Amazon Got 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent Because CAFC Says Obvious Ideas Must Be Written Down

from the idiots dept

So, about a month ago, we wrote about Amazon's ridiculous new patent on "photography against a white background," which got a fair bit of attention. There were debates among photographers, patent lawyers and lots of other people with opinions about just how legitimate (or not) the patent really was (hint: it's not). However, Charles Duan, Public Knowledge's patent expert, has written up a fantastic explanation for how Amazon was able to get the patent. And the main culprit, in a twist that should surprise no one is... CAFC. Yes, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit strikes again.

The ethically challenged court that is at the root of so many problems in the patent system, often thanks to a too close relationship with patent lawyers, is the heart of the problem once again. Even with the Supreme Court unanimously reversing CAFC left and right (and even saying that CAFC "fundamentally misunderstands what it means to infringe" a patent), CAFC is still causing all sorts of damage.

The issue here is "obviousness." Now, you may recall that, back in 2007 (back when the Supreme Court was just getting warmed up with its annual bout of CAFC-smacking), the Supreme Court issued an important ruling in Teleflex v. KSR, saying that the CAFC's "standard" for what counts as "obvious" was way too strict, and that patent examiners should be allowed to use basic common sense in rejecting patents that tried to claim obvious things. This resulted in new guidelines at the US Patent Office, in which examiners actually had some ability to apply common sense. The new rules had an immediate impact, with courts and patent examiners getting much more aggressive in rejecting bad patents. Unfortunately, in 2010, then USPTO director David Kappos rewrote the rules again, deleting a bunch of "tests" for obviousness, making it once again harder for examiners to reject patents for obviousness.

More recently, CAFC effectively blessed a new set of very strict rules for judging obviousness that require any indication of obviousness to be written down somewhere. In other words, if you can't point to a written explanation that explicitly states that something is obvious, the USPTO won't reject a patent for being obvious. As Duan explains:

Hear-Wear was about a patent on hearing aids. The patent was being reconsidered by the Patent Office, and the independent claims had already been held unpatentable.

But a dependent claim further added an element about a wire coming out of the hearing aid:

Claim 3. The at least partially in-the-canal module for a hearing aid of claim 2 [of the Hear-Wear patent] wherein said insulated wiring portion is terminated by a plurality of prongs that provide a detachable mechanical and electrical connection to an audio processing module.

This is complicated language, so the visual to the right should help you to understand it.

Most people call this a plug: a plurality of prongs (those two things at the end) that provide a detachable mechanical (you can plug and unplug it) and electrical connection (electricity flows across the prongs) to an audio processing module (whatever you plug it into, like your computer).

It is hard to believe that a patent could be granted for adding a multi-pronged plug to a well-known invention. “Every purchaser of electrical devices in the United States for the past 50 years or more is familiar with multipronged electrical connections,” wrote the lone dissenting judge in Hear-Wear.  But the two judges in the majority would have none of that. As they said, the Patent Office “cannot accept general conclusions about what is ‘basic knowledge’ or ‘common sense’ as a replacement for documentary evidence for core factual findings in a determination of patentability.” Proving this patent obvious, according to them, required paper documentation.

Even though this latest case is a recent ruling, it shows the kind of situation that CAFC has been creating for ages. It has never appreciated the idea that obviousness is different than prior art. A patent is only supposed to be awarded if it's both new and non-obvious to a person skilled in the art. But, for reasons that make no sense, many in the patent world seem to think that something is only obvious if it's been first written down somewhere specifically. But, of course, some things are so obvious that there's no need to write them down.

And that's the case with this white background patent. As Duan points out, one of the dependent claims adds what may seem like a useless detail to the patent: "The studio arrangement of claim 2, wherein the first distance is about 4.5–5.5 times a height of the top surface of the elevated platform. " That 4.5-5.5 times issue is really nothing special, but because a previous patent on a similar setup doesn't include the number, well, suddenly this patent is "non-obvious."
No one would write an article with that exact distance ratio or file a patent application about it. No one would want to do so. It was too uninteresting a feature to have ever merited any attention. Who knew if Saigo had used that distance ratio—Saigo’s application didn’t say. Who knew how many other photographers had actually used that distance ratio before—it didn’t matter, since it wasn’t on paper before her. Who knew if some college dissertation mentioned the exact numbers—with only a few hours left, and with a stack of other applications to examine, this examiner would not find it.

It was a silly thing to grant a patent on, no? Photography against a white background is obvious, but photography against a white background at a certain distance is nonobvious? The examiner could perceive no reason why that 4.5–5.5 ratio was advantageous, and the text of the application revealed none. If this patent issued, it would not be because the invention was an improvement; it was because this Studio Arrangement claim was different. Not better, just different.

