Stupid Patent of the Month: A Drink Mixer Attacks the Internet of Things

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/stupid-patent-month-drink-mixer-attacks-internet-things

107 27 11 years ago

joopxiv2• 11 years ago

The whole patent system is mindbogglingly stupid. How this extremely obvious abuse can continue without any meaningful reform is beyond me.

msandford2• 11 years ago

Because there's no meaningful action happening in government on any issue really.

The biggest legislative issue of the decade is probably Obamacare and that was basically a license to not change anything about billing or waste, but rather a subsidy for buyers and small concessions on eligibility.

bitJericho• 11 years ago

When government can make wide and sweeping changes quickly then we'll have a reason to be scared!

SomeCallMeTim2• 11 years ago

whole patent system is mindbogglingly stupid.

The patent system serves a purpose: In the case of drug patents, it enables drug research to exist at all.

It's crazy expensive to bring a new drug to market. Unless we're going to have the government fund all new drug research, we need patent protection for drug development. I'd be happy to mass-invalidate all patents that don't actually have serious R&D dollars behind their creation (the idea of the patent protecting the small inventor hasn't been true for many years), but that becomes a difficult threshold to quantify.

And as the EFF points out, this patent is not valid under current law. It doesn't satisfy the most basic criteria of "novelty." No matter how much we improve the PTO, there will still be stupid patents that leak through. What's broken is that, once issued, such a patent is hard to tear down (and there are probably thousands of such patents already issued).

We need a vastly simplified and streamlined way to tear down obviously bad patents like this. The PTO has reached out in the past to get help from experts in judging patents; extend that to reviewing existing patents, and give the PTO an explicit mission to seek-and-destroy such patents since they are measurably hurting the tech economy.

Cut out the bureaucratic obstacles to destroying patents that show no novelty. Make a patent challenge a process that takes no more than a month, and that reliably invalidates or limits the scope of broad-reaching patents, so that if you get a bogus letter demanding payment for some patent that never should have been issued, you could potentially drag out the negotiations long enough for the patent to be rendered null and void.

That would destroy the Patent Troll business model.

Kluny3• 11 years ago

How about gamify it? Have a UI connected to an open-source repository of all current patents. Patents come up on a users dashboard formatted all prettily, with a form ready to go for listing your evidence. Users earn points for each patent they knock off. Combine efforts with the US Patent Office for maximum results - users do all the work, patent workers only have to approve/disapprove evidence.

joopxiv2• 11 years ago

... this patent is not valid under current law.

Yet it was approved. And with the current system, it will cost more to fight it than to give in to the extortion of the patent trolls.

In the case of drug patents, it enables drug research to exist at all.

You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is economically driven. Diseases that aren't profitable are ignored.

jobu• 11 years ago

Alice v. CLS Bank wiped out a bunch of silly "do it on a computer" patents. Hopefully a sane judge will look at this and decide it fits under that umbrella. Otherwise we'll end up waiting a decade for the Supreme Court to come down with a decision that <trivial concept> + "do it over the internet" is not patentable.

It is a bit sad though that the USPTO has abdicated their responsibility and left it to the legal system.

WildUtah2• 11 years ago

These cases are in the Eastern District of Texas. EDTX allows plaintiffs to choose their judge. Judge Gilstrap does not believe in the precedential validity of Alice v. CLS Bank and prohibits defendants from making motions based on it unless he specifically invites them, which he doesn't do.

And that judge gets about one fourth of all patent cases in the country.

The Federal Circuit abolished the law (still on the books but null and void) that required patent litigation to be brought in the district where a defendant was accused of infringing and allowed cases to be brought anywhere the plaintiff likes. Rep. Gilmore in the House of Representatives has introduced a bill, the Innovation Act, that would restore a weaker version of that statute, until the CAFC abolishes it again.

monochromatic2• 11 years ago

Judge Gilstrap does not believe in the precedential validity of Alice v. CLS Bank

Surely the truth is a little more nuanced than a federal judge simply not believing in the precedential validity of binding precedent.

the law (still on the books but null and void) that required patent litigation to be brought in the district where a defendant was accused of infringing

What law is that? I thought the general rule was that (subject to certain constraints) the plaintiff has some latitude in this.

dheera• 11 years ago

0. Patent something, stated as generally as possible, and shut up about it. 1. Wait for several years until someone comes up with the same idea. 2. Deliberately wait for several more years until 20 more companies make billions of dollars from it. Don't say a thing until the reward is big enough. 3. Sue and claim "damages" from each company.

Given that this mode of income is made possible in the US, people can and will exploit it.

ExpiredLink• 11 years ago

You aptly summed it up. The 'stealth mode' is the key to patent success.

elektromekatron• 11 years ago

1. A system for customizing a product according to a user's preferences comprising: a remote server including a database configured to store a product preference of a predetermined product for at least one user; and a first communication module within the product and in communication with the remote server; wherein the remote server is configured to receive the identity of the predetermined product and the identity of the at least one user, retrieve the product preference from the database based on the identity of the predetermined product and the identity of the least one user and transmit the product preference to the first communication module.

https://www.google.com/patents/US8788090

So, this seems to be a claim on sending a message to an automated system that contains a data store of products, saying what is wanted and who it is for.

I wonder how much effort will end up being misdirected into having to deal with just this one stupid patent.

crapiola• 11 years ago

The very same "inventor" has a patent on sharing routes https://www.google.com/patents/US20130332076

imauld• 11 years ago

This gave me the inspiration to finally patnet my idea:

Doing a thing to a thing with another thing. On the internet.

beambot2• 11 years ago

No problem. Back in early 2005, we built a robot bartender that could take orders over the web (or from PDA) and would automatically mix them. This was our undergrad capstone project, so there is probably "official" documentation on file somewhere at the university. I still have our final report around too -- plus a video (shit quality, sorry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RzoeacsXrQ).

I'd be happy to make an expert declaration pro bono to get this tripe invalidated (contact info in profile).

Kluny3• 11 years ago

That project must be a classic or something. I recall a team in the cohort a year ahead of mine in college doing the same thing, also for their capstone (in 2010).

beambot2• 11 years ago

It's definitely a right of passage for roboticists. Now there are BarBot competitions and bartending robot startups -- so it's definitely an old idea! There's no way that ours from 2005 was the first, but ours definitely predates the patent (ie. is sufficient prior art).

adnam• 11 years ago

Check out the profile and philosophy of the guy behind this: http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventor-network/invento...

In order to make money at inventing, Rothschild has started a few businesses, including BarPoint.com, which provides on-line and wireless product information and shopping services. There was just one problem—he figured out quickly that getting into “business mode” was not his true passion.
“Setting up and running companies around my inventions has been cumbersome,” he explained. “I’m not a ‘runner’; I’m an inventor. I ended up selling two of my companies so that I could spend less time in business mode and more time in invention mode.”

renox• 11 years ago

In France one mobile operator (Orange) attacked another one (Free) with patent violation and the judge told them something like this : "software cannot be patented: you loose, pay 200k€ of damage".

I'm quite happy about this outcome but that's only a first level judgement and it was this week so it can still be appealed..

Now what would be even better is that the patent office which accepted this software patent (illegal here) should be held responsible for this mess, but I'm not holding my breath..

Stupid Patent of the Month: A Drink Mixer Attacks the Internet of Things

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