decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Discovering invention later | 310 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
US 6,735,249
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 25 2013 @ 02:30 AM EDT
So here's an a overview of VP8. Section 5.2 VP8 Inter Prediction Modes, and Fig. 3, mention copying motion vectors from adjacent macroblocks or subblocks. This is the area that '249 is relevant to. The idea of copying macroblock motion vectors predates the patent (e.g. Chalidabhongse & Kuo 1997 ), so this may not be so much a basic patent as an "improvement patent" that covers some very specific techniques for implementing a well-known method. Perhaps these claims read on VP8, perhaps not, perhaps the claims can be coded around.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Argument
Authored by: Ian Al on Monday, March 25 2013 @ 03:30 AM EDT
artp made, what seemed to me to be, a very level headed comment:
First, it appears that there is no need for a continuation on a patent from an engineering standpoint. You either invented something or you didn't. If you didn't, then you don't get a patent. You either understand what you invented or you don't. If you don't, then you can't write the patent application. What is the difficulty here?
I have fulminated in the past about the courts treating each independent claim as an independent protected invention and this continues to appear illegal to me according to §112. However, apart from this, I think I can see the patent lawyers' argument about continuations.

You commented that:
It is no good just finding an example of ‘prior art’ that resembles the embodiment disclosed in the '249 specification.
The strong implication is that court and patent lawyers are protecting the abstract ideas that lead to the invention embodiment. Any other real embodiments of the abstract idea can be encompassed by new claims and a continuation.

I haven't read your opus under the previous article in any depth yet, but I will return to it to see if it shines a light in this direction. For the moment, it would appear that Bilski says that claims that address abstract ideas are invalid, but the Supremes have not given us enough to demonstrate that this is violated by the practice of continuations.

I'm sure that the patenting engineer sees the embodiment as the invention. The claims are just lawyer flimflam to patent the ideas behind the invention and any other inventions that can be captured with new claims to allow the patent to be monetized.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Continuations
Authored by: PJ on Monday, March 25 2013 @ 08:19 AM EDT
Yes, thank you for explaining.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You 'invent' without knowing it. Experience the Aha! 8 years later. Submit Continuation.-n/t
Authored by: macliam on Monday, March 25 2013 @ 10:53 AM EDT
.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Discovering invention later
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 25 2013 @ 03:26 PM EDT
I don't remember where I saw it, but two guys discussing inventing something,
and its obviousness, and one remarks "Yeah, I thought of it as soon as I
saw it."

Probably worked for Apple.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )