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I'm having a complete inability to reconcile the reporting on this subject with the patent in question [1]. All the reporting mentions this as a problem for In

by roc 15y ago

I'm having a complete inability to reconcile the reporting on this subject with the patent in question [1]. All the reporting mentions this as a problem for In-App Purchases, but the patent in question seems to only deal with soliciting user feedback. Is there some required rating component involved in In-App purchasing that runs afoul of this patent? [2] Because I'm missing the part where developers necessarily infringe on this patent as a part of using the App Store or In-App Purchasing in general. [1] 7,222,078 [2] I've admittedly only purchased in-app a few times, and I can't recall ever seeing it. And I get notably annoyed when apps throw the pop up asking me to rate their app as-is. So forcing me through a rating widget, I'd think, would stick out.

cube13 15y ago
IIRC, there was some mention of using this mechanism as a way to make sales to consumers in the patent. I agree, it seems more like this is over the "Rate me" dialog popup boxes than the IAP, but the suits seem to have hit developers that use IAP more than anyhting else.
dhimes 15y ago
I'm as lost as you. From the patent text: "One of the core purposes of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 15. This is the ability to learn interactively and iteratively from the users of products and information systems anywhere in the world while they are in use—without having to travel to their sites (or without having to bring them to a testing laboratory). Since this is a two-way link, it also offers the ability to respond meaningfully to customers and users based on worldwide, local, organizational or individual needs regardless of where they are located." ... "As envisioned by this invention, as customers and vendor employees interact to produce continuous improvement, the marketplace may be e-engineered into an interactive development environment (i.e., research and development environment, or R&D environment) with a national or global scope." It seems that they've patented a survey. I don't get it. And, anyway, a "purchase" button sure isn't what they had in mind when they wrote the patent! (BTW, "e-engineered" is verbatim. Maybe it's a term I don't know, but I took it as a typo of "re-engineered.")
- tptacek 15y ago
  The thing that matters in a patent are the claims. The descriptive text is in large part there only to satisfy the requirement of 'enablement', meaning, if you patent an idea, you have to disclose enough information so that someone reasonably skilled in the art could duplicate your invention. Trying to parse the descriptive text of a patent isn't particularly useful. The claims in this patent are straightforward: * Handheld devices with keypads * Remote servers * Interactions for setting up a sale of an item * Interactions triggered by repeated use of the system
  - sigzero 15y ago
    And all of those invalidate that patent because they are friggen obvious uses of tech.
    - roc 15y ago
      The 'obviousness' test is (unfortunately) more about rejecting trivial patents; not rejecting things that are clear logical extensions of what has come before.
      - tptacek 15y ago
        Something that blew my mind the first time I worked with IP lawyers (I've been induced to file a bunch of patents): you can patent extensions of other people's ideas; for instance, even though someone else came up with tiered FEC multicast file transfer protocols, you can patent the application of that idea to some problem, like, tiered FEC file transfer of mailing list messages. I've never filed a patent like that ("Nice idea you got there! Shame if I came up with a bunch of other ideas based on it!"), but I guess it's obvious when you think about it.
  - dhimes 15y ago
    The descriptive text is in large part there only to satisfy the requirement of 'enablement', meaning, if you patent an idea, you have to disclose enough information so that someone reasonably skilled in the art could duplicate your invention. Trying to parse the descriptive text of a patent isn't particularly useful. Thanks for clarifying there. Wow- so using any handheld device with a keypad that interacts with a server in such a way that allow a sale is patented. I've been struggling to wrap my head around this issue, so I tried to recall if we've ever been in this situation before where it suddenly became possible for the "ordinary" person to make cool new technology applications. It occurred to me that perhaps there was. Several decades ago consumer electronic components became quite cheap and powerful (I could buy integrated circuits as a kid and build stuff, for example). So, I wondered, are circuits patentable? Maybe that would be analogous to what's going on today. Turns out, they are patentable. So it seems that changing the law here would require singling out the software industry as being particularly "special" in some respects, and maybe in a way that it really isn't. This thought pulls back my knee-jerk "ban the software patents" reaction quite a bit. However, the industry itself recognizes that software is somehow special. For the first time to my knowledge builders of stuff that isn't toxic or somehow else dangerous can declare it illegal for you to take it apart and see how it works. So maybe software is somehow special and a special case can be made concerning software patents-- like having them expire sooner. (I have a knee-jerk reaction against the "no hacking" terms, also.) Here's an article by Pamela Jones on reverse engineering software if anybody's interested: http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/ http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/

