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Patent Insanity thread:11-19-06 Patent Office gives Microsoft Patent for PC based Telephone interface

D

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Today's latest Patent insanity:

The wording is so vague and broad that Cisco now owns everything transmitted.

Any bets or guesses what Cisco will do with this gift of the world by the USPTO???

Patent given to Cisco for:

10-13-2006 System and method for providing integrated voice, video and data to customer premises over a single network

================================================
I can't find my Patent Insanity thread so have to start again.

This particular time I find it hysterical to find the University system under attack by the Patent Office.

Good maybe they will somehow be able to stop the Insanity of these Corporations owning the patent Office for everything.

This Company Blackboard now claims they came up with the idea of learning over the Internet.

8-28-2006 Patent fight rattles academic computing

Blackboard's claims are "incredibly obvious," said Feldstein. The company's patent suggests "that they invented e-learning," said Alfred Essa, associate vice chancellor and CIO of the Minnesota state college and university system.
 
"It just wouldn't be a level playing field if someone could come onto the scene tomorrow, copy everything that Blackboard and WebCT have done and call it their own," said Blackboard general counsel Matthew Small.

You know what wouldn't be a level playing field...patenting the whole concept of your industry and then sueing all your competitors out of business.
 
Blackboard's Small denies the company is claiming to own the very idea of e-learning. He says the company supports open source, and notes a Blackboard product called Building Blocks allows users to create their own systems off Blackboard's basic platform. Blackboard, he says, is focussed on commercial providers and has no intention of going after universities ? its customers, after all ? in court to collect royalties.
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While I think its stupid to give them a patent, I'm not all that bent out of shape about it. If the patent office created a process by which you could get a patent for commercial exclusivity but not noncommercial use then it would almost pass my sniff test.

I still think its a bad idea overall, though. But the open, free community will invariably produce a better solution than Blackboard. Even if they don't people will be free to choose from a variety of free options, Blackboard's offerings, and those of companies that license from Blackboard.

My primary issue is that we shouldn't have to rely on the 'goodwill' of a given company and the PTO needs to get a friggin' clue!
 
Originally posted by: thraashman
I think I'm going to patent urination, so that now everyone who pees owes me money. Or maybe I can patent light.
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You should see if there's a patent for shining light through a stream of urine . . .
 
I know there were places to learn on the internet when I first got on it back in 1993, 13 years ago. I think the Patent office forgot that you can't patent something that is already in the public domain, or something that is obivous to someone skilled in the field.
 
Originally posted by: BoberFett
The USPTO just needs to pull their heads from their asses. What else is new?
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I'm not sure that's quite fair. Can you imagine their workload since the mid90s?! In 2002, they had 325k applications (11% over 2001). Over 45% came from overseas . . . the only thing worse the US legalese BS is ESL legalese BS.

2003 . . . 355,000 applications with an average of 25 claims per application. How much you wanna bet the USPTO budget isn't growing like DOD?
 
Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
Originally posted by: BoberFett
The USPTO just needs to pull their heads from their asses. What else is new?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's quite fair. Can you imagine their workload since the mid90s?! In 2002, they had 325k applications (11% over 2001). Over 45% came from overseas . . . the only thing worse the US legalese BS is ESL legalese BS.

2003 . . . 355,000 applications with an average of 25 claims per application. How much you wanna bet the USPTO budget isn't growing like DOD?
Click to expand...
Their workload would be significantly lightened if rather than fully processing every application, they actually rejected ideas that should be obvious to anyone even somewhat competent, if patentable at all. One click purchase anyone?
 
Originally posted by: BoberFett
Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
Originally posted by: BoberFett
The USPTO just needs to pull their heads from their asses. What else is new?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's quite fair. Can you imagine their workload since the mid90s?! In 2002, they had 325k applications (11% over 2001). Over 45% came from overseas . . . the only thing worse the US legalese BS is ESL legalese BS.

2003 . . . 355,000 applications with an average of 25 claims per application. How much you wanna bet the USPTO budget isn't growing like DOD?
Click to expand...

Their workload would be significantly lightened if, rather than fully processing every application,

One click purchase anyone?
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We rarely agree but on the same page here, hell who wouldn't put a few thousand to throw at a phoney Patent applications that could reap millions.
 
