12:01 Tuesday

Major League Patents

With the NHL and NBA playoffs behind us, and as summer finally heats up, we can turn our sports attention fully to baseball. The image at the right, by the way, is from D594,515, issued yesterday for a "Transparent Baseball Bat."  I guess that's not as dangerous as a transparent ball.

I was curious to see if any of the 30 Major League teams owned any patents.  One possibility, I thought, was the L.A. Dodgers, who for a while had a knack for finding and developing talent that was unmatched (e.g., 63rd round draft pick Mike Piazza; a 4-peat (1979-82) and a five-peat (1992-96) of Rookies of the Year; etc.).  Did they have some unique tools at their disposal?  Another candidate was the Oakland A’s, with Billy Beane’s quantification methodologies for identifying undervalued players, as described in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.  And, of course, perhaps the Yankees simply bought IP they thought was valuable. 

Unsurprisingly, nothing turned up.  Most likely, if any teams did have some homegrown weaponry, they were almost certainly keeping them under wraps as trade secrets, rather than adding those techniques to “the public storehouse of knowledge.”  Looking to basketball for an example, the Houston Rockets GM, Daryl Morey, has gone on the record about holding his Beane-like statistical algorithms very close to the vest. [Brush with fame: Morey was a student of mine when I TA’ed comp sci classes at Northwestern.] And besides, would MLB really allow one team to sue another for patent infringement?  And MLB has some patents, too – one of their own (U.S. Patent No. 7,486,943) and four that it bought and were the subject of last year’s DDB Technologies LLC case in the Federal Circuit.

But it just so happens that there are a few patents tangentially related to particular teams. I’ll follow up with one or two posts that look in more detail at a couple of the more interesting ones.  Stay tuned.

For now, here are the results of my first, simplistic search:  team names appearing anywhere in the spec. “Chicago Cubs”, for example.  In addition to possibly identifying IP owned by teams, it is also is a good indicator of a team’s popularity with inventors, who often use them as examples of their inventions’ embodiments.  Damn Yankees are first here, too.

Team	# Patents Mentioning
NY Yankees	35
Chicago Cubs	17
Boston Red Sox	16
Toronto Blue Jays	15
Atlanta Braves	15
San Francisco Giants	14
NY Mets	11
Minnesota Twins	10
St. Louis Cardinals	9
Cincinnati Reds	9
LA Dodgers	9
Seattle Mariners	7
San Diego Padres	7
Oakland Athletics	6
Cleveland Indians	5
Milwaukee Brewers	5
Baltimore Orioles	4
Chicago White Sox	4
Texas Rangers	4
Philadelphia Phillies	4
Houston Astros	4
LA Angels*	4
Detroit Tigers	3
Kansas City Royals	2
Florida Marlins	2
Colorado Rockies	2
Washington Nationals	1
Pittsburgh Pirates	1
Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays	0
Arizona Diamondbacks	0

* - 3 as California Angels, 1 as LA Angels.  None as Anaheim.

On deck: perhaps the only patent with an MLB player as an inventor.  And he’s an All-Star.

Want this in *your* wallet? The Purest Miss Ever.

I've commented before that it is not too difficult to find cases of Bilski failures by examiners, and frankly, discussing such patents is losing its novelty.  We all know the problem is there, and we all have seen the examples.

But, after reviewing all my past entries, I can safely say that today's Pure Miss issued to CapOne is the worst Ive seen.  And for that, it deserves its own blog entry.

No commentary is needed, other than that -- surprise -- 101 was never raised by the examiner.  Patent was allowed in Feb. 2009.

U.S. Patent No. 7,546,945 System and method for managing transactions Assignee: Captial One Financial Corporation 1. A method for managing transactions associated with accounts of an individual, comprising: receiving information associated with the individual; receiving information associated with a first account of the individual;  receiving information associated with a second account of the individual; processing the received information associated with the individual, the received information associated with the first account, and the received information associated with the second account; and automatically performing a transaction based upon a result of the processing, wherein the processing is based upon comparisons of one of terms and events of the first and second accounts to maximize a benefit to the individual.

 

 

 

Five for Netflix

It’s hard to believe that Netflix is already eleven years old.  The company that Reed Hastings started after paying a $40 late fee to Blockbuster now stocks over 55 million DVDs that it rents to 10 million subscribers.  I’m sure that if my wife and I ever find some of that time that seems to have evaporated once we had kids, we’ll join up.  (Not that we're complaining...we do love our kids.  Really.)

