High tech spiders and arts

La Machine is a company formed in the early 1990s as a collaboration between artists, designers, fabricators and technicians. Now led by Artistic Director François Delarozière, the company creates extraordinary theatrical machines, permanent installations, and also its own theatrical productions. I understand they use a lot of ingenious, hi-tech devices that make things look out of this world and aesthetic, too. Check it out at http://www.lamachine.co.uk/index.php/gallery/

Another case of pure ugly art is a horse-shaped building

Throughout history, one of the classic forms of sculpture is that of horses, the challenging being to capture the beauty of the natural horse form in a static object. Such sculptures can be made of many materials, including wood, so that a sculpture of a horse done in wood is a work of pure art. Now most such sculptures tend to be life-sized to miniatures, but heck, let's have some fun, be avant-garde artistes and build a horse sculpture the size of a multi-story building. Maybe in tribute to the Trojan horse, itself a work of art in story form. Despite its massive size, it's still a work of art. And what the heck, let's live in this large wooden horse sculpture. Otherwise known as U.S. Patent 5,564,239. All art is art. If some art is patentable, all art is patentable, no matter how many nonsensical statements made by IP government officials and judges, who know less about art than they do about science and engineering.

THE FIRST ROTATING HOUSE TURNS 50

Tuesday's New York Times carries a nice article on Belgian independent inventor Francois Massau (1905-2002), who in 1958 built one of the first rotating houses, a patentable artistic-engineering idea becoming more popular, since such houses captures/blocks more sunlight for free heating/cooling.

How physics influenced the development of surrealism

I have long argued that all, not just most, of the artistic world should be patentable. The formal arguments aside, based on the growing science and engineering of art and entertainment, I firmly believe that one of the largest, most successful engineering-design product company in the world is Disney, and I mean for all of their products. Part of my argument is based on the numerous links back and forth between art and science, links too deep and numerous for a patentability line to be drawn - i.e., scientists are artist who use numbers instead of paint or notes. One such deep link, noted in a variety of books and theses, is between physics and surrealism. A new book published by Yale University Press titled "Surrealism, Art and Modern Science" by Gavin Parkinson, furthers the documentation of this linkage. One of Parkinson's arguments is that some of the founders of surrealism, including Salvador Dali, were inspired by the poetic attempts by astrophysicist Arthur Eddington to explain Einstein's relativity to the public, leading to such works as the very famous timeclock-melting "Persistence of Memory".

Hollywood is too engineered to be patentable

Friday's Wall Street Journal has an interesting op-ed piece by JoAnn Anderson titled "No Affairs Worth Remember: who is to blame for the death of the romantic comedy?".she argues it is a combination of the sexual revolution and fading away of class tensions). One comment in the article is worth of quoting in the national media: According to Richard Schickel, a film critic for Time.com, "movies are more structured now than they're written; movies proceed more on beats now - an action sequence, a sex sequence - what gets lost in that are people trying to exchange witty dialogue." Schickel is correct - movies are more and more engineered structures made of action components with a known useful entertainment functions. And as the Patent Office has declared in an ill-defined way, functional structures are patentable. Patents in Hollywood just helps quicken the evolution of the entertainment industry into a formally engineered products industry, the convergence of Northern and Southern California. Which is why Ex Parte Lundgren must prevail - it is more consonant with the expansion of science and engineering into the entertainment industry than the science and engineering nonsense of Bilski.

