Monopoly, Patents, & Business Methods

Today's Wall Street Journal article, "How a Fight Over a Board Game Monopolized an Economist's Life" presents the ins and outs of Ralph Anspach's trademark battle with Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly. Professor Anspach and Hasbro have different perspectives on the history of the game and the patents that cover it. We wonder if what is really disclosed is a business method.

Hasbro cites a patent issued to Charles B. Darrow, a heater salesman as the origin of the game. That patent, 2,026,082, was sold to Parker Brothers in 1935. Parker Brother's registered the Monopoly trademark in the same year and went on to sell over 750 million copies.

Professor Anspach cites an earlier 1924 patent, 1,509,312, invented by Elizabeth Magie Phillips as the real origin of the game.

Aside from always executing a strategy to buy the utilities and railroads, having to have the Top Hat or the Dog as my game piece never having the stamina to finish a game, I found the claims interesting. I think Ms. Phillips is the inventor of the corner space and that Professor Anspach may be on to something here from a prior art perspective if in fact Mr. Darrow saw a version of the Phillips invention. But there are no records to determine if the two inventors ever went to the same trade show or crossed each other's paths.

The Landlord Game disclosed in Ms. Phillips patent has the following claim:

A game-board provided with corner spaces, intervening spaces of different denominations and values, some of the spaces of the different series corresponding and distinguished by coloring or other markings, so that the corresponding divisions may be recognized, a series of cards of changeable value, two or more of which are alike and which relate to two or more certain spaces on the board, a series of movable pieces to be used in conjunction with the spaces of the board and controlled by dice, so as to determine play.

The Monopoly patent introduces the concept that the spaces are arranged together in groups by color, that they have value, and that if you own the whole block you can extract more money:

In a board game apparatus a board acting as a playing-field having marked spaces constituting a path or course extending about the board, said path affording a continuous track for the purpose of continuity of play, certain of said spaces being designated, as by position, or color so as to constitute a distinguishable group, there being a plurality of such groups each differing from the others and each having its spaces adjacent on the same side of the board, the apparatus having indications of the rentals required for the use and occupancy, by opponent players, of space of one or more such groups, which rentals are subject to increase by the acquisition of an additional space or spaces of the same group by the same individual player, thereby making it possible for the possessor to extract greater payments or penalties from any opponents resting or trespassing thereon.

Mr. Darrow may have disclosed a business method. But does anyone have the McDonald's Broadway piece?

Where are the patent numbers rant: The WSJ used one of the drawings from the Darrow patent in the article but once again didn't provide the patent numbers.

Hope..With Someone Else's Image - Nope!!

It's been a busy week on the intellectual property front.

First, David Young, chief executive of Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, one of the country's largest book publishers pronounced that he would like to see legislation that would prevent the sale of books below cost. At issue is the price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon for some of the book titles expected to dominate the holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart is selling books below cost. Amazon is cutting costs and selling the digital versions for $9.99. The issue is economic. Independent booksellers and new writers will suffer when books are sold below cost. Wal-Mart appears to be paying the full price, the copyrights are being protected, and the authors are getting paid.

Then we have artist Shepard Fairey, who designed the famous Barack Obama "HOPE" poster, who, according to AP, admitted Friday that he didn't use the Associated Press photo he originally claimed his work was based on, a photo taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia, on assignment for the AP, at the National Press Club in Washington.

Mr. Fairey appears to have pulled in some serious money selling posters, autographed posters, and a whole range of stuff featuring his work. For more info on the emergence of the poster as a cultural icon see:

Ben Arnon: How the Obama "Hope" Poster Reached a Tipping Point and Became a Cultural Phenomenon: An Interview With the Artist Shepard Fairey

Mr. Fairey apparently had artistic amnesia when he said he didn't use the photo that featured a single image of then Senator Obama as claimed by AP intead saying used a picture with two images, one of Mr. Obama and another of actor George Clooney. By saying he used the picture with two people in it rather than the one with only Mr. Obama, he tried to claim he significantly modified the picture and was not infringing AP's copyright. He claimed that his work was covered under the fair use doctrine. But it now turns out he altered the single photo and added the word HOPE across the bottom.

His legal team lead by Mr. Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University -- withdrew from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material. I can tell you this, when your lawyers quit on you because you didn't give them the straight story, it's not a good thing. When your lawyers are from the Fair Use Project and you misled them and destroyed material its a very bad thing.

Mr. Fairey earned much critical acclaim for his work, vandalism of public property aside (do you remember all those posters that showed up all over the place prior to the election?), Mr. Fairey earned quite a bit of money from his use of AP and Mr. Garcia's work.

In determining which of this week's intellectual property happenings is cause for concern, Mr Fairey wins. Mr. Fairey is the one who absconded with someone else's work without paying for it. The book publishers might be concerned that their product is being undervalued but at least it's being valued. In the case of AP and Mr. Garcia's work, they received no value. That's a greater concern.

Data Dissemination Industry Day at PTO

John Owens, the CIO of USPTO, had a rough day on Thursday, the day he hosted USPTO's Data Dissemination Industry Day. But I suspect Mr. Owens has a rough day every day.

Mr. Owens is responsible for PTO's information infrastructure. He's got archaic technology, thousands if not millions of users internally, externally, locally and globally. There are gargantuan demands for his information. Now add to the mix that the Office of Management and Budget is asking Mr. Owens how he is going to make PTO's petabyte repository of data available to the public for free.

Mr. Owens was looking for a partner to help him solve this problem. There didn't seem to be many volunteers in the room on Thursday.

Oh, did I mention that he doesn't have any money.

PTO, or "The Office" as the IP legal community refers to it, is in the throws of a financial crisis just like the rest of us. They are a fee based agency. Filings are down, fees are down. PTO still has an daunting backlog of patents to examine. The average number of claims is up, the number of references that examiners have to review is skyrocketing. The explosion of digital information makes doing a comprehensive search for the most relevant prior art a nightmare even for those of us with multi-monitor displays and the fastest CPUs on the block that can navigate across huge repositories of articles, patents, thesis, dissertations, journal articles and product specifications in seconds. USPTO's staff doesn't have many of the resources at their disposal that we can get in our pajamas from home.

