Stupid Patent Of The Month: Movies From The Cloud

from the not-the-onion dept

The Onion once ran a piece titled "I invented YouTube back in 2010." The joke, of course, is that YouTube launched in 2005. This month's Stupid Patent of the Month is just as ridiculous. US Patent No. 8,856,221, titled ‘System and method for storing broadcast content in a cloud-based computing environment,' claims a mundane process for delivering media content from remote servers. This might have been a somewhat fresh idea in, say the mid-1990s, but the application for this patent was filed in 2011.

The patent suggests using "at least one server" that should have "a memory that stores media content and a processor." The server then communicates with "a consumer device" that can send messages and receive content. Aside from these prosaic details, the patent makes only a half-hearted effort to distinguish its supposed invention from the massive array of cloud-based media services that already existed when it was filed. For example, the description suggests that existing services were inadequate because customers might pay a flat monthly fee yet make few downloads. The patent recommends tailoring customer cost to the content actually downloaded. But even if that was a new idea in 2011 (and it wasn't), routine pricing practices should not be patentable.

Overall, the '221 patent contains little more than rote recitations of long-existing technologies ("[a] list of media content may be provided to the consumer and displayed on consumer device display, e. g., via a website displayed in a web browser") and pricing models ("[t]he cost amount may be based on factors such as playback time"). The patent's claims, which describe the formal boundaries of the invention, merely list steps for using this conventional technology.

In addition to being obvious, the claims of the '221 patent are invalid as abstract under the Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. Under that case, an idea does not become eligible for a patent simply by being implemented on a conventional computer. In fact, the '221 patent goes out of its way to emphasize that "any kind of computing system" is suited to perform the claimed functions. In our view, it would not survive a challenge under Alice.

The '221 patent is owned by Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems, LLC ("RBDS"). We were unable to find any sign that RBDS engaged in any business other than patent litigation. It is based in, you guessed it, the Eastern District of Texas. Court records show that RBDS has sued about 25 companies, ranging from startups to The Walt Disney Company.

The inventor of the ‘221 patent also won the August 2015 Stupid Patent of the Month for a patent on a drink mixer connected to the Internet. That patent, which had claims so broad it arguably covered the entire Internet of Things, is owned by a company called Rothschild Connected Devices Innovations, LLC ("RCDI"). After one of defendants went to the expense of challenging the validity of the drink mixer patent, RCDI dismissed the case without collecting a cent. This is classic troll behavior, forcing defendants to choose between paying the high cost of defense or a license fee that the patent owner does not deserve. We believe that RBDS's litigation similarly has only nuisance value.

We need broad patent reform (including venue reform) to stop this wasteful patent trolling. We also need reform at the Patent Office so that it doesn't issue terrible patents like this in the first place. Contact your Senators and tell them to pass patent reform.

Republished from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series.

Filed Under: cloud, movies, patents, stupid patent of the month

Stupid Design Patent Of The Month: Rectangles On A Screen

from the has-no-one-at-the-uspto-looked-at-its-own-website? dept

On October 11, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the long-running Apple-Samsung litigation. The issue is whether Apple, by virtue of having its designed patents infringed by Samsung, is entitled to all of Samsung's profits made from the infringing phones (regardless of how much that design contributed to the value of the phone).

This case -- in which EFF submitted an amicus brief arguing the award of Samsung's total profit is improper -- is important for many reasons. But one reason stands out: it is trivially easy to get a design patent on trivial designs and, unless the Supreme Court changes the law, that can lead to anything-but-trivial awards in court.

This month's stupid patent, a design patent, shows just how broken the current system of design patents is. Design patents, unlike the utility patents we usually feature, consist only of a single claim followed by pictures. It is generally the pictures that inform the public as to what is claimed. Importantly, in a design patent only the features drawn in solid lines are claimed. Anything in dotted lines is generally not part of the claim.