A history of artistic invention

INVENT - v.t. to originate or create as a product of one's own ingenuity, experimentation or contrivance; to produce or create with the imagination Around 6000 BCE, Mesopotamian artists invent "art pottery". Pottery itself is invented earlier by Neolithic farmers in villages along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Around 2500 BCE, Egyptian chemists invent the first "synthetic color pigment", Egyptian blue, a mixture of limestone (calcium oxide), malachite (copper oxide) and quartz (silica), carefully fired to a temperature of 800 to 900 degrees Celsius. Around 1500 BCE, Egyptian craftsmen invent "glass bottles", by attaching metal rods to silica paste cores and repeatedly dipping the cores into molten glass. Around 1200 BCE, the Phoenicians invent "Tyrian purple", an expensive dye made from a Mediterranean snail. Around 610 BCE, scupltors in Greece invent "free-standing human scultpure" known as kouroi for male figures and korai for female figures, which are used as religious votive offerings. Around 570 BCE, musicians in India invent "hollowed string instruments", specifically the vina which consists of two hollow gourds connected by strings and a bamboo reed. Around 450 BCE, Greek artists invent "chiaroscuro", three dimensional painting, by using highlighting and shadowing. In 105, Chinese court official Ts'ai Lun invents "paper". His paper is cheaper to produce than papyrus or parchment. In the mid-600s, Chinese artists in the Tang Dynasty invent "porcelain", a fired mixture of kaolin (a clay) and petuntse (a feldspar). It is not until 1708 that Europeans learn the secret of making porcelain, when the German chemist Friedrich Bottger in Meissen makes porcelain from clay and ground feldspar. In 855, European musicians invent "polyphonic music", music that combines several simultaneous voice parts. In 1022, Murasaki Shikibu (a young noblewoman in Kyoto, Japan) invents the first "(romance) novel", the story Genji the Shining One, with 1200 pages in the English translation. In 1041, the Chinese printer Pi Sheng invents "movable type", for printing, made with clay blocks. 400 years later in Germany, in 1454, Johannes Gutenberg invents metal movable type. Around 1360, Germans invent "stringed keyboard instruments", starting with the clavichord and harpsichord. German wiresmiths do so by pulling wire through steel plates. The keyed monochord, the forerunner of the clavichord, dates back to the 1100s. In 1437, English composer John Dunstable invents "counterpoint" for musical compositions. In 1470, Italian printer Nicolas Jenson invents the "Roman typeface", by adapting Roman script to typography. Today's very popular Times New Roman font is descended from Jenson's. In the 1480s, Leonardo da Vinci invents the technique of "sfumato" where shadows and objects in the distance are blurred to reflect atmospheric distortions, for example, his 1485 painting Virgin of the Rocks. In 1494, Venetian printer Aldus Manutius invents the "textbook", i.e, small printed books, octavo sized (6 by 9 inches), for students. In 1501, Manutius invents the "italic" typeface, a smaller typeface based on cursive script for his new smaller books. In 1578, English writer John Lyly invents "euphuism", in his book, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit. The writing style of euphuism is characterized by extensive use of simile and illustration, balanced construction, alliteration and antithesis. In the 1610s, Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi invents "feminist art", painting women who wreak violence against men who have wronged them, for example, her 1614-1620 painting 'Judith Slaying Holofernes'. Her style is motivated by her being raped, and then tortured in a trial to get her to recant, as well as being motivated by the work of Caravaggio. In 1657, Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac invents "science fiction" with his story Les Etats et empires de la lune about a trip to moon. One might also attribute this invention to the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, who in the year 125 wrote the story 'The True History' in which he describes a trip to the moon. In 1780, Spanish ballet dancer Sebastian Cerezo invents the "bolero", danced to guitar and castanets. In 1832, German musician and silversmith Theobald Boehm invents the "modern flute", the first to use mechanical levers as keys to allow for the control of multiple tone holes. In 1847, he develops an improved version which becomes the basis of modern flutes. In 1837, the German scientist Friedrich Froebel invents structured educational entertainment for children, i.e., "kindergarten". One student of Froebel's kindergartens was Piet Mondrian, who with Theo van Doesburg, started the De Stijl style of art in 1917. In 1841, the American painter John Rand invents "collapsible metal paint tubes", replacing pig bladders in which paint tended to dry out quickly. Pierre-Auguste Renoir remarked that "without paints in tubes, there would have been no Cezanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro, nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionism". In 1872, the photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Jules-Etienne Marey use multiple cameras to prepare photographs of moving objects, "serial photomontages", the precursors to motion pictures. In 1879, American author Ella Cheeber Thayer invents the idea of "online romance", in her book Wired Love: a romance of dots and dashes, a story about two American telegraph operators who conduct a romance using telegraph messages. In the 1880s, Argentinians invent the "tango", dance and music that is a mix of African, Indian and Spanish rhythms. The first forms of the tango dance are based on the "acting out" of the relationship between prostitutes and pimps. Around 1905, Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton combine ragtime, the blues, and spirituals to invent what is to become known as "jazz". In 1909, Italian poet Filippo Thommaso Marinetti invents "Futurism", in his manifesto Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, in which he encourages artists to celebrate "a new beauty, the beauty of speed". Futurist painters combined the bright colors of Fauvism with the fractured planes of Cubism to express mechanization, movement and propulsion. In 1920, Marcel Duchamp invents "intellectual property art" in his 1920 'Fresh Widow', a wooden window on which he painted the word "copyright" for an object that typically would be patentable. In 1932, Alexander Calder invents "mobiles", where he suspends sheets of metal painted black, white and primary colors, from wires and rods. His inspiration was seeing the colored rectangles covering the walls of Mondrian's studio. His art forms are named by Marcel DuChamp. In 1949, American painter Dan Robbins invents "paint-by-number kits". Robbins was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's practice of assigning numbered sections of his paintings to apprentices. In 1966, Spanish author Julio Cortazar invents "hypertext" in his book 'Hopscotch'. His book has 155 chapters, with chapters 1 to 56 meant to be sequentially as in the normal fashion. However, at the end of each of these chapters is the number of an alternative chapter the reader can elect. For example, chapter 2 ends with a link to chapter 116, which itself has a link to chapter 3, giving the reader the choice of reading chapter 116 or not. Cortazar's book is cited by computer programmers creating the first computer-based hypertext systems. Cortazar, in his book, does not indicate if he was aware of Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic Monthly articles on his proposed Memex information system which has an associative-indexing feature, hyperlinks. In 1968, the Plato's Stepchildren episode of the television show Star Trek invents "broadcast interracial sex" when Kirk(white) kisses Uhura (black). This kiss is more controversial than the first broadcast intercultural kiss in the 1950s on the show I Love Lucy. The kiss is less entertaining than a kiss on the cheek a few years later between Archie Bunker and Sammy Davis Jr. In 2000, artist Eduardo Kac invents "transgenic animal art" when he creates the 'GFP Bunny', a transgenic rabbit whose cells are augmented with the Green Flourescent Protein gene, which causes the rabbit to glow under a black light.

