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Primary Examiner: Blackman; Rochelle-Ann J. Other patents by the same examiner: http://patents.justia.com/examiner/rochelle-ann-j-blackman http://patents.justia

Primary Examiner: Blackman; Rochelle-Ann J. Other patents by the same examiner: http://patents.justia.com/examiner/rochelle-ann-j-blackman http://patents.justia.com/examiner/rochelle-ann-j-blackman It is the examiner's job to reject patents which aren't innovative, and that clearly hasn't happened here.

josaka 12y ago
It's also the examiner's job to narrow the scope of rights granted by a patent to accord with the amount of innovation present. The output isn't binary, and there's some utility in letting weaker filings through the system. An absurdly narrow patent that's impossible to infringe (often called a "glamour patent") still yields over $10k to the US treasury and avoids an extended and expensive fight by the government over rights, that at the end of the day, are of no value.
krick 12y ago
Funny. Looking at that list I start wondering how that really can happen. Yes, I know that jurisprudence is BS, there's no such thing as justice, etc., but really. I mean, looking at this list makes it so obvious that something isn't right, that I don't understand how she can have a job. That is, it couldn't be that examiner's work isn't overviewed/supervised by other instances, could it? If so, why Ms. Blackman haven't lost her job yet? Why nobody questioned her examination cases? Or maybe she is doing it right and it's only hard to understand if your brain isn't spoiled by law education? Can somebody explain?
- u124556 12y ago
  Why nobody is showing concerns about her to the USPTO? Do US Government agencies have any politics about the general public concerned with the work of the individuals working there? What about other examiners?
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Why nobody is showing concerns about her to the USPTO? This feels a little too close to being a witchhunt. Once we start talking about "why isn't the internet reporting these people to their employers?" the conversation has stopped being about ideas. EDIT: The concerns seem justified. I'm just saying that maybe we shouldn't be trying to use HN to organize the end of individual careers. Calling attention to the fact that this patent was examined by particular individuals seems ok. It's just a fact. Using HN as an organizational vehicle to help angry people on the internet get some specific people fired, by name, would be a troubling new trend for HN. We're a community, not a task force.
    - X4 12y ago
      absolutely.. stop here! It's the system not a poor woman working for a giant money printing industry! Challenge the status quo instead of sniping out individuals.
      - differentView 12y ago
        Not everyone has the ability to do both. People should do what they can. Even though I can't invent a new clean energy source, I try to reduce energy use where I can.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      It's an ugly trend, sure. But I think there's something to be said for reporting people to their employers when your concern is that they're doing their job badly, where "badly" here might be read as "incompetently" or "perniciously". How do you feel about filing complaints against cops for, say, beating up arrestees? What about taking bribes? If reporting a cop for taking bribes is OK, why is reporting a patent examiner for awarding a patent in the face of prior art bad? What about reporting a clerk to their manager for speaking to you rudely? Not only does this happen all the time, I don't see a lot of people saying hey, lay off the rude clerks. edit: a pair of summary examples: "X is a satanist". This doesn't impact X's performance as a patent officer, or really anything else. "X couldn't recognize prior art if it was disclosed in the patent application". This directly impacts performance as a patent officer, and can properly be reported to X's employer.
  - acdha 12y ago
    > Why nobody is showing concerns about her to the USPTO? What are the odds that her supervisor has no idea what's going on? They either have a broken quality review process or, more likely, have been told to do more with less for so long that people know they aren't doing good work but need to deliver numbers. Hiring people to work in the federal government is a bitter political issue so it's almost certain that they're understaffed, particularly since the legally-mandated process and payscale will complicate hiring technical experts in fields which pay well. In either case, you can complain about this person in particular but you really should be contacting your congressional representatives to request both legal reform and increased budget / accountability for the USPTO to avoid some congressman's “savings” costing industry billions when a bad patent is issued.
- GoodIntentions 12y ago
  It took me more years working than it should have to realize this: If someone consistently does a poor job, look up. They aren't the problem.
- sitkack 12y ago
  The self-enclosed member can include an inner surface at least partially defining an enclosed region, and an outer surface that turns outwardly to engage a cavity or lumen wall in addition to turning inward to at least partially encompass a central region defining a longitudinal path.
- tzs 12y ago
  > I mean, looking at this list makes it so obvious that something isn't right, that I don't understand how she can have a job. Just reading the list gives you no useful information whatsoever about how well or how poorly she is doing her job. All the list has is the abstracts from the patents. A patent abstract is kind of like the blurb on the back of a book, or a trailer for a movie. They give you an overview of what the patent covers, but there will be innumerable ways to accomplish what the abstract describes without infringing the patent. When you are looking at a list of patents to figure out if you might be infringing one of them, or to figure out if one of them describes a solution to a problem you are trying to find a solution for, the abstract is more of a tool for telling you which patents you can skip rather than what ones you need to take a deeper look at. To see what the patent actually covers, you have to read the claims. However, the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, so you have to read that, too. A claim may appear to be quite broad, but the discussion in the specification might limit general terms in the claim to very specific values or meanings. In most cases, a patent is not something you can just sit down and quickly understand, even if you are an expert in the field the patent is in. Even this is not always enough. You should also read the "file wrapper" for the patent. That's the collection of documentation generated during the processing of the patent application. It will include things like the examiner's prior art search results, initial rejections of claims, the letters from the application trying to persuade the examiner to change their mind about rejected claims, answers to questions from the examiner, and stuff like that. You can get the file wrapper online through the "Patent Application Information Retrieval" (PAIR) interface [1]. [1] http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair
