How do i know if i m not violating some patent private labeling a product

[Daytraderz]

Keep your investment minimal, and your inventory exposure minimal for the first year in case you should (unlikely) receive a cease and desist. High turnover of inventory, and low on hand inventory.

This is very helpful advice for start-ups especially for people who are young and only knowledgable mainly in theory, like me. Thank you!

 

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[Vigilante]

Why?

http://soundbible.com/365-Crickets-At-Night.html

 

[Jon L]

I don't know much about patents for physical products, but if they're as screwed up as patents for software, my condolences. In software, anyone can get a patent for anything. One guy, for example, got a patent for a restaurant ordering system for servers. He patented the fact that he uses WiFi to connect the devices together. How that's patentable, I have no idea. (Patents are supposed to not be immediately obvious. The idea of using wifi to wirelessly connect to a central server isn't exactly novel.) He's now suing everyone in the industry, and winning.

What most people do in software is that they completely ignore all patents until it becomes an issue. When it does, life sucks.

 

[Rudynate]

I don't know much about patents for physical products, but if they're as screwed up as patents for software, my condolences. In software, anyone can get a patent for anything. One guy, for example, got a patent for a restaurant ordering system for servers. He patented the fact that he uses WiFi to connect the devices together. How that's patentable, I have no idea. (Patents are supposed to not be immediately obvious. The idea of using wifi to wirelessly connect to a central server isn't exactly novel.) He's now suing everyone in the industry, and winning.

What most people do in software is that they completely ignore all patents until it becomes an issue. When it does, life sucks.

Under current law, that patent may never have issued. The Supreme Court decisions Bilski v. Kappos in 2011 and Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014 have drastically revised the landscape in software patenting.

But also, when someone hears about a new product or invention, from a hindsight point of view, it is, of course, obvious, even if the person concluding that it was obvious never would have thought of it in a million years.

Also, in order to be patentable, a product must be both novel and nonobvious.

 

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[Jon L]

Under current law, that patent may never have issued. The Supreme Court decisions Bilski v. Kappos in 2011 and Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014 have drastically revised the landscape in software patenting.

But also, when someone hears about a new product or invention, from a hindsight point of view, it is, of course, obvious, even if the person concluding that it was obvious never would have thought of it in a million years.

Also, in order to be patentable, a product must be both novel and nonobvious.

yeah...so there are novel and nonobvious software patents out there - Amazon's One Click Ordering is one. Its a great idea, and is only obvious after the fact. Jeff Bezos has said, though, that he would be willing to give up that patent if it fixed the rest of the software patent system.

Most software patents are not like that ... set the particular problem the patent addresses in front of 1000 developers, and 999 of them will come up with the same exact solution that is in the patent. People will also patent stuff that is the industry standard solution to that particular problem, and the patent office lets them through because it is novel and non-obvious based on *prior patents,* even though developers have been using that method for years. I've run across countless patents where I just shake my head in disbelief. Its like somebody patenting using a trench to transport water. We've been doing that for thousands of years, but because no one has ever thought to patent it, hey, its novel and non-obvious based on what's already been patented before.

I hadn't heard about these cases, so I'm hopeful...I'll go read about it. Software patents needed to be shaken to their core, so maybe this is the start of that.

 

[Jon L]

yeah...so there are novel and nonobvious software patents out there - Amazon's One Click Ordering is one. Its a great idea, and is only obvious after the fact. Jeff Bezos has said, though, that he would be willing to give up that patent if it fixed the rest of the software patent system.

Most software patents are not like that ... set the particular problem the patent addresses in front of 1000 developers, and 999 of them will come up with the same exact solution that is in the patent. People will also patent stuff that is the industry standard solution to that particular problem, and the patent office lets them through because it is novel and non-obvious based on *prior patents,* even though developers have been using that method for years. I've run across countless patents where I just shake my head in disbelief. Its like somebody patenting using a trench to transport water. We've been doing that for thousands of years, but because no one has ever thought to patent it, hey, its novel and non-obvious based on what's already been patented before.

I hadn't heard about these cases, so I'm hopeful...I'll go read about it. Software patents needed to be shaken to their core, so maybe this is the start of that.

so this, in my view, is what is wrong with the patent system for software anyway:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...t-a-patent-on-white-background-photography/2/

See page 2, specifically where it talks about the fact that a 2-prong plug was patented. Apparently, in order to prove that something is obvious or prior art, there needs to be written documentation of it. The problem is that stuff that is *that* obvious doesn't get written about.

"
It is hard to believe that a patent could be granted for adding a multi-pronged plug to a well-known invention. “Every purchaser of electrical devices in the United States for the past 50 years or more is familiar with multipronged electrical connections,” wrote the lone dissenting judge inHear-Wear. But the two judges in the majority would have none of that. As they said, the Patent Office “cannot accept general conclusions about what is ‘basic knowledge’ or ‘common sense’ as a replacement for documentary evidence for core factual findings in a determination of patentability.” Proving this patent obvious, according to them, required paper documentation.

