Comment by monochromatic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by monochromatic | Hacker News Reader

> The patent behind all these lawsuits is not particularly innovative. It claims something about sending notifications after an emergency phone call. Here’s the gist from one of the figures . . . .

This is a little disingenuous. You know the patent doesn't cover the "gist" or any particular figure. It covers the claims (which you don't mention at all, even in passing). And for some reason, you don't even tell us what the patent number is so we can look at it for ourselves!

From a little googling, I suspect that we're talking about Pat. No. 6,775,356. But why hide the ball and characterize the patent as "not particularly innovative" when you could just let people see it for themselves?

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.goog...

> You know the patent doesn't cover the "gist" or any particular figure. It covers the claims

It seems like whenever anyone criticizes a patent by summarizing it, someone points out that the patent is defined by the claims, but if anyone criticizes a patent by reading the claims, someone points out that the claims have to be read in the context of the rest of the patent.

You do have to read the claims in light of the specification. But I'd say that looking just at one random figure is more wrong than looking just at the claims in isolation.

Its about context. If this were claim construction brief, just looking at one random figure would be totally wrong. But a proper and careful analysis of the claims would be a snoozefest. I wanted to tell a story celebrating the hard work of these wonderful students.

Primary sources are always useful, but so is some context from the writer. Reading the patent and the recent SCOTUS opinion, Alice v Cls Bank, it definitely looks to be invalid in the context of software implementation. I wouldn't call the writer "disingenuous." It would be difficult to argue for fee shifting as an exceptional case, because there has been only a few recent decisions and not consistent precedent yet.

If you can already tell whether or not a patent is invalid under Alice, congratulations, you're smarter than any patent attorney in the country.

Since we won on jurisdiction, the patent itself wasn't a big part of the story.

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