359 karma · joined February 26, 2015
As you some of you already know, the patent office does not freely give patents for impossible devices. No perpetual motion machines, no magic invisibility cloaks, nothing that an ordinary person in the relevant art could not build after reading the patent. This is a doctrine called “enablement”—the patent, plus what is already known in the art, must be enough to enable one to build a working device without undue experimentation. This is the quid pro quo of the patent system: to get ownership of the invention for 20 years, you must tell everyone enough about it to build it themselves.
This patent almost suffered the fate of non-enablement at the patent office. What led to its issuance is the interesting part because patent examiner tried and tried to reject this patent as not “enabling” the invention. Yet it issued anyways.
I cannot link directly to the patent prosecution documents, but the files are public and you can find them at the USPTO database[0] by searching for the patent's application number 15/141,270.
The patent was filed in April 2016. The first action by the USPTO was in November 2017 with the usual delay and it rejected all claims as not enabling the invention. Simply put the examiner said: “You’re claiming a perpetual motion machine, good-bye.”
The patent examiner and the applicant held an interview in January 2018, which is an ordinary event to try to convince the examiner is wrong. The examiner pointed out “that he still felt there were enablement issues.” The applicant disagreed. No agreement was reached.
A few days later, the applicant filed his formal response to the rejection. He attached a published article under his authorship in AIAA Space Forum[1]. He also cited other publications on how to “generate extremely high EM flux intensities.” Basically, he's saying I'm peer-reviewed here is some other peer-reviewed articles, and it being peer-reviewed that's all you need to know.
But most interestingly, he attached a letter from Dr. James Sheehy, Chief Technical Officer of the Naval Systems Air Command, indicating that the amount of magnetic field and electricity described as being required by the patent “can be created, and thus the invention is enabled.” Dr. James Sheehy is a real dude, with that real title and corresponding resume.[2]
Dr. Sheehy’s letter is fascinating. It asserts that the applicant is currently one year into a project to demonstrate the feasibility of high EM field-energy and flux and has begun experimenting with associated propulsion systems. Dr. Sheehy says he believes the research shows the invention will be a reality. Then he says (seriously, he says) “China is already investing significantly in this area and I would prefer we hold the patent opposed to paying forever more to use this revolutionary technology.”
The examiner at the patent office (who is typically kind of knowledgeable in the field) nevertheless called B.S. Peer-reviewed, shmear-reviewed. He rejected the application again finally in March 2018. He pointed out "for a high energy electromagnetic field to polarize a quantum vacuum as claimed it would take 10^9 teslas and 10^18 V/m." He said "these levels are not feasible with current technology so how would someone of ordinary skill be able to know how to create this craft? The largest magnetic field ever created is 10^3 teslas and a neutron star is 10^ teslas so how are you using a microwave emitter that produces a magnetic field that is three orders of magnitude greater than a neutron star?" And so on... Basically, the examiner said this is bullshit.
As is often done in this situation, the applicant filed an appeal from the patent examiner’s rejection. This is usually a procedure that is next addressed by a board of patent judges, with more briefing, typically oral argument, and takes months to years. But the appeal was never picked up after it was lodged, and it is unclear why. Two months after the appeal was filed, on October 31, 2018, the examiner (for no reason apparent in the file) allowed the patent to issue without comment and on the same day the government paid the fees it owed. The patent was issued in due course.
Whether or not the named inventor was a crank, and whether or not the invention was equally frivolous, this was a patent prosecuted by a Navy attorney, vouched for by the Navy CTO, and pushed through under atypical circumstances, in a public forum.
What's even more intriguing is that, if the Navy wanted, it could obtain the patent under a secrecy order that would keep it from the public's eyes until it was declassified.
Knowing all this, now ask yourself why this impossible sounding patent issued in a public forum with high-level brass support under tax payer dollars.
[0] https://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair
Good precedent is in Inventor Holdings v. Bed Bath Beyond at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. The holding is that a lower court can decide that if a plaintiff turns a blind eye to how bad it’s sotware patent is in light of _Alice_ and doesn’t drop its case, it can award the defendant its attorney fees. This particular case went on far, far too long and the court awarded almost $1M in defendant’s fees to be paid.
