Closer Looks

My kids were recently introduced to the classic album from my childhood, “Free to Be You and Me,” and it's become part of the regular iPod rotation for the car ride to school.  It’s nice to see that not only are  they enjoying it, but they particularly like the same “Boy meets Girl” routine that I remember listening to over and over again when I was their ages.  The sketch features Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas as newborns, with Brooks absolutely convinced he is a girl based on gender stereotypes (scared of mice, can’t keep a secret, wants to be a cocktail waitress, etc.).  When the truth is finally exposed, Thomas sighs the moral, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”  Of course, neither of them have a clue what that expression means.  They’re just babies, after all.

Which brings us (sort of??) to this week’s Bilski Watch.  There were once again several excellent examples of claims that probably should not have made it though.  Some had “help” from the examiners’ amendments (e.g., adding “computer implemented” to the method.)  But we’ve seen plenty of these before.  If you want more, I suggest simply searching on class 705.  (Here’s two:  U.S. Patent Nos. 7,539,642 and 7,539,643).

Instead, we’ll look at two patents that on their surfaces may deceptively appear to be slam dunks in one direction or the other.

U.S. Patent No. 7.538,690 Method of collecting parking availability information for a geographic database for use with a navigation system Assignee: Navteq North America, LLC 1. A method of obtaining data for a geographic database for use with a navigation system, the method comprising: collecting data indicating an event in a geographic region in which a parking facility is located, wherein said event selected from the group consisting of: sporting event, entertainment event, convention, exhibit, parade and holiday; collecting data indicating parking availability at said parking facility during said event including collecting data indicating locations of respective empty parking spaces; analyzing said data indicating parking availability; based on said analyzing, modeling an influence factor corresponding to historic parking data for said parking facility, said historic parking data indicating past parking availability at said parking facility including location information of available parking spaces and said influence factor indicating an increase or decrease in said past parking availability based on said event; and storing said historic parking data and said influence factor in said geographic database.

Commentary: While lots of people know GoogleMaps, Mapquest, Garmin, etc., fewer know about Chicago-based Navteq, the company that provides much of the underlying data to those businesses.  That may be changing somewhat as Navteq appears to be branding itself more toward the end user (e.g., the local NPR station gives “Navteq traffic” reports during rush hour.)  But they probably have a ways to go.  My six-year-old son is a GoogleMaps fanatic, and could give a lecture about Hybrid vs. Satellite vs. StreetView while telling you how to get between any two points in the city.  Offline (no joke).  But he has no idea who Navteq is.

So you’d think that a company whose product/services are so closely tied to particular machines—navigation systems, as stated in the title of this patent and the preamble of claim 1—shouldn’t run into Bilski problems.  But unless that system in the preamble is somehow limiting of the claim’s scope (and it doesn't appear to breathe life to the claim terms), you should think again.  Data collecting, analyzing, modeling, storing... 101 never came up in prosecution. (And how does one know if he’s performed a general “analyzing” step?)

I do like the concept of this patent, though.  Anything that can help me find parking more easily would be welcome in my neighborhood.

Here is a second example, submitted by a blog reader:

U.S. Patent No. 7,539,656 System and method for providing an intelligent multi-step dialog with a user Assignee: Consona CRM Inc.  1. A method, comprising: receiving a question from a user; building a knowledge session in the context of a knowledge map using a plurality of input; creating at least one goal; presenting at least one question to the user; receiving at least one answer from the user; changing a session state based on the answer; resolving the at least one goal; and presenting feedback to the user.

Commentary:  The reader who submitted this jokingly used the subject line: “Patent for holding a conversation.”  My reaction was similar when I skimmed the claims.  But then I looked more deeply at the second step, “building a knowledge session.”  Sure, it sounds abstract and “untied” to an apparatus.  But the specification sheds some light here: the “knowledge session” is built by a “dialog engine”, which is a “machine for knowledge session management.”  So there may be something to this.  The spec describes how the dialog engine builds this knowledge session with various inputs, actions, and outputs.  And there is at least some discussion about hardware in there.  In short, upon further review it is not clear that this case is as easy as it initially looks.  Of course, it would have better for the patentee had they put some of that machine-type language into the claims.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m far from convinced this claim really flies over the 101 hurdle, especially with much of the apparently purely functional definitions the spec gives to these terms.  And independent claims 9 and 10 likely fare even worse.  101 didn't arise in the prosecution here, either.  But the point is that there needs to be at least some minimal analysis before rushing to judgment.