12:01 Tuesday

Patent of the Week - Money Hanger

My daughter turns 5 next week and I don't expect her to receive cash gifts from her relatives or friends.  But even if I did, would I really want her to use this novel device?

That's right, it's a way to show off to the world exactly how much loot you raked in on your big day.  Very convenient when walking to deposit all that cash at the nearest ATM.

Here's the one and only claim:

U.S. Patent No. 7,523,575 Method and appartus for celebration money hanger Filed: April 14, 2008 1. A method for attaching paper money to the clothing of a user, comprising the steps of: a) providing a body having a front and a rear side; b) providing a celebratory message on the front side of the body; c) attaching the body to the clothing of the user so that the body is removably attached to the clothing of the user; d) attaching the paper money to the body so that the paper money is removably attached to the body; e) providing a wire member for attaching the paper money to the body, wherein the wire member is shaped like a horseshoe having a first and second end, wherein the first and second ends are biased away from each other; f) providing a first and second receptacle on the rear side of the body, wherein the first end of the wire member can be attached to and removed from the first receptacle and the second end of the wire member can be attached to and removed from the second receptacle; and, g) removing the first end of the wire member from the first receptacle and passing the first end through the paper money, and, reattaching the first end of the wire member to the first receptacle so that the paper money can be removably attached to the body.

Commentary: At least it looks like we've found another Art Unit with short pendencies.  No Accelerated Exam here for this 12-month filing-to-issuance (including a round of office action and amendment to circumvent prior art).  Not much else to say here from a claim perspective, other than that I wonder if performing this method might potentially run up on some other problems, like 18 U.S.C. Section 333 (okay, there's an intent requirement there... but why even risk it?)

Also, this inventor is from Alabama.  In light of a previous Patent of the Week involving certain rodents, I have to wonder if it is just my Northern biases at play here.  Can someone from the South please tell me if this notion of showing off your birthday gift money is at all common?  Or squirrel skinning, for that matter?  I really have a difficult time imagining either of these activities occuring in an urban environment.

Hey Rocky, Watch me pull a skinning apparatus out of my hat!

I'm pleased to see that the folks over at the AnticipateThis blog were entertained by the Patent of the Day from a few weeks ago on the squirrel skinning apparatus. It reminded me that there was a postscript to the story, which was originally sent to an internal mailing list prior to this blog's creation.  There was quite a bit of discussion among us afterward on some of the, er, finer points.  But I'll now revisit one topic of that general discussion.  If you prefer G-rated content, you can skip the rest of this post.

First of all, there was no offense intended toward Kentucky.  Actually, one of the cited references is Patent No. 7,163,452, which is also a squirrel skinning device and a method.  (It's not for the squeamish; one claimed step is "inserting tail of a squirrel between said first and second gripping portions".  And there are Figures.  Nice Figures.)  Yes, there is competition in the squirel skinning market... a rising tide lifts all boats, I suppose.

However, it is with a mix of pride and embarrassment (there should be a word coined for this emotion -- any Atlantic readers out there?) that I note the inventors are from my home state of Michigan.  I haven't seen any reviews that compare the qualities of Michigan and Kentucky squirrels -- none of the restaurants I've found serve both varieties -- but I'd be curious to hear some opinions.  I'm guessing that Michigan squirrel is kind of like Great Lakes coho salmon, which was artificially introduced from the Pacific northwest, and just doesn't have that same, authentic ocean flavor.

In any event, it looks like the drawbacks of traditional squirrel skinning techniques are well known north of the Mason-Dixon line, too, as described in the Background section of the '452 patent:

"Hunting is an ancient art that at one time meant survival. Today, most hunting is recreational, but many hunters still eat the animals that they hunt. Before most animals can be eaten, they must be skinned and squirrels are extremely difficult to skin. In the past, squirrels have proved difficult to skin and this has led to a decline in the number of people who still hunt and eat squirrels.

"In the past, squirrels were often cleaned by splitting the skin across its back and then pulling the two pieces in opposite direction. This is difficult and gets a lot of fur on the meat. Another method often used in the past is placing a foot on the squirrel's tail and pulling on the hind legs. This method is better, but the tail often slips or is pulled out altogether. This method also has problems with fur."

Oh, Bullwinkle.  Let's hope you don't find Rocky in the wrong "hat".

"And now here's something we hope you'll really like."   Back to Bilski...