In truth, I was ready to believe the pro-glypsophate studies until a contrary consensus formed. Because of this astroturfing campaign, I now have doubts.
I hope then that you subscribe to your public broadcasting stations (read: fund PBS and NPR news reporting--are you OK with that?) and have told your representatives to fund those organizations.
If not, then you're looking for something that cannot be achieved and will forever be moving the goalposts. Media in the US or anywhere else, even when it is best, has never been un-biased. But it has been more honest and fair.
Why would this be classified by Sinclair a MUST run segment for likely one reason? Easy: to curry favor with the White House to clear the path for further consolidation. Trump speaks glowingly of Sinclair,[1] despite what others consider to be anti-competitive acquisitions and mergers and detrimental to a healthy free press.[2] Yet, Trump has taken action to prevent CNN from merging with Time Warner which is currently being tried in a courtroom.[3] The difference is that CNN's news reporting is very unfavorable to this White House.
This is not how a democracy remains healthy, or, really, how one continues to exist.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2017/05/07/sin... [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/02/trump-defends-sinc... [2] https://www.vox.com/2017/5/15/15598270/sinclair-broadcast-im... [3] http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/21/media/trump-comments-att-tim...
If the use case for the app is personal use by the possessors of the textbook, very likely no problem. For all other uses you should consult a lawyer to make sure you're in the clear.
There is a fundamental role that lawyers play that is an intangible: to pursue justice for the client.
Much of why law is expensive and has been slow to automate is because of intentional and unintentional barriers.
Unintentional because it has developed in evolutionary form, over hundereds of years, and during that time has imperfectly used human language as its protocol. Contracts and statutes are difficult to make perfect using the English language. Lawyers thus argue over what the parties intended and understood when they fixed their promises into words.
Intentional because of, for example regulatory capture. Law is an industry that has taken actions in the past to make itself necessary.
But even if these barriers are fixed and much of law is automated, there remains a notion of what is fair and right, or ought to be fair and right. This is a human concept.
Take for example blockchain and its contracts, which remove some of these barriers. Currency is transferred to/from one address to another because that is what the code intended, and the code is law and the transaction immutable. But what if the other side fraudulently misrepresented who they were? Do you not want a human advocate and arbitrator there to determine what is right in this situation?
Why is this even on the front page? This is not Russia... moving towards a transparent, functioning democratic system.
The judges and other professionals working in the district are just that--professionals. There is no secret cabal of lawyers conspiring to screw tech companies there. The judges and courts are not biased against defendants and trying to screw them.
There may be a tendency of to protect the district (e.g., avoid transfers of cases out), since the judges see themselves as stewards of the community in which they serve. But that has no bearing on the merits of the case or who wins. And recent changes in the law have significantly mitigated this. The judges are very knowledgeable at patent law, being very experienced in the domain.
Source: Am a lawyer that has practiced over a decade there, represented both sides of the "v.", also appears in numerous other courts around the country, and has obtained multiple decisions from different EDTX judges forcing patent trolls to pay my clients' attorneys' fees for frivolous lawsuits.
"Arising from/out of X" implies that the claim was caused by X (here, the from/out of is redundant as you point out)
But "in connection with X" implies something more broader, merely that it has a nexus to X.
By joining the two, the drafter sends the signal that the intended scope is as broad as it can reasonably be. If it only said "arising from," some claims that only have a tenuous relationship to X do not fall within the scope. Parties may decide that they want the scope to be narrow, or they want to be be broad, and the language matters.
If you think you might want a patent, don't hesitate to talk to a patent lawyer to make sure you are not waiving your rights, otherwise you'll regret it. You can always choose not to spend money on the patent application but make that decision after you know what you are doing.
If, later it turns out the big idea was not new, but the refinements are, then you may find yourself with an invalid independent claim but valid dependent claims (which are treated as though they stand on their own). Although you could have filed the dependent claim as independent just the same, it saves paper and cognitive time analyzing it, which is a good thing. And for that reason patent fees are more expensive if you add more independent claims rather than dependent.