Credit Card Art

Apparently, : Credit card covers wiand artwork mix very well, as Anthony David Adams and Bowen Dwelle of CreditCovers (http://creditcovers.com/) proved in 2007 on only $30,000

After working for several Fortune 500 companies as an idea man, 27-year-old Anthony David Adams was tired of making money for other people. He wanted to create an original idea for a product and company that he could profit from directly.

"I was interested in creating something that would reach a large amount of people," says Adams. After just 30 minutes of brainstorming, he had the concept: personalized "skins" for credit cards, with pop art that would make consumers take notice.

Along with CreditCovers co-founder Bowen Dwelle, 38, Adams hammered a business plan together and secured the startup costs, launching the company in January last year. "For a few hundred bucks, I got the prototype done," Adams says. "It wasn't a million-dollar investment."

Adams did the prototype art himself, but he knew that using exclusive original artwork from popular artists would be the key to success. He approached alternative, counterculture illustrators such as comic artist Jim Mahfood and skateboard artist Todd Francis to create the visual aspects of the covers. Mahfood's designs include beautiful women, while Francis created a tongue-in-cheek parody of traditional patriotic credit card designs--a sinister vulture and a logo that reads "Bloodsucking Financial Institution."

The covers were first sold in local clothing and accessories store Sukara Sterling, and word-of-mouth helped the four-person company get a foothold in specialty clothing stores and youth culture boutiques. The business' small size allows Adams and Dwelle to run it from their laptops. CreditCovers, now sold on every continent as well as on creditcovers.com, expects sales of more than $1 million this year.

With franchise deals in progress, Adams is keeping his hopes for 2008 modest.

US Government responds to the idea of patenting movies

It is enough of the creative minds out there to create ideas of patenting movies. (Read the post). (adapted from Greg Aharonian) The US Patent Office just sent out a Response to the first of four movie plot patents submitted by patent lawyer Andrew Knight. The Response is a request for more prior art from Mr. Knight, which is mostly a 103-obviousness concern (with the presumption that his specific plot is 102-novel). Since the Detailed Description has to be 112-ish enough to enable an obviousness determination in light of the prior art, with no 112-clarification questions in the Request, the initial concern of the patent examiner seems to be mostly obviousness-related. This may not mean that the PTO accepts the 101 statutory nature of movie plot patents, with a 101 rejection to appear later in the first Office Action. Still, if the PTO was looking for an easy rejection, a simple 101 First Office Actioni rejection, while not justified, would also not have been unreasonable. It may be that in light of other arguments, the PTO is thinking that maybe fighting movie and music patents, in the long run, is a losing battle (and it is) especially if the 101 arguments are based on nonsense, caselaw pathetic, arguments such as those found in last summer's MPAA submission to the PTO on "functionality" (may that submission find a first use when printed on multiple sheets of toilet paper). Another interesting note: the patent is being examiner in Art Unit 3714, which is for Education and Amusement. Somewhat appropriate, but given the general electro-technical nature of modern movies, maybe not the best match. But if the PTO is going to open to more patenting of the arts, it needs new Art Units (with examiners with degrees in the arts) and new Classification Classes (using classifiers with knowledge of the arts). What follows is the bulk of the text to the PTO's first Response. **** Application/Control Number: 10/722,473 Art Unit: 3714 DETAILED ACTION Request for Information Under 37 CFR 1.105 1. This is one of four related applications (applications numbered 10/722,473, 10/846,544, 10/861,849 and 10/869,082). In each of these applications, Applicant seeks to obtain a patent for a fictional plot or storyline. Applicant has acknowledged that in doing so, he seeks to open up an entirely new area for patent applications. It therefore behooves the Office to have all of the facts concerning the case before rendering an opinion regarding patentability. 2. Furthermore, storytelling is of immemorial antiquity. Throughout recorded history, man has told stories. No doubt storytelling antedates recorded history. One can easiy imagine our Neolithic ancestors lounging about the case spinning yarns. 3. The point is that for tens of thousands of years [greg note: except for creationinsts], people have been telling stories. Each of these stories has a plot. None of these plots will appear in the patent literature. Nor is it possible for the Examiner to search more than a miniscule portion of the prior art - certainly no meaningful search can be accomplished without further information. (not necessarily true, since there are some good plot databases on the Internet, such as IMDB - Internet Movie Database. But this statement is more an examiner's plea for the PTO to not make the mistake they did with biotech and software and bizmet patents, which is to seriously worry about prior art problems decades after the first such patents are filed.) 4. Therefore, in order for Examiner to do an adequate examination of Applicant's invention [note: does this imply that movie plots can be invented under 101?], Examiner requests the following information: a. Whether a search of the prior art was made, and if so, what was searched. b. A copy of any non-patent literature, published application, or patent (U.S. or foreign), by any of the inventors, that relates to, or has a plot/storyline similar to, the claim invention. c. A copy of any non-patent literature, published application, or patent (U.S. or foreign) that was used to draft the application. d. A copy of any non-patent literature, published application, or patent (U.S. or foreign) that was used in the invention process. e. Identification of any use of the claimed invention known to any of the inventors at the time the application was filed notwithstanding the date of the use. f. A copy of any publication of which the Applicant is aware concerning these applications. [note: if Mr. Knight signed an NDA to view one or more publications relevant to his application, is he forced to violate the NDA and submit such information to the PTO?] g. Identification of any court case that Applicant contends provides legal precedent for a grant of patent rights to the application. [note: easy to partially answer this question: EX PARTE LUNDGREN!!!!!!!!!! Mr. Knight has my permission to send a copy of my patenting movie/music article to the PTO. Also, STATE STREET - movie plots are big business!] 5. Examiner realizes that it may prove difficult to provide some of the non-patent literature that might have been used to develop the plots in question. For instance, it might not be practical to submit an entire novel or a motion picture in response hereto. In those cases, Applicant should identify the non-patent literature and provide a synopsis of the plot or other pertinent information. If possible, Applicant should provide copies of any particularly relevant passages. 6. This Requirement for Information under 37 CFR 1.105 is made without an action on the merits and has a shortened statutory period of two months for reply. Applicant may extend the time period for a reply up to six months in accordance with 37 CFR 1.136(a).