Speaking of homes, Mr. Owens shared that the routers in our homes are more powerful than some that power USPTO. His servers are seven years old. He has tons and tons of data that have privacy protected information buried in with the public data. He can't release it until he can protect the privacy data. Easier said than done. (Take it from us...we've done it.)

His vast network of telecommuting patent examiners share the same network with the internal system users and the general public and their ever more powerful data seeking, spidering bots. PTO uses CAPTCHA to try to make sure that preference in access to the data goes to people not to machines. This is easily circumvented by the savvy (maybe not so savvy) software engineers on the hunt for data.

Mr. Owens has big time security problems. His agency has to meet all of the same buzzword compliant, alphabet soup standards like FISMA, NIST, PPI, etc., etc. for information security as every other federal agency. From what we've seen, USPTO does a pretty good job at that. Mr. Owens has to worry that one of his systems might release the trade secrets or inventions that will create our next trillion dollar industry. In addition to worrying if the FBI might show up, he no doubt loses sleep wondering how his day would go if one of his systems got hacked and someone stole the latest unpublished patent applications from Intel, Apple, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Ford, or for that matter any independent inventor, university, small company or biomedical firm. Imagine how that day would go.

Oh, did I mention that every week his systems support the publication of 10,000 new patents and published patent applications.

Oh, and his classification and search systems don't begin to deal with the convergence of technology and the simultaneous emergence of new science that drives even greater demand for information.

PTO's patent search system only supports 300 concurrent users according to the PatFT Operational Notices and Status Page of USPTO.GOV. The image above is what you get when you happen to be the unlucky 301st searcher.

Did I mention that USPTO has over 6,000 patent examiners trying to use the same 300 concurrent use licenses?

If you want a vibrant intellectual property marketplace, if you want to improve the patent system and bring an end to ridiculous patents, if you want to advance innovation by avoiding wheel reinvention because you simply can't figure out what innovations came before you, you need to have information and information transparency. If you want to have information transparency you need information systems that work. To have information systems that work you can't be tied to old systems run by the same guys who were running the systems when the place was using paper and nobody knew how to make a searchable PDF. Mr. Owens needs the money to build a new next generation cloud computing environment to support all this. But for now, that just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

And in the biggest irony of all times, Mr. Owens will probably be infringing someone's business methods and software patents as he tries to move his agency into the 21st century. How will USPTO handle the fees or, perish the thought, a patent infringement law suit? Mr. Owens is going to need some patent attorneys of his own.

I hope Mr. Owens has lots of Rolaids.

Patent Auctions Go Mainstream

Today's New York Times's article "Patent Auctions Offer Protections to Inventors" offers proof that patent auctions and the pejoratively named Patent Trolls are a force to be reckoned with. It is time to move to using the term Non-Practicing Entity (NPE) and accept the fact that these organizations will help shape the face of intellectual property monetization going forward. (They are going to need some better logos if we can't use the cute trolls any more.)

Zoltar Satellite Alarm Systems is about to auction off its hard won and battle hardened patents for personal alarm systems with GPS receivers. Aside from the usual rant that none of the articles on the subject included the patent numbers,(5,650,770 and 5,963,130, the Self-Locating Remote Monitoring System patents plus 3 more use patents and 15 interational patents), these patents may be the seminal technology for helping rescue people find you when you dial 911. The inventors convinced the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that they had already invented 911 locator services for cellphones when the FCC and others thought it couldn't be done.

The privately held Zoltar, its two inventors, and their investors are seeking a more cost effective way to monetize their intellectual property asset without having to do battle with every cellphone maker on the globe. The auction provides a way for them to get a reasonable return on their investment while turning the heavy lifting of patent enforcement over to firms with deeper pockets and the ability to get the companies that infringe the patents of small or individual inventor's to return their calls.

While there is still lots of discussion on where NPEs and transaction companies fit into the marketplace it's clear they are here to stay. Holders of intellectual property can no longer afford to ignore small inventors and small companies because they now have a new avenue to get the marketplace to pay attention to their investments and pay them for their work. The technology is out there to do deep dive searching into the content of patents so that everyone in the IP market space can find what's out there. You can no longer get away with just paying attention to the big patent holders. Some of the good stuff has been created by individual investors and small companies for whom patent auctions are a good thing.

There are many schools of thought on the emerging patent marketplace these days. One is the IP marketplace model like the stock market treating patents like stocks that can be traded freely in the marketplace. The downside here is that its not an asset that is easily traded or moved between owners. The other is the art gallery model where patents are treated like works of art - which is probably a more accurate reflection of the asset but a more benign view of the reality of how the transaction has to work to maximize value. The art gallery model has its flaws since its unlikely someone would pay the big bucks for patent and a just hang it in the hall for their personal enjoyment. Its value is in its monetization. (Unless of course your goal is to take it out of the market all together...we'll save that discussion for another day.)

At Coronado we like the transparency and transaction velocity model. In this model the more information you have about the patents, their use, the inventors, and how you can use the technology in new and serendipitous ways never contemplated by the inventors, the more you understand its value. If you know its value you understand why you need to pay for it. This creates transparency.

This knowledge is coupled with the ability to quickly determine who owns the patents so you can go out and get yourself a license. (Calling NPEs who hide their ownership of patent assets, and sit back in the tall grass waiting - hey, USPTO solved the problem of the submarine patent by publishing the applications. You guys have just recreated it in another form. And weren't you some of the biggest complainers when the submarine patents surfaced in the old days? We know how to find you...) This creates transaction velocity and a vibrant intellectual property marketplace.

At Coronado Group we focus on the transparency part with our Cognition IP work. We are committed to making patent information more accessible and more transparent to help advance the ball on the transaction velocity part.

The auction is being lead by Pluritas, LLC, a patent transaction company. It will be held on October 14th. The titans of the cellular and smartphone universe are expected to show up for the party. It will be interesting to see if Pluritas or the purchaser release a price so that we will all understand the value that Zoltar's work has in the marketplace. That's part of getting to that vibrant intellectual property marketplace sooner rather than later.

Shine The Klieg Lights On The Patent System

In honor of tonight's Emmy's and the drama of the Troll Tracker case, it's time to drag out the klieg lights and shine the light of day on the whole patent system.