But, the law said, that was enough to grant a patent.
Welcome to the wonderfully insane world of patent law, where common sense has no place. And you can patent just about anything if you're tricky enough.
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Filed Under: cafc, obviousness, patents, photography, prior art, uspto, white background, written down
Companies: ksr


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:10pm

    By their logic, I can patent "being a troll on techdirt articles about bad patents", because that's something I bet no one has said before...
    I really want to try this now.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    That One Guy (profile), 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:16pm

    'You keep using that word...'

    So the only way they can tell if something is obvious... is if someone tells them that it's obvious.

    Brilliant.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    orbitalinsertion (profile), 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:18pm

    So, not obvious

    to a moron with an agenda.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    justok (profile), 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:30pm

    Patent nonsense.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:33pm

    Q: How do you call a judge, for whom using a plug as a detachable electric connection is non obvious?

    A: corrupt

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:49pm

    So if I shoot pictures against a green screen and then key in a white background do I get around the patent as written?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Lord Sauron (profile), 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:49pm

    Just submitted my recent application to the USPTO

    Yup that is right I just submitted...

    "Converting agricultural and animal products to maximally digestible materials by the application of heat, to better build my Orc Armies"

    Because cooking food might be obvious but not yet pateneted!


    One ring to rule them all!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 3:59pm

    Re: Just submitted my recent application to the USPTO

    I then intend to patent the use of the resulting byproducts in legal proceedings related to intellectual property.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Pixelation, 11 Jun 2014 @ 4:45pm

    First...

    First we had the "on a computer" patents, now we get "on a white background" patents.

    Brilliant!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 4:54pm

    "Amazon Got 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent Because CAFC Says Obvious Ideas Must Be Written Down"

    So I can patent the wheel - awesome!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Digitari, 11 Jun 2014 @ 5:10pm

    Hmmmm?

    So can I patent the concept of giving a patent? then, after granting sue them for infringement???

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Digitari, 11 Jun 2014 @ 5:11pm

    Re: Hmmmm?

    yes, this is a "mobius" concept

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 5:32pm

    So if the use of that 4.5–5.5 ratio is what makes this patent new, non-obvious, etc. enough to get patented since no one would have used that exact ratio in writing before, I'll just copy their patent application, put my name on it, and change the ratio to something different like 1-4.49999999999 and 5.5000001-(infinity-1). They can keep their piddly little ratio and I'll make millions from patent trolling when they exceed their ratio.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  14. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 6:04pm

    I just got a patent for applying toothpaste to a toothbrush. Sure, toothbrush designs all have patents. But no one has patented the idea of putting toothpaste on one before...so pay up, folks!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  15. identicon
    scf, 11 Jun 2014 @ 6:16pm

    Patents must be novel.

    Millions of photos have been takes against a white background. For that reason the invention is not novel, and thus cannot be patented.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  16. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 6:20pm

    You want obvious? I'll give you obvious, IN WRITING! Go to the Internet Archive and look up Audell's Electrical books, or any physics text. You will find a plethora of references to just about everything the patent office is considering, including electrical plugs. This is all totally STUPID!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  17. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 7:45pm

    Open source patents, anyone?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  18. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 11 Jun 2014 @ 8:31pm

    Re: 'You keep using that word...'

    Can you patent this system?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  19. icon
    PaulT (profile), 12 Jun 2014 @ 12:39am

    I'm pretty sure that when photo ID driving licences came into force in the UK in the late 90s, the written requirment was for them to be taken against a white background. I'm also very sure that the technique was available in photo booths long before that, and the specs for those booths must have been written down somewhere.

    Even if we're to believe that something obvious can only be so if it's written down, does nothing like this exist in the US?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  20. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2014 @ 12:53am

    I will have a patent on a large wooden board (preferably white, with rounded corners). I call it a door. Obvious idea, so can I haz patent now?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  21. icon
    Richard (profile), 12 Jun 2014 @ 2:44am

    Re:

    The same requirement has been written into the specs. for passport photographs in the UK for many years.

    I think the requirement is not "written down" it is "written down in a document that I can be bothered to find".

    link to this | view in thread ]

  22. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2014 @ 4:30am

    Re: 'You keep using that word...'

    That sounds patently absurd!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  23. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jun 2014 @ 4:31am

    Re:

    A: Texan?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  24. identicon
    Robert, 12 Jun 2014 @ 6:04am

    If it Hasn't Been Patented

    What they are saying is not matter what is claimed, if it hasn't been patented yet, they will allow the patent through and let the lawyers fight it out in court for big bucks.
    Obvious, don't care, prior art, don't care, simple use shifting of the same device, don't care.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  25. icon
    bgmcb (profile), 12 Jun 2014 @ 8:00am

    This is stupid*1

    *1 Patent pending

    link to this | view in thread ]


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