

IBM Patents Half-day Out of Office Notifications - acak
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,095,941.PN.&OS=PN/8,095,941&RS=PN/8,095,941

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skymt
If I'm reading it correctly, the patent covers a _very_ specific
implementation, even mentioning use of EJB. Presumably an implementation on a
different stack couldn't infringe.

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abalone
Not necessarily. Patents commonly discuss specific implementations but qualify
them as just one of many possible "embodiments" of the invention.

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garbowza
Incorrect. Only what is specifically claimed (in the claims themselves) holds
up in court.

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lucisferre
The key requirement in that is going to court.

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saulrh
Exactly - no matter now badwrong the patent, it still takes time and money to
go to court, and the kind of people that IBM will be using this patent against
don't have that time or that money.

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garbowza
The key is to read the claims (particularly the independent ones) - that is
the only part of a patent that holds water.

In this case, the first independent claim is seriously narrow. The OP's title
is extremely misleading.

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acak
This is what I read in the claims section:

"What is claimed is:

1\. A system for generating an electronic notification containing a portion of
a day out of office notice, ..." (and then goes on to explain its
implementation).

Could you please tell me how the title is misleading?

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gerggerg
_"This invention relates in general to personal information management
applications, and more particularly, to a system that generates an electronic
notice that displays a portion of a day out of office notice."_

Surely this quote is actually from a Monty Python sketch and not an official
patent issued by the USA.

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noonespecial
You haven't seen their _"method and process for swinging a mackerel at high
angular velocity in the direction of a colleague's face"_ yet then, have you?

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chime
Every patent application needs these three questions answered:

    
    
        1. What's novel about this?
        2. What's not obvious about this to an average professional in this field?
        3. What is useful about this?
    

In this case, 3 is a given but I can't seem to figure out 1 and 2.

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IanDrake
Right, but money has a way of figuring out 1 and 2.

Seriously, if they get awarded this patent, I'm just going to go through
everything I can think of and file patents for half. Apple patents "swipe",
I'll patent the "half swipe". Microsoft patents "avoid Ghetto" GPS feature,
I'll patent the "avoid areas near a Walmart" feature.

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eternalban
Has anyone ever tried starting a community effort, something like IP Commons?

[edit: I just duck'd and fished this out patentcommons.org but the site is
down.]

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gtani
<https://w2.eff.org/patent/>

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eternalban
Thanks for the link. I mean, why not start a non-profit "open source" patent
organization and start filing patents and hold ownership in commons; GPL for
IP. Two can play this game, right?

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lrizzo
A very thorough examination: filed 2006 granted 2012. But i understand why it
took so long, they also had to invent multi-base fractional numbers (days
hours and minutes: "timestamp to-the-minute" is repeated eight times in the
claim) to support the invention. Who had heard that before.

Coming next: a patent that supports notifications accurate "to the second".

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Roboprog
My second thought was how I will be required to set this up anytime my
schedule for a day is a bit unusual :-(

Method and device for making office life suck even more...

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esurc
Sounds like the patent examiner was test-driving this invention himself.

Would explain quite a bit about PTO.

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ansonparker
6 minute abs!

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a_a_r_o_n
Exclamation. Adjective adjective noun, exclamation.

