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Starting today, you can help make the world a better place thanks to a (desperately needed) change in patent law allowing 3rd parties the ability to challenge ridiculous patents filed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. At one time illegal, now all you’ll need to do is dig up enough evidence to support your claim and along with your comments, it can all be sent directly to the USTPO for review and further analysis.
Brought to you by good guy Google and the folks at the Stack Exchange who’s work in conjunction with the Patent Office, make the whole process even easier for those wanting to keep the world safe from patent trolls. Jumping onto patents.stackexchange.com will give “patent troll hunters” the resources they need to discuss sketchy patents, validity, or prior art with others, where evidence can be filed to the USTPO with minimal effort. Google is doing their part by linking disputed patents found on their handy patent search site to Stack Exchange discussions. Bad boys, bad boys, what’cha gonna do when we come for you…
Currently, there aren’t rewards in place for patent busters, but users will awarded badges for bragging rights once they’ve successfully taken down a patent. This is yet another instance where crowd sourcing can work in everyone’s favor and I can already hear the patent trolls squealing in horror. As a bonus, here’s a quick link to a patent I dug up, filed by some dudes named Jonathan Ive and Steve Jobs. It’s an electronic doohickey they apparently “invented” and you might find vaguely familiar. [Patent D504889]
“Ahhhh, what’s up, doc?”
“Shhhhh… I’m huntin’ patents.”
[Wired | Thanks, Adam!]
hahahahah…suck on this Crapple. The world suddenly seems to be better place now :)
Let the patent hadouken war start in earnest.
Very Well Then…..Round 1….FIGHT!!!!
:)
>.> oh now its on like donkey kong
Yay!
Just a couple months ago I was wishing there was something the public could do about patents! This is fantastic news indeed!
I think I’ll just leave these here:
http://www.google.com/patents/US7469381
http://www.google.com/patents/US7844915
http://www.google.com/patents/US7864163
http://www.google.com/patents/USD618677
http://www.google.com/patents/USD593087
http://www.google.com/patents/USD604305
Those are the 6 patents that Samsung was deemed to have infringed upon. ( Yes, there is not a rounded corners patent on there. Oddly enough, Samsung was deemed to not infringe on that, even though they were deemed to infringe upon the trade dress which includes rounded corners… )
I have a a bunch of patents from a certain company to disprove, time to take a bite out of crime
You mean take a bite out of Apple ;)
same thing lol
Eh, what’s in it for me to be “vewy, vewy quiet”? :)
Best thing I have read in a long time!! Now anyone know where the grid of icons patent is?
I’ve heard of one Steve jobs that used to attribute patents to himself that, really engineers (talented) in apple, invented.
This is a great opportunity to start hitting crApple and its idiotic patents!
Slide to unlock, delete
Universal Search, delete
Any and all apple Design Patents
Apple’s recent Approved Patent for Universal Batteries, delete
Actually lets just delete all of Apple’s Patents and Reimburse each and every company that they took money from..
+10,000,00
AMEN!
They should be able to patent no single aspect of the IOS UI, but every large aspect together, eg. shaking apps, sliding, infinite horizontal format of home screen with screen one on left and universal search screen hidden in background, “frosty” polished UI, etc. But they’d better not be able to patent slide to unlock or “Rounded rectangular keys on a synthetic keyboard with audio response”
Now the USTPO wants the public to do their job? What are they going to be doing while the public is busy doing their job? The idea is good but the USTPO should be doing a better job when approving patents especially those vaguely written and with prior art….rubber band effect anyone!
Well duh, issue more invalid patents for us to debunk for them, and occasionally issuing a valid patent there are the rare thing that should be patented, just not software or software implementations
Didn’t apple have the patent about being able to click on something and get a list of what to do? If so that should be thrown out as well since we have been doing that on computers far longer then that patent.
The really sad part is that these patents got issued in the first place. I mean does the USPTO just rubber stamp everything that comes their way without hardly a glance? The Apple patent linked in the article is so ridiculous that I can’t believe it got issued.
But overall this is excellent news since perhaps now these patents (that should not have been issued in the first place) will meet their demise!
This is good news as long as it’s taken seriously and things actually happen to those stupidly awarded patents. Hopefully this will help the innovators get on with innovating and worry less about ridiculous lawsuits and court action. There’s far too much of this crap and it has made me hate Apple even more than I did in the first place. Slide to unlock innovation please.
I hope this is good news but I suspect it will be a long time before we see a story posted saying “Patent X overturned by Joe Bloggs” and I’ll eat my hat if we ever see “Apple’s patent X overturned by Job Bloggs”.
If USTPO can’t recognise that patenting a rectangle is ludicrous then I don’t think someone pointing it out will make any difference.
Finally!
Relevant question about patents:
http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/219/prior-art-on-microsoft-patents-asserted-against-barnes-noble-and-motorola
Putting Apple’s patents to end would be the greatest reward of all.
Steve Jobs: RIGCLG (Rolling In the Grave Crying Like a Girl).