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ROFL - another good one | 221 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Mr. Quinn is quite amusing
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:22 AM EDT

Quote he:

the PTAB ignored all the recited tangible computer elements embodied in the claims
Sorry Mr. Quinn:
    The PTAB is finally recognizing that reciting hardware in the equivalent form of "enter 2+2= on a calculator" is truly not reciting patent eligible subject matter!
No matter how much Mr. Quinn would love math to be patentable - the Supremes keep stating otherwise and it appears the PTAB is coming to terms with regards understanding abstract subject matter.

Thankfully they're starting to cut through all the games the abusive Patent Lawyers like to play... like the one where the Patent Lawyer argues for narrowed claim construction to get the grant then argues for broader construction to enforce it.

From the PTAB ruling:

Versata urged the district court to construe these claim terms broadly and not limit the claims to preferred embodiments but, before this panel, urges that the district court's narrow construction be adopted.
Let that be a warning shot across the bow of the Patent Lawyers who want to broaden the reach of their patent when enforcing.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Gene Quinn is hilarious
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:25 AM EDT
Quinn:
"the PTAB ignored all the recited tangible computer
elements"

Quinn goes on to quote the three independent claims in full,
helpfully highlighting the tangible elements.

Here's what he highlighted in the three claims:
"a data source"
"a processor"
"a memory"

He goes on to wax indignant about how these "tangible
elements" make it impossible for the claims to "preempt an
idea". I wonder what it would take to "preempt an idea"
in his world?

Claim 17 is rather confusing; once you delete the
superfluous nonsense (store the data in a data source, then
retrieve the data when you need it) it seems to be a patent
on the idea of price discrimination in the context of
organizational hierarchy, but I'm not sure. There's a vague
reference to 'sorting' the data and removing 'less
restrictive' pricing, but crucial details (like the sort
comparison criteria) are not specified.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

ROFL - another good one
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:29 AM EDT

The authority that the PTAB seems to be relying on to ignore claim terms is unclear and not explained in the opinion in any satisfactory way.
Actually Mr. Quinn - they covered it quite well. From the ruling (there's lotsa good quotes in this), in the section "b. General Purpose Computer Hardware...":
Thus, as with the "shift register" in Benson, the recitation of generic general purpose computer hardware (processor, memory, storage) in the challenged claims represents routine, well-understood conventional hardware that fails to narrow the claims relative to the abstract idea.
Yup - they understand "enter 2+2= on calculator, review display" quite well now it appears.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Love the explanation on "computer is nothing without software"
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:36 AM EDT

I guess he's incapable of instructing electronics. At the end of that particular paragraph:

No black magic, just basic understanding of software and the inherent limitations of hardware, which as it turns out is capable of absolutely nothing in and of itself.
Yea... for those of us with the true basic understanding: there truly is no black magic - it's all abstract.

My first home computer was a Comodore Vic 20. We picked up a monthly magazine that came equipped with source code we could type in, store on magnetic tape, and then execute. I didn't stop at that though - I kinda liked to modify the code to see what happened. Made a ship on a game "warp jump".

Ok... I was cheating - warp jumps kept you from crashing!

Yeesh - at 12 years of age I was preforming amazing feats of patentability ;)

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Additionally, it appears Mr. Quinn has a selective reading habit
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:40 AM EDT

Quote he:

nowhere are the claims actually listed in their totality
Mr. Quinn should take a moment to review the claims appendix - page 37 of the pdf.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Nice conflation
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:47 AM EDT

Quote he:

I wonder whether the PTAB would find a calculator patent eligible. After all, all a calculator does is something that can be performed via pen and paper
Mr. Quinn conflates the calculator (a physical device) with "using the calculator to perform math" (an abstract task).

He mentioned intellectual dishonesty earlier in his article. If Mr. Quinn wants to compare "software to a computer" with the "application of a calculator" that would be much more intellectually honest.