The Troll Tracker case revolves around one lawyer complaining that another lawyer defamed him after lawyer number 1 got the clerk of the court to change the date stamp on a filing because he filed it too early. This resulted in lawyer number 2 posting comments on his Troll Tracker web site. Lawyer number 1 said that the post questions the integrity of this behavior resulting in lawyer number 1's feelings getting hurt and filing a defamation suit against lawyer number 2, aka the Troll Tracker. There was intrigue as a bounty was offered seeking the true identify of the Troll Tracker. Once the identity was disclosed the defamation suit followed. One of the more interesting aspects of this whole adventure it that the parties seem to have forgotten was sought that free speech thing in the Constitution. The klieg light metaphor is about the need for more transparency in the entire patent system.

While getting ready to post my rant I needed to look up the spelling of klieg which lead me down another serrendipitous discovery about the Kliegl brothers.

The Kliegl brothers invented the Klieg light and a the accompanying new noun. Klieg lights are used to create day at night. There isn't a movie set or late night highway construction project that doesn't have Klieg lights. The Kliegl brother's earliest was a patent 708365 filed on August 26, 1901 and issued September 2, 1902 for an Electromedical device for treatment of disease. Like other biomedical engineers that came after them, they appear to have moved on to more profitable ventures inventing many of the advances in theatrical lighting we all take for granted. Aside from the famous spot light, there are footlights, and plugs, and electrical components. The phrase Klieg lights came from the merger of Kliegl and light according to several web citations.

Bring on the light of day...natural or of the klieg variety.

The Future of Ideas

Dilbert's views on patents. Here's the link to the Dilbert site.

Comparative Effectiveness Research and Intelligent Search

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) and evidence-based medicine have been one of the boogeymen of the healthcare debates. Fear that, as a result of CER findings, your doctor will not be able to make his or her own decisions about what's best for you but will be forced through some chart of acceptable protocols. None of the physicians or researchers I know are that wimpy.

We don't know what the outcome of the healthcare debate will be but we subscribe to the belief that knowledge is power. The more you know, the better your decisions will be. CER has the potential to deliver for healthcare what nutritional labels did for groceries - information.

To that end, Coronado has been working on a novel intelligent search tool for answering clinical questions. At a high level this is what it does: When faced with a complex patient problem or when you are looking for information to address a research issue, you construct a single query by combining all of the text based information you have about the problem and using that as the search source. You copy and paste all the text-based information you have - clinical reports, image interpretation text, previous findings - and copy it into the search box. When you've entered all the text that you have you can add your own notes, words you are looking for, hunches, terminology that relates to the subject matter in your domain. The search box can handle gigabytes of data. Once that's done, you hit enter and the intelligent search tool evaluates all of the concepts in the search source and then finds and ranks results based on how conceptually and semantically close the documents are to your search source.

Our initial implementation uses the content of 13 of the top diagnostic imaging journals and RadLex, the radiology and diagnostic imaging ontology, to create the concept space and the searchable document set. We started here because two of the top radiology informatics experts from the University of Maryland School of Medicine have been gracious enough to provide us with guidance so we can make sure it works. It also offers us a platform where we can address some pressing search and retrieval issues - convergence. In physician speak this area is dealing with multidisciplinary/multimodality diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. In regular guy speak what this means is that to answer a question it's not unusual for s clinician or researcher to need to do cross-domain searches covering radiology, chemist, molecular biology, pharmacology, chemotherapeutics and contract agents to get a comprehensive answer to a complex problem. It would be nice to be able to execute a search that gets it rather than having to keep searching and searching and searching.

We have been using this technology successfully in the patent and intellectual property space. Our work on the patent front resulted in our having a deep understanding of the nature and content of scientific, technical and medical documents and understanding how to authors writes these kind of documents, where the good information is buried. As a result of this work our concept space for scientific materials is excellent allowing IP searches that dig deep into the content of the patents and supporting documents. Since the patent space is so wide and the classifications so deep, we have refined the complex subject matter there with some of our own special sauce to help expedite complex searchers. We expect that we can leverage this framework to support a highly focused implementation for medical research. Especially with help from our colleagues.

This tool offers a lot of value in the comparative effectiveness arena. First, you can pose a complex search that will return the documents that are the closest to your topic. This lends itself to helping medical librarians and investigation collaborators on evidence-based medical evaluations assemble the information they need to do their work. At the risk of being corny, less time finding, more time working.

It also supports deep dive information harvesting. While a certain protocol or finding may be a very small part of one investigation it may be extremely critical to current searchers. Conventional search techniques, especially those on the internet, make finding these documents hard to do. Because the intelligent search tool searches on the conceptual and semantic content, it finds all the documents that embody a particular idea even if it's not the most important concept. It makes a whole new universe of information accessible to searchers. You can search the widest possible universe of documents and still get highly refined results.

One of the other areas we are exploring is the ability to do longitudinal searches. Or, as consultants like to call them, retrospective longitudinal searches. We do this in the patent world now. Basically what this means is that you can look back in time to see what evidence is available. Because the technology understands how the words used to describe something have changed over time as well as their context, this may enable searchers looking for evidence to look back in time. This has the potential to accelerate some of the work to establish meaningful comparative effectiveness work without having to wait for new evidence. It has its limitations, it's only as good as the old documents, but it might prove helpful as investigators look across older medical evidence or access deep repositories of reports. We're looking at all that "stuff" stored in the archival PACS systems.

And a final note. It's easier to search. You don't have to distill your search requirements into ands, ors, or nots. You simply write up what you are looking for, stream of consciousness works, or assemble the best scientific and medical documents that describe what it, or assemble a text document where you keep your research notes and use that for the search. It's more natural. It lends itself to serendipitous search - navigating through the information to see what's there, to see what you find. It lets you search the way you think...really.

We published a White Paper called Intelligent Search for Answering Clinical Questions. You can download it from our website. The image if our version of finding the needle in the haystack..just find all the needles.

Dick Tracy Watch Gets FCC Approval

Gizmo Alert!! According to CNET the FCC has approved LG's Dick Tracy watch. CNET watches the FCC database to stay on top of what's next. I wonder can you use a cartoon as prior art?

The LG GD910 certainly meets the Gizmo test.