U.S. Patent D767,583, issued on September 27, 2016, is a patent on a design for a "display screen portion with graphical user interface." Here, the claim is to "the ornamental design for a display screen portion with graphical user interface, as shown and described." As most design patent owners do, the patent also makes clear that "the broken line showing of the display screen in the figure forms no part of the claimed design." Below is the sole picture from the patent showing the patented design:

The only thing claimed in this design patent are the three rectangles at the top and the square beneath them. This patent is both remarkably trivial and remarkably easy to be accused of infringing. Someone who arranges three rectangles in a row with a square underneath in the way shown in the image is potentially infringing this patent. (The test for whether a design patent is infringed is described in a case called Egyptian Goddess, and is based on what an "ordinary observer" thinks and often involves a comparison to the prior art.) For example, here is an excerpt from the USPTO's home page, showing three rectangles and something that looks close to a square beneath it:

To be clear, this patent would likely not be infringed if someone arranged three rectangles and a square in a different way (say, if the rectangles were arranged vertically instead of horizontally), and the USPTO itself may not infringe as the prior art would likely narrow this patent significantly.

But even the possibility of a finding of infringement may be enough to cause concern for many people who may be accused of infringing a design patent. That's because under current law, if someone is found to infringe a design patent, the patent owner can argue that it is entitled to all of the profits from that website.

The Supreme Court has a chance to fix this last issue in the upcoming Apple-Samsung decision. But that won't change the fact that the Patent Office still issues patents on trivial designs at an alarming rate. This latest patent is just another in a long line of questionable patents.

Reposted from the EFF's Stupid Design Patent of the Month series.

Filed Under: boxes, patents, screen, stupid patent of the month, stupid patents, web design

Stupid Patent of the Month: Solocron Education Trolls With Password Patent

from the patenting-passwords dept

Another month, another terrible patent being asserted in the Eastern District of Texas. Solocron Education LLC, a company whose entire "education" business is filing lawsuits, owns U.S. Patent No. 6,263,439, titled "Verification system for non-traditional learning operations." What kind of "verification system" does Solocron claim to have invented? Passwords.

The patent describes a mundane process for providing education materials through video cassettes, DVDs, or online. Students are sent course materials, take tests, and, if they pass the tests, are allowed to continue on to the next part of the course. At various times, students confirm their identity by entering their biographical details and passwords.

Solocron did not invent distance education, encryption, or passwords. The patent doesn't describe any new technology, it just applies existing technology in a routine way to education materials. That should not be enough to get a patent. Unfortunately, the Patent Office does not do enough to prevent obvious patents from issuing, which is how we get patents on white-background photography or on filming a Yoga class.

The extraordinary breadth of Solocron's patent is clearest in its first claim. The claim, with added comments, is below:

1. A process which comprises the steps of:

encoding at least one personal identifier onto a user interface media [i.e. set up an interface requiring a particular user ID];

displaying a prompt on said user interface media for the at least one personal identifier which requires a match of the at least one personal identifier encoded on the user interface media [i.e. ask the user to enter their user ID];

encoding at least one password onto a data storage media [i.e. encrypt or otherwise password-lock a file];

encoding the at least one password from the data storage media onto the user interface media [i.e. set up the user interface so it can check if the password is correct]; and

displaying a prompt on the user interface media for entering the at least one password which requires a match of the at least one password from the data storage media with the at least one password encoded on the user interface media [i.e. require users to enter their passwords into the interface].

Although the claim runs 119 words, it just describes an ordinary system for accessing content via inputting a user ID and password. These kinds of systems for user identification predate the patent by many, many years. The claim is not even limited to education materials but, by its terms, applies to any kind of "data storage media." The Patent Office should not allow itself to be hoodwinked by overly verbose language that, when read closely, describes an obvious process.

Solocron is asserting its stupid patent aggressively. It has sued dozens of companies, including many new suits filed this year. As with so many patents we have featured in this series, it is suing in the Eastern District of Texas, taking advantage of the court's patent-owner-friendly rules. We need fundamental patent reform, including venue reform, to stop patents like this from being granted and from being abused in the courts.

Reposted from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series.

