- Sarah Garber: Avoiding Alice Rejections With Predictive Analytics
- Joseph Herndon: Corelogic v. Boundary Solutions
- Joseph Mandour: Justin Bieber And Skrillex Sued For Copyright Infringement
- Victoria Heckstall: What The Samsung/Apple Lawsuit Can Teach Us About Patent Law
- George Kanabe & Johanna Jacob: No “Last Resort” Striking Of Undisclosed Expert Opinion
- Eric Goldman: De Minimis Music Sampling Isn’t Infringement – Salsoul v. Madonna
Get a Job doing Patent Law
Oral arguments today in Kickstarter v. Fan Funded
Judges: Reyna, Hughes, & Stoll
2016-06-08 2015-1927
Background on the district court case here: link to arstechnica.com
The l0ser in this case, aka “Fan Funded, LLC” (and I use the term “l0ser” in every sense of the word, including the sense that includes “big time lo0ers who deserve to l0se repeatedly and shouldn’t even be permitted to breathe the same air as the typical non-l0ser person”) starts with a giant whine that the district court didn’t bend over backwards to try to save their incredibly junky patent. Because “presumed valid!”. That argument fell on deaf ears.
Here’s the ridiculously junky claims (US7885887; link to google.com):
1. A system for marketing and funding one or more projects of an artist comprising a server having applications programs operable from a remote site for:
providing software tools to an artist or Account Manager to manage at least one project, the project comprising at least one creative work;
receiving information from the artist or Account Manager regarding at least one Sales Container associated with the at least one project, each Sales Container including at least one of a product, a service, and a patronage, while the artist retains outright ownership of the project and the creative work;
transmitting offer data from a server to a client via a network, the offer data comprising an offer to Fans concerning the at least one Sales Container associated with at least one project, wherein the offer is for a Sales Container at a predetermined level of patronage in exchange for funds for the project;
receiving at the client such offer data and presenting the offer to the Fan;
transmitting acceptance data back to the server from the client accepting the offer;
processing the acceptance data by the server;
registering contact and marketing information regarding Patrons in a database; and
providing the artist or Account Manager software tools to manage communications, through said Patron database, to Patrons regarding the sales and marketing of one or more projects.
Wowee zowee: “software tools”! S00per d00per techno! Who could have imagined anyone using the Internet or “software tools” to assist with fundraising way back in the dark, dark “Iron Ages” of 2002? Apparently nobody at the USPTO, the agency responsible for dr0pping umpteen thousands of junky patents like this on the public.
I have to give some credit to the attorney for the l0ser in this case. He actually appears to believe what he’s saying. That’s impressive because he’s so completely full of reheated zombie brain baloney that the courtroom positively reeks. I also give him credit for not pretending that the case fell within the scope of DDR or Enfish.
Yes, friends, the Internet does allow people to do stuff …. on the Internet. Before the Internet existed, people didn’t do stuff on the Internet. Shocking!
This junk will remain tanked and the CAFC will publish its Rule 36 opinion within the next week.
Try to believe this super junky patent directed to a method of “providing an indication” of how “appealing” a “content item” is (<–p u k e; fyi, this was cited on the face of the junky patent asserted by the l0ser "Fan Funded"). Note especially the language used in the claims.
Remember folks: software is not logic! Nope. The "experts" have told us so many times. LOLOLOLOLOLOL
US8996526
link to google.com
2. A system, comprising:
at least one computing device;
and a content analysis application executable in the at least one computing device, the content analysis application comprising:
logic that identifies a population of users having a demonstrated interest in a content item;
logic that identifies a demographic attribute associated with each of the users in the population of users based at least in part upon an age of each of the users;
logic that determines a distribution of the population of users comprising:
logic that generates a plurality of ordered bins into which the demographic attribute can be separated, the plurality of ordered bins being ordered consecutively according to a respective demographic attribute or demographic attribute range associated with each of the plurality of ordered bins;
logic that identifies a respective one of the plurality of ordered bins into which each user from the population of users can be placed according to the demographic attribute; and
logic that places each user from the population of users into the respective one of the plurality of bins according to the demographic attribute;
and
logic that calculates a content item metric providing an indication of appeal based at least in part upon the distribution of the population of users across the plurality of ordered bins, the distribution based at least in part upon the number of the plurality of ordered bins into which the population of users is distributed or a contiguousness of the plurality of ordered bins into which the population of users is distributed.