George Lucas to patent movies and music

Wall Street Journal, page R6, on 18th of June 2007 has an interview with George Lucas, the inventor of the "Star Wars" industrial complex (it is, isn't it?). Here some of his answers, with comments. Lucas: Painting, music, any kind of art form is essentially technological. The most important part is to be able to communicate emotions. That is the key to what we do.

Greg Aharonian would ask: who is more qualified to assess whether the arts are technological, comprising technical effects: a master artist like Lucas, on non-artistic, non-engineering judges and policies makers in the USPTO, UKPO, EPO, and courts? I think Lucas. Maybe some aspects are mostly "non-technological", whatever that means, but then - who cares - LUNDGREN!! Especially if one considers the growing avalanche of papers in science and engineering journals on the production of the arts. "Painting, music, any kind of art form is essentially technological." It is - Lucas is right. And technology is subject to the patent system.

Lucas: I liken digital technology to going from fresco to oil painting. If you are doing a fresco, you needed about at least two dozen people. It was done by candlelight, and it was very hard to do. The fact that they can make it consistent over a long time is a marvel. But if you use oil paints, you can go outside. You can see the light play on your subject, which completely revolutionized art [a technology revolution]. At the same time, if you don't like what you're doing, you can paint right over it and start over. You can't do that with frescoes.

With film, that's what happened. It used to be [with] film, you went out and shot it, whatever you got was what you got. Sometimes people would sit out there for days and days and days trying to get it right because they knew they only had one shot at it and they weren't gong to be able to come back.

With digital technology, we can go in and shoot it, the way would an oil painting. Then you can go back to your studio and touch it up. You can completely manipulate it. It's much more like a painting than it is like photography.

It's also more like a circuit diagram, a computer program, architectural design - you can completely manipulate it. And you can have libraries of stock components, which when functionally combined can be automatically optimized. Etc., etc., etc. - Lucas is talking about engineered production - technology, which everywhere else is protected with patents.

Q: "Jurassic Park" was shot entirely digitally? LUCAS: No, but the dinosaurs were digital. Compared to stop motion, which is what we did before, they [the digital versions] were so real looking that that was the breakthrough. A technological breakthrough. LUCAS: We could actually create real things digitally that would fool anybody. [Then] I said I want to shoot digitally. I can cut digitally. I can do the effects digitally. I want to work the whole way digitally.

That is, the whole way technologically. And new articles of manufacture are patentable.

Patenting Cubism, Art and Science

100th anniversary of invention of Cubism is upon us. First, Flicker Alley has just released a two-disc CD set for $29.95 titled "Discovering Cinema", which contains two French-made documentaries titled "Learning to Talk" and "Movies Dream in Color", which contain clips and full short films from the 1910/1920 time period, when people inventing the leap from silent black and white movies to color and sound, a classic problem in the history of technology evolution.

