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Comment by madars | Hacker News Reader

The patent in question is http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7640098.html (source: http://news.priorsmart.com/stenbock-everson-v-runwayfinder-l...)

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To summarize: it's a patent on the idea of overlaying a flight plan on a map using a website. The general case of this is drawing line-segments on a background, something every trivial paint program can do. This patent clearly fails the obviousness test.

I wonder if an appeal to a company such as Google might sponsor a reprisal? It seems relevant to many businesses interests.

It doesn't fail the obviousness test at the USPTO, because they seem not to employ people with ordinary skill in the art of anything related to software. At least, that's the most charitable explanation I can come up with.

"Hmm, drawing a flight path on a map. I would need a ruler for that. Oh, this doesn't use a ruler? Must be very advanced technology. Ok."

There is a list of valid degrees that qualify a person to join the patent bar or work as an examiner. A law degree is required and also an engineering degree but software engineers are specifically excluded.

Civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineers and possibly others are included and software is excluded. And this is the agency that evaluates and issues patents to strangle our field.

But the problem is that you can't summarize a legal document like this if you want to make complete sense of it. Every sentence has to be evaluated on its own merit.

Every patent I've read (IANAL, but I have read a number of patents over a couple of years of helping our lawyers challenge the USPTO) requires very careful reading to understand and evaluate all the claims.

I haven't read the patent in question for this case.

However, what is USUALLY the case with patents is that they are far narrower than what is claimed by the company or in the press. "Company patents pencils!" says the news article. When you read the patent you find that they've patented a very, very, very narrow use of pencils and that few, if any of the world's pencil uses are encompassed by the patent.

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