Surprisingly, until today Netflix only had four patents to its name.  One of them, U.S. Patent No. 7,024,381, was famously asserted against Blockbuster the day it issued, April 4, 2006.  That case settled a year later while Blockbuster’s summary judgment motion was pending.

But today Mr. Hastings and Netflix received their fifth patent.  And no, they don’t need to send back a patent to the USPTO in the supplied pre-paid envelope before receiving number six.

U.S. Patent No. 7.546,252 Approach for managing rental items across a plurality of distribution locations Assignee: Netflix, Inc. 1. A method for managing digital versatile discs (DVDs) carrying movies in distribution locations, the method comprising the machine-implemented steps of: identifying a first set of one or more DVDs located at a first distribution location, wherein the first set of one or more DVDs carry a first set of movies that has not been requested for rent by rental customers associated with the first distribution location; causing the first set of one or more DVDs to be sent from the first distribution location to a designated distribution location; identifying a second set of one or more DVDs located at a second distribution location, wherein the second set of DVDs carry a second set of movies that has not been requested for rent by rental customers associated with the second distribution location; and causing the second set of one or more DVDs to be sent from the second distribution location to the designated distribution location, wherein the first, second and designated distribution locations are distinct distribution locations..

Commentary: First, the obvious question.  Is there a Bilski problem?  (And even though the Supreme Court has granted cert, it’s still the law, at least for now…)  For now, I'll posit that this claim sails clear:  The DVDs here are apparatuses that are probably “particular” enough to satisfy the machine or transformation test.  It helps that the claimed method makes active use of the movies contained on the DVDs, too.  In that way, the DVDs aren’t just any ol’ object to be distributed – it matters that the DVDs carry unrequested movies.  This “ties” the DVDs to the method through the identifying step.  So perhaps this claim is a good example of how Bilski might not have killed all business methods.  (Of course, obviousness may be a different story, right?)

Or perhaps not…

Compare claim 4:

4. A method for managing rental items in distribution locations, the method comprising the machine-implemented steps of: a computer identifying a first set of one or more rental items at a first distribution location that is not needed by customers associated with the first distribution location; the computer causing the first set of one or more rental items to be sent from the first distribution location to a designated distribution location; the computer identifying a second set of one or more rental items at a second distribution location that is not needed by customers associated with the second distribution location; and the computer causing the second set of one or more rental items to be sent from the second distribution location to the designated distribution location, wherein the first, second and designated distribution locations are distinct distribution locations.

The claims are nearly identical, but with two key differences.  Think subject-object.  Claim 1 is a “general” method, where the subject is anything or anyone, but the object is “particular” apparatus (DVDs containing movies).  (Yes, the preamble says "machine-implemented steps"...but is that really limiting?)

Claim 4 is reversed: the subject is a computer, which performs the method on a “general” object (rental items).  It seems clear from recent cases that the CAFC intended to kill the Claim 4-type scenario where the subject “computer” isn’t particularized.  And it isn't even close here.  (The “computer” terms were added in an Examiner’s Amendment, by the way, with no explanation given, in April 2009.  In re Bilski had been fully digested by this time.)

But what about Claim 1?  Should it fall by Bilski's sword, as well? I’ll leave the discussion open.

Some other interesting prosecution notes:

• Priority disclaimed.  The app was originally submitted as a C-I-P claiming priority back to Netflix’s first patent, 6,966,484, which was filed in September 2002.  During prosecution, Netflix amended their specification by deleting the priority claim language.  PAIR does not indicate any parent application.  So by doing this, Netflix may have gained over a year of patent term (this app was filed in December 2003), but at the risk of potentially exposing itself to some intervening art or earlier on-sale activity.  I suspect this disclaimer, which occurred in September 2007, was provoked by the then-looming rule change for continuation applications.  Those rules, to have taken effect Nov. 1, 2007 but for the Tafas injunction, would have limited continuation practice and the number of claims.

• Term Extended? You'd think that because of the disclaimed priority, the claims would be hit with a 103 rejection over the '484 patent, or at least an obviousness-type double patenting rejection leading to a terminal disclaimer.  Not so.  Instead, Netflix actually had term extended by over 800 days for PTE.  Go figure.
  

• Weaker presumption?  What do we make of the Examiner’s statement in the Notice of Allowability:
  

“Applicant’s voluminous IDS received August 28, 2008 has been given a cursory review.” 

Should an accused infringer need to present clear & convincing evidence to show invalidity in this situation where the Examiner essentially admits he did not read the references?