***

For some time, and more so in the future, many have argued that all of the arts, both methods and articles of manufacture, should be subject to the patent system, as scientists and engineers more and more apply their useful arts to the ... arts. While all artistic methods have been patentable for over 100 years (methods uncopyrightable under 17 USC 102b), it is only gradually that all artistic works are becoming patentable as the great tension between 35 USC 101's manufactures and 17 USC 102a's fixed expressions face the reality of the growing science and engineering of all forms of art. A death and an anniversary help illustrate this patenting evolution. The death is that of Lenore Tawney, who died last year in New York City at the age of 100. In 1959, the New York artist invents the genre of fiber art, by combining several techniques - plain weave, gauze weave, slit tapestry and open-warp weaving - to invent large, abstract, free-hanging sculptures from fibers. Ms. Tawney had earlier been trained as both a sculptor and a weaver, and her new genre united the worlds of arts and crafts, which had been mostly disjoint until then. A progress of the useful arts deserving of patent protection - if she had wanted to so patent - the inventor's choice. Obvious? 1959 seems a pretty late discovery date after centuries of sculpting and weaving for this to be obvious.

***

An important interplay of science and the arts is celebrated this year, the 100th anniversary of the invention of Cubism by Pablo Picasso, with his then infamous and now famous painting of five prostitutes, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, one of the classic paintings in the history of all of the arts for its role in fostering modern art. It was not until one year later in 1908, that the term "cubism" was invented, when art critic Louis Vauxcelles derisively described George Braque's 1908 painting "House at L'Ebstaque" as being composed of cubes. Early Cubists were inspired by current theoies of mathematics and physics, especially the relativity of Poincare-Lorentz-Einstein, as introduced to them by mathematician Maurice Princet. The 29 September 2007 edition of New Scientist has a nice article (page 50) on this inspiration, written by Arthur Miller, emeritus professor of the history and philosophy of science at University College London. Some years ago, an excellent thesis was written on this subject. Some quotes from the article: X-rays, discovered in 1895, bolstered Picasso's belief that what you see is not always what you get. He arrived at the same conclusion after seeing the work of primitive Iberian sculptors, who represented not what they saw but what they knew. Kind of like a good patent lawyer, who drafts patent claims not on how the inventor sees the invention as is, but how the lawyer see what the invention is. And frankly and sarcastically, some patent drawings are being allowed to be so sloppy as to be Cubist :-) The painting is laid out like a motion picture in five frames of increasing geomertization: from the Egyptian-Gauginesque figure on the left, through the middle figures (fusions of French conceptual art and primitive Iberian sculpture), to the strange angles of the figure on the right, ... Now the science. Picasso's notion of viewing an object from several perspectives at once also grew out of his fascination with four-dimensional geometry. Early in 1907, he was introduced to an insurance actuary called Maurice Princet who had a keen interest in mathematics. ... In June 1907, Princet visited Picasso's studio just when the artist had become stuck on how to proceed with Les Demoiselles. .... Princet showed Picasso a book by Esprit Jouffret about complex polyhedra in four dimensions. To illustrate his results, Jouffret had projected these objects onto the two-dimensional plane of the paper in order to show them from different perspectives in succession - like walking around an object. ... Picasso was particularly struck by [mathematician] Poincare's suggestion of how to represent an object in four dimensions by projecting a succession of primitives. With a nod to Jouffret's book (inspired in part by Poincare's popular book, "Science and Hypothesis"), Poincare wrote that geometers do this playfully all the time. Why not project multiple perspectives all at once, Picasso wondered? "Obvious to try" in light of Poincare's prior art comment - an interesting example for future KSR debates? (Let's hope the question never gets to the Supreme Court, who would butcher both the art and science.) How did Picasso proceed with his reasoning? It was while viewing an exhibition of African masks that Picasso a moment of illumination. What Princet had been trying to teach him about geometry suddenly made sense .. now he understood how to add multi-dimensional geometry to the mix. The result was the face of the squatter (middle right hand side of painting), a projection from the fourth dimension, in which front and profile views are seem simultaneously, her head swivelled 180 degrees. ... [the squatter] figure underwent the most extreme transformations in hundreds of preliminary sketches [experiments]. Cubism 101-patentable as a method? Why not? Technical? Why not? Picasso created an aesthically useful application of Poincare's science. Obvious? Probably not. After all, other artists could have read Poincare's book and thought about the artistic implications. And if the genus of Cubism is patentable, why not new styles of Cubism as species as they were invented in the years that followed by other artists? With regards to "manufactures", as such species patents use narrower and narrower independent/dependent claims, when does specific expression become patent-controllable? Sadly, on the 100th anniversary of this interaction between art and science, not only are these questions unanswered, but barely asked. A painting is a manufacture. Interestingly, another scientist/artist read and was inspired by Poincare's book (Science and Hypothesis), a scientist/artist who went on to invent great things with his avant-garde thinking in the era of other avant-garde thinkers being inspired by science. His name: Einstein. As the arts become more fully subsumed into the sciences, it ends a modern evolution that started with Da Vinci, continued through Picasso and many others, and finishes in the 21st century as scientists, engineers, neuroscientists, biologists, mathematicians and othes embed the arts into the progress of science. The Founding Fathers would rejoice that we are now making the phrase "science and useful arts" redundant, that we can drop either "useful arts" or "sciences" because they now cover the same thing - everything. And with such science of art, we can embed into consumer electronics tremendous art technology that allows the entire public to more fully express their inner art visions. A goal the Founding Fathers of America, and the Founding Fathers of modern art, would allow fully support. Imagine the artistic power of Disney in the hands of all people. Is patenting movies and music weakended in any way by Comiskey? No. All forms of art - "2D" (paintings, etc.) and "3D" (sculptures, etc.) are useful (101) articles of manufacture (101) made from compositions of matter (101) that can be described by clear, decision-free sequences of instructions for either hand or machine manufacturing. The only patentability problem then reduces to 112. Which is where all these arguments below - in the 112 realm of practical instruction, not the PTO-botched and court-botched metaphysics of 101. The following claims might be surprisingly acceptable: 1) A new biological cell. 2) The useful medical uses of the cell of claim 1. why not then 3) The useful entertainment uses of the cell of claim 1. Health and entertainment are two humongous useful methods and articles of manufacture industries. Why can't I claim applications of my new science (in this case, my new cell) in both industries, especially if entertainment uses result in more profit than the medical uses? You might ask how could a new biological cell be entertaining. Come to California. The first step to make completely redundant "sciences and useful arts" was suggested by Shakespeare - throw all of the copyright lawyers into the ocean, where they can finally realize the complete lie of 17 USC 102, as the idea of drowning merges with the expression of drowning. 17 USC 102 was, is and will always be scientific nonsense, a contempt of modern set theory, a statute completely at odds with the evolutions of the arts and sciences. With copyright lawyers gone (ok, don't kill, just throw them in jail for consumer fraud), the patent lawyers can help scientists more fully embrace the arts by bringing more and more art into the form of structured patent claims.

