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 d

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.