Patentlyo Bits and Bytes by Anthony McCain

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About Anthony McCain

Anthony McCain is a law student at Mizzou where he is focusing on intellectual property; He has a background in mechanical engineering. anthony.mccain@patentlyo.com

10 thoughts on “Patentlyo Bits and Bytes by Anthony McCain

  1. 4

    Warren “Reliably Wrong” Woessner on the Genetic Technologies decision:

    The sky has fallen

    link to natlawreview.com

    Translation: “My favorite type of junk patents aren’t eligible. But I really like them! And so do my rich friends! This can’t be right.”

    LOL

    So the industry shills are in panic mode … again. How many times have we watched this silly movie? In the meantime, people are still discovering more and more correlations. If only Warren could get his fingers deeper into that pie and share some of the glory? Oh, what a pity.

  2. 3

    that is the least important “fact” involved in having a legal discussion about the law and the means of that law’s application

    “Of course you can invest millions of dollars in a business that depends on your ability to discriminate against gay people. People like you are The Most Important People Ever. Nothing’s going to change that!”

    LOL

    Keep the laughs coming, “anon.” You’re a very serious person! I’m sure your clients just love your deep insights.

  3. 2

    Oral arguments were heard last Friday in Ameranth Tr0lling, Inc. v. Every Company in the World.

    15-1703
    Judges: Reyna, Chen, & Stoll

    Recording here: link to cafc.uscourts.gov

    One of the junk patents here: 8,146,077 link to google.com
    More here: 6,384,850, #6,871,325, #6,982,733

    The claims ramble on and on with transparent scrivening, a p-a-thetic effort to put shiny gloss over old technology. But al they do is broadly cover methods of presenting “hospitality menus” (i.e., a menu for food) over the Internets.

    After granting a CBM petition, the PTAB correctly found a bunch of claims ineligible and a few dependent claims eligible. Bizarrely, the dependent claims that the Board found eligible recited only additional conventional junk like “use voice recognition tech” or “use handwriting capture tech” for data input.

    At one low point in the oral argument, the attorney for the patentee appears to assert that the patentee “invented” the handwriting capture in the context of a hierarchical menu. Well, golly, you’d think they’d simply claim that! What’s the point of the “hospitality” bal0ney? (rhetorical question — we all know how these tr0lls operate).

    Actual exchange:

    Chen: Ameranth is not standing here contending that it was the first one to link a customer in a restaurant to that customer’s order to make sure that customer got its food … right?
    Patentee: In the context of these ge-nerated menus, yes.
    Chen: As a ge-neral matter though that had been done a long, long time.
    Patentee: Yes, but these are computerized menus.

    LOL! Try to believe it. In other words: “do it on a computer!” Over and over again the patentee ducks and dodges when its vapid scrivening is challenged.

    Listen and laugh as the patentee here claims to have invented “transforming a back office menu into a specialized menu for a different non-standard display device” (LOL – wut? that meltdown occurs around 30 minutes).

    Another l0ser argument of the patentee is that statements like this in the specification — “hand-writing and voice recognition technologies can be utilized to convert the manual operator inputs into appropriate text messages” — are not sufficient evidence that the technologies were in the prior art (as opposed to innovations of the patent). Try to believe it!

    And then we have the usual mis-statements of fact by people who were apparently born yesterday. The patentee’s attorney asserts that “voice recognition technology was new at some during my lifetime.” Setting aside the non-sequitur of “during my lifetime” (legally irrelevant), the facts are that Bell Labs had a working system back in 1952 and even commercially available voice recognition techn0logies were well-known in the 80s, long before the critical date of the application (1999). So we have just another hacktacular display of ineptitude by desperate tr0lls and their ign0rant attorneys. Would sanctions be appropriate to put an end to that kind of nonsense? Sure they would.

    1. 2.1

      I assume Ameranth has notified its shareholders of how badly the oral arguments went. Can someone please show me where Ameranth has done so?

      After all, that’s the right thing to do, at least according to Ameranth (see here: link to prnewswire.com)

  4. 1

    Kelly Mackin: Federal Circuit Guidance Is Needed Because District Courts Are Misapplying Alice

    This is one of the most vapid articles I’ve read in a long time on 101.

    A choice quote:

    Additionally, its time to reconsider the history of the patent system and what has guided the application of patent law for hundreds of years: the Patent Act of 1952

    LOL!

    Over 7,500 claims in 150 patents have been invalidated as a matter of law.

    Awesome. Many more to come!

    Apparently Kelly was b0rn yesterday and doesn’t remember that the PTO was gleefully granting ridiculous junk at historically unprecedented rates for many years.

    Tranxition began with an idea: Computer Personality is how a computer takes on the style and habits of a user over time.

    Sounds like a lot of other crxppy comp00ter companies who conceal a simple widely recognized concept underneath scrivening. Has everyone seen the patent on “provisioning” cell phones by now?

    It was estimated recently that, as of 2015, approximately 240,000 patents relate to computer-implemented inventions; at an estimated invalidation rate of 82.9%, approximately 199,000 of those patents appear vulnerable to Section 101 invalidation in the current climate. Is this really what Congress intended with 101?

    LOL. Congress didn’t tell the CAFC and the PTO to drive a truck through the patent system. But Congress and the Supreme Court certainly did recognize that the PTO and the CAFC made a huge mess that needs to be cleaned up.

    Welcome to the clean up, Kelly. We all knew you and your client wouldn’t like it. Boo hoo hoo.

    1. 1.1

      One of the reasons why the SC wrote Alice the way it did (so that no one can understand exactly what is and isn’t patentable) is so that they couldn’t be overruled by Congress: Congress can’t overrule what it doesn’t understand.

      Once the SC says “computer software is not patentable”, then Congress will step in. Will it sla p down the SC? We’ll have to see.

      1. 1.1.1

        Once the SC says “computer software is not patentable”, then Congress will step in.

        Maybe.

        But Congress is never going to jump in to rescue the incredible junk that Kelly Mackin is defending.

        That’s an important fact for you and your clients to understand. Or you can just keep taking their money and blow sunshine up their behinds. After all, it’s the American way.

        1. 1.1.1.1

          That’s an important fact for you and your clients to understand.

          Actually that is the least important “fact” involved in having a legal discussion about the law and the means of that law’s application.

          Of course, you already knew that, but still insist on your “defend claim” meme.

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