And therein lies the rub. The Federal Circuit essentially expected a written document describing a wire attached to a hearing aid and ending with a plug with multiple prongs. What are the chances that a written reference will say this? What scientist would waste time writing an article entitled “The Benefits of Multi-Pronged Plugs for Hearing Aids”? What publisher would ever find such an article worthy of its journals? What reader would subscribe to a journal that published such banality? Yet such an article, such a simplistic, uninspiring, obvious article, is exactly what the Federal Circuit would demand to prove this claim obvious.

With this law, the Federal Circuit has created a world in which the most obvious ideas are the hardest to prove obvious.
"

This is a sad, sad state of affairs, but it explains a lot.

 

[Rudynate]

so this, in my view, is what is wrong with the patent system for software anyway:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...t-a-patent-on-white-background-photography/2/

See page 2, specifically where it talks about the fact that a 2-prong plug was patented. Apparently, in order to prove that something is obvious or prior art, there needs to be written documentation of it. The problem is that stuff that is *that* obvious doesn't get written about.

"
It is hard to believe that a patent could be granted for adding a multi-pronged plug to a well-known invention. “Every purchaser of electrical devices in the United States for the past 50 years or more is familiar with multipronged electrical connections,” wrote the lone dissenting judge inHear-Wear. But the two judges in the majority would have none of that. As they said, the Patent Office “cannot accept general conclusions about what is ‘basic knowledge’ or ‘common sense’ as a replacement for documentary evidence for core factual findings in a determination of patentability.” Proving this patent obvious, according to them, required paper documentation.

And therein lies the rub. The Federal Circuit essentially expected a written document describing a wire attached to a hearing aid and ending with a plug with multiple prongs. What are the chances that a written reference will say this? What scientist would waste time writing an article entitled “The Benefits of Multi-Pronged Plugs for Hearing Aids”? What publisher would ever find such an article worthy of its journals? What reader would subscribe to a journal that published such banality? Yet such an article, such a simplistic, uninspiring, obvious article, is exactly what the Federal Circuit would demand to prove this claim obvious.

With this law, the Federal Circuit has created a world in which the most obvious ideas are the hardest to prove obvious.
"

This is a sad, sad state of affairs, but it explains a lot.

I don't agree with the dissenting opinion.. it's very ham-handed. Hearing aids are highly miniaturized electronic devices. What applies to a blender does not necessarily apply to a hearing aid.

 

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[Jon L]

I don't agree with the dissenting opinion.. it's very ham-handed. Hearing aids are highly miniaturized electronic devices. What applies to a blender does not necessarily apply to a hearing aid.

yeah, the problem I have with that is that adding a plug to a hearing aid is hardly non-obvious. When I can go to any of thousands of manufacturers world wide and have them design and build a small plug for a hearing aid, the resulting patent just clutters up the patent landscape. Its akin to the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations we have. I'm sure there are people out there that thing that all those laws are a good thing. I don't. They're time-wasting clutter.

I don't develop software personally anymore, but when I did, I came up with novel solutions to various problems SEVERAL TIMES A DAY. That's kinda the whole point of what I do. Now, only a portion of those would be worth patenting, but if I did, I could have several patents that I could then use to sue people that violate my patents. What a mess.

The particular guy that patented the Wifi connection for restaurant order takers wrote awful software, by the way. It was poorly designed and buggy. He started losing out to people that built better software, but because he had those ridiculous patents, he started suing everyone and is now making more money than he was when he was writing software.

 

[Rudynate]

yeah, the problem I have with that is that adding a plug to a hearing aid is hardly non-obvious. When I can go to any of thousands of manufacturers world wide and have them design and build a small plug for a hearing aid, the resulting patent just clutters up the patent landscape. Its akin to the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations we have. I'm sure there are people out there that thing that all those laws are a good thing. I don't. They're time-wasting clutter.

I don't develop software personally anymore, but when I did, I came up with novel solutions to various problems SEVERAL TIMES A DAY. That's kinda the whole point of what I do. Now, only a portion of those would be worth patenting, but if I did, I could have several patents that I could then use to sue people that violate my patents. What a mess.

The particular guy that patented the Wifi connection for restaurant order takers wrote awful software, by the way. It was poorly designed and buggy. He started losing out to people that built better software, but because he had those ridiculous patents, he started suing everyone and is now making more money than he was when he was writing software.

So you are an EE with experience designing hearing aids - a "person having an ordinary level of skill in the art?"

