The explanation for the ridiculous patents

Check out the Excrement Patents tag. There are lots more such patent applications. I guess it is extra money for the PTO to waste. Now, you are thinking, what is the harm that people file such silliness, such silliness will never issue?" Oh, you poor, naive fools: GENERAL CONCEPT: scan incoming documents into a relational database, identifying relevant fields AS TRIVIAL A CONCEPT AS IT GETS SLIGHTLY MORE SPECIFIC CONCEPT: scan incoming documents with printed dates and form identifications, and load date/form data into appropriate fields of relational database AS TRIVIAL A CONCEPT AS IT GETS SLIGHTLY MORE SPECIFIC CONCEPT: scan incoming PTO Office Actions with dates and document types ("notice of allowance", "missing documents") and load into the relational database inside a docketing system.

To patent submarine patenting:

I have critiqued silly and ridiculous patents in the previous and other posts, but here is the attempt to patent submarine patents, filed by someone who knows nothing about jurisdiction (out of pity, the PTO should return his application fee): Submarine patents U.S. Patent Application 20080221912 David James Harris, of Great Britain 1. A method of seeking patent protection for an invention, comprising: a) filing a first European Patent Application for the invention at a first date; b) filing a second European Patent Application for the invention at a second date not more than one month later; characterised in that the second European Patent Application is a divisional European Patent Application claiming the filing date of the first European patent application.

David, my boy, a patent issued in the United States is completely useless for a method performed completely outside the United States. Now, I can understand a pro se inventor filing such wackiness, but I am shocked that a US law firm is helping a foreign inventor file such excrement:

Computer system for distributing a validation instruction message U.S. Patent Application 20080201334 Justin Ryan Simpson (Legal Rep: Brooks Kushman) Claim 1: 1. A computer system for distributing a validation instruction message, the computer system being adapted to communicate with an interface, a specification database and a plurality of European agent computers, the interface including: a European patent identifier receiver adapted to receive a European patent identifier; and a country selection receiver adapted to receive a country selection, and the specification database being adapted to store a plurality of European patent specifications, wherein, when the computer system receives a European patent identifier and a country selection, the computer system is adapted to: (a) obtain, from the specification database, a European patent specification corresponding to the European patent identifier; and (b) provide the European patent specification and the validation instruction message to a European agent computer corresponding to the country selection.

Justin, more than likely, someone is going to implement this computer system outside the United States, making your U.S. patent (if it issues) completely useless. Such as implementing this system in Europe, where sadly because the EPO and courts love to betray science, engineering, semantics and law with their silly "technical effect" drooling, the European sibling of this patent application will never issue.

Application For The Method of Patenting Paralegal Process:

This is the classic attempt at dealing with the European fetish for the pompousness of using the characterized by vs. the good old American said: System for facilitating the preparation of a patent application with an automatically variable omnibus form paragraph U.S. Patent Application 20080256428 Milton; Harold W. DICKINSON WRIGHT PLLC Claim 1: A method of preparing a patent application including DESCRIPTION and CLAIMS sections by using a computer program comprising the steps of: presenting an omnibus form paragraph preceding the CLAIMS section, drafting a claim in the CLAIMS section including at least one key, storing a key explanation describing the use the key, characterized by scanning the claims for the key, automatically inserting the key explanation in the omnibus form paragraph in response to the presence of the key in the claim. 3. A method as set forth in claim 1 further including storing "characterized by" as the key. 5. A method as set forth in claim 1 further including storing "said" as the key.