HILARY CLINTON AND JACK NICHOLSON

Departing from my usual analysis of technological advances and intellectual property, there is an equally captivating moment, similar to claims language used by patent boutiques and examiners. IF YOU LOVE HILARY CLINTON AND JACK NICHOLSON: For those of you who love Jack Nicholson's climatic scene in the movie "A Few Good Men" - the "You Want the Truth?" scene, and if you love Hilary Clinton, you will love the following humor written by New York Times op-ed writer David Brooks: BRIAN WILLIAMS: ... Senator Clinton, which issue would you like to obfuscate next? CLINTON: Obfuscate? Son, let me tell you the truth, because you can't handle the truth. We live in a world with enemies. We fight elections where people play rough. Who's going to do it? These two pretty boys? The left-wing nutjobs in our party who sit around watching Bill Maher? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, leads to victory. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about in Santa Monica dinner parties, you want me at that podium. You need me at that podium. And I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to the self-righteous liberals who rise and sleep under the very blanket of the victory I provide! I wish you'd just said thanks and went on your way. In any case, I don't give a damn what answers you think you're entitled to!

Jazz festivals patentable; System a vague term

In this post:

· fun at the typical European anti-software-patent nonsense

· Payment issues in the Hollywood script writers’ strike

· Was the first clickable flashy Web ad used in ..... 1981?

· Patent used to confirm paintings are not Pollock’s

· Would jazz festivals be patentable?

· Is “system” a vague term?

