Stupid Patent of the Month: Selfie Contests

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/stupid-patent-month-selfie-contests

by glitcher • 3 years ago

175 45 3 years ago

zw123456• 3 years ago

Dear eff.org, I am informing you that you are in violation of intellectual property laws by having a contest for "The Stupidest Patent of the Month" you are infringing on the property rights covered by patent No. 8,655,715 which covers all such contests.

AlbertCory9• 3 years ago

Just wait another year and a half, and then you're free:

2025-08-10 Adjusted expiration

No one's bothered to invest the $500,000 or so for an IPR to destroy this patent, which should be easy. Just adding the words "on a computer" to a common activity does not make it patentable.

mort96• 3 years ago

Just adding the words "on a computer" to a common activity does not make it patentable.

Someone should tell the patent office

AlbertCory9• 3 years ago

They did. But that didn't automatically invalidate all the old patents.

pclmulqdq• 3 years ago

Honestly, the EFF should be IPR-ing all of these instead of complaining about the patent system in general.

It sounds like the lawsuits over this patent are probably for minimal amounts of money.

monsieurbanana• 3 years ago

I completely disagree, complaining about the patent system is a good thing to do, that doesn't preclude doing something else too. I also don't see why the amount of money extorted matter.

iamjfu• 3 years ago

In this case, complaining made me aware of the issue. I've known about patent trolling but not this particular kind. So complaining is a form of raising awareness which could be a good first step if system reform is needed.

ikekkdcjkfke• 3 years ago

The legitimicy of whoever approved this patent needs to be questioned

btrettel5• 3 years ago

Former patent examiner here.

Getting angry at the examiner when the patent stinks is similar to getting angry at programmers when the application stinks. Often, it wasn't the programmer's fault. Management didn't give them enough time, for example, so the programmer did the best they could given the time constraints.

And that's exactly what happens at the USPTO. Many examiners understand that patent quality is a problem, but USPTO management simply doesn't give examiners enough time to do a quality job. Mistakes will happen.

[I posted this elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38765299]

nfriedly• 3 years ago

I think it's mostly congress's fault. They told the patent office to basically approve anything that didn't have prior art in the form of an existing patent for the exact same thing.

nikanj• 3 years ago

Just wait for the next wave of patents where they add ”using AI”

Flux159• 3 years ago

So how would someone go through the process of invalidating patents like this? I assume that there's no easy or cheap way otherwise the eff would have already done it.

Another post mentions spending $500k for an IPR to invalidate - would that be the only way, limiting it to only well funded startups or larger established companies?

analog312• 3 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, but I have several patents and get involved as an internal technical expert in investigating IP issues with my employer. None of this is actual advice:

There are multiple levels of engagement. The simplest is simply to ignore the patent and take the risk.

You can get an independent lawyer to write a finding that the patent is invalid for reasons X, Y, and Z. What this does is to insulate you from treble damages.

There is a formal process for requesting invalidation, but it requires starting with the confidence that the patent is invalid (or a lot of money to waste, or both), and those things are usually enough to justify either of the two above options.

Situations where it makes sense to request formal invalidation seem to be rare.

You can wait until you get sued, and counter with an invalidation action.

I don't think you can DIY any of this. Especially, the rules for what is "obvious" and what actually counts as prior art, are complicated and it's easy to be wrong.

AlbertCory9• 3 years ago

Being known for filing IPRs makes you a "hard target." The trolls will avoid targeting you until they've built up a war chest by settling with all the soft targets.

abduhl• 3 years ago

> What this does is to insulate you from treble damages.

This is a dangerous suggestion. Using advice of counsel as a defense to willful infringement is not always successful, and this would be especially true if counsel’s advice is that the patent should be invalidated (rather than your technology not infringing).

barapa• 3 years ago

Thanks for the advice!

AlbertCory9• 3 years ago

that's the standard defense we used at Google. It's like a trial but without a courtroom. Briefs and answering briefs. Not for amateurs.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

okay since these arent going to to away, lets try something else:

one stop gap solution would be making it more streamlined and standardized to make a license

these are antagonistic tolls because the conditions are onerous

you do something ambitious and lucrative, patent owner comes out of the woodwork and says “cease doing that”, “pay me this toll” or “cease doing that and pay me this toll” or “pay me this toll and continue doing that”

and you’re like “no, thats ridiculous, have fun in court” and then they go have fun in court and you freak out

its a state sanctioned monopoly, the state should standardize how the licensing is done. a model uniform patent license, almost like an insurance model that businesses pay into maybe even from existing fees, where patent holders file claims to that insurance pool

m3kw92• 3 years ago

What about the idiots that allowed this patent?

btrettel5• 3 years ago

Former patent examiner here.

ametrau• 3 years ago

I think by idiots they mean the org collectively

chrismorgan• 3 years ago

But also often when the application stinks, it’s because the programmer was incompetent.

m3kw92• 3 years ago

Yeah for sure, but the system is what I’m questioning.

siliconc0w2• 3 years ago

Shown HN: I made a tool to help visualize patent claims - here is the patent in question https://recurveip.com/claims/8655715

(tool is still WIP, if you're interested I would love to get your thoughts)

Kwpolska• 3 years ago

The diagram is hard to read and doesn’t add anything over the text of the claim.

siliconc0w2• 3 years ago

Agreed it could use improvement, I'm working on fine-tuning the model to create better diagrams (this is using the latest 3.5 turbo model which typically requires a couple iterations before it gets to a valid diagram).

jacobgorm• 3 years ago

Friends of mine ran a site called Hotpeople.dk from around 2002 that seems like it would be prior art, see https://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/samfund/article4805511.ece .

qingcharles• 3 years ago

The headline translates amusingly in Google "Undressed young people show themselves online".

I was going to say that the original Hot or Not predates your friends' site, but Wikipedia has prior art for that too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_or_Not#Predecessors_and_sp...

GuB-422• 3 years ago

The EFF and similar organizations often voice their opposition against the patent system.

But why couldn't the EFF use the flaws of the patent system to their advantage.

They could file all kinds of patents for things they oppose. DRM schemes, surveillance and tracking tech, dark patterns, etc... And then patent troll companies that use these techniques.

Win/win. If they lose their lawsuit, it creates a precedent against patent trolls. If they win, that's one less of the things they are against.

dbspin• 3 years ago

Think it through - there are a literally infinite number of such potentially patentable non-innovations. And such lawsuits are expensive and time consuming. Meanwhile the bar to entry for patent trolls is extremely low. That would be and endless futile game of whackamole.

GuB-422• 3 years ago

The idea here is mostly for the EFF to be the patent troll.

But unlike most patent trolls who prey on companies producing useful things, the EFF would attack companies making things that shouldn't be done (according to the EFF).

For example, let's have the EFF patent ad banners with a close button that is too small to click. If the patent is granted (unlikely but let's imagine it is), the EFF can then threaten sites with such an ad banner with a patent lawsuit. Hopefully discouraging websites from using such tactic.

oh_sigh• 3 years ago

Patent trolls definitionally don't produce anything, so aren't going to run afoul of other patents. Squatting on shitty patents might be a good idea to prevent them from ever getting into a troll's portfolio, but it might be a good idea just to put the money towards invalidating patents that the biggest trolls use to extort money out of companies.

rpigab• 3 years ago

The Fine Bros youtube channel tried to patent reaction videos.

Stupid Patent of the Month: Selfie Contests

Related Stories