Filed Under: passwords, patents, stupid patent of the month
Companies: solocron education

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Storage Cabinets On A Computer

from the because-on-a-computer dept

How do you store your paper files? Perhaps you leave them scattered on your desk or piled on the floor. If you're more organized, you might keep them in a cabinet. This month's stupid patent, US Patent No. 6,690,400 (the '400 patent), claims the idea of using "virtual cabinets" to graphically represent data storage and organization. While this is bad, the worse news is that the patent's owner is suing just about anyone who runs a website.

The '400 patent is owned by Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. ("GEMSA") which seems to be a classic patent troll. GEMSA is incorporated in Australia and appears to have no business other than patent litigation. The patent began its life with a company called Flash VOS. This company once offered a product that allowed users to run multiple operating systems on personal computers with x86-compatible processors. The '400 patent describes a graphical user interface for this system. The interface allows users to interact with "graphical depictions of cabinets" that represent memory partitions and different operating systems.

GEMSA says that Flash VOS moved the computer industry a "quantum leap forwarded in the late 90's when it invented Systems Virtualization." But Flash VOS didn't invent partitions, didn't invent virtual machines, and didn't invent running multiple operating systems on a single computer. All of these concepts predate its patent application, some by decades. In any event, the '400 patent claims only a very specific, and in our view, quite mundane user interface.

Importantly, the '400 patent's claims require very specific structures. For example, claim 1 requires "a secondary storage partitions window" and "at least one visible cabinet representing a discrete operating system." A user interface must have all of these features to infringe the claim.

In the past year, GEMSA has sued dozens of companies, ranging from Airbnb to Zillow. In each case, it makes the bare assertion that the defendant's website infringes the '400 patent. For example, it simply states that "AIRBNB maintains, controls and/or operates a website with a graphical user interface ("GUI") at www.airbnb.com that infringes one or more claims of the '400 patent."

GEMSA doesn't explain how Airbnb's website satisfies highly specific claim limitations like "a virtual cabinet representing a discrete operating system." In fact, the accused website bears almost no similarity to GEMSA's supposed invention:

As far as we can tell, GEMSA seems to think that anyone with a website that links to hosted content infringes its patent. Complaints with such sparse, and implausible, infringement allegations should be thrown out immediately for failure to state a claim.

There will be no prizes for guessing where GEMSA has filed its litigation. Every one of its cases was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, where we have long complained that local rules favor patent trolls like GEMSA. Venue reform legislation currently before Congress would stop trolls flocking to the Eastern District of Texas. That might help reduce abusive patent trolling. But we still need broader patent reform to ensure that such weak patents don't lead to abusive troll litigation.

Reposted from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series.

Filed Under: cabinets, images, patents, stupid patent of the month, stupid patents
Companies: gemsa

Stupid Patent Of The Month... With Special Stupid Trademark Bonus Round

from the it's-stupid-all-around dept

This month features not only a stupid patent, but also a stupid trademark to go along with it.

My Health, Inc. is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 6,612,985, which is entitled "Method and system for monitoring and treating a patient." My Health also holds a trademark in the term "My Health." My Health claims that it is "the only person or entity entitled to use... ‘My Health' in commerce."

Since getting patent and trademark rights, My Health has been pretty active in federal court. It has sued at least 30 companies for patent infringement and has been involved in another three lawsuits involving allegations of trademark infringement. But regardless of what type of case it is, we think both the patent and trademark are stupid.

First, My Health's stupid patent. The patent is generally directed to "a method and system for monitoring and treating a patient who has one or more diagnosed conditions and is located at a remote location from a treatment processing system." If that sounds mundane, that's because it is.