ANTI-SOFTWARE-PATENT NONSENSE IN EUROPE UK attorney David Musker has written a satire of anti-software-patent nonsense in Europe: “The great free bear debate, or what ales the patent system?”. Great satire. He should be appointed head of the EPO Board of Appeals - the decisions, if not more rational, will at least be more entertaining. Read here PAYMENT ISSUES IN THE HOLLYWOOD SCRIPT WRITERS’ STRIKE If you are following the script writers’ strike in Hollywood and New York, one main question is what they are actually arguing about, beyond that the writers want more money. The 1 December issue of the New York Times, page B4, has some specific examples: The [writers’ guild] leaders said, for instance that [the new contract] would pay only $250 for a year’s reuse of an hour-long program streamed on the Web, in contrast to the $20,000 currently paid for a network re-run. The producers have offered writers the same residual rate [for downloaded films and shows] they pay for DVDs, which works out to 0.36 percent of wholesale revenues, which amounts to pennies per DVD but tens of thousands of dollars on the millions of copies of even modest hits; writers are seeking a rate of 2.5 percent. [A writers’ guild leader] said guild leaders were “pleased” to know that [entertainment] companies were now offering an economic package they say will add $130 million to the $1.3 billion they already pay writers. $20,000 - multiples of $10,000 - $130 million - $1.3 billion - large amounts of money for the rights to scripts. Why? Because NEW scripts and their DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF plot PROCESSES, at these levels of money, ARE very CONCRETE, TANGIBLE and USEFUL. :-) WAS THE FIRST CLICKABLE FLASHY WEB AD USED IN ..... 1981? I recently came across a 1981 book on videotext that mentioned something called Adflashes, which seems to have anticipated flashy Web ads by over 10 years: ”The advertisement flash, or ‘adflash’, technique consists of drawing attention to an advertisement on another page by flashing characters to induce you to request that page ..... The adflash technique attempts to mix editorial and advertising in traditional newspaper fashion. However, the reader/viewer for the first time has to press a button to see advertisements, .... The efficacy of adflashes is questionable at this stage in the development of Prestel.” The first clickable Web ad was sold by GNN in 1993 to a law firm, 12 years after adflashes. Another reminder that much of the innovation in the Internet had to do with marketing, not technology - the eternal legacy of Microsoft. PATENT USED TO CONFIRM PAINTINGS ARE NOT POLLOCK’S Tne 29 November 2007 New York Times, page C16, has an article on the disputed authenticity of some recently discovered paintings attributed to Jackson Pollack. In 2002/2003, the son of artists friends of Pollock found, in a storage locker, 32 paintings supposedly done by Pollock. Art experts have been arguing since then if the paintings are authentic or not. The initial art reviewers said they were authentic, but later art experts said they weren’t. One recent study, done by Richard Newman of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, found that for two of the nine paintings Newman looked at, the two paintings contained a pigment first known to have been patented by Ciba-Geigy in 1983. Since Pollock died in 1956, the painting is either not his, or it is one of his painting that has since been altered. There are also mismatches between the paints used in the 32 paintings, and paints found in Pollock’s studio. One for the patent detectives. I remember years ago hearing about a murder case where the murder victim was bound with an unidentifiable type of tape. However there was a number on the tape that detectives realized was a patent number, and used information from the patent in their case. What next - Law and Order - Alexandria? In the first episode, a dead body is found floating in the Potomac with the sign “3(b)” scratched out on the chest by the victim. Oooooooh, sounds mysterious! WOULD JAZZ FESTIVALS, IF NOVEL TODAY, BE PATENTABLE? The November 28 edition of the New York Times, page C12, has an obituary for Elaine Lorillard, a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, which in turn has inspired jazz festivals around the world. Lorillard was a socialite married to Louis Lorillard, a descendant of Pierre Lorillard, who found the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company in 1760. Here’s the interesting question in light of the questionable illogic of KSR/Graham - if jazz festivals did not exist today (102 novelty for a 101 business method with an easy to create 112 description), would the idea be unobvious enough to be patentable under 103? And if so today, if State Street existed in 1954 (the year of the first Jazz festival), would jazz festivals have been patentable in 1954? First, the motivation for Lorillard to create the jazz festivals. From the obituary: It was a casual remark during intermission at a classical concert in Newport in 1953 that inspired the Lorillards to sponsor the first Newport Jazz Festival. Mrs. Lorillard, already a jazz fan, was seated next to John Maxon, then head of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. ”It’s too bad we can’t do something like this for jazz.”, he said. “That’s another music form that’s worth a big-time festival.” The Lorillards got in touch with George Wein, then the owner of a jazz club in Boston, and asked him to produce that first festival. A priori, let’s assume that the business method of jazz festivals meets 101 via State Street, 102 via no prior art, and 112 via a good lawyer. One simple question remains: are jazz festivals obvious? The examiner issues an Official Notice rejection with little explanation other than citing the prior art of non-jazz outdoor festivals, “obviously” combined with jazz. Indeed, outdoor music festivals have been around for centuries. The applicant comes back and argues, using KSR, “You can’t make that objection, it’s hindsight analysis. After all, its been 50 years since the invention of Jazz (Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in 1905). It’s a clear failure of others to invent. And 50 years is the length of time the Supreme Court felt comfortable with in Goodyear for something to be unobvious.” Who wins? I quote from Goodyear Tire v. Ray-O-Vac, a 1944 Supreme Court case (321 U.S. 275, 278), which KSR rests on via citation chains: ”We think this case is one of the category of inventions which, when viewed after disclosure and explanation by the applicant, seem simple and such as should have been obvious to those in the field. Yet this does not necessarily [negate] invention or patentability.” The next sentence: ”During a period of a half century .....................” The same half century between the invention of jazz and the existence of outdoor music festivals, and the invention of the outdoor jazz festival. An obvious combination (jazz + outdoor music) or not? Obvious combination or not in light of this foundation language for hindsight bias in Goodyear? And thus, patentable to not? I say patentable. There is too much judicial handwaving going on to try to give meaning to the completely vague 35 USC 103. Inventors should not be penalized for the incompetence of Congress and the courts, and their arrogance that they think they understand “obvious” - they don’t. IS “SYSTEM” A VAGUE TERM? A reader sent in the following paragraph from an Office Action, obviously a less-trained examiner: ”Claims 55-66 recite ‘system’ which is vague and indefinite since a system may be one of several different statutory classes of invention (including a method or an apparatus). Applicant must indicate on the record to what statutory class of invention the system claims belong. For the purposes of this examination these claims are considered apparatus.” How do you respond? “Our system claims are for systems that belong to the statutory class of systems.” “System” claims appear in zillions of patent - articles of manufacture (systems are comprised of multiple manufactured apparati). PTO entanglement should shut up about rules changes until it fixes its many current problems, like Peterlin making it easier for Chinese spies to steal American secrets by bugging the homes of her teleworking examiners. See a previous post on claims.

