On July 25, 2017, the Patent Office issued a patent to HP on reminder messages. Someone needs to remind the Patent Office to look at the real world before issuing patents. United States Patent No. 9,715,680 (the ’680 patent) is… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘Stupid Patent of the Month’
EFF Asks Court to Strike Down Unconstitutional Restraint on Our Speech
EFF has asked a federal court to rule in its favor in a lawsuit we filed against an Australian company that sought to use foreign law to censor us from expressing our opinion about its patent. While the company, Global… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: Using A Computer To Count Calories
This month’s stupid patent, like many stupid patents before it, simply claims the idea of using a computer for basic calculations. U.S. Patent No. 6,817,863 (the ’863 patent) is titled “Computer program, method, and system for monitoring nutrition content of… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: Storing Files in Folders
Our ongoing Reclaim Invention campaign urges universities not to sell patents to trolls. This month’s stupid patent provides a good example of why. US Patent No. 8,473,532 (the ’532 patent), “Method and apparatus for automatic organization for computer files,” began… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: IBM Patents Out-of-Office Email
Update: March 1, 2017 Today IBM told Ars Technica that it “has decided to dedicate the patent to the public.” While this is just one patent in IBM’s massive portfolio, we are glad to learn that it has declared it… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: A Lyrics Website With User Interaction
Song lyrics are some of the most searched-for topics on the Internet. This has lead to fierce competition among lyrics sites. If you scroll to the bottom of one of these websites, you’ll see the claim: “Song discussions is protected… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: Movies From the Cloud
The Onion once ran a piece titled “I invented YouTube back in 2010.” The joke, of course, is that YouTube launched in 2005. This month’s Stupid Patent of the Month is just as ridiculous. US Patent No. 8,856,221, titled ‘System… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: Changing the Channel
Is somebody really claiming to have invented a method for switching from watching one video to watching another? This question comes from a lawyer at the New York Times, as an aside in an interesting article about the paper’s response… Read More ›
Stupid Design Patent of the Month: Rectangles on a Screen
On October 11, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the long-running Apple-Samsung litigation. The issue is whether Apple, by virtue of having its designed patents infringed by Samsung, is entitled to all of Samsung’s… Read More ›
Stupid Patent of the Month: Elsevier Patents Online Peer Review
On August 30, 2016, the Patent Office issued U.S. Patent No. 9,430,468, titled; “Online peer review and method.” The owner of this patent is none other than Elsevier, the giant academic publisher. When it first applied for the patent, Elsevier… Read More ›