Technology + Law®

Credit must be given to Director David Kappos of the US Patent & Trademark Office for introducing the “Patent Dashboard”.   

The way it works is to provide visual indicators for key measures, such as number of months to a first action examination (26.2), number of applications not yet examined (728,055), staffing level (6,038 examiners), etc.

The really great part of this is that as data changes, the gauges show this… in a visually pleasing and informative manner..

So far, the key indicators are:

First Office Action Pendency — average Number of months from patent application filing date to mailing date of firsst Office action

Traditional Total Pendency — average number of months from filing date to final disposition (e.g., issue, abandonment)

Patent Application Backlog — number of new patent applications in the pipeline

Utility, Plant, and Reissue (UPR) Patent Application Production Units — total number of production units (i.e., first action + number of disposals / 2)

Average Actions Per Disposal — average number of actions until final disposition

Utility, Plant, and Reissue (UPR) Patent Applications Allowed — allowance rate

Patent Examiners on Staff — total number of patent examiners

Patent Examination Quality — a measure of quality based on a random review of cases

Pendency Including Requests for Reconsideration (RCE) — pendency measurement including RCE’s

Inventory Position — number of months it would take to examine every unexamined application currently pending

Pendency from Application Filing to Board Decision — number of months from filing date to final Board decision

Pendency of Requests for Continued Examinations (RCEs) — pendency from filing date to final disposition of the RCE

Pendency of Continuation Applications — pendency from filing date of parent to final dispostion of the continuation application

Pendency of Divisiional Applications — pendency from filing date of parent to final dispostion of the divisiional application

To see the current Patent Dashboard, visit the US PTO’s Data Visualization Center.

In a previous post, the patent infringement law suit filed by Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing LLC against numerous technology companies, including AOL, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and Netflix, was noted. We decided to take a closer look at each of the patents asserted to be infringed in the case.

6,757,682 — Alerting users to content of current interest

This is a very interesting patent!

Essentially, it is a method that allows users to submit items of interest.  The items of interest are assembled by category and are then presented to other users who have elected to receive such notifications.  In particular, the items of interest can include a URL to the item.

An example provided in the application is to a Webcam in a nature preserve showing a watering hole.  Most of the time, the Webcam shows only the watering hole.  But when users see a rhino at the watering hole, they submit this in real time, and other users are alerted to this fact.

The claims are broad.  For instance, claim 1 recites:

1.         A system for disseminating to a participant an indication that an item accessible by the participant via a network is of current interest, comprising:

a computer configured to receive in real time from a source other than the participant an indication that the item is of current interest; process the indication; determine an intensity value to be associated with the indication and an intensity weight value, and adjusting the intensity value based on a characteristic for the item provided by the source; and inform the participant that the item is of current interest; and

a database, associated with the computer, configured to store data relating to the item.

In a previous post, the patent infringement law suit filed by Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing LLC against numerous technology companies, including AOL, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and Netflix, was noted. We decided to take a closer look at each of the patents asserted to be infringed in the case.

6,788,314 — Attention Manager For Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device

This patent is a continuation of U.S. Patent No. 6,034,652, which was discussed in the previous post. A continuation application is a patent application  to pursue additional claims to subject matter disclosed in an earlier application of the applicant.

In this case, the claims focus on a method for providing content from more than one remote source to a computer system having a “content display system” that can display the content to the user.   Along with the content, each content provider can “control at least one of the duration, sequencing, and timing of the display”.  Interestingly, the claims set forth that “each content provider provides its content data to the content display system independently of each other content provider and without the content data being aggregated at a common physical location”.  This means that there is no third party data aggregation of the content.

Claim 1 recites:

1.          A method for engaging the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device, comprising the steps of:

providing one or more sets of content data to a content display system associated with the display device and located entirely in the same physical location as the display device;

providing to the content display system a set of instructions for enabling the content display system to selectively display, in an unobtrusive manner that does not distract a user of the display device or an apparatus associated with the display device from a primary interaction with the display device or apparatus, an image or images generated from a set of content data; and

auditing the display of sets of content data by the content display system;

wherein each associated content provider is located in a different physical location than at least one other content provider and each content provider provides its content data to the content display system independently of each other content provider and without the content data being aggregated at a common physical location remote from the content display system prior to being provided to the content display system, and wherein for each set the respective content provider may provide scheduling instructions tailored to the set of content data to control at least one of the duration, sequencing, and timing of the display of said image or images generated from the set of content data.