• Tempered glass, and high-quality metal casing construction
• 1.43" diagonal face measurement, by about .5" thickness
• LG's flash interface featuring touch-screen input
• Voice recognition, and text to speech so it can "read out" text messages
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Three side-mounted buttons
• A speakerphone
• A full-blown MP3 music player
• Water resistant design
• 7.2 Mbps 3G HSDPA compatibility, enabling high-speed data transmission and video calls using the built-in camera

The TV is missing but since it supports video calls, it looks likeit has it all. Chester Gould and Al Gross were ahead of their time. Check out the Chester Gould Dick Tracy Museum.

Clocks, Watches, and Beepwear

We are on the hunt for the Dick Tracy watch slogging through the inventions in the mobile phone, new technology, wireless and now wristwatch world. Today we keep our neon clock company we bring you Clocks, Watches and Beepwear.

Attempts to search for information on inventions is fraught with frustration. The Dick Tracy watch is more fun but not any different than any other electronics information hunt. Figuring out what the right words are to describe this type of invention requires some serious thought. They you have to figure out what class PTO has stashed the relevant inventions (art) under, and then figuring out if what you find is really what you are looking for. This is clearly a convergence issue. This is why we HATE all forms of keyword and Boolean searching. It is one of the most frustrating and unfulfilling experiences in the hunt for good information. The world of patents has its own kind of intellectual hide and seek. Inventors who try to pick terms that give you the broadest possible coverage of your new invention. Use works that make your invention seem new so it won't be declared obvious. Then pick some verbs that cover a lot of ground so that as technology morphs they can say, "Yeah, my invention does that..."

The Dick Tracy watch provides some excellent info hide and seek adventures. Dick Tracey's original two way radio watch came about when Dick Tracy's creator, cartoonist Chester Gould, met Al Gross, an inventor and engineer who has many wireless devices to his credit. After a 1946 meeting, Dick Tracy started wearing his iconic two way radio watch. What a good excuse to read old comics, "I'm looking for prior art honey..."

What does one call the Dick Tracy watch when you are on a technology hunt? You look for the terms that show up in patents that describe wrist mounted apparatus that provide continuous data feeds of local and other geographically disbursed location time data -- aka the wristwatch potentially with two faces. What words do you add to include the fact that this one communicates? How about one with a display, was it digital, sure looks that way, and square too.

Here are a some of the good descriptions we came across:

• Wrist instruments including timekeeping devices (Note: wrist instrument...sounds expensive)

• Improved wristwatch radiotelephone - (We didn't find the original wristwatch radiotelephone to go with this improved invention.)
  

• Personal digital apparatus..a wristwatch-type device with sensors (Note: could be a sports monitor)

• Battery powered communication device (Note: could be anything - walky talky? But you gotta go down the path)

• Personal digital assistant watch - (Note: good but no communications implied by this description)
  

• A programmable portable information device (PDAs, cellphones, electronic roledex device?)

• A portable timekeeping device (Note: Could be a cellphone or a battery powered clock that you tote around with you when you travel, or what about the clock in your car? What about a stop watch?)

• A portable information device such as a multifunction electronic wristwatch

US Patent 3032651 is one of the earliest Wrist Carried Radio Set. This "wrist carried radio" was invented by two Swiss inventors and actually cites a Janauary 20, 1946 article from the Richmond Times Dispatch titled, "Dick Tracy Wrist Radio" as prior art. It also cites a 1954 article from the Washington Star entitled, "The Army's New Wrist Radio." It has some very elegant drawings. This application must have been written shortly after the press documented the meeting between Mr. Gross and Mr. Gould.

Timex and Motorola have a series of overlapping intellectual property which resulted in the Beepwear watch. The Beepwear pager watch was a hit at the Beepwear Pro was promoted as, "It's a pager, ...it's a watch, ....it's an organizer,....right on your wrist! "

Timex's US Patent 4847818 filed in 1988 by Timex is one of the earlier inventions. It has a remarkably simple title: Wristwatch Radiotelephone offering a different phone configuration than the standard Dick Tracy:
There are Timex patents with Microsoft as well, see 5922058.

Ericsson defines their invention as a personal information management system. (That's nice and broad) US Patent 6334046 describes a personal information management system that includes a personal information manager having a first transceiver and a first storage device for personal information and a communication system. Could be Dick Tracy in silhouette in their figures.

IBM has a patent for a PDA watch with features that take advantage of the flexibility of the human wrist to enhance data entry. It describes the field of invention as "relating in general to information processing apparatuses, and in particular to personal data assistants."

HP's 7055111 is for "Opportunistic Data Transfer From a Personal Digital Apparatus". In case you are wondering, Opportunistic Data Transfer appears to relate to the capability to download data to your personal digital assistant at a predetermined time. The Personal Digital Apparatus covers a lot of territory. The personal digital apparatus appears to be hooked to the arm according to the figures and preferred embodiment but they wander into the medical data arena - is that the same as the devices that keep track of your work out and upload the data to your personal computer (whatever that is these days?) This one has lots of Bluetooth compliant device language.

The LG "Dick Tracy watch" was shown at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. Samsung has its own version that lets you check voice mail and check Outlook mail. I guess we'll have to see what RIM and Apple do next.

The best description of this class of devices so far is simply, "An attention grabbing gizmo."

That explains it.

Wireless IP Titans at Defcon 1

Looks like the wireless world titans are about to go to Defcon 1.

Today's Wall Street Journal "Ericsson Wins Nortel Auction" reports that "Telfon AB L.M. Ericsson will pay $1.13 billion to acquire the most profitable piece of Nortel Networks Corp. after winning an auction for the assets late Friday."

WSJ notes that Ericsson got the Nortel CDMA business and "a group of 400 resarchers working on high-end broadband technology." What is missing from this reporting is that the asset the bidders wanted was the Nortel patent portfolio and their smart people. Depending on who you believe the Nortel patent portfolio has between 6,000 and 7,000 patents covering networking, telephony, and wireless technology. Ericsson has tens of thousands of its own patents including a significant number of software patents.

Research in Motion was excluded from bidding. RIM had less than 1,000 patents with 450 issuing in the last year but apparently is shopping as well. RIM picked up the three speech/voice patents from the Multimedia Patent Trust in February. Now the subject of a prior art bounty. Everyone in the wireless space knows you better have a good patent portfolio.

