Using Google blogs and YouTube

This course was different in that we used blogs and videos to keep track of what we learned throughout the course. I would like to talk about using them in class for 190G.

Patents are hard to learn about. I felt that the approaches that we took in class helped me learn the material better. I learned a lot through blogs. I was researching on several critical articles, analyzing the articles, summarizing the articles, and putting my own thoughts onto the blog. I felt that those were the most important lessons throughout the course.

As with YouTube videos, I felt that it is indeed different learning tool. As I was able to speak out what I wrote, I was able to learn the ideas and concepts with more clarity. 

As with comments, it was a good tool to interact with other classmates. I would have hoped that we limit comments to certain posts every week so that everyone can interact better.

These methods that we took in class were different from traditional learning methods because I was able to interact with other students more so than traditional methods. Usually, we take exams in classes and I felt I was stressed out at times. But in this class, I was able to focus more on learning as focus was geared towards learning. I feel that I can do even better if more students commented on my blogs and youtube videos. I didn't get to interact with everyone on weekly basis because some students never commented on my blog or YouTube. But I feel that is expected because there are over 25 students in the class.

I found out that there are various approaches to learning out of this class. Overall, I enjoyed it.

Experience in the class

Patents are hard to learn in general. From this class, I learned to analyze and summarize patents. I also learned general components of the patents and how patent is made up of. I learned about many cases involving infringement and patent trolls. I was also able to stay current on current technology and smartphone wars that are going on. Furthermore, it was interesting that I was able to interact with other students to learn the topic rather than taking an exam to prove my knowledge.

Learning in general is important because a person needs to keep updated with new knowledge to stay competitive. As I will be going into technology fields working as Software Engineer, I feel that patents are important to learn about. I will surely come across patents in the future in my career, and I hope that I can use what I learned from the class to apply them in the future.

Overall, the experience of this class was a lot different than my other core classes. It involved a lot of peer teaching and learning by researching online journals and cases. I believe I read over hundreds of cases of patent cases in this class, and they were all very informative.

Assignment 3 EC for this week - Silly Patent 3

For my last post on silly patent, I decided to do a post on more practical(?) patent.
This product is called office gym exercise kit.

As you may instantly know by the title, it's for exercising in your office. In your cube, you can transform your workspace into a gym. The kit provides a full range of arm leg and back exercises. It states that all you need is a chair to get exercise done.

To further describe, office gym kit is a portable exercise kit. It is capable of attaching about a chair post and chair back support to provide workout for the user. "User's body will be wrapped around the post and under the base of the chair then secured such that the flexible body remains in place around chair post."  Furthermore, "Both the flexible body and flexible band have retainers attached thereon. Several elastic straps are included in the kit. The elastic straps may be fastened to the flexible body and flexible band by latching onto the retainers. The user then exercises by extending the elastic straps with arms, legs or the like."

This sounds more practical than other silly patents that we have seen so far, both in class and on the web. Everyone seems to be working out now days to stay healthy. And the reason for making this product and making it patented seems to be somewhat of a good idea. For prior art, I have seen cases in which the companies sell products that can be easily done with household product. But, I have not seen anything that can be used in the office itself. As with usage, it seems that one could really use this if he or she was in the office alone. Or, if the worker is self-employed, this could actually be alternative to real gym. It would save time and money. However, when you are working with others, it will be difficult to actually use this because it will make you look like a fool. Also, I feel that this is a fast track to getting fired. Do note that this is specifically made for office/job environment. Would you use this while working?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7137935.PN.&OS=PN/7137935&RS=PN/7137935

Assignment 2 EC for this week - Silly Patent 2

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4858627.html

For my second post, I found an interesting patent that seems to be silly. It is called a smoking hat. What it does is when a user smokes any tobacco products, the hat attached to the head of the smoker, takes the smoke inside and filters and removes the bad substance harmful to the environment. It also makes our environment clean and makes air smell nicer. This is a product that is suitable for smokers who are also interested in keeping the environment clean. I was able to get their exact abstract from the patent website.

 It is stated that, "A portable hat system enables the smoking of tobacco type products without affecting the environment includes a hat for covering the head of the smoker, an integral fan for intaking ambient air (contaminated and non contaminated) into the hat with this intake ambient air flowing in front of the smoker's face, a filtration, purification and deionization system for removal of combustion products, such as smoke odors and positive ions from the intake ambient air, and an exhaust system for expelling the filtered deodorized, deionized and optionally scented air from the hat."

<Source:http://totallyabsurd.com/smokershat.htm>

This is basically a hat attached to the person to prevent harmful substances from going out to the world. On the first look, it doesn't look too innovative because a smoker would not first think about environment in the first place(if the user was a smoker). Second, I feel that it would be cumbersome for smoker to use this because it would create more stress for the user. After all, many smokers smoke in order to get rid of stress. I was not find similar prior art for this patent. It may be because no one actually used this patent to get anything out of the world. To me this patent does not seem practical at all because no one would go that far to smoke. I feel that there is no practical use for this patent, so it should be invalidated, but as it's not obvious and there are no prior arts for this patent, it seemed to have been approved.