Heckuva job, PTO! How on earth did this incredible pile of g@rbage get granted?
Regarding, US8996526, it issued on March 31, 2015, not all that long after Alice. Perhaps we should lay the blame for this sort of junk where the responsibility lies: Kappos and every other PTO leader from Alappat/State Street Bank on that figured that simply reciting a computer or such was enough for 101 purposes. Of course that line of thinking was not valid at the time of Benson, otherwise the claims in Benson would have passed muster.
MM, totally agree. I note you did not immediate draw the ire of the pro-business method lobby. Perhaps the message is finally sinking in.
Regarding the sincere, but clueless attorney, for Fan Funded, what was the gist of his argument. It cannot only be that the claim was presumed valid. Really? After Bilski/Alice?
Ned, your echo effects are showing again.
“MM, totally agree. I note you did not immediate draw the ire of the pro-business method lobby. Perhaps the message is finally sinking in.”
Would that the same takeaway be gathered from all of the running away that you and Malcolm do to counterpoints presented?
Think about it.
Maybe your same quip about “don’t bother to read” applies to Malcolm’s voluminous CR@P and that most people simply skip his posts because they recite the same ad nauseum ad infinitum v0m1tfest time and again…?
Rule 36 opinion in favor of Kickstarter published today (took two days).
My boy skrill would never copyright infringe!
With respect to sampling sound recordings, the Sixth Circuit’s ruling in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films created another variant: any sound recording sampling, no matter how minor, was per se infringement, period. Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit rejected Bridgeport’s per se rule, holding that the “de minimis” defense …. applied to music sampling.
Good for the Ninth Circuit.
On average, contemporary copyright ins@nity is even more appalling than patent ins@nity. Try to believe that copyright was even asserted against this:
Pettibone copied one quarter-note of a four-note chord, lasting 0.23 seconds; he isolated the horns by filtering out the other instruments playing at the same time; he transposed it to a different key; he truncated it; and he added effects and other sounds to the chord itself
It’d be interesting to see the Supremes take this up, if only to hear the whining from the copyright tr0lls.
What evidence do you have of such “copyright Tr011s”…?
link to ipclinicorg.files.wordpress.com
Coauthored a paper on the copyright troll issue.
Thanks Ryan!
I will read it with pleasure.
(note, that the “digital economy” will have a growing patent impact in the not so distant future, and is not solely an impetus in the copyright world)
the “digital economy” will have a growing patent impact in the not so distant future
Deep deep stuff.
…and Malcolm pipes in his usual ARSE mode…
Did you have a point to make, Malcolm?
At all?
No?
That’s what I thought.
“Go figure Folks”
Did you phone that comment in from 1992?
I am not the one that uses a ten year old script – we both that would be you (happy Decade of Decadence)
Ryan,
A couple of observations:
The authorship of the paper is a bit cloudy – written in first person singular, attributed to single person’s views (Andrew P. Bridges), and yet “prepared by” a small group including yourself.
The influence of Pamela Samuelson is evident – and NOT in a good way.
Prinda and Righthaven are certainly bad actors – but you seek to confuse bad actors with some sense of misplaced righteousness in a “must practice” paradigm that never has been a requirement of IP protection (both patents and copyrights from the very start of this country were meant to be property items that were FULLY alienable. For example, you seem to want to portray a patent Armageddon strategy of a chestful of patents to force cross-licensing as some sort of good thing – it never was a good thing, and the ability of the so-called “Tr011” to wreck that strategy was a feature and not a bug.
The infusion of emotion and non-objectivity is a detriment to the legal writing here. A bug and not a feature. It is one thing to be able to use some emotion to buttress legal points, but here, the emotion is used to supplant and obscure the legal points.
In the sum total**, this article is CR@P.
**It does have some good points, and does provide an expose of some bad actors, but it is the overall thrust and intent of the piece that suffers from drinking TOO MUCH of the “IP is bad” kool-aid.