In a previous post, the patent infringement law suit filed by Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing LLC against numerous technology companies, including AOL, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, and Netflix, was noted. We decided to take a closer look at each of the patents asserted to be infringed in the case.

6,034,652 – Attention manager for occupying the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device.

This is an interesting patent in many respects.  First thing to note is that the patent was classified in class 345/2, which where computer-graphics-related inventions are classified.    That is interesting because this patent might just as easily be considered a business method, particularly, if the information being displayed included advertising or there was a business model associated with the implementation.  But this just goes to show the difficulty in defining a “business method”.

While the popular press has stated that this patent covers things like stock tickers and headline feeds that are continually updated and displayed in the periphery of a site, it appears that the invention also requires that such information be displayed during times of user inactivity, such as, for example, when there is a lack of keyboard input.

However, the claims are fairly broad.  Consider Claim 12, which recites:

12. A method for engaging the peripheral attention of a person in the vicinity of a display device of an apparatus, comprising the steps of:

acquiring a set of content data from a content providing system;

detecting an idle period of predetermined duration; and

selectively displaying on the display device, in an unobtrusive manner that does not distract a user of the apparatus from a primary interaction with the apparatus,
an image or images generated from the set of content data, wherein the step of selectively displaying further comprises the step of displaying the image or images
automatically after detection of the idle period.

But even this claim requires the step of “detecting an idle period of predetermined duration”…..  So, it will be interesting to see how the plaintiffs interpret this and assert it against the defendant’s technology.

In a previous post, the patent infringement law suit filed by Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing LLC against numerous technology companies, including AOL, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo,  and Netflix, was noted.  We decided to take a closer look at each of the patents asserted to be infringed in the case.  Particularly, we will look at the claims.

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6,263,507 – “Browser for use in navigating a body of information with particular application to browsing information represented by audiovisual data”

The first thing to note is that this patent has a very large number of claims, specifically, 129 claims.   (The average number of claims in an issued patent is between 15 and 20, according to one study).

Of the 129 claims, 15 are independent claims.

The most interesting — and potentially broadest — claim appears to be be independent claim 20, which, arguably, reads on Google News (my comments are in bold and bracketed)

acquiring data representing the body of information  [obtaining news from various sources]




storing the acquired data  [storing it]

generating a display of a first segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data [displaying a news article]

comparing data representing a segment of the body of information to data representing a different segment of the body of information to determine whether, according to one or more predetermined criteria, the compared segments are related [finding a related news article]

generating a display of a portion of, or a representation of, a second segment of the body of information from data that is part of the stored data, wherein the display of the portion or representation of the second segment is generated in response to the display of a first segment to which the second segment is related [displaying a portion of the related news article].

This claims may also read on other news aggregators such as Yahoo! and AOL which provide related news articles responsive to a search.

However, as several commentators have noted, the issue for the court will likely be whether the claims were novel /nonobvious in view of the prior art at the time of filing.

While I do not agree that the Patent Office was doing a poor job when they were examining software patents such as these in the late 90’s, this viewpoint has been put forward by some.

Interval Licensing, LLC,  owned by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, today filed a complaint for patent infringement against numerous technology companies, including AOL, Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo,  and Netflix. Interestingly, the patents asserted as being infringed were filed over ten years ago, when the Internet landscape was much different.  An example of one of the patents alleged to be infringed is U.S. Patent No. 6,263,507 which involves a method for aggregating and presenting information.

The complaint, which was filed today in federal district court, is provided below:

TechDirt is reporting that Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Lexmark have asked the International Trade Commission (ITC) to block import of certain ink that allegedly infringes on several of its patents.  A lot is at stake given that the toner and ink jet market is worth $26 billion per year … and, according to PC Magazine, HP sells its ink at about $88 per ounce!