• Undue Multiplicity.  The only claim rejections were under 112 for indefiniteness under the “undue multiplicity” rule.  See 37 CFR 1.75(b) and MPEP 2173.05(n).  The examiner found that the 126 claims originally presented “would tend to obfuscate, confuse, and becloud the claimed invention.” 

Undue multiplicity rejections are not so common anymore, in part because they are almost always reversed by the BPAI when challenged.  The conventional wisdom is that they were historically used by examiners to trim workload, requiring applicants to pick some subset of representative claims for examination. (Indeed, the doctrine was cited in Tafas for the proposition that it is possible to place at least some limits on number of claims in an application.)

It has been a recent curiosity of mine whether an alleged infringer could challenge a patent’s validity in a civil litigation under this Rule.  After all, if “the net result” of the repetitious claims tends “to confuse rather than to clarify” the subject matter of the invention, then it should not matter if this challenge is made by an examiner during prosecution, or if it is made by a lawsuit defendant after issuance -- either the claims are indefinite or they are not, and the statute applies equally regardless of timing.

In a similar style to the successful argument reviving prosecution laches with Lemelson, I suspect there is some case out there with a patent having a ton of claims where it could be argued, “If undue multiplicity doesn’t apply here, then it doesn’t apply anywhere.”  It's a longshot, but the right district court judge just might bite...

Any takers?

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Endangered Species: the Jepson Claim

In one of my posts last week, I noted that a featured patent included Jepson claims.  Jepson claims are not dead (either "merely" or "really most sincerely"), but they may be on their way to extinction.

Jepson claims have been around since at least 1917.  Such claims typically begin with a preamble of already-known elements ("In a system for making widgets with elements A, B and C"), then a transitional phrase ("..the improvement comprising..."), followed by the inventive elements presently claimed ("...elements D and E...")  It has been said that in a Jepson claim, "the claim preamble defines not only the context of the claimed invention, but also its scope." Rowe v. Dror, 112 F.3d 473 (Fed. Cir. 1997).

Jepson claims bear some similarlity to Eurpoean claim forms that use "characterized by..." language.  And like other claim forms, Jepson claims have their pros and cons.  Wikipedia (admit it--you look there, too) actually gives a good summary, noting that Jepson claims can be useful in allowing the Examiner to hone in quickly on points of novelty, particularly in crowded arts.  This could result in fewer Festo-inducing arguments and amendments.  But the big downside, of course, is that there is an admission that the preamble's limitations are known in the art, and presumably (rebuttable) known by others for 103 purposes.  See MPEP 2129.  In a post-KSR world, where the apparently best obviousness attack is to show that an element is missing in the cited references, that doesn't leave much wiggle room.

It is not news that use of Jepson claims is atypical.  Landis writes that "the occasion is rare when it is the recommended format" and that "It is seldom used in practice."  Judge Newman echoed this thought over twenty years ago when she noted that the Jepson form of claim "occasionally continues to be used", and was thus an exception to "the modern style, [where] patent claims no longer merely claim the salient features, the 'heart' of the invention." Pennwalt Corp. v. Durand-Wayland Inc., 833 F.2d 931 (Fed. Cir. 1987) (en banc) (Newman, J., dissenting). 

Less known, however, is that the use of Jepson claims has been dropping at a breathtaking rate.  When Judge Newman made her comments, nearly 8,000 patents with Jepson claims were issuing annually.  Today that number is closer to 1,000.  The remarkable graph below represents the number of patents which include the word "improvement" in their claims, shown annually since 1976.

The law regarding Jepson claims has been pretty stable over this period, so the root cause of this drop-off is probably found elsewhere.  Perhaps it was simply a natural process as new attorneys/agents entered the practice and opted to try claiming more broadly.  Or perhaps there was a growing perception that courts were looking with increasing favor at broadly drafted claims.  I'm not sure.  But if you have a good theory--or a compelling argument why you think Jepson claims will/should have a big comeback--please share.

Anybody care to start a "Save the Jepson claim!" campaign on Facebook?

[UPDATE 6/4/09 1:56PM: The graph below shows the issuance of Jepson patents as a percentage of total issuances.  Peak is over 14% (that's 1 in 7 patents, friends) in 1980, dropping steadily to about 0.7% in 2008]

Safety for Six-Shooter: Patent of the Week - Part 2

Here's one you may not see everyday:

U.S. Patent No. 7,536,817

No-skip recocking revolver

Inventor: Leonard Storch (New York, NY)

Filed: July 7, 2008

Several interesting notes here:

1. Pro se applicant.

2. Inventor reads this blog.  Though I stumbled on this patent independently with my standard weekly searches, Mr. Storch was kind enough to contact me when his patent issued on Tuesday.