Fair enough.
We prepared this for my school’s law clinic on behalf of Mr. Bridges and it was inevitably a piece of advocacy colored by the aims of the clinic and Mr Bridges’ practice.
The lack of “objectivity” is by design.
What I hoped you would take out of the article is the fact that copyright trolling is a real phenomenon that is a product of the enforcement of statutory damages divorced from any actual monetary loss to the plaintiffs.
I am more interested about this quote
“but you seek to confuse bad actors with some sense of misplaced righteousness in a “must practice” paradigm that never has been a requirement of IP protection (both patents and copyrights from the very start of this country were meant to be property items that were FULLY alienable. For example, you seem to want to portray a patent Armageddon strategy of a chestful of patents to force cross-licensing as some sort of good thing – it never was a good thing, and the ability of the so-called “Tr011” to wreck that strategy was a feature and not a bug.”
Do you care to elaborate? Are you saying that NPE activity is preferable to crossliscencing? That is an unconventional viewpoint.
Also. I don’t think the righteousness is misplaced. Practicing entities are not looking to “monetize” their patents. Rather they seek to protect existing profits via litigation. Monetization’s aim is to profit off the underlying litigation.
It makes sense that the latter would be associated with more abuses.
“Unconventional” is not the right description.
From the very start, the US system was built to have IP property be FULLY alienable – the natural consequence of this is protection of the IP completely outside of the realm of any “must make” paradigm.
The so-called “Tr011s” enabled the breaking of the war chests of “you must cross-license or we will bury you” game of the massive patent aggregations that favored those already established entities that could more readily make patenting a sport of kings.
The “righteousness” IS misplaced because you have not grasped the fundamental aspects of the US system – full alienability and NO tie to actual making.
Profit – by “demonizing” is every bit as loathsome as the bad actors you write about – in fact, it is MORE loathsome because of the fallacy of painting anyone who “does not make” as a wrongful doer.
As is said: you have consumed far too much Kool-aid and have aimed for emotion over legal substance.
Corelogic v. Boundary Solutions
It’s ridiculous that ineligible junk like this can’t be tanked by shoving the PTO’s face in its own reeking incompetence.
Both IPRs and its cousin the CBM Review need to be expanded by Congress to deal with the gaping ineligiblity problems infecting hundreds of thousands of junky claims out there.
1. An interactive computer implemented method for retrieving geographic parcel boundary polygon maps and associated parcel attribute data linked to a non-graphic database, wherein the data is acquired electronically, comprising:
a. activating a computer terminal connected to a computer network;
b. accessing an applications program for access to the data;
c. accessing a data entry screen and entering a parcel attribute to call up the parcel selected;
d. subsequently accessing a national parcel map database comprising multiple jurisdictional databases which have been normalized to a common data protocol;
e. searching a jurisdiction look up table associated with the national parcel map database, said look up table indexed for identification of the pertinent jurisdictional database, whereby a numerical jurisdictional identifier for the selected jurisdiction is located, and the identified jurisdictional database thereafter accessed; and,
f. thereafter displaying on screen a parcel boundary polygon map, along with surrounding parcel boundary polygons, the default scale of the displayed map selected to fill the computer display screen with parcel boundaries within a selected distance around the subject parcel, the selected parcel boundary polygon highlighted, defining both the location and boundary of the parcel, and associated attribute data for the highlighted parcel displayed.
The ‘957 patent describes the NPDP as an electronic repository for parcel-level maps and linked attribute data acquired from public and private entities. Databases from different jurisdictions are assembled and stored in a standard format, with each jurisdictional database placed in an individual directory. The system normalizes information to a single universal protocol. Parcel-level information includes parcel boundaries and geocodes linked using a parcel identifier to a non-graphic database containing property tax records.
What this does is extend the ability to display a map and tax data for one state to the many by normalizing the DB format, an apparently manual process that is not actually claimed.
Thus, if there had been a method of automatically normalizing databases from multiple jurisdictions, that was either not invented, not described or not claimed.
MM, any other comments?
“An apparently manual process that is not actually claimed.”
Strawman much?
It is more than obvious that the claim is not – nor was it meant to be – a manual process (apparent or otherwise).