The prize in the Nortel auction was the patent portfolio. The market for intangible assets and patents and the human capital to create new patents in particular continues to expand. Having an arsenal of patents is a key defensive and competitive weapon. Having smart people who invent stuff is the icing on the cake.

Nokia has its own patent factory (and a book letting everyone know how they manage their IP pipeline). Nokia and Intel have announced plans for a next generation phone. Intel and Nokia are aiming for the unbiquitous internet connectivity space and a whole new class of mobile devices. Intel has been aggressively shopping for technology.

Apple and RIM are duking it out in the smart phone market space, Apple has its own considerable portfolio and is careful to license the technology it doesn't own. I wonder if anyone was paying attention when Apple was one of the early players to license the Amazon One-Click Patent 5,960,411? It was pre-ITunes store.

Motorola and RIM are engaged in their own invalidity, infringement, and re-examination actions. Intellectual Ventures recently entered into a strategic relationship with Telecordia acquiring the rights to license approximately 500 Telecordia patents. Telecordia also has a lot of very smart people inventing interesting technology in the telecommunications space.

Patents and 400 smart people is a very good prize for Ericsson. The rest is window dressing, revenue generating, profitable but window dressing. We suspect the technologists, the executives, and the armies of IP lawyers and experts are mobilizing for battle exchanging key strategy on their smart phones. Stay tuned.

Advertising Image v. Multimedia Object

We have been digging around in the multimedia space lately looking at patent applicatons. This is always a fun place to wander around while watching episodes of Entourage on your IPhone or having a YouTube window open with Michael Jackson videos or laughing babies going.

The multimedia patent world aligns with two of our favorite patent portfolios. The MPEG-LA suite of patents - where the titans of the multimedia revolution cross-licensed all of their patents and battle it out in the marketplace; and the Multimedia Patent Trust's holdings; a small but formidable collection of nine patents that includes six in the MPEG space and three in the speech space. Our favorite in the MPT collection is the Netravali patent 4,383,272 which has to do with updating pixels to distinguish moving areas of a picture. From a 50,000 foot view, only compressing the parts of the picture that change to save space. A lot of people think this is a seminal invention in the evolution of HDTV. The patent applications we look at here are made possible by the techiques defined by Mr. Netravali and his co-inventor John D. Robbins.

The first thing we did when we started looking at the patent applications was to define multimedia. One of the sources we were working with defined it as "a transmission that combines media of communication - text, and graphics and sound, etc." That seemed clear enough - if it has pictures, text, and makes noise it's multimedia. No requirement for movement.

One of the published patents we came across in the multimedia space was 10/112,519 - Method and System for Providing Intelligent Advertisement Placement in a Motion Picture. The application describes an invention for embedding advertisements into motion picture content using personalized data. The individual inventors describe a process for swapping out objects in the motion picture with advertising images based on personalize data. I get Diet Coke, you get Mountain Dew, if you're in Louisville, Kentucky or Jeffersonville, Indiana you get Big Red - America's #1 Red Soda. (A shout out to our friends at the Census Bureau.)

Throughout the application the inventors use the phrase "motion picture". So, what's a motion picture? According to the web and the old school paper dictionary, a motion picture is a "movie," a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement. Another definition says a motion picture is a length of film with or without recorded sound bearing a sequence of images creating the illusion of movement. OK. So, a movie is a motion picture? It depends. Merriam-Webster says it's a series of pictures projected on a screen in rapid succession with objects shown in successive positions slightly changed to produce the optical effect of a continuous picture in which the objects move. This application was filed in March 2002 and is a continuation in part of an application filed in January 2000.

Fast forward to July of 2006 when patent application number 11/486,683 - System for Creating Dynamically Personalized Media was filed. The inventors describe a multi-media object management system to manage the delivery of product placements in a multi-media program. They describe modifying the content in which the multi-media object locations that can be brokered are replaced with content defined by advertisers based on demographics or other user attributes. The patent teaches a multi-media object location comprising "a spatial and temporal site." (What??) The specification talks about selling the multi-media object locations to advertisers. We like the figures. Nice, easy to understand pictures. The application seems a little heavy with obscure vocabulary no doubt added to help insure the widest possible coverage if and when a patent is granted.

Time for a little clarity. Is a multi-media object an advertising image or is it some precursor thing where you place an advertisig image? What about this spatial and temporal thing? Is this the space where the advertising image goes and an event that takes place over time kind of like the guy drinking the soda in the picture above? You have to ask yourself what words will the examiner use to do their own prior art search? What will the phrase multimedia object return? A multimedia object comes from the world of object oriented programming, MPEG, and the graphics world.

One application discusses product placement, the other discusses advertising. Isn't product placement advertising? Yep. Product placement is defined as an advertising technique used by companies to subtly promote their products; a form of advertising where branded goods or services are placed in context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, the story line of television shows or news programs. (We were good until the news programs part, notice all the anchors tweet from their Macs.)

This is a vocabulary conundrum. But you have to ask yourself, what is the impact of the word choices of the inventors? Will the choice of words in the claims and description of the invention make a difference? What happens when these applications hit USPTO? USPTO has to figure out what to do with the patent applications and which examiners are going to look at them. Should you expect that the content would drive them to the same class?

The motion picture advertising patent is classified in class 725/34. (In case you are wondering, the first boldfaced class on a published patent application is the Primary classification and drives which Group Art Unit at PTO is going to examine your patent application.) The multi-media object product placement patent shows class 705/14 as the the primary class.

Which means?

The two independent inventors who wrote about motion pictures and advertising had their patent classified in class 725/34 a class for interactive video distribution systems, PROGRAM, MESSAGE, OR COMMERCIAL INSERTION OR SUBSTITUTION: Subject matter comprising means or steps for inserting or substituting a video program or other information beyond the control of a viewer, television, for operator interfaces for video sequencing or editing specific to individual user or household: subject matter comprising means or steps for conveying user-specific data. JACKPOT!!

705/14 falls under Data processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, or Cost/Price Determination - Distribution and redemption of coupon, or inventive or promotion programs. The class definition says, "Note - A display or advertising system is included herein." A display or advertising system? Perplexing - is this a method, a business practice, a process - I guess we'll see.