2. Petition to Make Special.  These aren't so common anymore, since they were replaced in August 2006 for all but a few categories by the new accelerated examination procedures.  But one of those remaining categories per MPEP 708.02 is applicant's age.  Here, Mr. Storch attested to his being over 65.  A year later, he has a patent.

3. Jepson claims!

4. A gun patent to a New Yorker?!  Why not!

5. The specification includes the following gems:

• "The inventor of the present invention is neither a gunsmith nor a machinist by trade. However, the inventor is an avid shooter, passionate about Second Amendment Rights, and an experienced inventor by trade having patented several diverse inventions. The inventor has U.S. Army and civilian experience target shooting and hunting with various hand guns and rifles and, at least when younger, was a dead shot earning a marksman medal in the Army."  

• "It is the ambition of this improved revolver inventor to have this present "Non-Skip Revolver" invention manufactured in superior quality "Non-Skip Trigger Cocking Double Action Revolvers" in 22 mag. and 44 mag. calibers for plinking and hunting, and in a small light weight five shot .38 Spl. for personal protection, and perhaps a licensed manufacturer(s) will offer a special edition set including all three caliber revolvers celebrating the Supreme Court's historic Jun. 26, 2008 Second Amendment Decision."

• "The present improvement represents another revolver safety advance. Ill-advised as it may be, it is just too tempting to hunters in the blood rush of hot pursuit of game to holster a cocked revolver to avoid skipping a round, for example, if their targeted game wanders off and they don't take their shot. Many a leg has been shot this way. Revolver accidents account for numerous lawsuits against manufactures. With this new safety feature, a hunter can decock, avoid skipping a round and holster safely." 

• "Who'd have thought, in this day and age of Glocks and tasers, old fashion six-shooters (six-chamber revolvers) could still stand significant safety and functional improvement?"

Certainly not me, Len.  Here's to you, for keeping our legs gunshot-free!

Training wheels for Unicycle: Patent of the Week - Part 1

Because I've always wanted to learn how...

U.S. Patent No. 7,537,229

Unicycle with auxiliary wheels

Inventor: Pao-Kung Wu

From the specification: 

"The unicycle has only one wheel such that the ride skill of the unicycle is more difficult than that of a bicycle.  As a result, some people give up learning to ride the unicycle because they often fall from the seat of the unicycle and gradually lose his/her confidence of riding unicycle during learning.  It's a pity."

A pity, indeed.

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.

Contest Results

Congratulations to Cynthia Flanagan, a patent agent at Syracuse’s Burr & Brown firm!  As an entry for last week's contest, Cynthia submitted U.S. Patent No. 6,477,533, “Systems and methods of maintaining client relationships”, assigned to Travel Services International, Inc.  Apparently forty-one people contributed to the conception of these methods of assigning travel agents to cruise customers.

More impressive than this patent's large number of contributors, however, was Cynthia’s methodology for finding it.  Since the PTO search engine is a bit primitive, Cynthia got creative.  She noted that a large percentage of inventors are listed with middle initials, and that those middle initials are searchable as distinct words within the “Inventor” field.  Try searching “in/z” today and you’ll get 4,177 patents with inventors "___ Z. ___".

So, if you are looking for a patent with lots of inventors, try a lot of middle initials, say in/(a and b and c and d).  That gives a fair number of candidates to then look at manually.  It's not scientific -- you need to include the right combo of initials, and there may be a patent out there with a hundred inventors who don't have middle names -- but it's a great heuristic approach.

Using Cynthia’s technique, I was able to find fairly quickly a pair of patents with even more inventors. 51 to be exact.  And these patents belong to Microsoft for its .NET platform application program interface.  They are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,013,469 and 7,017,162.  Can you imagine the inventor disclosure meetings?  And if these ever are litigated, whose deposition is taken? Wow.

But since I’m not eligible for the contest, a gift certificate for Baskin-Robbins is on its way out to Cynthia. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Flushing away Bilski

The take-a-number toilet reservation system is back.  And it's mad.

A few years ago, IBM was issued U.S. Patent No. 6,329,919 for a “System and method for providing reservations for restroom use.”  This made news.  The patent soon became the face of all that was evil with the recent patentability of business methods.  In fact, public outcry rose to such a level that USPTO Director James Rogan ordered a reexamination of the patent.  A couple months later, IBM disclaimed the patent.

