

StubHub granted U.S. patents for seat mapping - ddinch
http://www.ticketnews.com/news/StubHub-granted-US-patents-for-seat-mapping101126374

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sixtofour
I don't know why it takes so long to grant a patent when all they do is slide
it under the rubber stamp machine.

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saulrh
Some articles I've read suggest that it's intentional on the part of the
applicant. The idea is to extend the useful life of the patent by delaying the
application's completion as much as possible.

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pat2man
Definitely worked well for some people:

"By April 1988, when Gould's use patent was approved, optically pumped
amplifier patents covered 80% of the lasers made in the United States. The
market for lasers had ballooned to more than $500 million per year. Suddenly,
Gould was a multimillionaire."

[http://electronicdesign.com/article/components/gordon-
gould-...](http://electronicdesign.com/article/components/gordon-gould-the-
long-battle-for-the-laser-patent1/2.aspx)

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ericHosick
Wow. Where I live, since at least 2005, I can choose the seats in a movie
theatre when buying a ticket (even online now). Seems like a lot of prior art.

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btn
The patent in question (which I believe is 8,024,234) only covers a method for
people _selling tickets_ to compare prices for tickets across a venue in the
form of a venue map. It does not describe an interface for purchasing them.

(Don't construe this as a defence of it though.)

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alexchamberlain
How is this substantially new? This type of article makes the US patent system
laughable.

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alexro
The patent thing may look laughable from the outside but inside the US it's
pretty much required by how everything in business has been set up - to
squeeze everything out of anyone using so-called 'legal' methods.

The legal system in the US is basically a self-feeding machine that produces
crap you have to pay for.

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antimora
It seems any unique process can be patented.

