Allied Security Trust comes out with the latest patent policy scam

Newswires report that a group of big high tech companies have combined some of their monies to buy up patents that "tr-lls" might assert against them. Yet another patent policy scam to avoid addressing the real issue - incompetent PTO management that allows too many crappy patents to issue. Some of the companies in the combination, the Allied Security Trust, include Verizon, Google, Cisco, Ericsson, HP and others. Companies will have to pay $250,000 to join, and ante up $5,000,000 for an escrow account to be available to buy up patents. Why is this a complete joke? First, this anti-tr-ll scam has as a chief executive office Brian Hinman, former VP of IP for the biggest and first patent tr-ll, IBM. Since IBM created most of the tr-ll tactics being used, I suppose Himan is in a good position to recognize and fight such tactics. Let's face it folks - this whole tr-ll scare is the patent world version of swiftboating, drenched in tons of hypocrisy spewed by tr-lls themselves. I mean, if Google wants to help the patent system a bit, it will immediately stop wasting the time of the Patent Office, drop all appeals related to its 1-click patent, and dedicated the patent application to the public. Otherwise, Google should shut the frk up about obnoxious players in the patent world. Second, this defensive tactical move is probably too late, given that the big tr-lls bought up a lot of patents before anti-tr-llism became popular, and that the tr-ll companies bought a lot of the higher hanging fruit. I ask, what's left to be bought that is obnoxiouslly assertable? Companies like Acacia have had enough time and enough money to sweep through the issued patents to find crap to assert. Anything left can be laughed out of court. Third, and most importantly, the only legitimate complaint is when people assert crappy patents that should have never issued in the first place. If you have a really good patent, one searched well, I say sue everyone you can find. If these companies, and others, didn't know about your technology, that's their fault for not taking the patent system seriously, which includes monitoring patents in your field of technology. The high tech companies are the biggest bunch of whining crybagies I know of in the patent world, as compared to the pharma companies, which for decades have had mature patent monitoring programs. The high-tech industry, thinking itself above the mechanics of the patent system, refuse to do any of this, and then whine when hit by a crappy patent. So the real problem is people wrongly and unethically asserting crappy patents. But what are the companies in this Allied Security Trust, or the Coalition for Patent Fairness, doing to help fight the issuance of crappy patents? Are they: - submitting less of their own crappy patent applications to the PTO (hey Google, drop your 1-click appeals), so the PTO has a lesser workload and more time to issue higher quality patents? NO - organizing prior art in their respective fields of technology, to use themselves, plus make available to the Patent Office, to help lessen the level of crap being issued by the PTO? NO - are they using the political clout to get Congress to investigate and clean up incompetence and corruption in PTO management? NO - are they pooling their monies together to develop software tools to analyze patents that they can use themselves and donate to the PTO to help lessen the level of crap being issued? NO - are they using their clout to fight the unconstitutionality and excessive costs of Markman hearings - (a specification is not fully enabled under 112 if you need a friggin claims construction done after the defendant has been sued)? NO So much like the Software Patent Institute, the Public Patent Peer review initiative, various PTO-business partnerships, the Public Patent Advisory Committee - this new Allied Security Trust is another patent policy scam that will do nothing to change things and once again deflect attention and resources from the real problems plaguing the patent system.

Specification stylistics

For example, in the technical description,. i.e., the specification section of the appication, the discussion of the drawings must be introduced by this legalistic sentence:

...the accompanying drawing in which like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the figures of the drawing

The language must be definite, the following are too nebulous to enable any claims that follow the section:

would... may... it ...It is then possible... can...

Pronouns must be decidedly avoided: it, them

The claims section is so serious that pronouns are never used therein.

The present tense is the king:

“surface to be free of at least…” should be “enabling at least … to be removed”

“can be” should be “is”

“capability” is rewritten as “structural characteristic”

“with” is too amaturish, weak, nebulously fuzzy (in parallel, or including, internal to?) the thought idea related as “containing”

Thus: no such verbiage as would, could, may, possible, can, will

No pronouns it, its, them, this

"It is" always means something that can be expressed more clearly.

Rewriting the 2nd amendment as a patent claim

The Supreme Court is once again contemplating the issue of gun control laws. An interesting question is what position the patent community should take, since the issue is one of the legal construction of the Second Amendment, and patent claim drafting is an ongoing process of legal construction. A letter to the New York Times last January or December offers an interesting observation. Let's think of constitutional amendments as social business methods. How do we write a patent claim equivalent to some form of the 2nd Amendment? Suppose we want to patent extremely broad ownership of guns by the public to promote public safety. We would write a claim as broadly as possible: 1. A method of increasing security of a state by allowing any person to keep and bear at least one arm. Everyone would be allowed to own at least one gun, though as infringers they would have to pay a royalty to do so. The claim has a broad scope and minimalist language (remember each word in the body of a claim is potentially limiting of scope). Such a claim corresponds to the following amendment language: 2nd Amendment': The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Much like the claim, it is a nice minimalist use of language to state a broad concept (everyone can own at least one gun), and the Founding Fathers were masters at saying as much as possible with as few words as possible (too minimal, if you were a woman or black). If the Founding Fathers wanted unlimited gun ownership, this language above is all you need, either as a patent claim or constitutional amendment. But as Times letter writer Regan McCarthy points out, the Founding Fathers could have used this minimalist language, but didn't. The actual Second Amendment has additional, limiting language: 2nd Amendment: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. which I argue corresponds to the following patent claim: 1. A method of increasing security of a state by allowing any person IN A WELL REGULATED MILITIA to keep and bear at least one arm. or 1. A method of increasing security of a state by allowing any person to keep and bear at least one arm, said person IN A WELL REGULATED MILITIA. or 1. A method of increasing security of a state with A WELL REGULATED MILITIA by allowing any person IN SAID MILITIA to keep and bear at least one arm. So the question is how do you write the Second Amendment as a patent claim, and once you do so, does the scope of the claim allow people not in militias to keep and bear arms? Much like the Times letter writer argues, I argue that the intent of the Founding Fathers was for state gun control via militia. If you try: 1. A method of increasing security of a state with A WELL REGULATED MILITIA by allowing any person to keep and bear at least one arm. as a patent claim, the MILITIA phrase is extraneous, since it doesn't connect to the claim body unless the "any person" is in the militia. Any other claim constructions to represent this Second Amendment language?