MCRed 12y ago
If we're going to have a discussion about patents, we need to actually have a discussion about them, not base our opinions on blatant misrepresentations. For example, people often claim that Apple "patented" the rounded rect, which is so dishonest that basically you have to call it a deliberate lie. The title of the article is politically biased. Amazon did not patent shooting a subject in front of a white background. They also never patented buying something with just one click. The problem is, that the political agenda against patents (and the people who oppose them, it seems) don't care whether the patents are on something innovative or not. For instance, I participated in some work that resulted in a patent of a solution for some very difficult problems in MMOs. The outraged headline was "Company patents playing games online!" When all of the opposition against patents comes form people misrepresenting patents, it's hard to see it as anything other than sour grapes that certain companies are more innovative than others. (the recent anti-patent movement is coincident with a specific innovation.)
- Harimwakairi 12y ago
  While I agree with you that anti-patent rhetoric often spawns ridiculous headlines with unread articles beneath them, do you not feel that Amazon's patent in this case is a little odd? Here's the abstract, for those who tl;dr'ed the article: "Disclosed are various embodiments of a studio arrangement and a method of capturing images and/or video. One embodiment of the disclosure includes a front light source aimed at a background, an image capture position located between the background and the front light source, an elevated platform positioned between the image capture position and the background, and at least one rear light source positioned between the elevated platform and the background. A subject can be photographed and/or filmed on the elevated platform to achieve a desired effect of a substantially seamless background where a rear edge of the elevated platform is imperceptible to an image capture device positioned at the image capture position." It appears that they've managed to patent the idea of setting up two lights, a white background, and a small pedestal for the object to be photographed. Isn't it a logical certainty that this has been done before? How is this an innovation worthy of legal protection?
  - Steko 12y ago
maninalift 12y ago
I just read the first one 8718462, and I actually think it might be worse than the "photographs on a white background" patent linked to in article.
throwawaykf05 12y ago
If you're going to call an examiner out, why don't we see if you can do a better job? Here are the rules if you want to prove the patent invalid (the examiner does not make them): 1. Read the claims. Of the thousands of comment this has generated, only a miniscule fraction have even mentioned the claims. The scope of the patent is defined by the claims, so that is what you must invalidate. The broadest claim is conveniently quoted for you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725200 2. If you want to prove non-novelty, find one documented reference that covers or even suggests using the exact combination of elements in the claim. Of course, the documents must be published and clearly dated before the priority date of this patent. 3. If you cannot do that, you may try to prove obviousness, in which case you need to find a combination of the documents above. How many documents you need to combine is not specified, but a rule of thumb is, anything fewer than 3 - 5 references. Anything more makes it difficult to prove obviousness. 4. If you cannot do that, try to prove it invalid as non-statutory patent eligible matter. That is tough, because broadly speaking, anything that has the least bit of industrial utility counts. 5. Another option is to show that the language of the claim is ambiguous. That does not mean “obfuscation” or “patentese”; this language is like plain English to those who read it every day. What it means is, for instance, if the language of the claim refers to one of many elements, but it is not clear which element it refers to. In NLP terms, it is a case where co-reference resolution is not definite. These types of invalidation are rare because they are easy to catch and typically examiners catch them pretty quickly. 6. One last option is to show that the specification does not have enough detail to support whatever is claimed. If the claim requires 10/3 lighting ratio and the spec does not mention it anywhere, that's an easy invalidation. Pointing to online comments from a thousand people and so-called “tech journalists” who do not know what claims are, and who can claim without any documented basis that “it's been used for ages”, does not count as a reference. If you have any relevant prior art, you can post it to askpatents.com, and someone has already conveniently started a thread for it here: http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/photography-lighting-amazon-issued-patent-prior-art-request http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/photography-... It'll probably not get any attention because 1) it's already issued, so no examiner is looking for prior art for it, and 2) nobody will infringe or otherwise care enough to go through the hassle and cost of a re-examination. However in case somebody does decided to do so, askpatents will be a good place they might look at. So go ahead, put your money where your mouth is, and go find prior art. That will be more constructive (and enlightening) than making uninformed comments on forums read by nobody that makes policy decisions.