Here is claim 1 of the patent, annotated for clarity:

1. A method for tracking compliance with treatment guidelines, the method comprising:

[a] determining a current assessment of one or more diagnosed conditions in a patient based on data about each of the diagnosed conditions from the patient who is at a remote location and on one or more assessment guidelines for each of the diagnosed conditions;

[b] updating an existing treatment plan for each of the diagnosed conditions based on the existing treatment plan, the current assessment, and on one or more treatment guidelines for each of the diagnosed conditions to generate an updated treatment plan for each of the diagnosed conditions;

[c] reviewing the updated treatment plan for each of the diagnosed conditions;

[d] determining if one or more changes are needed to the reviewed treatment plan for each of the diagnosed conditions;

[e] changing the reviewed treatment plan if the one or more changes are determined to be needed;

[f] providing the patient with the reviewed treatment plan for each of the diagnosed conditions; and

[g] generating and providing compliance data based on the updated treatment plan and the reviewed treatment plan for each of the diagnosed conditions.

This claim is essentially TeleHealth, with the addition of "generating and providing compliance data" at the end. This patent is almost surely invalid under the Supreme Court's decision in Alice, which held that abstract ideas are not patentable, absent something more. Here, My Health is claiming little more than the idea of remotely diagnosing and treating a medical patient. This is not a new idea, and the patent doesn't even claim how to do it, but only the idea of doing it (albeit with a bunch of patent-speak to make it look complicated). This 1998 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine shows how the ideas in this patent are routine and conventional enough to be a plotline in a TV series.

We're not the first to reach the conclusion the patent is invalid. In a lawsuit from last year, a defendant sued by My Health asked the court to rule the patent invalid. Unfortunately, the court said it was too early in the case to decide that issue and the parties later settled.

Along with being abstract, we doubt that this patent described anything new or nonobvious in 2001. In fact, the Patent and Trademark Office has twice agreed that there are serious problems with the patent's validity in light of what people already knew and were doing in 2001. It instituted 2 different "inter partes" reviews, meaning on two different occasions someone was able to show that there was a reasonable likelihood that the claims were invalid. But on both occasions, the parties settled before the Patent and Trademark Office decided whether the patents should be cancelled.

My Health recently sued again based on its stupid patent, and we wouldn't be surprised if this case also settles. By settling quickly with various parties before a court can make a decision as to the merits of it claims, My Health can continue to collect on its stupid patent.

But it's not only a stupid patent that's causing problems. My Health's stupid trademark is prompting a whole other stream of litigation. Not surprisingly, plenty of other companies have used the term "My Health" to describe services that provide health information to their users. So My Health is going after them, too.

In February 2015, My Health sued General Electric (GE), and alleged that GE's use of the term "myHealth" in connection with its online employee portal infringed My Health's trademark. My Health claimed that it "invested substantial time, money, and goodwill in advertising and promoting [My Health] in commerce and in the healthcare and technological services sectors." My Health further claimed that "GE is attempting to use [myHealth]...in order to take advantage of and capitalize on My Health's efforts to market and popularize My Health."

Given these statements, you might think My Health was an actual company with an actual business to protect. Indeed, My Health was required—under the penalty of perjury—to claim that it was using the term "My Health" in commerce in order to register it at the Patent and Trademark Office.

However, in February of this year GE told a very different story. According to a GE's motion for summary judgment (asking the court to rule in its favor as a matter of law), My Health "did not [have] a single document showing the actual sale of any goods or services under the purported MY HEATLH mark." That is, from the evidence GE was able to gather, "[My Health] simply obtained a patent, obtained a trademark registration, and proceeded to extract settlements based on threats of infringement litigation."

Beyond GE's claims, this is a trademark that never should have issued. Using the term "my health" to describe products and services related to—you guessed it—your health, is something the entire world should be able to do without fear of a trademark lawsuit. In fact, GE presented evidence that it had been using the term "myHealth" to describe its employee portal at least three years before My Health even applied for the trademark. (You can see GE's use yourself at the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine). It's not surprising GE was using this term: it is a completely predictable way to describe GE's service.

From what we can tell, My Health didn't oppose GE's motion. Instead, My Health settled with GE and the court never determined whether My Health was even entitled to hold a trademark in the term "My Health." This is unfortunate, because if My Health's patent infringement activity is any indication, My Health will continue to assert its trademark despite the serious doubts about its validity raised by GE.