Patent of the Week: Prayer Counter

President Obama was in the news yesterday for reaching out to the "Islamic Republic of Iran."  In his honor, here is the Patent of the Week:

 

U.S. Patent No. 7,508,316 Portable interactive Islamic prayer counter Filed: May 28, 2008 1. A method for indicating a current or completed Rakah of a plurality of Rakat performed by a user during an Islamic ceremonial prayer, the method comprising: providing a prayer counter with an indicator for indicating a prayer count; a first proximity sensor for sensing when a Sudjood position has been assumed by the user, the first proximity sensor sensing the Sudjood position without physical contact by the user; and a processor operably associated with the indicator and first proximity sensor for updating the indicator to the next Rakah thereby informing the user of the user's progress during the Islamic ceremonial prayer; programming the prayer counter with one of a plurality of Islamic ceremonial prayer modes, the plurality of prayer modes including a first prayer mode for performing two Rakat; a second prayer mode for performing three Rakat; and a third prayer mode for performing four Rakat; sensing the Sudjood position; and updating the indicator when the Sudjood position has been detected.

Commentary: This is not the first religious-based patent I've come across.  In December, I had a long string of emails with some Israeli patent attorneys about U.S. Patent No. 7,469,494 "Reading assistant for Torah scrolls". And there is U.S. Patent No. 6,589,056 "Hand held, hand operated, mechanical rosary prayer sequence symbol prompter."  And lots of others, too.  Heck, there are 326 utility patents that have "Christmas tree" in their title.

But the difference (non-substantive, obviously), is that today's patent was filed under the Acclerated Examination program.  The Brazilian inventor apparently thought this invention was valuable enough to warrant the extra effort and expense (and seeing that it was examined in the 2600 TC, this may have been wise).  As we've seen before, the examiner in AE once again appeared to be very helpful during prosecution, even recrafting an apparatus claim into the method claim that is now claim 1.

But one has to wonder about market demand for these products, particularly as religious affiliation is dropping in the US.  Given that most religions have been around for centuries or millenia, it's tough to imagine a patentable improvement to ritual that is going to catch on widely enough to turn a big profit.  I mean, it's not like the portable hookah system and hookah containment device of U.S. Patent No. 7,404,405, also an Accelerated Examination patent. For that one, I could understand why the inventor wanted to see his invention patented in 6.5 months. After all, "As hookah us increases in prominence, the need to make hookah smoking more amenable to a larger market increases in importance."

Penny Pinching, and a Patent of the Day

Let's start with a Practice Tip o’ the Day:  When analyzing 101 under Bilski, be sure to look at dependent claims.

That said, we'll go and apply it twice today:

Those who have followed closely Bilski’s wake of subject matter destruction may have heard of Every Penny Counts, Inc., (“EPC”) the Florida based entity that has sued Visa, AmEx, Bank of America and others on U.S. Patent No. 6,112,191. The patent has been asserted against programs such as B of A’s “Keep the Change” that rounds debit card purchases to the nearest dollar and pockets the difference in a savings account.  In that pending litigation, B of A successfully moved to reopen discovery following the Bilski decision in order to serve 101-related interrogatories (which the court recently ruled went outside the scope of Bilski in denying B of A’s motion to compel responses).

Well, it looks like EPC has another arrow in its quiver – a newly issued, apparently unrelated patent that issued today:

Key terms are in bold.

U.S. Patent No. 7,502,758 Creation and distribution of excess funds, deposits, and payments Assignee: Every Penny Counts, Inc. 1. A method of accumulating credits from financial movements to and from an account held by a financial transactor and managed by an account manager, comprising: initiating roundup by accessing entries in the account with an information processor authorizing, by the transactor, rounding up of entries in the account; rounding up the entries in the account to obtain a total roundup amount; withdrawing the roundup amount from the account and debiting the account with the roundup amount; wherein the step of initiating roundup is performed by said information processor accessing the account in the account manager, and the steps of initiating, rounding up, and withdrawal are done outside the control of the account manager.

Commentary: The examiner did not try to identify a particular machine.  But I did.  Unsuccessfully.  If someone sees one, please let me know.  The obvious candidate is the oh-so-particular “information processor”.  But according to dependent claim 7 (today's trick), this may not be a machine at all:

7. A method as in claim 1, wherein the steps of accessing and rounding are performed by said information processor and said information processor is a service organization.

The application claims priority to a PCT filed in 2001 from some September 2000 provisional applications.  It’s a pre-Bilski allowance, but barely – October 2008.  Still, it’s tough for me to believe this one got through GAU 3696.  The 3600 TC was on heightened scrutiny for several months before Bilski, and 101 rejections (in my experience, anyway) were almost routine.  And there was a post-allowance, post-Bilski 312 amendment that gave the examiner another bite at the apple with the Machine-or-Transformation test fresh on his mind.  But he didn't bite.  Perhaps there is something in that the allowance here was the result of a pre-appeal conference after this claim had been finally rejected. 