From the article at the OP's link:
It may seem self-evident that virtual classrooms should closely resemble real ones. But a major education software company contends it wasn't always so obvious. And now, in a move that has shaken up the e-learning community, Blackboard Inc. has been awarded a patent establishing its claims to some of the basic features of the software that powers online education.
.
.
Critics say the patent claims nothing less than Blackboard's ownership of the very idea of e-learning. If allowed to stand, they say, it could quash the cooperation between academia and the private sector that has characterized e-learning for years and explains why virtual classrooms are so much better than they used to be.
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As the holder of two U.S. patents, I can tell you that the requirements for obtaining a patent are that the invention must be new, useful and UNOBVIOUS. Although this concept obviously is useful, it's hardly new, and when it comes to obvious, it's worthy of the dreaded "D" word... DUH! 😛
 
Court will fix what USPTO messed up.
At least one more headache looms: ImClone appears likely to lose a patent trial involving Erbitux, its lucrative cancer drug and sole product. The judge's verdict could come at any time.
---
The scientists accuse Schlessinger of absconding with their idea of combining a monoclonal antibody with chemotherapy, taking it to a corporate predecessor of Sanofi-Aventis (Charts), and secretly applying for a patent on it. While the application was pending, Aventis licensed the rights exclusively to ImClone. (Schlessinger denied impropriety and claimed credit for the antibody and the combination.)

ImClone had reason to question who the inventor was as early as 1994, when the U.S. Patent Office rejected its application on the grounds that the Weizmann scientists had published an article describing the combination idea before Aventis filed for the patent. ImClone told the patent office it would provide support for its claim, then dropped the application. The company later refiled, and the patent office relented.

Before and during trial, the judge expressed skepticism about ImClone's case. At one point the scientists' lawyer, Nicholas Groombridge of Weil Gotshal & Manges, protested that they couldn't be expected to discover the patent because ImClone had hidden it from them.

A defense lawyer interjected: "Objection. That's just argument, your honor." Responded the judge: "It's a good argument, though." And in one ruling the judge noted that "defendants have produced no documentation verifying their claim...."
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Today's latest Patent insanity:

Patent given to Cisco for:

10-13-2006 System and method for providing integrated voice, video and data to customer premises over a single network

A method for providing integrated voice, video, and data content in an integrated service offering to one or more customer premises includes receiving television programming from a programming source, receiving data from a data network, and receiving telephone communications from a telephone network.

The method further includes placing the television programming, data, and telephone communications in a common format for integrated communication over a single network infrastructure using a common communication protocol.

In addition, the method includes communicating the integrated television programming, data, and telephone communications in the common format over the single network infrastructure using the common communication protocol to one or more customer premises to provide the integrated service offering.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventors: Wendt; Thomas C. (Plano, TX), Robbins; Patrick T. (Highland Village, TX), Easty; Allen D. (Carrollton, TX), Tobias; Michael J. (Highland Village, TX)
Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (San Jose, CA)

Appl. No.: 09/644,195
Filed: August 22, 2000

=====================================================
The wording is so vague and broad that Cisco now owns everything transmitted.

Any bets or guesses what Cisco will do with this gift of the world by the USPTO???
 
Originally posted by: CPA
That damn Bush and the Republican Adminstration........
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I actually do blame them.

The past 5 years by the USPTO Office under their watch has been beyond words.

They are Pro-Business at all costs and this is further proof.
 
Originally posted by: CPA
That damn Bush and the Republican Adminstration........
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At least partially, I'm sure the Patent Office has probably been underfunded for decades. I can only imagine what it's been like 1996 to present.

 
Originally posted by: dmcowen674
Originally posted by: CPA
That damn Bush and the Republican Adminstration........
Click to expand...

I actually do blame them.

The past 5 years by the USPTO Office under their watch has been beyond words.

They are Pro-Business at all costs and this is further proof.
Click to expand...

LMAO, I figured as much, just thought I would throw that it there, since you forgot to.
 
While it may be a myth here is a widely quoted Patent Office doozy:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899.
 
Anyone who thinks that the Patent Office has gotten worse in the past decade or so must be completely ignorant of the patent frauds and fortunes of Jerome Lemelson.
 
Well go ahead---patent light.

I am going to get a patent on human stupidity----I will make far more money---stupidity is infinite I tell you---infinite---and light is limited by a fusion process that generates this light---and matter is finite.
 
Originally posted by: Vic
Anyone who thinks that the Patent Office has gotten worse in the past decade or so must be completely ignorant of the patent frauds and fortunes of Jerome Lemelson.
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Lemelson is certainly a noteworthy INDIVIDUAL. I think the larger discussion is about the general dysfunction at the USPTO that not only allows extraordinary individuals to cause problems but corporations as well.

Further, Lemelson has been dead for nearly a decade. The USPTO BS about genes, one-clicks, and light beams in urine are amongst the flood of patents (many international) that have come in the past decade . . . and curiously NOT rejected.
 
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