My Health, armed with a stupid patent and a stupid trademark, has sued numerous companies, imposing costs on both those companies and the public at large. For that, it more than deserves this month's award.

Republished from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series

Filed Under: my health, patents, stupid patent of the month, telemedicine, trademark
Companies: ge, my health

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Mega-Troll Intellectual Ventures Hits Florist With Do-It-On-A-Computer Scheduling Patent

from the promoting-the-progress-of-stupid-patents dept

When it comes to patent trolls, no one is bigger than Intellectual Ventures. The Washington State-based behemoth is at the center of both patent trolling and the debate around patent reform. Though it claims to promote innovation, Intellectual Ventures is behind some of the most outrageous troll campaigns in recent years. Famous for hiding behind thousands of shell companies, it spawned Lodsys, the troll that harassed small app developers, and the Oasis Research litigation featured in This American Life.

This month, Intellectual Ventures filed some fresh lawsuits against targets including JCPenney, Sally Beauty, and flower delivery service Florists' Transworld Delivery. We checked out the asserted patents to see if any deserved our Stupid Patent of the Month award. All were worthy candidates, but one in particular stood out.

Before we get to the patent, here's a short script:

DISPATCHER: Hey, is your crew available?

ROSIE: Yep.

DISPATCHER: We need you to head over to Jimmie's place and fix his problem.

ROSIE: Okay.

DISPATCHER: This is Rosie, right?

ROSIE: Yep.

DISPATCHER: Great. The job has been assigned to you.

This script will probably not win an Academy Award for screenwriting. But how about a patent? As silly as this question may sound, by suggesting implementing this kind of basic crew management using an "enterprise computing system," a company called ABB, Inc. was able to get a patent. In 2003, the Patent Office issued U.S. Patent 6,633,900 titled "Mobile Crew Management System For Distributing Work Order Assignments To Mobile Field Crew Units" (the '900 Patent). Intellectual Ventures acquired it in mid-2015.

Claim 1 and Figure 5 of the '900 Patent best illustrate the banal idea at the center of the patent: crew assignments, but with a computer. The claims outline mundane steps (like the script above) and applies them to a computer environment. For example, one step is "notifying the field crew of the assignment." Another step is "retrieving and presenting a list of assignments to the field crew."

Patent claims like these are almost surely invalid under the Supreme Court's Alice v. CLS Bank decision. But that does not appear to have deterred Intellectual Ventures. Indeed, with such a huge portfolio at its disposal (Intellectual Ventures claims to own more than 40,000 patents), it is astonishing that it would chose to litigate with such a weak patent. This choice raises awkward questions about the overall quality of Intellectual Ventures' portfolio.

Intellectual Ventures is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Florists' Transworld Delivery (FTD Companies, Inc.) has its headquarters in the Chicago suburbs. But Intellectual Ventures' lawsuit [link to complaint] was filed about as far from these places as possible in the Eastern District of Texas. As we have noted many times before, the Eastern District of Texas is a hotbed of abusive patent litigation. Having chosen to litigate with a plainly invalid patent, it makes sense that Intellectual Ventures would chose a forum where the local rules favor patent plaintiffs.

Venue reform legislation currently before Congress would put an end to this kind of forum shopping. That would help reduce abusive patent trolling. But we need broader patent reform to ensure that patents like this one don't issue in the first place so that they can never become litigation weapons for trolls like Intellectual Ventures.

Reposted from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series

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Filed Under: patents, scheduling, stupid patent of the month
Companies: intellectual ventures

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Phoenix Licensing Trolls Marketers With 'Personalized Communications' Patent

from the that's-not-patentable-subject-matter dept

This month, we feature yet another patent that takes an ordinary business practice and does it on a computer. Our winner is US Patent No. 8,738,435, titled "Method and apparatus for presenting personalized content relating to offered products and services." As you might guess from its title, the patent claims the idea of sending a personalized marketing message using a computer.