Maybe we’ll see this one fought on 101 in litigation down the road...

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Here’s another one where the dependent claims shed some light on the alleged machine:

U.S. Patent No. 7,501,961  Determining a toll amount Assignee:         Rent A Toll, Ltd. 1. A method for determining a toll amount, comprising: determining a capture rate of transports at a toll location; determining the toll amount based on a multiplier value; determining via a toll processing unit, said multiplier value based on the capture rate of the toll location; and wherein the determining the multiplier occurs after the determining the capture rate.

Commentary: This one looks pretty bad out of the gate, doesn’t it?  Take away that “toll processing unit” (“TPU”) and it’s a straight Comiskey mental process, I think.  And, using today’s Practice Tip, look at dependent claims 6 and 7:

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the capture rate is determined by at least one of: a toll authority; a third party entity; a toll rental entity; an electronic device; and a human being. 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the capture rate is determined by at least one of: a manual process; an automatic process; a semi-automatic process; a static process; and a dynamic process.

Egad!  But, believe or not, I think the TPU here saves the day.  The spec and figures make it clear that this TPU is a machine that performs several specific functions and is more than just a general purpose computer when viewed in the context of the system here.  Recall that it only takes one element that is tied to the machine to satisfy BIlski.  Good thing, too, since without that TPU, this claim is roadkill.

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And here is today's Patent of The Day

U.S. Patent No. 7,502,827 System and method for communication between motorists in automobiles using license plate information 1. A system for communicating with a motorist, comprising: a repository of electronic addresses in which a vehicle is assigned an electronic address according to its license plate registration number, wherein the electronic address includes the license plate registration number; and a messaging service that enables a motorist associated with the vehicle to send and/or receive messages using the electronic address from said repository of electronic addresses via a wireless communication system.

Commentary:  In other words, your license plate is linked up with the address for your email, Facebook, instant message service, cell phone, etc.  And when might you use such an invention?  The inventor explains:

“For instance, I might want to order pizza from a pizza truck in front of me, or advertise my profession, or perpetually receive bids on my car, or buy a car from the salesman in front of me because he looks honest, all the way to having police officers rather to issue tickets/warnings through this system rather than step out into a dangerous highway or situation in general, etc.”

Wow, it actually makes me want to get stuck in traffic behind a bunch of delivery vans.  Or to fulfill my childhood dream of stopping the Entenmann's truck.  Plus, if you get caught up with road rage when the jerk in the SUV cuts you off, you can safely text him the finger, I guess.  Limitless possibilities.

Bilski Watch - Late Edition & Patent-of-the-Day

More of the same today, and nothing particularly noteworthy issuing.  IBM has their usual slew of pre-Bilski allowances but I'll spare you from them.

But here's two that may be of some interest, to E*Trade and First Data.  And be sure to read to the end -- there's a special treat having nothing to do with 101 -- a Patent of the Day.

-aaron

U.S. Patent No. 7,490,061 Solutions Server  Assignee: E*Trade 1. A method of providing solutions for trading securities, the method comprising the steps of:  receiving a level-two quote, the level-two quote comprising a symbol and at least one market participant quote, the market participant quote further comprising a quote price, a quote quantity, a quote Market Participant Identification (MPID), and a quote side;  creating in computer memory a solution set comprising at least one solution record corresponding to each market participant quote in the level-two quote, the solution record comprising a solution symbol, a solution side, a solution MPID, a solution price, a solution quantity, and a solution latency, the solution latency comprising a latency for the market identified by the solution MPID,  wherein creating a solution set further comprises the steps of: calculating the solution quantity for the solution record dependent upon the quote quantity and dependent upon a hidden quantity ratio for the market identified by the solution MPID, and  recording the solution quantity in the solution record; and sending the solution set to at least one client.

Commentary:  I guess if you include a step of "creating in a computer memory" that suffices.  Or so this examiner thought before 10/30/2008.