 

[Jon L]

So you are an EE with experience designing hearing aids - a "person having an ordinary level of skill in the art?"

no, i'm not, but the basic idea of putting a plug on a hearing aid is novel? There are many thousands of contract manufacturers out there that could design and build this for me from scratch. There are also many different types of miniature plugs out on the market already (and this, I do have some expertise in). Maybe the actual plug itself should be patented, but the mere fact that you've added it to a hearing aid? Come now. I'm not debating whether this thing is patentable currently. I'm saying it shouldn't be. We have an absolute mess in our patent system. In software, its so bad that ALMOST NO ONE bothers checking patents when they write software. The assumption is that you violate someone's patent every time you write code.

 

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[Rudynate]

no, i'm not, but the basic idea of putting a plug on a hearing aid is novel? There are many thousands of contract manufacturers out there that could design and build this for me from scratch. There are also many different types of miniature plugs out on the market already (and this, I do have some expertise in). Maybe the actual plug itself should be patented, but the mere fact that you've added it to a hearing aid? Come now. I'm not debating whether this thing is patentable currently. I'm saying it shouldn't be. We have an absolute mess in our patent system. In software, its so bad that ALMOST NO ONE bothers checking patents when they write software. The assumption is that you violate someone's patent every time you write code.

I'm going to answer your question with a story. I worked for a hearing aid manufacturer. The hearing device industry is a small, specialized industry. Most American manufacturers are located in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area. Internationally, most other companies are in Denmark, Switzerland or Germany. It is difficult to recruit engineering talent in this industry because it is such a specialized skillset that currently employed engineers are so well paid that they don't have much motivation to change jobs. The company I worked for tried an experiment wherein they tried hiring EEs without industry experience, reasoning that you could just tell the engineers to design hearing aids and they would be able to do it. Within about a year, all the EEs without industry experience had been laid off, and the company just bit the bullet and spent the money they had to spend to get engineers with industry experience - the ones without experience couldn't do it - they lacked the specialized skillset required.

The lesson in all of this is that something seeming obvious in hindsight is not an indication that it actually was obvious at the time of invention. Even if the concept itself was easily thought of, the technical challenges involved in implementing it could very well render it inventive.

It is also entirely possible to come up with an invention that is both novel and non-obvious that violates somebody else's existing patents. Almost all patents are "improvement" patents. It is completely within the realm of possibility that the improvement infringes the patent on the underlying technology, no matter how innovative the improvement is. It happens all the time. Entire industries employ elaborate cross-licensing schemes among themselves to avoid paralyzing the industry with infringement lawsuits.

 

[Jon L]

I'm going to answer your question with a story. I worked for a hearing aid manufacturer. The hearing device industry is a small, specialized industry. Most American manufacturers are located in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area. Internationally, most other companies are in Denmark, Switzerland or Germany. It is difficult to recruit engineering talent in this industry because it is such a specialized skillset that currently employed engineers are so well paid that they don't have much motivation to change jobs. The company I worked for tried an experiment wherein they tried hiring EEs without industry experience, reasoning that you could just tell the engineers to design hearing aids and they would be able to do it. Within about a year, all the EEs without industry experience had been laid off, and the company just bit the bullet and spent the money they had to spend to get engineers with industry experience - the ones without experience couldn't do it - they lacked the specialized skillset required.

The lesson in all of this is that something seeming obvious in hindsight is not an indication that it actually was obvious at the time of invention. Even if the concept itself was easily thought of, the technical challenges involved in implementing it could very well render it inventive.

It is also entirely possible to come up with an invention that is both novel and non-obvious that violates somebody else's existing patents. Almost all patents are "improvement" patents. It is completely within the realm of possibility that the improvement infringes the patent on the underlying technology, no matter how innovative the improvement is. It happens all the time. Entire industries employ elaborate cross-licensing schemes among themselves to avoid paralyzing the industry with infringement lawsuits.

I think you're missing my point...one that i've restated a few times, so I'll quit trying to restate it...but you do kind of make it again - with a better patent system, perhaps the need for an 'elaborate cross-licensing scheme' would be minimized.

 

[Rudynate]

I think you're missing my point...one that i've restated a few times, so I'll quit trying to restate it...but you do kind of make it again - with a better patent system, perhaps the need for an 'elaborate cross-licensing scheme' would be minimized.

But you don't like top-down bureaucracy. The cross-licensing schemes, consortia, patent pools, etc. are grass roots solutions devised by patentholders that allow them to respect each others' patent rights, avoid litigation and thrive in the marketplace. They are creatures of free-market capitalism.

What you're suggesting completely changes the function of a patent from being a time-limited monopoly granted by the government to being a permit issued by the government. It also implies that the government would be involved in the enforcement of patents. It seems like a monopoly would be less repellent to a hard-core free marketer than a permit.

 

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