Comment by rudyfink | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rudyfink | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, and this re-examination was initiated by the PTO director too! [The PTO can order re-exam on its own action (as opposed to action by an outside party)]

It may sadden you, but the patent was invalidated based on at least two pieces of prior art (patents in this case) that were both stick shaped dog toys.

The first is a patent (4577219) filed in 1984 for a stick shaped chewable dog toy ( http://www.google.com/patents?id=ANQ9AAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... )

The second is a design patent (D428220) filed in 1999 for a stick shaped pet toy ( http://www.google.com/patents?id=JJMEAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a... ).

If you were also curious about the gory details of its re-examination process, you can pull it off of the patent application information retrieval (PAIR) service ( http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair ) -- enter the reexamination request number off of the re-exam certificate ( 90/006301 ) and click on "image file wrapper" and then you can see all of the actions undertaken.

These cases are very tricky. Patents in general are. The question is: Do patents currently assist the small companies fight the big ones OR do they only hinder innovation?

Can I paten a technique for saving people's lives that requires no tools and anyone can learn, but no human being has ever done it before (intentionally)?

The paten question is no triviality and should not be treated as such. Don't think "oh why don't they just revoke it". Perhaps what is wrong with our system is the time given, 7 years in software terms may as well be a lifetime, while 7 years in physical product terms is hardly anything. Thats the problem with our system. And copyright is a whole nothing monster. They mingle often, but are not the same.

      Do patents currently assist the small companies fight the big ones

I think everybody knows the answer to that one and it's as asking if the US went to Irak on valid concerns for WMD: official answer is Yes; and when that will change hell will freeze.

> Can I paten a technique for saving people's lives that requires no tools and anyone can learn, but no human being has ever done it before (intentionally)?

The fact that anyone would even ask this is a far more dire social commentary than an oddly unoriginal patent. If something has a $0 cost outside of basic education and consistently saves lives, but you patent it and make money off it, what kind of person are you?

On the other hand, you may just want to patent something to prevent exactly that from happening. Holding a patent does not require you to make money off of it, but it does prevent others from doing so. It's a bit sad that one has to go this far, but there you have it.

You want to ensure the technique remains available to anyone freely: patent it and publish it along with permissive licenses.

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