Nothing wrong with sending a clear message to someone actively trying to do harm to innovation. That kind of behavior should not be welcome in our industry.
It's absurd to say that I am "actively trying to do harm to innovation." I filed for patents on novel processes to protect myself. That's inherently defensive, not offensive.
Smart people can disagree on this topic. I understand that a lot of people don't think there should be software patents, or patents at all. I don't think it's that simple.
You sued Square, right? Square benefited in no way from your work or from your patent, but now you're either expecting payment from them for no services rendered, or forcing them to waste their resources fighting your shakedown attempt. In what worldview is that not harming innovation?
Not to mention that Square's fundamental innovation, its credit card reader, is premised on intellectual property theft. See http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/lawsuit-questions-s.... So in addition to holding a hundred more patents than my company, Square isn't even being honest about who deserves credit for theirs. Yet you argue that they're the pro-innovation good guys, and non-VC backed independent inventors are actively destroying innovation, because they hold patents? I have to disagree.
You were right at the time, but I just flipped through it now (the meat seems to be in attachments 4 and 5 at the bottom of the original link) and it doesn't change my argument.
What service did you render to Square to earn the payment you claim to deserve? Did they get the idea for their product from your patent? Did they learn how to implement their process from patent?
Are you just trying to get a slice of the pie because of some childish "I thought of it first" garbage, and because our broken patent system allows it?
I suspect it's that last one.
> Yet you argue that they're the pro-innovation good guys
I never argued that. I argued that you are trying to extort money out of Square despite providing them with no real service or benefit, and that this does real harm to innovation.
the service rendered was he made public the details of the invention. Whether Square read or did not choose to read the patent is beside the point.
> Did they get the idea for their product from your patent? Did they learn how to implement their process from patent?
You are assuming that Square did not read his patent - which if true suggests that Square inefficiently re-invented the wheel. You know, that whole standing on the shoulders of giants thing.
However, what we find happening lately is the concept of efficient infringement where large corporations have found it more cost effective to infringe and fight with their lawyer muscle than to pay inventors their due rights.
I completely disagree.
1) http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...
2) www.google.ca/patents/US8396808
3) http://pat2pdf.org/patents/pat8396808.pdf
if not publicly disclosed?
If you have any of those, I'd encourage you to file a public comment with USPTO, as I have repeatedly. Otherwise, yeah, in this case I thought of it first, and I filed a patent on it, and I added a number of important limitations, and it was granted.
I think a lot of folks would agree that face-based payment authorization as an option would have come along eventually, just as every other biometric and security device will eventually get applied to everything anyone might want to secure.
I think the people here are challenging the "novel processes" part of your patent. I can't look at it myself currently, but based on the replies, I'm a bit skeptical myself on the "novel" part of it. Unless the replies are misrepresenting what your patent is about. Which is totally possible.