Patent classification remains an illusive art and USPTO changes its mind along the way but sometimes plain language works best at getting your patent where you want it to go. The examiners are probably happy to have something that helps them find the invention in the blur of words. We have a motion picture where we replace images with advertising images selected based on characteristics of the viewer. Then we have a multi-media object consisting of a spatial or temporal site. The space and time continuum - isn't that what movies are? As another testament to the art of a well crafted patent application. The independent inventors in the motion picture advertising application started their claims by saying: "What is claimed is:" The multi-media object inventors started their claims with: "What is new and desired to be protected by Letters Patent of the United States is."

There is something to be said for clarity and simplicity of language.

Celebrity Watch - Information Edition

For those of you who, from time to time, engage in a little electronic celebrity stalking we bring your Celebrity Watch Information Edition. We suggest you try the FBI's Electronic Freedom of Information Acts (EFOIA) electronic reading room.

The FBI's electronic reading room is where the FBI posts frequently requested information sought under the Freedom of Information Act. For you celebrity stalkers, the reading room features the links to the files they have assembled on "Famous People". Its luminaries include Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Desi Arnez, John Lennon, and Gene Autry among others. Malcolm X is listed as "Little, Malcolm X." There are files on Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Dr. Martin Luther King, and John Steinbeck.

If you are looking for additional entertainment, check out the Unusual Phenomena listings for Project Blue Book, their investigation into UFOs, and, Animal Mutations. (Perhaps concern about discovering exactly when pigs would fly.)

For a while, the Elvis file was the most frequent FOIA subject in the entire Federal Government. The FBI saved a lot of money when it posted the file online rather then sending out hard copies to people FOIAing his record.

Electronic reading rooms and FOIA are the gateways to amazing amounts of scientific and technical information. Most federal agencies have electronic reading rooms on their website that include most frequently requested information and the actual EFOIA form. A well written FOIA request can be the gateway to tracking down high quality prior art and inventive activity information.

Roll Up Your Windows

From the Ridiculous Intellectual Property Enforcements Catalog we bring you "Roll Up Your Windows."

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) filed a suit against AT&T asseting that RINGTONES QUALIFY AS A PUBLIC PERFORMANCE under the Copyright Act. What is ridiculous about this is that the mobile operators have already agreed to and are paying royalties on the ringtones that they sell to subscribers. Now they want the mobile operators to pay when the phone rings in pubic.

According to a press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), ASCAP argues that phone carriers must pay additional royalties of face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone user's copyright infringement. Fred von Lohmann, an EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney added, "Are the millions of people who have bought ringtones breaking the law if they forget to silence their phones in a restaurant? Under the reasoning from ASCAP, it would be a copy right violation for you to play your car radio with the window down."

It would be a nice thing to silence the cell phones in restaurants (and elevators, and Starbucks, and at the hair place) but it's hardly the ringtones that are annoying. But for now we may need to roll up those windows while this ridiculous claim proceeds or risk delivering a public performance with our cell phone ring tones.

Photomosaic Images, and Excellent Prior Art

We have come to love the art of excellent prior art. Finding really good prior art is one of those serendipitous search moments. Just doing a prior art search makes you smarter but when you find an elegant, amazing piece of prior art it's great. The best prior art quests tend to be part of invalidity efforts with big money, big principles, or both at stake. The one we discuss here is a big principle example.

A refresher on what USPTO says about prior art:

Under 35 U.S.C. 102(b) states: "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -- (b) the invention was patented or disclosed in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States."

Excellent prior art was found by the people at Public Patent (PubPat) Foundation at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; a not-for-profit legal services organization whose mission is to protect freedom in the patent system. PubPat.org says that they represent the public's interest against undeserved patents and unsound patent policy. We are nonpartisan about their mission but impressed by their finely honed prior art skills.

In September of 2008, Pubpat asked USPTO to re-examine a patent for photomosaic images (6,137,498) The patent was filed in October 27, 1997 based on a provisional application dated January 2, 1997. The patent was granted in October 24, 2000. The reexamination appears to have triggered when the inventor, Robert Silvers of Cambridge, Mass. was sending cease and desist letters and asserting his patent against individuals, small businesses, and against the GIMP open source software program. On June 11th, 2009, PubPat received a copy of the USPTO Office Action invalidating 41 of the 63 claims including all of the independent claims. While the fight isn't totally over, this was a major victory.

What was the primary piece of prior art cited in the USPTO Office Action? The cover of the "Being Double Digital, The Media Lab at 10" November 1995 issue of WIRED magazine. The cover featured a photomosaic portrait of Nicolas Negroponte. This piece of prior art was actually created by Mr. Silvers himself. A piece of art previously submitted to USPTO.

To add to the sublime nature of this particular piece of prior art is the fact that Mr. Silvers' bio cites the Media Lab under his educational credits. Mr. Silvers published a paper titled "Mosaics: Putting Pictures in their Place". The paper was submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning as part of the requirements for a Degree of Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) That paper, published in 1996. The document itself states "In 1994, he entered the Media Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The very institution that the WIRED magazine profiled in the November 1995 issue that was used to invalidate Mr. Silver's patent. It's interesting that Mr. Silver's own work is not cited on the patent document.

Mr. Silver passes the patent number test. Mr. Silvers' web site includes his patent number on the bottom of every page. Perhaps Mr. Silver will need to modify his website now.

Where Are The Patent Numbers? - Windustry Edition

Today we add the latest installment in our Eschew IP Obfuscation campaign. We look at recent events in the emerging "Windustry" - the US wind market.

On May 11th, Susan Decker of Bloomberg.com reported that General Electric had asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to block Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from importing rival equipment into the United States claiming that it misappropriated three of GE's patents. "Turbines made by Mitsubishi, Japan's largest heavy machinery maker, infringe three patents..." Ok, three patents, which ones?


The article goes on and adds, "Today's wind turbines use different technology, than covered by the GE patents, Mitsubishi lawyer Roger Taylor told the judge. "GE is forced to twist and contort the meaning of its patents to prove infringement." GE says Mitsubishi is infringing, Mitsubishi says not so fast, this is a stretch. We also learn, the ITC acts as a third party arguing on behalf of the public, and has taken the position that there was no violation of GE's patent rights. When did that happen?