Yes, Mr. Quinn - the calculator is patent eligible subject matter. But not the process "enter 2+2= into calculator, review display".

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

ROFL - "software is transformative"
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 12:56 AM EDT

Quote he:

It takes a machine, any machine, that is otherwise wholly incapable of operating to perform a particular function and transforms it into a machine that is capable of offering the specific functionality defined by the code.
Oh... I gotta challenge for Mr. Quinn to absolutely prove that statement. Definition of machine:
    An apparatus using or applying mechanical power to perform a particular task.
Ok... and Mr. Quinn did say any machine. So, the challenge for Mr. Quinn:
    Please apply software to a Singer sewing machine to have it calculate pi to the 15th digit
Remember, all you're allowed to do is add the software - nothing else in order to prove your statement.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Ooohhh... are pigs flying? I agree with Mr. Quinn!
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 01:05 AM EDT

The one thing I agree with Mr. Quinn on:

shouldn’t they be required to define what is an abstract idea?
Absolutely!!!!!!

Congress should also clearly and explicitly define what an abstract idea is. They should clearly apply one tiny change to Patent Law along the lines:

    Laws of Nature, Natural Phenomena and Abstract Ideas are not patent eligible subject matter. An abstract idea is something you can't physically touch. Non-abstract you can touch!
The Supremes and PTAB would do quite well with regards requiring "touch" in order to confirm patent eligibility.

Yes Mr. Quinn you can touch the computer, just like the calculator. But you can't touch the software!

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Did the PTAB Just Kill Software Patents?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 02:15 AM EDT

Now, looking at that patent (US 6553350 B2), I see nothing about their algorithm that is computer specific. It could be run on any computer that has the needed resources, or in fact computed by hand on a pad of paper. In fact, all it looks like is they are computing the table that was stored on the mainframe when it is needed. That is definitely not novel. In the early years of computing, resources were limited, very limited. Often you computed a calculable data set when you needed it because pre-computing and storing it for later was to resource intensive. Look up “lazy initialization” ( Lazy initialization @ Wikipedia) and “lazy evaluation” ( Lazy evaluation @ Wikipedia ). The descriptions talk about it's use in programming languages as a language provided feature for in memory objects. It fully applies to software written by a programmer that is calculating the pricing data on the fly from various factors specified in the rest of the patent description. It's an old method that they have just applied to pricing tables. The patent is bung.

Another thing that makes this patent bung is I know of many accounting systems where they would compute the price on the fly from customer related factors if it wasn't already stored in a customer/contract price table.

"retrieving from a data source" is a simple database operation. Zero specifics to make it unique, nothing novel, nothing interesting, quite boring in fact. I must have coded that thousands of times in hundreds of different ways during my career. In fact I got so bored coding it again and again I started writing code generators to write the code for me. That way I could concentrate on the somewhat more interesting stuff. I say somewhat more interesting because most business accounting and management processes that can be reduced to mathematical algorithms are easy to code. It is figuring out how to turn the process into a mathematical algorithm that is the only part that has any creativity to it. Once you have the algorithm that reflects the business process, the rest becomes obvious and could be implemented by any programmer skilled in the art. Programming is not hard. It is in fact so easy it should be taught to all kids just after they learn how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and learn simple formal logic. Now we're back to that mathematical algorithm issue. By their very nature mathematical algorithms can be done on paper. No need for a computer.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Amusing? Hilarious?
Authored by: albert on Thursday, June 13 2013 @ 10:53 AM EDT
I can think of other, much more appropriate adjectives for Quinn. (as long as
they remain abstract, I should be safe here)

Have any of you engaged him in his comment section?

He doesn't block comments, and actually engages critics, which is unusual for a
propagandist (cf. Mueller)

I suspect FM blocks comments to prevent extra bandwidth charges, or maybe he's
just sensitive to criticism {:-)>

Quinn seems totally immune to it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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