Claim 1 of the patent is representative (the claims are supposed to describe the boundaries of the invention). It claims a "method of generating a set of personalized communications … with a computer system." The steps are described at an extremely high level of abstraction, including things such as "accessing a computer-accessible storage medium" using "identifying content to distinguish each person from other persons." The patent plainly proposes using ordinary computers to achieve this task. In fact, the "preferred embodiment of the apparatus" is illustrated in Figure 1 and includes fascinating, non-obvious details like a "display," a "keyboard," and a "mouse or pointing device."

Attentive readers have probably already concluded that the claims of US Patent No. 8,738,435 are almost surely invalid under Alice v. CLS Bank, the 2014 Supreme Court decision which held that abstract ideas implemented on a generic computer are not patent eligible. We agree. But this has not stopped a company called Phoenix Licensing, LLC, from suing more than 100 targets with this and other highly questionable patents from the same family (a patent family is the group of issued patents that come from the same application).

Phoenix Licensing has filed at least a dozen lawsuits just this month against companies ranging from CVS to Credo Mobile. Unsurprisingly, given that its patents are so vulnerable to challenge under the Alice standard, it has filed all of these lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas. Recent data shows that the Eastern District of Texas is much less likely than other federal courts to invalidate patent claims under Alice. This helps explain why a dispute between Phoenix Licensing (principle place of business in Scottsdale, Arizona) and Credo Mobile (headquartered in San Francisco) would end up way out in East Texas.

In its complaint against Credo Mobile, Phoenix Licensing boasts that its original 1996 patent application has grown into a patent family of 19 patents with more than 1,500 issued claims. But this is not evidence of inventiveness. Rather, it simply shows that the Patent Office is asleep at the wheel. The Patent Office has allowed Phoenix Licensing's mundane idea -- using a computer to send personalized marketing messages -- to grow like a Chia pet into a thicket of patent claims.

We have seen similar strategies from other patent trolls who exploit the permissiveness of the Patent Office to get an absurd number of nearly-identical claims, which can then be used to force defendants to play an expensive game of whack-a-mole in court. This creates enormous settlement pressure. Indeed, most of Phoenix Licensing's cases settle quickly after filing. The Phoenix Licensing story shows that we still need reform both in the courts and at the Patent Office -- to stop abusive patent litigation and to stop these stupid patents from issuing in the first place.

Reposted from the EFF Deeplinks Blog

Filed Under: customization, marketing, patents, stupid patent of the month
Companies: phoenix licensing

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Sharing Your Hard Copy Documents, But On A Social Network

from the because-patents dept

Back when you were a kid, you may (depending on your age) have checked books out of your library using a circulation card. The cards, like the one pictured below, would allow the librarian to keep track of the books, who had them, and when they were expected back at the library.

(Ohio Univ Libraries / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This month's Stupid Patent is awarded to Xerox, who on January 19, 2016 was awarded a patent on essentially the library circulation card, but done electronically.

The patent, U.S. Patent No. 9,240,000, is entitled "Social Network for Enabling the Physical Sharing of Documents." The patent discusses what it sees as a problem with current methods of sharing documents. Specifically, it says that "systems and methods which enable the sharing of documents among people working in proximate locations, while still promoting worker efficiency and independence, is [sic] needed." In addition, "there is still a need for an efficient social networking platform which is organization specific and which allows members of an organization to know what other members sitting in the same organizational space are reading, what documents they are amendable to sharing, and to which documents they are providing physical access."

And how does the patent solve these problems? Claim 11 details one way:

11. A computing system for enabling a physical sharing of a hard copy of a document, comprising:

[a] a plurality of programmatic instructions stored on a medium, wherein, when said plurality of programmatic instructions are executed, cause a client computing device to present a first graphical user interface to a user, wherein said first graphical user interface comprises a plurality of printing options for printing the document, wherein said first graphical user interface comprises an input for receiving an indication by the user that the user is willing to physically share the hard copy of the document within a predefined period of time; and

[b] a computing device for hosting at least a portion of a social network comprising a profile page of the user, wherein said computing device receives at least one of a characteristic of the hard copy of the document, in response to the user indicating a willingness to physically share the hard copy and publishes said characteristic on the profile page of the user, wherein said profile page is accessible to everyone who is connected to the user in a social network, and wherein said characteristic include at least one of title, date, location of document, or location of printing.

