
Stupid Patent of the Month: A Drink Mixer Attacks the Internet of Things - CapitalistCartr
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/stupid-patent-month-drink-mixer-attacks-internet-things
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beambot
No problem. Back in early 2005, we built a robot bartender that could take
orders over the web (or from PDA) and would automatically mix them. This was
our undergrad capstone project, so there is probably "official" documentation
on file somewhere at the university. I still have our final report around too
-- plus a video (shit quality, sorry:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RzoeacsXrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RzoeacsXrQ)).

I'd be happy to make an expert declaration pro bono to get this tripe
invalidated (contact info in profile).

~~~
Kluny
That project must be a classic or something. I recall a team in the cohort a
year ahead of mine in college doing the same thing, also for their capstone
(in 2010).

~~~
beambot
It's definitely a right of passage for roboticists. Now there are BarBot
competitions and bartending robot startups -- so it's definitely an old idea!
There's no way that ours from 2005 was the first, but ours definitely predates
the patent (ie. is sufficient prior art).

~~~
Vexs
I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of Victorian-era steam
powered machine that read mixing instructions off one of those paper wheels
player pianos used. Actually, that sounds like a pretty cool project; no
wonder so many people make these things.

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dheera
0\. Patent something, stated as generally as possible, and shut up about it.
1\. Wait for several years until someone comes up with the same idea. 2\.
Deliberately wait for several more years until 20 more companies make billions
of dollars from it. Don't say a thing until the reward is big enough. 3\. Sue
and claim "damages" from each company.

Given that this mode of income is made possible in the US, people can and will
exploit it.

~~~
ExpiredLink
You aptly summed it up. The 'stealth mode' is the key to patent success.

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joopxiv
The whole patent system is mindbogglingly stupid. How this extremely obvious
abuse can continue without any meaningful reform is beyond me.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>whole patent system is mindbogglingly stupid.

The patent system serves a purpose: In the case of drug patents, it _enables
drug research to exist at all._

It's crazy expensive to bring a new drug to market. Unless we're going to have
the government fund all new drug research, we need patent protection for drug
development. I'd be happy to mass-invalidate all patents that don't actually
have serious R&D dollars behind their creation (the idea of the patent
protecting the small inventor hasn't been true for many years), but that
becomes a difficult threshold to quantify.

And as the EFF points out, this patent _is not valid under current law._ It
doesn't satisfy the most basic criteria of "novelty." No matter how much we
improve the PTO, there will still be stupid patents that leak through. What's
broken is that, once issued, such a patent is hard to tear down (and there are
probably thousands of such patents already issued).

We need a vastly simplified and streamlined way to tear down obviously bad
patents like this. The PTO has reached out in the past to get help from
experts in judging patents; extend that to reviewing existing patents, and
give the PTO an explicit mission to seek-and-destroy such patents since they
are measurably hurting the tech economy.

Cut out the bureaucratic obstacles to destroying patents that show no novelty.
Make a patent challenge a process that takes no more than a month, and that
reliably invalidates or limits the scope of broad-reaching patents, so that if
you get a bogus letter demanding payment for some patent that never should
have been issued, you could potentially drag out the negotiations long enough
for the patent to be rendered null and void.

That would destroy the Patent Troll business model.

~~~
joopxiv
> ... this patent is not valid under current law.

Yet it was approved. And with the current system, it will cost more to fight
it than to give in to the extortion of the patent trolls.

> In the case of drug patents, it enables drug research to exist at all.

You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be
involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is
economically driven. Diseases that aren't profitable are ignored.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be
involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is
economically driven. Diseases that aren't profitable are ignored.

I think both should happen. That we _want_ both to happen.

I fully support government subsidized programs, including research (and a
safety net, and highway repair, and...). I'd love to see the government spend
more on researching less profitable diseases.

 _However_ , capitalism, for all its faults, is _very efficient_ at some
things. One of those things is the allocation of capital in research projects
for those diseases that _are_ profitable.

With government allocation of money, we _might_ get the same results, but odds
are good that the money would be allocated less than optimally.

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jobu
Alice v. CLS Bank wiped out a bunch of silly "do it on a computer" patents.
Hopefully a sane judge will look at this and decide it fits under that
umbrella. Otherwise we'll end up waiting a decade for the Supreme Court to
come down with a decision that <trivial concept> \+ "do it over the internet"
is not patentable.

It is a bit sad though that the USPTO has abdicated their responsibility and
left it to the legal system.

~~~
WildUtah
These cases are in the Eastern District of Texas. EDTX allows plaintiffs to
choose their judge. Judge Gilstrap does not believe in the precedential
validity of Alice v. CLS Bank and prohibits defendants from making motions
based on it unless he specifically invites them, which he doesn't do.

