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Comment by blauwbilgorgel | Hacker News Reader

Here is the original complaint (pdf)

http://www.rembrandtip.com/pdf/2013-02-04RembrandtSocialComp... (With Facebook and AddThis as defendants)

Here are the two patents in question

http://www.google.com/patents/US6415316 (1998, Method and apparatus for implementing a web page diary)

http://www.google.com/patents/US6289362 (2001, System and method for generating, transferring and using an annotated universal address)

And here is a patent supposedly in the hands of Facebook right now, that references one of the above patents. This is now used to claim that Facebook knew of the patents, and willfully infringed them.

http://www.google.com/patents/US7907966 (2011, System and method for cross-platform applications on a wireless phone).

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When will these stupid patents die out?

Now that all of the tech companies have invested billions in them and would logically want to protect their investment and competitive advantage, I don't ever see it ending (since of course corps control government). If we're lucky someone will get an iPhone banned in the US and then all hell will break loose.

I'm having trouble understanding the claims and drawings of the US6289362 patent, especially all the AUA stuff.

i) It feels a lot more relevant to something like Pinterest.

ii) Isn't the product they're describing just a copyright violating website?

iii) Isn't the core of the product, the AUA, just a list of URLs? Isn't this just a regular CMS? Were there really no CMSs before 1998?

The drawings are irrelevant; It's always and only about the claims.

i) I'm not familiar with how Pinterest works, so I'm no help there.

ii) they're describing essentially any annotation of content (including a link to content), provided the conditional presentation of that annotation happens on the client side.

iii) Patents are granted to inventions comprising all the elements of their claims. Reducing things to their 'core' is a habit of engineers that hampers understanding of the patent system.

The only things that are relevant as prior art, are those that contain all the elements.

A CMS that contained annotations along with content is not prior art for Claim 1 of the '362 patent, if it did conditional rendering based on that annotation on the server. As Claim 1 includes sending an applet, template and data to the client, to handle the conditional presentation.

If a given implementation doesn't send an applet, it wouldn't count as prior art if it came before, and it wouldn't infringe if it came after.

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