This claim is a good example of patent-speak. For various reasons, patent claims are often written in long, obfuscating language that tends to make them difficult to understand for anyone who isn't a patent lawyer. To be clear: patent lawyers will rightly tell you that every word in a claim is important. This is true. But what is also true is that often times claims include terms—such as "plurality of programmatic instructions stored on a medium"—that are essentially meaningless outside the patent system.

Claim 11, when given a plain English translation, reads something like this:

A computer that, [a] via a GUI, asks the user whether they want to print something using through a variety of methods, and to note whether they want to share the document once printed, for a certain amount of time and [b] if the user says they want to share it, updates the user's status on their profile page that tells people the name of the paper, the date it will be available and where.

This claim reads as merely a computerized version of the library's circulation card. A library purchases a book (similar to the printing of claim 11). The library then offers it to one of its patrons, who then decides they would like to borrow it for a certain amount of time. The patron brings the book to the counter, the card is filled out with the patron number and due date, and then placed in the file of all the cards for other patrons to search if they're looking for that book and when it will become available.

We just gave Xerox a patent on what amounts to sharing a book, but electronically. When considered this way, it is clear that Xerox's patent is a stupid patent. It deserves our censure. But more importantly, this patent issued this month, on an "invention" from 2011. Ultimately this patent is one of hundreds or thousands of patents that don't describe actual inventions, but rather just rehash old, obvious ideas "on a computer" using confusing language. The failure of the patent office to prevent this patent from issuing is regrettable, and shows just how dysfunctional our patent system is.

Republished from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Stupid Patent of the Month series

Filed Under: patents, stupid patent of the month

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Microsoft's Design Patent On A Slider

from the if-only-it-had-rounded-corners dept

For the first time ever, this month's Stupid Patent of the Month is being awarded to a design patent. Microsoft recently sued Corel for, among other things, infringing its patent on a slider, D554,140, claiming that Corel Home Office has infringed Microsoft's design.

The design patent, as detailed by Microsoft in its complaint, is titled "User Interface for a Portion of a Display Screen" and entitles Microsoft to own this:

More specifically, Microsoft claims to own this design of a slider.

Design patents aren't like the utility patents that most people think of when they think of patents. Unlike utility patents, which are meant for new and useful inventions, design patents are meant for new, non-functional, ornamental aspects of articles. They have only one claim, little to no written description, and usually a series of images detailing what exactly is being claimed. (A note about design patents: solid lines are used to show what is claimed; broken or dotted lines show the unclaimed "environment related to the design" or define the boundary of the design.)

As Professor Sarah Burstein points out on her fantastic Tumblr, design patents are often issued on a small part of a product, and often for things that seem unoriginal, not ornamental, or just ridiculous.

Microsoft's patent claims against Corel are unsurprising in light of how much money is potentially at stake. If Corel is found to infringe even one of Microsoft's design patents through even the smallest part of Corel Home Office, current Federal Circuit law entitles Microsoft to all of Corel's profits for the entire product. Not the profits that can be attributed to the design. Not the value that the design adds to a product. All of the profit from Corel Home Office.

The well-known Apple v. Samsung dispute addressed the issue of whether an infringer should be required to pay all of its profits for infringing a design patent that applies only to a portion of a product. Samsung had asked the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to reject this reading, but the court disagreed in a May, 2015 opinion.

Samsung has now asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. In its petition for certiorari, Samsung points out the absurd results of this rule. For example, Samsung explains that under the Federal Circuit's ruling, "profits on an entire car—or even an eighteen-wheel tractor trailer—must be awarded based on an undetachable infringing cup-holder." In addition, given that many products will include multiple ornamental features that could be covered by design patents, this raises the possibility that a company could get hit for multiple judgments for all its profits.