U.S. Patent No. 7,490,059, Methods and Systems for consolidating financial reporting information 
Assignee: First Data Corp. 
1. A method for providing financial reporting information to a customer, the method comprising: 

receiving financial reporting information for a plurality of distinct financial accounts at a host system;

mapping the received financial reporting information onto a set of distinct financial account types with the host computer system wherein each financial account type of the set of financial account types is distinguished based on a credit mechanism by which an account balance is increased and a debit mechanism by which the account balance is decreased;

consolidating the mapped financial reporting information according to a set of consolidation rules with the host computer system wherein the consolidation rules are defined by both the financial institution that controls at least one of the financial accounts and the customer;

formatting the consolidated financial reporting information according to a set of fulfillment rules with the host computer system for distribution to the customer; and

preparing a summary of the consolidated financial reporting information for distribution to the customer with the consolidated financial reporting information.

Commentary:  Not sure if that "host computer system" is particular enough, but I'll let it slide.  The interesting story here is that the  claims were actually rejected  in 8/2006 under 101 -- failing the State Street useful/concrete/tangible test.  After two rounds battling over whether the claim really did produce a useful result, the applicant added the last step of “preparing a summary”.  This satisfied the Examiner.

Patent of the Day 
U.S. Patent No. 7,488,244  Apparatus for skinning squirrels 
Yep, because "It is well known that when a squirrel is manually skinned without the aid of a device, one must first start by pulling the hair away from a spot just above where the tail joins the body and make a cut that leaves a strip of skin uncut at the top edge of the tail."  Well known in the inventor's home of Cadiz, Kentucky, I guess.

So, for those of you who hate having to step on your squirrel's tail when you skin it, you'll love this gizmo: "One advantage of the present invention is that it eliminates the need to step on the tail and bend over to complete the skinning process."

Practice tip:  This application was filed in April 2008 -- 10 months to issuance, and no Accelerated Examination.  So if you can put in a few appropriate buzzwords in your application, try to dress it up so it can get classified into Art Unit 3643 "FISHING, TRAPPING, AND VERMIN DESTROYING", where there appears to be short pendencies.

Patent of the Week - Reusable Postage Stamps

This issued today to IBM – reusable, any-denomination postage stamps via RFID.

 U.S. Patent No. 7,457.760 Programmable radio-frequency identification (RFID) postage stamps

In addition to the invention itself, which sounds like a great idea, there’s interesting prosecution notes:

• Accelerated exam, baby.  Filed in February 2008, in Art Unit 3628 (a business methods unit) – which typically has pendency times about 4-5 years, I think.
• First action allowance (examiner buys into IBM’s reasoning distinguishing the prior art).  So there shouldn’t be as big a Festo problem, in my opinion (this is a question that still bugs me…it’s not so straightforward)
• Only one claim!  Why slow things up unnecessarily?  IBM filed a continuation shortly after the notice of allowance to capture the rest (presumably – it’s not yet public).
• It’s a method claim, with the end-user as the actor.  Interesting choice, but it makes sense here.  (and clearly passes the Bilski “tied to a particular machine” test – the machine here is the stamp)
• What, no American could think of this?  I guess those Brits know their Post.

Summary:

This invention introduces a single re-usable stick-on section of electronic paper, in the form of a postage stamp, containing an RFID chip. All the sender is required to do is simply affix the stamp to a parcel and swipe a smart card over the stamp to encode it. Once encoded, the sender can send the parcel via any number of 24-hour 7 day a week post-boxes, or for larger items some other deposit or collection mechanism may be used. When the sender's smart card is swiped over the stamp, the chip will be programmed with the sender's information such as payment details linked to the smart card so that the accurate cost of sending the item can be calculated and charged during the sorting process. During the sorting process, the item is accurately weighed and measured by the postal office. An anti-tampering mechanism is also provided to allow the stamp to be reused without jeopardizing the prior sender's personal and financial information. Also, the stamp may be encoded using the Bluetooth protocol.

Claim 1:

1. A method of using digital electronic paper in the form of a reusable stamp comprising:

·         affixing a stamp without a predetermined postage to an article to be mailed, wherein the stamp comprises a top layer having a visual display, middle layer having an electronics layer, and a bottom layer having an adhesive layer;

·         swiping a smart card to encode the affixed stamp with a unique payment identifier issued by a payment authority and valid for a single payment, and other information such that the visual display automatically updates to show a representation of the encoded information;

·         depositing the article with the encoded affixed stamp at a postal authority deposit location such that after the article is received by a postal authority, a postage value is determined automatically during a sorting process;

·         verifying the visual display and the encoded information on the stamp for evidence of tampering; automatically requesting payment of the calculated postage from a payment authority using the unique payment identifier, and

·         altering the adhesive through electrostatic manipulation to allow the removal of the affixed stamp so that the stamp may be reused.