On June 10th, the Lexology business intelligence newsletter included a post from Joanna Boag-Thompson of Sherpherd & Wedderburn LLP citing, "GE is the proprietor of three patents which relate to variable speed turbines. Ms. Boag-Thompson notes that GE alleges that the turbines sold by Mitsubishi infringe GE's patents and therefore that Mitsubishi's import of turbines should be blocked. Further in the post she notes that, "An initial ruling is set to be issued by the ITC on 7 August. The initial ruling will be issued by one judge (Carl Charneski) and, once the initial ruling has been issued, the full US ITC then has until 7 December to complete its investigation and either modify, accept or reject the initial ruling. Any order to block imports could, however, ultimately be overturned by the US trade representative Ron Kirk for policy reasons."

The articles report that GE got into the wind turbine market in 2002 after buying the wind turbine assets out of bankruptcy from Enron Corporation. GE had about $6 Billion in global sales of wind turbines in 2008. Mitsubishi's web site says, "Since the 1980s, Misubishi has pioneered the development of high-efficiency wind turbines." Still no details on the patents, GE's so Mitsubishi's, we press on.

Greenstockscentral.com notes in their coverage notes that the three patents asserted by GE were issued in 1992, 2005, and 2008, and are related to variable speed turbines that adjust to insure there is a consistent power being supplied to the electrical grid without damaging the machines and to deal with periods where there is low voltage on the grid, such as a during a power outage. Greenstockscentral.com's info apparently came from National Wind Watch. They point back to Susan Becker at Bloomberg.com. Still no patent numbers. But at least we have some kind of clue to the age of the patents.

But, if GE only got into the wind turbine business in 2002, where did the 1992 patent come from? Enron? Was GE doing R&D work in that area but wasn't selling products. Why are these innovations important? Were their licensing discussions that broke down, are there other infringement matters that are underway? How did the ITC staff make it's decision so quickly? Or at least it looks like it was quick given the information available on the ITC investigation. So the information quest continues. Find the source documents, the complaint to the ITC.

The case is In the Matter of Certain Variable Speed Wind Turbines and Components Thereof, 337-641, U.S. International Trade Commission.

A 337 Investigation is a trade remedy investigation involving claims regarding intellectual property rights including allegations of patent infringement by imported goods. This is a particularly onerous process because a finding that imported goods are infringing a US patent stops the goods at the border. Immigration and Customs Enforcement get an order from the judge and stops the products from entering the US. This is a "we're not messing around" kind of move. If you are on the wrong side of one of these actions, it's a very big problem especially when your dealing with products as expensive as a wind turbine.

Next stop, the ITC website. After a circuitous hunt riddled with dead links and curiously misleading information perhaps designed for the Intellectual Property Cognescenti, we find that public documents are in something called EDIS. To get to the public documents requires creating a user ID.

(Information police: this user ID sign up form includes a list of states NOT in alphabetical order. Strangely disorienting. Does the ITC not know how to alphabetize? Then there's the security question, "What city was your mother/father born in?" Which one? Mother's city, Father's city, does the slash indicate they want both with a slash? Does the ITC assume everyone's parents were born in the same city? But I digress.)

After the get a user ID drill and logging into EDIS, we get to the search screen which takes us to the investigation screen, which then tells us the investigation is confidential and we can't see the documents. So the public document portal doesn't contain public documents after all. We move on but still don't know what EDIS stands for...Electronic Docket Information System? Who knows.

This is kind of perturbing, We can see how keeping the trade secrets of how GE implemented the inventions disclosed in its patents might be confidential but what about the the patent numbers? Come on. But we learn that the investigation number is now 337-TA-641.

This is just too hard.

How about checking the GE site next? Very nice web site, plenty of big brother stuff about how the smart grid will monitor our electricity so that we'll all be doing laundry at 2am but nothing on the web site about the wind turbine infringement. On its R&D GE page says, "GE became the first organization in history to be assigned its 50,000th patent. GE achieved this historic milestone in 1978, the year of the company's centennial. And, they have 36,000 technologists, impressive. Nice R&D blog, "From Edison's Desk" on what GE is up to including the Smart Grid work in Miami. GE gets the new media thing - YouTube Video created by GE put on YouTube and then linked into their blog.

Note to self, add GE.com to list of prior art search locations. Still no patent numbers.

More hunting. According to a news report four of the world's top wind turbine manufacturers are GE Energy, Gamesa, Siemens, and Vestas and they are worried about a tax credit that is about to expire. Vestas has some nice patents. Gamesa is a Spanish company, apparently a smaller player. Only GE manufacturer's wind turbines in the US according to a review of a George Mason University feasiblity study of the Pickens Plan to move to replace natural gas consumption in energy production with wind energy. No mention of Mitsubishi though. Still no patent numbers.

With more hunting we do learn from the Department of Energy that the US has the fastest growing market for wind. In 2007 we eclipsed Germany in Incremental Wind Capacity and are second only to Germany in Cummulative Wind Capacity. (Information police...does this make any sense. Germany's is smaller then the US in population, and land mass. What this says to me is we don't have much wind yet.) Turns out that Maryland, home of the Coronado Group, isn't represented in the "Windustry".

Then we find some interesting business data, courtesy of SC for Green blog scforgreen.com. "Wind turbine imports from Europe and Asia rose from $60 million in 2004 to $2.5 billion in 2008, according to Customs data reviewed by McClatchy Newspapers. Imports of other equipment usually, but not always, used for wind power production also increased in the same period. The value of AC generators and towers, for instance, jumped from $84 million to $1.6 billion." Exponential growth on the import front. Significant market expansion on the import front. Could be bad for business if you are GE. Still no patent numbers.

So, here's what we have so far:

• GE thinks Mitsubishi misappropriated the technology disclosed in three of its patents.
• Mitsubishi thinks GE is stretching their old technology patents to address current products. But if one of the patents was issued in 2008 how old could it be. Is this a blame it on USPTO moment?
  
• The ITC is investigating and has already made a decision sometime or other that they don't think GE's patent rights are being violated. We have no idea how they came to this decision or when.
  
