Now you can tell someone to literally go f--k themselves over the internet: Remote-control mock-cock patent dies It is a great day for those who dream of Internet-of-Flings sex toys. A key patent describing web-connected remote-controllable techno-dildos has expired. Friday marks the 20-year anniversary, and, ahem, climax of, US Patent 6,368,268, a controversial piece of intellectual property that has long been blamed for holding back …
Our current patent system is beyond broken. It doesn't protect or foster innovation, but rather stifles it. This particular instance probably hasn't been a major loss for the world, but how many individuals and small companies don't even bother to TRY these days? If I had a great idea for some invention, given the minefield of patent law and patent trolls out there, I'd most likely just say "screw it" and go fishing or something, because likely some assbag imagined something vaguely like it and filed a patent on "thing that does stuff."
It's a marvel that any innovation at all happens in today's toxic environment. I expect there will be less and less until they fix patent law. Patents should be issued ONLY for WORKING devices or manufacturing processes, not for vague ideas like "oh, you know, we could do some kind of Internet sex thingy, I think" and other such "business method" patents.
Death to patent trolls!
With US patents the rubber approval stamp is pretty much automatic.They rely on them being challenged in court to weed out the crap ones.
Which of course is completely impractical for the small inventor/innovator, and only benefits lawyers.
Where software/computer controlled devices are concerned, this isn't as true as it used to be.
Yes, during the late 90's and 00's (20 00's that is), the USPTO was granting patents that basically said "do this regular thing we've always been doing, but do it on a computer".
However, in the last 3-5 years there have been several cases handed down from the Supreme Court basically spanking the lower courts and USPTO for their acceptance of "on a computer" patents. The subject of a patent must be inventive, with or without an "on a computer" step. Taking something that already happens, even manually via filed paper work, and adding a computer system to do the same is no longer acceptable patent matter.
This returned the status quo to what is was prior to this 90's (or maybe late 80's) period. Accepting patents for software is an anomaly of the 90's/00's when the USPTO, unilaterally, decided to expand patent coverage. This is why software such as UNIX, MS-DOS, VMS, etc. never had patent protection, as it predated this period, so you couldn't get a patent for that sort of software. But the USPTO changed its mind in the 90's and started allowing it. Then in the early-mid 2010's the US Supreme Court disabused the USPTO and the patent appeals court of that notion.
The USPTO also introduced their inter partes patent review process, where, after paying the appropriate fee to the USPTO, a patent's validity can be challenged without a trial by basically asking the USPTO to have a second, harder look at the patent, based on additional information the requesting body has provided (there's no point asking for an inter partes review if you can't provide your own research/information to the USPTO).
Courts and bureaucracy are slow movers. So its taken a couple years for this to filter down. And with only a couple years to go (as of say a couple years ago) then no-one would have bothered to pro-actively try to get the patent in question here cancelled, if it could have been under the newer precedents, just wait a couple years and it has just expired anyway.
With US patents the rubber approval stamp is pretty much automatic.
They rely on them being challenged in court to weed out the crap ones.
I've thought one solution there (it would need other fixes implemented as well) whereby anyone who has submitted a patent, only to have it invalidated later, would then be able to get a 5X refund of their filing fees back from the USPTO. Enough of those and they'll find it necessary to actually DO their jobs or face their budget being wiped out.
Whilst I have a lot of sympathy for the view I will offer a counter argument proposed by a US legal contact.
Where is your evidence that this actually results in less economically valid innovation whether you compare against some hypothetical or by comparison to less restrictive and less adverserial countries?
https://buttplug.io - probably the best URL in the world.
It is probably NSFW but it is also a genuine open source project with a particular focus. The TLD choice is pure genius
From their WebSite ....
Features
Implementations in C#, Javascript, and other popular languages.
Support for popular hardware brands, such as Kiiroo, Lovense, Erostek, and more.
Can support Bluetooth, USB, Serial, and Audio controlled toys.
Cross-platform libraries available for Desktop and Mobile.
Open Source with Permissive License (BSD 3-Clause)
The PUNS on this can be be endless .....
@frank ly
Yeah, lots of prior art. A friend provided a pager set to vibrate to his girlfriend (back when pagers were still thing) to be worn in her knickers, so he could remind her of his thinking of her when both were at work. Their kids are in college now, so I suspect this would be prior art to a sane patent office.
Problems:
1) The USPTO only considers things it can find in its list of filed patents to be "prior art".
2) Apparently this eliminates quite a few things that are obvious to those reasonably skilled in the art.
3) Like you mention. take anything, no matter how common for centuries and add "with a computer" or "over the Internet"
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Not so niche when you look at the stats....
Worldwide turnover for sex toys is approxed at $20 billion for 2015, expected to rise to some $30 billion in 2020. And that's just the wiggly-buzzy stuff. Not even the rest of the mass-produced apparel used in the many, many fetishes that are so far documented. Note that the US is a major consumer of the stuff.
So yeah, if you can lock down a slice of the pie using the notoriously ...insane... US patent system, you're in the money. Not a chance of it in Europe, or most other places, but in the US.... ohboy...
So not so niche after all....
Nope, them assholes are probably too big to stuff.
Or too tight.
There isn't enough lube in the world for some of those assholes, I think the following quotes would apply to them:
That operations officer's fart hole's sewed so tight he shits out of his mouth.- Sergeant Major Choozoo, Heartbreak Ridge
Or:
Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.- Ferris Bueller
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Essentially this pitiful excuse of a patent is for 'a device that can be connected to via a network, receive data and activate actuators depending on said data'. The reason for this should be irrelevant.
The amount of prior art for such implementations (in less NSFW settings) date back roughly since computer networks exist, conceivably before the invention of the transistor.
Stuff like this is a reminder of why it might actually make sense to ignore the US market for one's products, so as to avoid such ludicrous patents.
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