And that judge gets about one fourth of all patent cases in the country.

The Federal Circuit abolished the law (still on the books but null and void)
that required patent litigation to be brought in the district where a
defendant was accused of infringing and allowed cases to be brought anywhere
the plaintiff likes. Rep. Gilmore in the House of Representatives has
introduced a bill, the Innovation Act, that would restore a weaker version of
that statute, until the CAFC abolishes it again.

~~~
monochromatic
> Judge Gilstrap does not believe in the precedential validity of Alice v. CLS
> Bank

Surely the truth is a little more nuanced than a federal judge simply not
believing in the precedential validity of binding precedent.

> the law (still on the books but null and void) that required patent
> litigation to be brought in the district where a defendant was accused of
> infringing

What law is that? I thought the general rule was that (subject to certain
constraints) the plaintiff has some latitude in this.

~~~
WildUtah
>the truth is a little more nuanced than a federal judge simply not believing
in the precedential validity of binding precedent

Not much more nuanced. The EDTX judges have a tradition of making millions for
themselves and their families through patent abuse in their courtrooms. Judges
cannot be forced to apply 'binding precedent' honestly if they don't prefer
to. The appeals court has the same problem.

>I thought the general rule was that (subject to certain constraints) the
plaintiff has some latitude in this.

That is the general rule, but it leads to abuse in IP cases, so Congress set a
different rule.

By law, IP cases must be brought where the defendant resides. (28 USC §1400)
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the patent appeals court, as
is its usual practice, nullified the law in the service of growing the patent
troll court in Eastern Texas.

~~~
monochromatic
It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway--nothing I write here
should be construed as legal advice. Anyway...

> The EDTX judges have a tradition of making millions for themselves and their
> families through patent abuse in their courtrooms.

If there were even the appearance of impropriety here, the judges would be
facing consequences. If you don't like the way they rule on things and manage
their dockets, that's fine. But it doesn't make them corrupt. If you have any
evidence for the judges "making millions for themselves and their families
through patent abuse in their courtrooms," I'd love to see it.

> That is the general rule, but it leads to abuse in IP cases, so Congress set
> a different rule.

> By law, IP cases must be brought where the defendant resides. (28 USC §1400)
> The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the patent appeals court, as
> is its usual practice, nullified the law in the service of growing the
> patent troll court in Eastern Texas.

Your memory is essentially backwards here. _Congress_ expanded the language of
§ 1391
([http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html](http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html))
and the Federal Circuit then interpreted that new statutory provision, along
with § 1400, according to its plain language in VE Holding
([https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=372999894064465...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3729998940644656498)).

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adnam
Check out the profile and philosophy of the guy behind this:
[http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventor-
network/invento...](http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventor-
network/inventor-spotlights/leigh-rothschild/)

> In order to make money at inventing, Rothschild has started a few
> businesses, including BarPoint.com, which provides on-line and wireless
> product information and shopping services. There was just one problem—he
> figured out quickly that getting into “business mode” was not his true
> passion.

> “Setting up and running companies around my inventions has been cumbersome,”
> he explained. “I’m not a ‘runner’; I’m an inventor. I ended up selling two
> of my companies so that I could spend less time in business mode and more
> time in invention mode.”

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crapiola
The very same "inventor" has a patent on sharing routes
[https://www.google.com/patents/US20130332076](https://www.google.com/patents/US20130332076)

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imauld
This gave me the inspiration to finally patnet my idea:

Doing a thing to a thing with another thing. On the internet.

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renox
In France one mobile operator (Orange) attacked another one (Free) with patent
violation and the judge told them something like this : "software cannot be
patented: you loose, pay 200k€ of damage".

I'm quite happy about this outcome but that's only a first level judgement and
it was this week so it can still be appealed..

Now what would be even better is that the patent office which accepted this
software patent (illegal here) should be held responsible for this mess, but
I'm not holding my breath..

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elektromekatron
_1\. A system for customizing a product according to a user 's preferences
comprising: a remote server including a database configured to store a product
preference of a predetermined product for at least one user; and a first
communication module within the product and in communication with the remote
server; wherein the remote server is configured to receive the identity of the
predetermined product and the identity of the at least one user, retrieve the
product preference from the database based on the identity of the
predetermined product and the identity of the least one user and transmit the
product preference to the first communication module._

[https://www.google.com/patents/US8788090](https://www.google.com/patents/US8788090)

So, this seems to be a claim on sending a message to an automated system that
contains a data store of products, saying what is wanted and who it is for.

I wonder how much effort will end up being misdirected into having to deal
with just this one stupid patent.

