subject matter.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid! [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 02:45 AM EST |
Judge Alsup did a great job of streamlining his case. He still leaves me with
distinct misgivings.
A patent is entitled to protect just one invention (according to the USPTO). All
of the claims are required to define the invention and the invention cannot be
complete if any claims are ignored.
How can a case be limited to just some of the claims in a patent?
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: BitOBear on Tuesday, February 26 2013 @ 06:42 PM EST |
One of the things that gets my goat when reading this sort of thing is that the
law folks don't even know they "aren't even wrong" when they examine
this stuff.
Zone, for instance, is a term of art in networking. It has no geographical
(physically spatial) meaning at all. For instance every computer with a public
IP address can be named in one zone (the in-addr.arpa zone that turns ip
addresses into numbers) and it may have names in other zones for turning names
into numbers.
Meanwhile, a non-trivial routed internet facility may have a "DMZ"
("De-militarized zone") and a public and a private zone.
A system may be a border between two or more zones (e.g. a router) and most
computers have a fully private (localhost zone) even if they aren't a router at
all.
In terms of the art, as applied by the software and writings, the word
"zone" can be replaced by "formal semantic grouping" in all
uses.
For instance, in DNS you the phrase "zone of authority" is the
"formal semantic grouping of authority".
When I use my company's VPN software to connect my laptop into the
"internal" network, I move it into that "zone" even though
my laptop is typically three time-zones physically removed from my corporation.
So why don't the lawyers and such actually consult the people who assigned the
term-of-art meanings of these words instead of arguing it out amongst
themselves?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: macliam on Wednesday, February 27 2013 @ 05:42 PM EST |
Apple 5946647 Patent
This
patent was litigated in the App
le v. Motorola lawsuit dismissed with prejudice by Judge Richard Posner last
June. There is a lot in Posner's opionion (including reasons why neither party
was entitled to injunctive relief). He also said that, with his claim
construction, Motorola should have little difficulty inventing around this
patent.
Apple 6847959
patent
I note that claim 1 reads as
follows:
1. A method for locating information in a computer
system, comprising the steps of:
- inputting an information
identifier;
- providing said information identifier to a plurality of
plug-in modules each using a different heuristic to locate information which
matches said identifier;
- providing at least one candidate item of
information from said modules; and
- displaying a representation of said
candidate item of information.
Note the words
"plurality of plug-in modules each using a different heuristic". The
Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit in its <
i>Apple II opinion has already offered its opinion to Judge Koh as to how
such words should be construed. The CAFC suggested (pp. 12-18) that Apple had
little likelihood of success with regard to the 8086604 patent, in which
claim 6 referred to
a plurality of modules ... wherein each
heuristic module ... employs a different heuristic
algorithm
The inventors of the '959 patent were the same as
for the '604 patents, subject matter looks similar, and presumably the same
patent lawyer prosecuted both patents.
The CAFC pointed out ("in
the interest of judicial economy") that no two modules can have the
same heuristic algorithm.
Look at the wording of Claim 1 of the
6847959 module! No wonder Apple wanted the the CAFC to reconsider this part of
the Apple II opinion en banc! [ Reply to This | # ]
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