Attempting to MAKE this “manual” is the very transgression of my coined term of anthropomorphication.
“anon” Attempting to MAKE this “manual” is the very transgression of my coined term of anthropomorphication.
If anything, that “transgression” occurred when the b0ttom-feeders drafted this pile of junk.
But go ahead and defend this junk, “anon”! It’s what you and the screeching entitled gasbags at PatentCr0cks do best. It’s all you, really.
LOL – move the goalposts back (as usual) Malcolm.
I need not defend any claim when I am talking about the law itself – or here, the rather blatant misrepresentation on a global level of what is a machine and what is not a machine.
Not sure why your ‘nother 0bsess10n with yet another blog that does not echo your feelings has to do with any of this though.
With the ability to use big data to alter the likelihood that an application will be assigned to a particular class or tech center, attorneys can … obtain better results at the USPTO
You have to love it when the truth leaks out of some patent attorney’s mouths. They’re so clever!
Yes, folks, in spite of what we’ve been told here since forever by the patent maximalists, you can play word games and get a junk patent out of the PTO as a “reward” for playing those word games.
At least some patent attorneys aren’t afraid to admit that. Heck no! They’ll just come right out and brag about it. And guess where they’re most welcome to do that? Surprise, surprise ….
From the comments: never [p]ut the terms “business,” “commerce,” “marketing,” or any synonyms thereof anywhere in your application”
LOL! But be sure to assert your junk patent against people engaged in business, commerce, and marketing. Nothing inequitable about all that. Nope! Not at all.
Here’s an even funnier one: As a practitioner specializing in business methods, I find it a rewarding challenge to dig deep enough into a client’s business invention until we find the technological core
Because there’s always a “technological core”! Sure there is. And if there isn’t one, well, just make up some b0gus terms and kick up some dust. And by all means don’t mention “business”! Take it from a “specialist in business methods.”
LOLOLOLOLOL
You are celebrating the wrong thing: patent profanity.
Its not “playing word games” its claiming something patentable verses claiming something that is patentable.
You have said many times that you believe some things are appropriately patentable (though you have never given an example).
Imagine one of those. Now then, one could claim that, could one not, in an abstract manner, without recitation of the objective structure you love so much? Such a claim might end up in the business method group where it would die the death you think it richly deserves.
On the other hand, one could claim the invention with recitation of the objective structure you love so much and be directed the the MM approves widget art unit and receive a first action allowance.
Isn’t that as it should be?
That said, anyone writing an article telling you there are magic words you can use to get you patent allowed, but not telling you what they are is selling a list of magic words….
That should read: “Its not “playing word games” its claiming something patentable verses claiming something that is not patentable.”
Sounds a lot like word games bro. Either that or the attorney is doing the inventing for the inventor.
If the attorney is doing the “inventing” for the applicant, I still can’t abide that. We had this same conversation like 8 years ago and the courts were like “lol but the attorney always helps the inventor out lol”. True, but they don’t always fundamentally change the entirety of the invention like these guys are proposing.
“ We had this same conversation like 8 years ago and”
And you were wrong back then as well..
You still lack respect for what the attorneys do (and do not do).
“On the other hand, one could claim the invention with recitation of the objective structure you love so much and be directed the the MM approves widget art unit and receive a first action allowance.”
I don’t think those people proposed that rather simple solution.
But 6, that was the gist of it (and all is is just you playing word games).
😉
Well if that was the “gist” then they should have simply come right out and said so.
That’s not how “gist” works…
I’m not sure who you mean by “those people”. To be clear, thread 1.0 is in reference to the first item on the list:
Sarah Garber: Avoiding Alice Rejections With Predictive Analytics
Yeah that’s the linked article and the same “those people” I was referring to, sorry I wasn’t sure if it was by just one person or not and didn’t want to look again.
I don’t think those people proposed that rather simple solution.
You’d need to actually do some work to effectuate that solution.
Why do that when it’s so much easier to simply scriven up some bal0ney? But don’t call these folks grifters or b0ttom-feeders. Nope. They’re s00per d00per important and all about “the technology”. Sure they are! They told us so, after all.
Comments are closed.