josaka 12y ago

It's also the examiner's job to narrow the scope of rights granted by a patent to accord with the amount of innovation present. The output isn't binary, and there's some utility in letting weaker filings through the system. An absurdly narrow patent that's impossible to infringe (often called a "glamour patent") still yields over $10k to the US treasury and avoids an extended and expensive fight by the government over rights, that at the end of the day, are of no value.

krick 12y ago

Funny. Looking at that list I start wondering how that really can happen. Yes, I know that jurisprudence is BS, there's no such thing as justice, etc., but really. I mean, looking at this list makes it so obvious that something isn't right, that I don't understand how she can have a job. That is, it couldn't be that examiner's work isn't overviewed/supervised by other instances, could it? If so, why Ms. Blackman haven't lost her job yet? Why nobody questioned her examination cases? Or maybe she is doing it right and it's only hard to understand if your brain isn't spoiled by law education? Can somebody explain?

u124556 12y ago
Why nobody is showing concerns about her to the USPTO? Do US Government agencies have any politics about the general public concerned with the work of the individuals working there? What about other examiners?
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Why nobody is showing concerns about her to the USPTO? This feels a little too close to being a witchhunt. Once we start talking about "why isn't the internet reporting these people to their employers?" the conversation has stopped being about ideas. EDIT: The concerns seem justified. I'm just saying that maybe we shouldn't be trying to use HN to organize the end of individual careers. Calling attention to the fact that this patent was examined by particular individuals seems ok. It's just a fact. Using HN as an organizational vehicle to help angry people on the internet get some specific people fired, by name, would be a troubling new trend for HN. We're a community, not a task force.
  - X4 12y ago
    absolutely.. stop here! It's the system not a poor woman working for a giant money printing industry! Challenge the status quo instead of sniping out individuals.
    - differentView 12y ago
      Not everyone has the ability to do both. People should do what they can. Even though I can't invent a new clean energy source, I try to reduce energy use where I can.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    It's an ugly trend, sure. But I think there's something to be said for reporting people to their employers when your concern is that they're doing their job badly, where "badly" here might be read as "incompetently" or "perniciously". How do you feel about filing complaints against cops for, say, beating up arrestees? What about taking bribes? If reporting a cop for taking bribes is OK, why is reporting a patent examiner for awarding a patent in the face of prior art bad? What about reporting a clerk to their manager for speaking to you rudely? Not only does this happen all the time, I don't see a lot of people saying hey, lay off the rude clerks. edit: a pair of summary examples: "X is a satanist". This doesn't impact X's performance as a patent officer, or really anything else. "X couldn't recognize prior art if it was disclosed in the patent application". This directly impacts performance as a patent officer, and can properly be reported to X's employer.
- acdha 12y ago
  > Why nobody is showing concerns about her to the USPTO? What are the odds that her supervisor has no idea what's going on? They either have a broken quality review process or, more likely, have been told to do more with less for so long that people know they aren't doing good work but need to deliver numbers. Hiring people to work in the federal government is a bitter political issue so it's almost certain that they're understaffed, particularly since the legally-mandated process and payscale will complicate hiring technical experts in fields which pay well. In either case, you can complain about this person in particular but you really should be contacting your congressional representatives to request both legal reform and increased budget / accountability for the USPTO to avoid some congressman's “savings” costing industry billions when a bad patent is issued.
GoodIntentions 12y ago
It took me more years working than it should have to realize this: If someone consistently does a poor job, look up. They aren't the problem.
sitkack 12y ago
The self-enclosed member can include an inner surface at least partially defining an enclosed region, and an outer surface that turns outwardly to engage a cavity or lumen wall in addition to turning inward to at least partially encompass a central region defining a longitudinal path.
tzs 12y ago
> I mean, looking at this list makes it so obvious that something isn't right, that I don't understand how she can have a job. Just reading the list gives you no useful information whatsoever about how well or how poorly she is doing her job. All the list has is the abstracts from the patents. A patent abstract is kind of like the blurb on the back of a book, or a trailer for a movie. They give you an overview of what the patent covers, but there will be innumerable ways to accomplish what the abstract describes without infringing the patent. When you are looking at a list of patents to figure out if you might be infringing one of them, or to figure out if one of them describes a solution to a problem you are trying to find a solution for, the abstract is more of a tool for telling you which patents you can skip rather than what ones you need to take a deeper look at. To see what the patent actually covers, you have to read the claims. However, the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, so you have to read that, too. A claim may appear to be quite broad, but the discussion in the specification might limit general terms in the claim to very specific values or meanings. In most cases, a patent is not something you can just sit down and quickly understand, even if you are an expert in the field the patent is in. Even this is not always enough. You should also read the "file wrapper" for the patent. That's the collection of documentation generated during the processing of the patent application. It will include things like the examiner's prior art search results, initial rejections of claims, the letters from the application trying to persuade the examiner to change their mind about rejected claims, answers to questions from the examiner, and stuff like that. You can get the file wrapper online through the "Patent Application Information Retrieval" (PAIR) interface [1]. [1] http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