That sounds pretty crazy to us. But that's exactly what might happen if Microsoft prevails against Corel. Putting aside whether Microsoft's design was actually new and not obvious in 2006 (when Microsoft filed its application), whether Microsoft needed the patent incentive in order to come up with this design, and whether it is even desirable to grant a company a government-backed monopoly on a graphical slider (we don't think so, that's why this is a stupid patent), the scope of damages for design patent infringement has the potential to become a powerful tool to shut down legitimate competition based on the mere threat of a lawsuit.

Reposted from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Filed Under: damages, design patent, patents, slider, stupid patent of the month
Companies: corel, microsoft

Subway, McDonald's And Burger King Sued Over GPS Tracking Patent... Or Something

from the stupid-patent-of-the-month dept

GPS technology has been around for a while. Wikipedia puts the start of development at 1973. But it wasn't until the 1990s that it became available for consumer use. And even then, it took some time before the government removed restrictions on accuracy that it had on its use by civilians. (The government had added an intentional error to the signal that made GPS variably inaccurate up to 50 meters.)

With the loosening of restrictions on GPS came furious development in consumer applications—and a flurry of patents.

Which brings us to this month's Stupid Patent of the Month. The dubious honor goes to U.S. Patent No. 6,442,485, "Method and apparatus for an automatic vehicle location, collision notification, and synthetic voice," filed in 1999. The "Background of the Invention" talks about a need for an automatic voice system that could speak for a driver involved in a collision and transmit location details to 911. For example, the patent says that "[i]t would be desirable to have an automatic vehicle location and collision notification system that would ascertain if a vehicular collision had occurred and communicate directly with an emergency facility."

But after this background, the patent devolves into a wilderness of made-up words and technobabble. The patent includes fabricated phrases such as "Location Comparator-Indicator Module" and "Automatic Speed Controlled Location Detection Module." (Google searches of these phrases turns up nothing other than results related to the patent.) Reading the patent to try to figure out what it means becomes an exercise in cross-referencing and guesswork. Even worse, key terms in the claims (this is the part of the patent that is supposed to clearly explain what that patent covers) don't even appear in the description of the purported invention. This means  that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to understand what the claims mean and to guess how a court might interpret them.

This sort of made-up gobbledygook is likely what has allowed NovelPoint Tracking LLP, the owner of this month's Stupid Patent, to sue over 90 companies for infringement. The latest round of lawsuits, filed on March 27, 2015, includes companies such as Subway (the sandwich artists, not a company related to transportation), McDonald's, and Burger King.

And what do these fast food franchises have to do with vehicle location, collisions, and synthetic voices? With respect to Subway, NovelPoint claims that Subway's Windows phone mobile application infringes NovelPoint's patent.

Here's the description of Subway's app from Microsoft's website:

Don't know where to find a local Subway? We're here to help. This app will display a list of local Subway locations along with the ability to get directions and let your friends know where to meet you.

We don't know what, exactly, NovelPoint thinks it owns, but it looks like it is accusing Subway of infringing because it has an app that shows a map with directions. And given the incomprehensibility of its patent, it can get away with this, at least enough to secure a quick settlement and get out before a court rules that no, in fact, it doesn't own a map with directions.

And indeed that is what appears to have happened. Of the almost 100 cases NovelPoint has filed, exactly none of the cases has had a decision on the merits of NovelPoint's claims. From what we can see, all of the cases have settled very quickly, most likely for small nuisance sums.

Patent owners shouldn't be able to get away with this. Patents should be clear and understandable. If new words are used, they should be defined. And if words already exist in the relevant art, they should be used. NovelPoint's patent is a great example of how using fake terms can be used to obfuscate what the patent actually claims, and then used to claim infringement by something no one would have considered the patent owner to have invented. We have laws that should prevent this sort of gaming. The Patent Office and courts need to start actually enforcing them. 

Reposted from the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Deeplinks blog

Filed Under: gps, location, patents, stupid patent of the month
Companies: burger king, mcdonald's, novelpoint, novelpoint tracking, subway