• The three GE patents are of the 1992, 2005, and 2008 vintage.
• The US eclipsed Germany in the amount of incremental wind capacity but since Germany is considerably smaller and has less people, and we can assume less energy requirements, we don't really know what this means.
• Imports of wind turbines and their parts have grown exponentially over the last five years.
• Round one of the decision at ITC comes August 7th.
• Boone Pickens, Jeff Immelt, and others are anxious to build wind based energy generation capacity.
  

What we don't know -

• WHAT ARE THE PATENT NUMBERS?
  
• Why do these inventions matter?
• When do these patents expire?
• Are any of the other competitors using GE's technology, did they license it?
  
• Why is finding out this stuff so hard?
  

So, I give up for today. I'm going to see if I can find the patent numbers for this ITC action before the case gets decided in August. Stay tuned.

27,000 Patents and Counting

Today's interesting IP article -- "Bellevue's lab is an inventor's real dream"

The latest news of the inventions and intellectual property holdings of Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, Washington from the Seattle Times Newspaper.

Chocolate Bunnys

Today's IP article comes from the Wall Street Journal on the trademark case on the Lindt golden bunny - foil wrapped chocolate bunnies. It reads,

"If you are not going to protect your trademarks, they are worth nothing," says Reinhart Lange, an intellectual-property lawyer at WilmerHale in Frankfurt.

"Mr. Lange is the Elmer Fudd of chocolate rabbit look-alikes. He has represented Lindt for some two decades. He learned the trade from a senior partner who brought intellectual-property cases for Lindt back in the early 1980s."

Little critters multiplied to get to it's current sales of $44M. The case is a legal rabbit hole with hopping mad founders family. Lots of rabbit metaphor. Nice.

Chocolate rabbits, intellectual property lawyers, Elmer Fudd. Some guys have all the fun.

Here are a couple of great golden bunny videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sWKBF7HIJs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilmpiL2eIUM

Information Retrieval Serendipity

Serendipitous information retrieval is the art of finding things you didn't know you were looking for until you find them. It's the joy of finding stuff, serendipity, good fortune, an auspicious search moment and you are happy. A search "ah ha" moment and they are fun. Serendipitous information retrieval is search nirvana.

I had my own serendipitious search moment late one Sunday night. Doing a little channel surfing to attempt to cure insomnia, I found an HD concert channel. Paying no real attention while multitasking on the laptop the HD concert was just background noise until Dave Matthews Band came on. It was musical nirvana. Something new but kinda old as Dave put himself during the concert. Aside from the commentary about being late to the party, for me it was an amazing find. Four concerts and 102 songs later, I still consider that channel surfing to have been a serendipitous event.

Serendipitous search is a creative investigative process. It's about thinking and navigating through information, and data, and web sites, and images, and enjoying the trip. It's the opposite of search paralysis where you just can't seem to find what you are looking for and keep giving up and starting over until you call it quits. Amazon and Netflix and the smart phone app stores all have a variation on these types of searches to help their customers navigate and make new discoveries by leading them down the path of searchers that came before them, it's a kind of simulated curiosity encouraging you to keep looking.

We learned about serendipitous search when we were working on our diagnostic imaging project. Doctors and clinicians talk about having a hunch and seeing if their hunch is right or more importantly when researching a problem, seeing where their hunches take them. When you ask them what they don't like about the current state of the art in search they'll tell you it's just too hard to follow their hunches, the tools just aren't there.

Richard Feynman's book "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" shows how the art of finding things out and the process of doing it has it's own pleasure. Like when you're a kid and you have to tell everyone "look what I found." Or when you have one of those white light enlightenment moments when you learn something new.

David Pescovitz wrote an interesting post on serendipitous search in the real world, how people search in malls, at flea markets, in the real world.

So that's what we're trying to do, to try to create serendipitous search experiences. To make the search experience one where you don't want to heave the laptop out the window.

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The phrase serendipity came from a 1754 fairy tale by Horace Walpole retelling the story of a 1557 Italian story, retelling a 1302 Persian fairy tale retelling a tale based on life of a Persian king who lived around 402. The English version is called "The Three Princes of Serendip" in which "the heroes were always making discoveries by accidents and sagacity of things they were in quest of."

If Serendipitous search isn't your thing, you can always go to Serendipity in NYC founded in 1954, 200 years afer Walpole's translation. They have great ice cream!!

Folding Mobile Phones

Lately we have been digging around in the mobile telephone space. There's a lot of action there. Between new IPhones and Blackberries, the new Palm Pre, and the latest features from Nokia including their app store Ova, there are lots of interesting developments to watch evolve.

Under the heading of deja vu all over again, we wanted to see how far back you had to go to find a folding phone. We saw the early Motorola folding phone back in the 1990s, owned folding phones for the car including the Razr, and a host of other cell phones with different versions of the "fold" so we were curious.

Consider the 1905 patent that described a vibrator for a sound-telegraph apparatus' "specially constructed for use in the army or in other service where the apparatus must be portable or occupy but small space." It features a collapsing design with a fold out flap for the microphone. An elegant piece of work considering it was over 100 years ago. The inventor was Arvid Andersson Lind of Stockholm, Sweden, yet another testiment to Swedish design.

Boo to Boolean Searching

Boolean Searches and I don't get along.  A Boolean search makes you think about how to construct your search NOT what you are looking for.

One of our Doctor friends who is a very smart guy with lots of polysyllabic words in his vocabulary tried to construct a Boolean search for me to prove he could do it.  The man is brilliant, he can operate using the da vinci surgery robotics system and teach medical school.  The Boolean thing...too hard.  I gave him my keyword guessing machine analogy.  He equated it to a slot machine.  Then I made a really tragic mistake; I tried to explain it.  Aside from being able to talk about George Boole, the father of Boolean logic and its "and" "ors" and "nots"the rest of the conversation was unfulfilling all the way around.

I like cognitive searching.  Or semantic searching, searching related to the structure of language and logic, if you want to be more accurate.  

Cognitive searching lets you search using your ideas.  You can create a stream of consciousness text entry that describes what you are looking for and then hit enter.  The search uses latent semantic analysis to understand what you are looking for and then go find it.  This is a much more satisfying search experience.

At Coronado Group we are very good at cognitive searching.