MCRed 12y ago

If we're going to have a discussion about patents, we need to actually have a discussion about them, not base our opinions on blatant misrepresentations. For example, people often claim that Apple "patented" the rounded rect, which is so dishonest that basically you have to call it a deliberate lie. The title of the article is politically biased. Amazon did not patent shooting a subject in front of a white background. They also never patented buying something with just one click. The problem is, that the political agenda against patents (and the people who oppose them, it seems) don't care whether the patents are on something innovative or not. For instance, I participated in some work that resulted in a patent of a solution for some very difficult problems in MMOs. The outraged headline was "Company patents playing games online!" When all of the opposition against patents comes form people misrepresenting patents, it's hard to see it as anything other than sour grapes that certain companies are more innovative than others. (the recent anti-patent movement is coincident with a specific innovation.)

Harimwakairi 12y ago
While I agree with you that anti-patent rhetoric often spawns ridiculous headlines with unread articles beneath them, do you not feel that Amazon's patent in this case is a little odd? Here's the abstract, for those who tl;dr'ed the article: "Disclosed are various embodiments of a studio arrangement and a method of capturing images and/or video. One embodiment of the disclosure includes a front light source aimed at a background, an image capture position located between the background and the front light source, an elevated platform positioned between the image capture position and the background, and at least one rear light source positioned between the elevated platform and the background. A subject can be photographed and/or filmed on the elevated platform to achieve a desired effect of a substantially seamless background where a rear edge of the elevated platform is imperceptible to an image capture device positioned at the image capture position." It appears that they've managed to patent the idea of setting up two lights, a white background, and a small pedestal for the object to be photographed. Isn't it a logical certainty that this has been done before? How is this an innovation worthy of legal protection?
- Steko 12y ago

maninalift 12y ago

I just read the first one 8718462, and I actually think it might be worse than the "photographs on a white background" patent linked to in article.

throwawaykf05 12y ago

If you're going to call an examiner out, why don't we see if you can do a better job? Here are the rules if you want to prove the patent invalid (the examiner does not make them): 1. Read the claims. Of the thousands of comment this has generated, only a miniscule fraction have even mentioned the claims. The scope of the patent is defined by the claims, so that is what you must invalidate. The broadest claim is conveniently quoted for you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725200 2. If you want to prove non-novelty, find one documented reference that covers or even suggests using the exact combination of elements in the claim. Of course, the documents must be published and clearly dated before the priority date of this patent. 3. If you cannot do that, you may try to prove obviousness, in which case you need to find a combination of the documents above. How many documents you need to combine is not specified, but a rule of thumb is, anything fewer than 3 - 5 references. Anything more makes it difficult to prove obviousness. 4. If you cannot do that, try to prove it invalid as non-statutory patent eligible matter. That is tough, because broadly speaking, anything that has the least bit of industrial utility counts. 5. Another option is to show that the language of the claim is ambiguous. That does not mean “obfuscation” or “patentese”; this language is like plain English to those who read it every day. What it means is, for instance, if the language of the claim refers to one of many elements, but it is not clear which element it refers to. In NLP terms, it is a case where co-reference resolution is not definite. These types of invalidation are rare because they are easy to catch and typically examiners catch them pretty quickly. 6. One last option is to show that the specification does not have enough detail to support whatever is claimed. If the claim requires 10/3 lighting ratio and the spec does not mention it anywhere, that's an easy invalidation. Pointing to online comments from a thousand people and so-called “tech journalists” who do not know what claims are, and who can claim without any documented basis that “it's been used for ages”, does not count as a reference. If you have any relevant prior art, you can post it to askpatents.com, and someone has already conveniently started a thread for it here: http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/photography-lighting-amazon-issued-patent-prior-art-request http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/photography-... It'll probably not get any attention because 1) it's already issued, so no examiner is looking for prior art for it, and 2) nobody will infringe or otherwise care enough to go through the hassle and cost of a re-examination. However in case somebody does decided to do so, askpatents will be a good place they might look at. So go ahead, put your money where your mouth is, and go find prior art. That will be more constructive (and enlightening) than making uninformed comments on forums read by nobody that makes policy decisions.