(Of course, the patent’s poster boy status lives on: like the Walker Digital patent family previously featured here, this disclaimed patent was nevertheless cited by Judge Mayer in his Bilski dissent as somewhere between “ridiculous” and “absurd”)

That brings us to this week’s issuance:

U.S. Patent No. 7.535.367 Airplane lavatory reservation system Inventor: Nitesh Ratnakar (Oak Creek, WI) 1. A lavatory reservation system comprising of; 1) assigning lavatory set to user among multiple lavatories in a facility according to user location in the facility; 2) lavatory reservation request input means; 3) lavatory door lock having means to restrict access to the lavatory based on set of rules; operatively connected to controller; and having input means; 4) a controller; 5) a monitoring device coupled to the controller and adapted to monitor occupancy of a lavatory; 6) computer program code operative with the controller enabling the controller to: receive a request to use lavatory from user; enter user in queue in assigned lavatory set according to set of rules; assign access code for lavatory reservation request; notify user of lavatory status; automatically operate lavatory door lock from second unlocked to first locked position upon lavatory door changing from first open to second closed position subsequent to entry of valid access code into corresponding lavatory door input means.

Commentary: Believe it or not, this is not the first bathroom reservation system since ‘919.  There’s U.S. Patent Pub. 2002/0022896, innocently entitled “Queuing methods and apparatus” by its patent attorney-applicant, and U.S. Patent No. 6,237,872 which was actually filed a few years before ‘919 (and granted to Dr. Reuven Bar-Levav, a Michigan psychiatrist who was murdered by a former patient in 1999).

Like those applications, today's also has an individual “non-traditional” inventor in Dr. Nitesh Ratnakar.  Unlike the previous applications, however, this one was filed pro se.  And I must say, it is one of the better pro se filings I’ve seen, both in form and substance of the file history (compare, for example, the classic Godly Powers application).  More impressive is that he filed this application electronically before EFS-Web.  Any patent attorney who suffered through that kludgy system surely appreciates Dr. Ratnakar’s extraordinary efforts.  Even I, a self-proclaimed tech-type, avoided this system and used it just once, and then only because the Rules required it in my particular situation.  So kudos, Doctor.  [Note: I still would strongly discourage prosecution of a patent pro se.] 

Turning to the meat, let’s compare Dr. Ratnakar's claim to that of IBM’s erstwhile ‘919 patent:

1. A method of providing reservations for restroom use, comprising:     receiving a reservation request from a user; and     notifying the user when the restroom is available for his or her use.

Yep.  Reading that two line claim, it’s understandable why people were up in arms.  But it’s not clear if the outrage was because of patentable subject matter (101, following the State Street case) or obviousness (103).  Recall that this patent was about to be reexamined because of prior art, not because the subject matter wasn’t patentable.  [By statute, all reexaminations are based on prior art. 35 U.S.C. Section 302.  Should this requirement be changed to allow for new 101 issues? 112?]

In contrast, Dr. Ratnakar’s claim looks pretty good with respect to Bilski.  There’s some fairly particular apparatuses in there: a door; a door lock; and a lavatory, at least.  And there may even be a physical transformation in the position of the door lock.  This claim’s undoing could turn out to be all those “means” under 112 (or 101 – see Ex parte Snyder), but I’m not looking at the spec to analyze that.

The file wrapper is unremarkable, other than the fact that the pro se inventor successfully navigated through two rejections, an RCE and an examiner interview to get his patent issued.  Then again, judging from his other filings and issued patents, Dr. Ratnakar appears to have quite a bit of experience with the patent system. His "Parking location reminder device" (U.S. Patent No. 7,411,518) is actually pretty nifty, imho.

So what do you think?  Does this week's toilet reservation patent bother you as much as IBM’s ‘919?  If not, why not?

As a final note, I'll point out that then-Director Jon Dudas gave a talk last year at which he reportedly referred to an application the USPTO “recently received for what was claimed to be a better way to stand in line while waiting to use an airplane toilet” as an illustration of declining application quality.  Sounds like Dudas may have been referring to this very patent, rather than IBM’s.  No doubt some will cast this "exemplary" application's allowance as an indictment of the PTO’s ability to separate the wheat from the chaff...

Contest of the Week

Although the USPTO's search database is adequate for many tasks, there are some questions that it just can't handle.  Like this one:

What's the greatest number of co-inventors you've ever seen listed on a U.S. patent?

Submit an entry by email (including # inventors and patent number) by 12:01AM Tuesday, May 26, 2009.  And just so you know, we learned today that if your answer isn't bigger than 31, you're not going to win.

Winner gets a free ice cream cone at Baskin-Robbins.