ANTIGUA CAN PIRATE AMERICAN MOVIES AND MUSIC (China/Venezuela/Dubai can, too)

ANTIGUA CAN PIRATE OVER $20 MILLION OF AMERICAN MOVIES AND MUSIC The World Trade Organization recently ruled that the United States is wrongly preventing its citizens from using foreign Internet gambling sites. Antigua and Barbados, homes to many Internet gambling ventures, claimed billions of dollars in damages, but Antigua was only awarded $21 million in damages (a calculation based on potential revenues). The interesting part is that instead of having the U.S. government write a check for the $21 million, the WTO gave Antigua permission to violate American copyright laws by illegally distributing $21 million worth of music, movies and software products. Which will generate all sorts of new lawsuits ("That Britney Spears video is worth $20 dollars - No, it's worth 2 cents"....). Of course, what one hand grants, the other threatens to take away, with the U.S. government issuing a stern warning to Antigua to not do any such authorized infringing while talks continue. A bit of advice for the U.S. government. "Might makes Right" is a great policy as long your Might is the Mightiest. Thus, you might want to imagine a world one day where the new Might, say China/Venezuela/Dubai team up and offer all American movies, music and software for free from their servers. Heck, with the oil profits they already have because of joke American energy (R&D) policies, they could probably buy up the rights and legally give it away for free.

RIAA: PERSONAL COPYING IS ILLEGAL

The RIAA has exponentially insane passion for
defending its members' copyright interests.

   "In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal
   representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing -
   contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme
   Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster - that the defendant's ripping of
   personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement.
   At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following:  'It is
   undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually
   all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and
   his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings
   into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder,
   they are no longer the authorized copies..."

The brief is at: www. ilrweb.com/

Movie Industry Admits Error in MPAA Statistics

This week's National Journal's Tech Daily news reports that: Movie Industry Admits Error On Downloading Study Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie-downloading on college students in a study. But AP reports that now the industry says its math was wrong. In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus. The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation that would force them to do so. But now the MPAA has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.

Camille Paglia, the Persona

Whenever Camille Paglia's turns out another study of the Western
Culture, she succeeds in aggravating a wide spectrum of intellectuals.

Paglia's discovery that women's reproductive powers naturally bind them to men upsets feminist intellectuals.

She says that Ayn Rand-like capitalism has freed women from bondage to men, and she makes Leftists boil with indignation.

When she associates homosexual aestheticism with some of the
most despotic systems and shows that gay men's love of all things
masculine is idolatry, she is sure to ruin their day.

She crumples the most sacred institutions of Church and State
— because it is a male attempt to smother natural female forces, the
conservatives will grumble.

Paglia's claims that the great world we call Western Culture is
nothing more than social manifestations - through literature, art,
political and religious institutions - of men's phobia of mysteries
that lurk within women's vaginas and, consequently, of women's
emotional attempts to conquer their penises. By conquering nature, men
try to counter-conquer women, sex, and everything that resists being
bottled up by intellect.

Paglia points out that the penis, unlike the vagina, is external,
hence visual; it is linear, it can be measured, compared, formulated.
The vagina, on the other hand, is ambiguous, striking in color,
impossible to quantify or architecturally simulate.

Paglia holds that nature does not conform to the laws of man, of
culture. Man sees uncontainable nature in woman, in the liquids that
flow from her genitalia during sex and menstruation, from her breasts
after childbirth, and he is threatened, even while deeply drawn to that
very object which he lacks and finds fascinating. Man turns toward the
sky, toward Greek gods, and invests his faith in transcendental logic. The
male ego is a sexual persona that replicates itself in phallic
monuments and skyscrapers, stairways to the sky, to the sun, to heaven,
in religious doctrines that designate women as the servants of men, as
shrews are to be tamed. By controlling women, men are attempting to
control nature, the ultimate representation of power. Deep down they
know that, like their own penises that shrivel into a flaccid strands
of flesh once orgasm has been achieved, their own power is fleeting.
Therefore, they fight the futile war and wreck Western Culture further
into spectacular carnage.

Paglia's language is intellectually powerful and colorful, and
together with her uncanny, perfect grasp of art history proudly
saturates the book with all things that are Paglia.