by roc 15y ago

cube13 15y ago

IIRC, there was some mention of using this mechanism as a way to make sales to consumers in the patent. I agree, it seems more like this is over the "Rate me" dialog popup boxes than the IAP, but the suits seem to have hit developers that use IAP more than anyhting else.

dhimes 15y ago

I'm as lost as you. From the patent text: "One of the core purposes of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 15. This is the ability to learn interactively and iteratively from the users of products and information systems anywhere in the world while they are in use—without having to travel to their sites (or without having to bring them to a testing laboratory). Since this is a two-way link, it also offers the ability to respond meaningfully to customers and users based on worldwide, local, organizational or individual needs regardless of where they are located." ... "As envisioned by this invention, as customers and vendor employees interact to produce continuous improvement, the marketplace may be e-engineered into an interactive development environment (i.e., research and development environment, or R&D environment) with a national or global scope." It seems that they've patented a survey. I don't get it. And, anyway, a "purchase" button sure isn't what they had in mind when they wrote the patent! (BTW, "e-engineered" is verbatim. Maybe it's a term I don't know, but I took it as a typo of "re-engineered.")

tptacek 15y ago
The thing that matters in a patent are the claims. The descriptive text is in large part there only to satisfy the requirement of 'enablement', meaning, if you patent an idea, you have to disclose enough information so that someone reasonably skilled in the art could duplicate your invention. Trying to parse the descriptive text of a patent isn't particularly useful. The claims in this patent are straightforward: * Handheld devices with keypads * Remote servers * Interactions for setting up a sale of an item * Interactions triggered by repeated use of the system
- sigzero 15y ago
  And all of those invalidate that patent because they are friggen obvious uses of tech.
  - roc 15y ago
    The 'obviousness' test is (unfortunately) more about rejecting trivial patents; not rejecting things that are clear logical extensions of what has come before.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      Something that blew my mind the first time I worked with IP lawyers (I've been induced to file a bunch of patents): you can patent extensions of other people's ideas; for instance, even though someone else came up with tiered FEC multicast file transfer protocols, you can patent the application of that idea to some problem, like, tiered FEC file transfer of mailing list messages. I've never filed a patent like that ("Nice idea you got there! Shame if I came up with a bunch of other ideas based on it!"), but I guess it's obvious when you think about it.
- dhimes 15y ago
  The descriptive text is in large part there only to satisfy the requirement of 'enablement', meaning, if you patent an idea, you have to disclose enough information so that someone reasonably skilled in the art could duplicate your invention. Trying to parse the descriptive text of a patent isn't particularly useful. Thanks for clarifying there. Wow- so using any handheld device with a keypad that interacts with a server in such a way that allow a sale is patented. I've been struggling to wrap my head around this issue, so I tried to recall if we've ever been in this situation before where it suddenly became possible for the "ordinary" person to make cool new technology applications. It occurred to me that perhaps there was. Several decades ago consumer electronic components became quite cheap and powerful (I could buy integrated circuits as a kid and build stuff, for example). So, I wondered, are circuits patentable? Maybe that would be analogous to what's going on today. Turns out, they are patentable. So it seems that changing the law here would require singling out the software industry as being particularly "special" in some respects, and maybe in a way that it really isn't. This thought pulls back my knee-jerk "ban the software patents" reaction quite a bit. However, the industry itself recognizes that software is somehow special. For the first time to my knowledge builders of stuff that isn't toxic or somehow else dangerous can declare it illegal for you to take it apart and see how it works. So maybe software is somehow special and a special case can be made concerning software patents-- like having them expire sooner. (I have a knee-jerk reaction against the "no hacking" terms, also.) Here's an article by Pamela Jones on reverse engineering software if anybody's interested: http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/ http://lwn.net/Articles/134642/