Posts Tagged: "patent search"

The patent process can be expensive, so the last thing you want to do is spend a lot of time and money preparing and filing an application when there is easy to find prior art that will likely prevent a patent from issuing. Likewise, a patent search can give you a good idea about the likely scope of any patent claim that you may be able to anticipate. Still further, a patent search will give you an opportunity to discover which aspects of your invention are most likely to contribute to patentability, thereby allowing the description in any filed patent application to focus on those aspects most likely to contribute to patentability. Without a patent search you would just be describing all the various aspects of your invention as if they are equally important, which we know won’t be the case.

Right now the best business to be in at the moment is the patent enforcement business, at least if you are concerning yourself with low-risk monetization with high reward. Between the legacy issue of bad patents, patent auctions and the many who purchase patents, what has started to happen is that the patent system rewards those who have the finances and ability to game the system. But the problem is extraordinarily complex.

Even when hiring a patent attorney inventors still need to be engaged in order to give the patent attorney the best information available about the invention. This seems simple enough, but so many inventors fail to understand what information is important and why it is necessary.  If you don’t understand that “why” you will you will almost never be able to provide all the information necessary.

In this agriculture search Article One Partners is not only looking for those with superior scientific training or advanced degrees. They are also hoping to expand the universe of those who will submit information relative to the study to include many who you might not ordinarily expect would have the such peculiar or specific knowledge or expertise. This call for additional researchers seeks farmers, commercial gardeners and others to rack their brains in an effort to recall things they may have seen, which could make them $5,000 richer due to the reward money that is guaranteed to be paid to the individual who submits the most relevant prior art.

Today there is a different solution for those who need to find that particularly illusive non-patent literature that typically makes up the best, most damaging prior art.  Rather than conduct the search around ever corner and under every stone you can leverage the knowledge of a global network of highly educated and highly trained researchers. Essentially, you can tap into their specific knowledge and stores of information by engaging the power of crowdsourced patent searching.

AOP, the world’s largest patent research community, has passed another significant milestone. This time the company has passed the $3 million threshold in financial rewards paid to its global research community. Actually, the milestone was reached at the end of August 2012, but AOP only officially made the announcement last week. In fact, as of the writing of this article the reward calculator found prominently on the AOP homepage shows that some $3,371,500 in reward money has been paid to its community of crowdsourcing researchers.

One of the newer prior art research studies currently underway at Article One Partners is one that relates to U.S. Patent No. 6,332,158, which relates to a system that assists user’s in selecting desired domains. This study is of particular interest because the patent in question is owned by a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation, which is one of the largest and most powerful of the patent assertion entities (PAE) in the industry today. The technology in question in the Acacia owned patent is a domain name lookup system and associated method. In the method a domain name query is sent from a resolver process when the user wishes to obtain information. If the domain name exists, the domain name server provides the corresponding machine address back to the user’s computer. However, when the domain name query uses a non-existent domain name then a machine address for a computer that executes a domain recommendation engine is provided. The domain recommendation engine assists the user in locating a desired domain name.

I have not previously noticed AOP doing Studies relative to foreign patents, but the hunt for prior art knows no boundaries and it seems only logical that some outside the United States would want to tap into the AOP network of researchers for prior art relative to non-U.S. patents. In the case of EP808484, the technology relates to online gaming and virtual worlds. The purpose of the invention is to provide a system for modeling a virtual body within a virtual environment, and controlling the movements of the virtual body in response to user body movement while providing acceptable level of realism.

There really is no one-size-fits-all approach to inventing that can be claimed to be a road-map to success that will work in all cases. Notwithstanding, there are certainly a number of things that can and should be done early in the inventing process if an inventor is going to pursue inventing as more than a hobby. I continually preach to inventors the need to follow what I call a “business responsible” approach, which is really just my way of counseling inventors to remember that the goal is to not only invent but to hopefully make some money. Truthfully, the goal is to make more money than what has been invested, which is how the United States Congress defined “success” in the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999.  The odds of being successful with one of your inventions increase dramatically if you engage in some simple steps to ensure you are not investing time and money on an invention that has little promise.

So what is going on with these research Studies that seek only U.S. patents? It would seem that based on the specific details of some of these research assignments there are a growing number of entities using the AOP network to search for patents that might be able to be acquired for some strategic purpose. If that is what is going on it would be a creative way to use the AOP network of researchers to identify patents and/or patent portfolios. It also means that if you are a patent searcher and you are not frequently perusing ongoing AOP Studies you are missing an opportunity.

On May 22, 2012, STEC IP brought separate patent infringement lawsuits against Apple, Amazon and Oracle. Little information about STEC IP seems available. In the complaints filed they explain only that they are a Delaware limited liability company having a principle place of business in Greensboro, North Carolina. Under Delaware law Members of the LLC (i.e., owners) may remain anonymous, therefore, those who are behind STEC IP may remain a mystery. Of course, it is known that STEC IP is being represented by Richard Kirk of Bayard and Mark Hogge of SNR Denton, both of whom are listed as attorneys for STEC IP in the respective filings. Each of the patents asserted by STEC IP are now undergoing review by the Article One Partner’s research community.

U.S. Patent No. 6,757,068, which relates to what is described as a sourceless tracking system. See AOP Patent Study DEV-1754. The claims of this patent are extremely broad and suffer from defects not associated with prior art. A patent like the ‘068 patent is cat-nip to the anti-patent community and an all too familiar illustration that the Patent Office makes mistakes. Claim 1 is an example of something that would be deemed inappropriate on the patent bar examination because it is horribly disjointed. It should have received a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112, 2d paragraph.

Article One Partners has just reached the $3 million milestone, having given out over $3 million to its cadre of researchers. Currently the total sum awarded by Article One is at $3,049,000 and counting, with some $64,000 being awarded to the winners of closed Studies on August 24, 2012. Some current Studies now carry a $10,000 Reward compared with the more usual $5,000 Reward.

When finances are difficult people look to themselves for assistance, and to figure out how they can make a better tomorrow without relying on anyone else. But if you do not have enough resources to pursue a plan in a manner that is likely to succeed all that you have done is waste time and money. Yes, the dirty little secret is that being cost conscious and seemingly financially responsible can lead exactly to the point where you didn’t want to be. The truth is that if you cut too many corners in the invention to patent to commercialization cycle your odds of succeeding go down dramatically. Being cheap is not synonymous with being fiscally responsible.

Article One Partners always has interesting patent studies going on at any particular time, but one of their studies recently caught my eye in particular. There is an ongoing patent study relating U.S. Patent No. 7,076,445, titled “System and methods for obtaining advantages and transacting the same in a computer gaming environment.” A system for obtaining an advantage in a computer game? Sounds like just the type of competitive advantage that I ought to know about so I can beat my son. Now don’t get me wrong. I can kick his butt on Madden 2012 (or any other version of Madden), but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is a completely different story! I guess I should just be thankful that he plays Call of Duty non-stop during the summer and isn’t practicing up on Madden!