Machinist hit with patent lawsuit

How many years, do you have a picture of one before 2000.

For how long has he been doing this? >4 years?

I was thinking of patenting the sidewalk. If someone pushed *that* patent through, maybe it'd be enough to stop this kinda crap.

On the US patents site, I note they are looking for patent examiners.

Sounds like the temperature drop issue was raised to evade the requirement that the patent not be obvious to one skilled in the arts.

Good luck.

"Jim Stewart" wrote: (clip) Sounds like the temperature drop issue was raised to evade the requirement that the patent not be obvious to one skilled in the arts. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I don't think that would be a valid way of obtaining a patent on an idea that is already in the public domain. But, unfortunately, part of the game is intimidation. Very often people who are in the right cave in because of fear. Or they don't have the resources to go through a lengthy litigation, even one they could win. I have an acquaintance who successfully resisted the threat of an infringement suit, and wound up with a written admission from the other party that they were in the wrong. He also wound up with about $50,000 in attorney's fees.

I forget the exact numbers, but they were something like 75% of new examiners don't last 12 months. Very high turn over rate. I know 2 engineers who tried it, and neither stayed with it long term.

Who would have ever thought that there was a government job that was not "easy".

V>mark wrote:

The essence of a patent is in the claims, usually claim 1 because subesequent claims are usually subordinate to claim 1.

This patent specifies "Intagliated" concavities. Intagliated means "engraved" according to

If your guy or his attorney can find a way to argue that his process is "milling" or "machining" rather than "intagliation" or "engraving", he'd have a defense.

The USPTO >I own a motorcycle and was researching how to make "diamond cuts" on

it is not too difficult to refute a patent if you have prior art, according to patent attourneys I've talked to. If this was "common", then there will be lots of chopper mags going back years showing it - that's prior art and the patent will be found invalid.

I'm not overly surprised. US patent and trade mark attorneys troll the world looking for common usage words, then enable a company to patent or register the trademark in the USA. Then issue writs against businesses using those words in advertising or in their business names.

Two come to my mind just recently - "Uggboots " which is a common name for a sheepskin boot made by several hundred businesses in Australia. All have recently received "cease, desist and payup" demands from the US company which has trade marked in the US the common Australian name for that type of boot.

The other was a beach wear company based in Sydney "Absolut Beach Wear" they received an injunction issued by a court in New York requiring them to stop using the name "Absolut", hand over the website they had, and release the business name which had been registered in Australia to the US based attorneys acting on behalf of "Absolut Vodka". They had been tried and found guilty in absentia and did not have the financial backing to fight the matter.

Might not be "too difficult" _IF_ you can pay the fricking lawyer bill. Which is the whole point of this game. Perhaps the law should be changed to "the patent will be found invalid and the company holding it will have to foot the bill for whoever proves that". Perhaps the examiner who granted it should get his/her pay docked, too.

And at the end of the process, you can continue doing a common process that never should have been patented in the first place; so can everyone else on the planet, and they are not contributing to your lawyer bills.

Likewise, if you actually have a valid patentable idea, it's only as good as your ability to pay lawyers to harass people who make it without paying you, so once again the process is skewed to the size of your lawyer fund, not the validity of your idea. Good luck stopping the factories in China, where IP is a laughingstock, regardless of the size of your lawyer fund.

I've sat on several apparently patentable ideas becasue there was no way for me to actually make any money with them without having a lot of money to patent them and then defend them.

It's a lovely concept, but the execution, at present, stinks.

What exactly is "diamond cut". According to the claim it has to have two longitudinal cuts and cross hatching . Is that what diamond cut is? Seems weak , I'd check it out real good and send him an LOL letter. Like go for it , I have a good 20 people that can testify this is prior art. Oh, it just says that it is on the cooling fin , nothing about the design has to be for cooling. The first claim is its envelope. For some reason I can't get the drawings. I'd also get a copy of all the prior art he sited and read their first claims, ect. Got to go.

Maybe it's not easy standing in the way of money

On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 12:07:50 GMT, Ecnerwal vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

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I have always thought that it was not a lovely concept, although a nice one, and apparently well-meant. I also have a few ideas, that have come up, but even from years ago, it is so hard and expensive to patent something, and apprently so easy to lose the value of that patent, tat it's just not worth it.

But what is the alternative? The State foots the lawyer bill? Rather than civil suits, the challenge is investigated by statutory authority, as the patent was?

***************************************************** It's not the milk and honey we hate. It's having it rammed down our throats.

I went through the fast track patent - had to educate the examiner. The examiners for the most part are college 'kids' part time. (heard this on the History channel on a show ...) I managed to get mine completed ( it was a long 70 pages of items) and it is approved in Japan and the European (Hague).

Sometimes one gets a good one and then later another type.

Mine was ok in the end.

Mart> The essence of a patent is in the claims, usually claim 1 because

Seems to me you could get the patent number, get the images and descriptions from the PTO website, and do it for yourself for free! I really dislike the patent conept anyway--how can you own an idea? I say let all who wish to manufacture an item compete in the market. The current system just damages consumers by encouraging patent holders to gouge. Of course the pro patent people say no new products will be developed without patent protection, but that's utter B.S. If there's a market, somebody, somewhere will be willing to supply it. If you need examples, just look at all of recorded history before the patent concept--things somehow still managed to get invented....

"Since the early 1970?s I have done, what is now known as ?diamond cutting?, as one of the services I offered to custom bikes builders ..."

Diamond cutting has been used far before the "early 1970s", more particularly in the production of precision rotating magnetic media, used in what are now called hard disk drives, but were originally called direct access storage devices (DASD).

It is "prior art" ... by several decades.

Ex-Cello Corp made the diamond cutting machines which IBM used since the 1950s for this purpose.

On 02 Aug 2004 05:31:52 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.compost.bin (MKloepster) vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

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Although the patents system is not good, is it the _concept_ or the implementation that is flawed?

There must have been _some_ people protected by patents. There have been many cases where market forces alone _still_ would have resulted in forces of _other_ kinds (such as brute, econominc etc) in some poor sod who spent 20 years developing an idea having it taken off him without patent protection.

I don't think there is anything wrong with owning an idea. What about plays, books and music?

What _is_ there to protect a person from struggling to spend a long time developing something up to saleable level, or at least manufacture level, and then somebody else with more noise and money simply taking it over?

***************************************************** It's not the milk and honey we hate. It's having it rammed down our throats.

Peter,

It may be worth noting here that the diamond cutting referred to, is more like the flashy cuts applied to jewellery, rather than cutting "with" diamond or diamonds.

Cheers Trevor Jones

The idea behind patents is to enable one who invests the effort and money to develop an idea to have exclusive use of it and fairly profit from his labor and investment for a limited time. This is granted in exchange for "teaching" the idea in the patent so it's available to all after the period of exclusivity has expired. Inventors are thus encouraged to innovate and disclose for the long-term public benefit by having a chance to exclusively profit from their work for a fixed period.

The problem isn't with the concept but with the implementation. If the USPTO did a rigorous and concientious job of examining, likelihood of successful challenge or infrigement would be low. If the likelihood of winning such attempts were low, people would be more reluctant to invest in legal services to abuse the system.

I believe this is still the case in Europe.