Assignment 1 EC(extra credit) for this week - Silly Patent

I did my first post on Anti-eating face mask.
The patent link is posted here at http://www.google.com/patents/US4344424.

Anti-eating face mask was created to prevent the growing problem of obesity. Lucy L. Barmby of Sacramento is credited as making this anti eating face mask. To describe what it does, this is the exact excerpt from USPTO stating what it does. "An anti-eating face mask which includes a cup-shaped member conforming to the shape of the mouth and chin area of the user, together with a hoop member and straps detachably engageable with a user's head for mounting the cup-shaped member in overlying relationship with the user's mouth and chin area under the nose thereby preventing the ingestion of food by the user."

After researching many patents out there, this is one of the top ten silly patents that I was able to find. It's interesting that someone invented this to prevent people from eating to prevent obesity. I find it amusing because one can just take the mask off in order to eat. It will be difficult, but I don't see why not. It's not obvious because I believe we wouldn't have thought of an idea to prevent food from going into our mouth. Based on my research, no prior art seemed to have existed regarding this invention. As such, patent is valid. Personally, I am not sure who would actually purchase this and use it on their daily lives. This should be suitable for weight-loss companies that are trying to develop a suitable program.

Assignment 3 for this week

After looking at cases, I can see how difficult it would be for courts to decide on matters relating to obviousness in technology. I saw from a source that over 80% of startups in Silicon Valley are software related companies. But again, how is it that software patents are so problematic? With all the software companies doing so well these days, what will happen to software patents?

While going through several articles on the web, I was able to look at this article. It states that Kelora patent was found obvious. And it also asked to the readers whether the software patents are dangerous or not? Some claim that software patents should be voided because many software patents are obvious over prior art. Courts also realized this and are trying to analyze software patents even more carefully. (Though I believe software should also be allowed to be patented since I know how hard it is to invent software)

Kelora had a patent on parametric search(faceted). This company is stated that it's a hybrid company between a patent troll and practicing entity offering search product. Kelora's suits included internet giants like Microsoft, Ebay, Target, Amazon, and NewEgg. Many others just went onto settle with Kelora rather than going to lawsuits. Many, however, believed that Kelora's patents should be invalid because it is prior art going early as 1960s. Many companies fought with Kelora that its patents were too obvious.

Finally, the courts decided with summary judgement that since client/server systems were well known as early as 1990s, it did not matter whether inventors did not know such system when they created it.

This is promising for companies because it shows that courts are taking one step further to analyze it through sophisticated interpretation. This patent was voided due to prior art under obviousness standard. Again, I feel that this issue of obviousness is problematic in patents. It creates confusion and problems for both the inventors and defendants of patents. It's stated that defendants of this case against Kelora used significant resources already, they were able to avoid going into full trial.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/26/kelora-obvious-software-patents/

Assignment 2 for this week

For my second post, I will further talk about obviousness of the patent cases.
The purpose of a virtual private network is to establish a secure, tunneled route between two points in an IP network(betanews).

The company called VirneX went one step further with VPN. This company called it Tunneled Agile Routing Protocol. The communication between VPN hosts are encrypted at on level, but routing information is hidden behind a second level. 
The purpose was to hide who was sharing is and what route its taking to get there in addition to hiding what's being shared or talked about.

Microsoft, on the other hand, implemented its own VPN technology. It built a VPN for phone network. To make internet work more like a phone, like people using a telephone console to be able to pick up the phone and dial. They argued that they shouldn't have to go to some dialog box and log in. Avoiding this option was exactly what VirnetX stated that Microsoft infringed.

Microsoft argued that the whole point of VPN was to establish secure and anonymous communication between two points. Therefore, the VirnetX's idea of inventing addition of anonymity was ridiculous because it's already there. Microsoft also argued that judge look up glossary to find the whole definition of VPN.

In the end, it became a confusion after confusion. It was all down to Judge's and Jurys' interpretation of VPN after looking up glossary and hearing from both sides. In the end, the Jury determined that Microsoft infringed on VirnetX's patents. The reason was because Microsoft wanted to patent this exact idea previously, but found out VirnetX already made it so they were denied. Also, Microsoft couldn't persuade the jury or the judge that VirnetX's VPN technology was so obvious that it was already covered by glossary definition. Also, trying to invent the same technology previously hurt Microsoft here big time.
The basis of the denial was prior art, which was existence of patent issued to VirnetX.

After looking at so many cases and articles relating to obviousness, it's clearly subjective. If Microsoft didn't file the patent before, they could have gotten away with it. I feel this is one of the major problem that exists in patent.

http://betanews.com/2010/03/17/microsoft-loses-another-jury-verdict-this-time-over-obviousness-of-vpn-patent/