The $360 Million-Dollar Door Ding

Obviously, I couldn't begin to put a per-share value on the suit without some idea as to the value of the suit itself. To do that, I needed to know more about the cars with pirated WordLogic software. A lesser professional would have gone to the web, not me. Driven by the dedicated, relentless Southern California work ethic so closely associated with sleepy beach towns, I left work a little early (10 a.m.) to visit Mercedes-Benz of Laguna Niguel (the eleventh largest M-B dealer in the world) because I didn't want to chance a slow Internet connection. To save time, I also chose an uber-fast car to test drive: A race-inspired, "Silver Arrow"-colored 2009 AMG SL63. With a 6.2 liter, 525 HP V-8 motor tied to a seven-speed gear box, it can do zero to 60 in 4.2 seconds, has a top speed of 155 MPH (limited by an electronic "governor"), and is therefore worth every penny of its $152,665 price tag. That sounds like a large sum of money until you realize that M-B of Laguna Niguel sports a lavish "Customer Comfort" area with sumptuous leather chairs to sit in while you rest your wallet and sip complimentary Starbucks coffee as they hand wash your car ... any time you want ... free. So, it all works out. Right? Right! Opulent dealership set-ups such as this - coupled with seriously flawed logic patterns of car guys such as myself - enabled Mercedes-Benz to sell 1,034,700 automobiles in the first 11 months of 2008. December will be reported shortly and raise the figure a bit, but let's just say they are doing one million cars annually. Of those, Andre, my salesman, said about one-third are of the S-Class variety (which are the models with the COMMAND System as standard equipment), suggesting that over 300,000 M-B cars leave showrooms each year with WordLogic technology on board. That was the first number I needed to ascribe a value to the suit. Furthermore, in Mercedes cars that don't include it, the package with the COMMAND system option costs $2,950 additional - that being the second figure I needed. Until Tuesday morning (when the Company issued a news release covering this topic), I guesstimated that at least $200 of that $2,950 could/would/should have been paid in software licensing fees to WordLogic Corporation. Therefore, based on 300,000 Mercedes models sold annually with WordLogic software on board, and with that software worth at least $200, the infringement deprived WordLogic of something like $60 million each year. It was explained to me that, by law, the suit is allowed to go back two years, so that's $120 million in damages right there. However, since M-B knowingly ignored the patent and built COMMAND-equipped cars anyway, WordLogic is entitled to sue for three times that amount. That, according to my math is a $360 million "door ding" against Mercedes - and trust me, I'm good at math. Apparently, I'm a fairly good guesser, too: In the Tuesday news release I just alluded to, the Company said it is seeking "8.6 percent in royalties on the sales of the infringing product that sells for approximately $3,000 to $5,000 per car," and that "treble damages" apply to those models sold "in 2007, 2008, and 2009." Comparatively then, WordLogic's in-house formula equates to low-end damages of about $464.4 million. We'll play it conservative though and use my $360 million number as we compare it to the Company's capital structure. WordLogic has just over 30 million shares outstanding, meaning the suit, on a per-share basis, could deliver shareholders approximately $12 per share in cash. The stock is presently priced under a buck. Now it's your turn to do the math. Remember: Mercedes-Benz is two names, but it's just one company and this is just one patent infringement suit. Truth is, this patent is being blatantly infringed on daily - all over the world! How many devices incorporate predictive text messaging? How many other multi-billion-dollar corporate machines are running on this software? What might be the total amount of damages? Your guess is as good as mine, and I'm sure the aggregate numbers are probably far too large for any of us to believe.

A truly scientific coffee table

This is patently obvious, but artistically unique: a periodic table of elements. Previously, I featured a V-8 engine coffee table, and now this is a table for all the scientists and chemists who can't live a minute without being too far from chemicals, though they are well aware of the triglyceride emulsifiers and tannins in their coffee. Don't you love the translucent icons?

This IBM patent clogs sewers:

One rumored candidate to be the next Director of the Patent and Trademark Office is David Kappos, one of the head patent lawyers at IBM. Given IBM's many abuses of the patent system and patent policy over the past few decades, I think it is inappropriate, nay, wrong, for anyone from IBM to be head of the PTO. Might as well as make Bernie Madoff head of the SEC as part of his upcoming jail-time work-release program. IBM patent lawyers for too long have abused the patent system. Case in point. Last week IBM was issued its usual batch of patents, many of which are crap - crappy patents whose sole value is to clog the PTO's patent examination pipelines to the detriment of everyone else. A patent application policy actively embraced by David Kappos. If I was an IBM investor, I would applaud David for doing his best to help IBM. In fact, sometimes I recommend people to buy IBM stock because the company will do anything to maintain its market value. Kudos to David for his efforts in this regard. But the reward for abusing the patent system for the benefit of IBM should be a gold watch at retirement - and should not be the reward of being appointed head of the PTO. One of the many crappy patents issued last week is the one below, an expert system at a server that analyzes incoming messages (such as news), checks lists to see which subscribers want to be alerted to such messages, and sends the message to such subscribers. That is, methods Marimba used (and patented) to push software in 1996, IBM decides six years later to patent as methods to push other stuff. As usual, the patent cites an inadequate amount of non-patent prior art, based on IBM's inadequate IDS and the examiner's lack of experience in searching the non-patent prior art. Further, it looks like this patent, crappy as it is, was a First Office Action issuance - usually a good indicator of crap. After the application was submitted, an amendment was submitted, maybe with a bit of talking with the examiner, and then the patent was allowed to issue. Don't you all wish you had such clout with the PTO to get such crap issued? Part of the problem is that the claim language is IBM's usual excessively wordy, baffle-them-with-bull's shirt, confusing verbiage - again, another IBM patent policy actively supported by Kappos. Let's look at the abstract, which is almost easy to understand, and then claim 1, which gives me a headache to read:

United States Patent 7,487,550 Methods, apparatus and computer programs for processing alerts and auditing in a publish/subscribe system Abstract A message broker receives a published message from a publisher program. Responsive to identification of one or more subscriber programs subscribing to messages of the type of the received message, the broker forwards the received message to the one or more subscriber programs. Matcher components compares the received message with stored subscriptions to identify subscriber programs, generates an alert when an alert condition is satisfied, and compares the generated alert with stored subscriptions to identify subscriber programs subscribing to the alert. The alert is then forwarded to the subscriber program subscribing to the alert.

The patent only cites five or six prior patents, inadequate, grossly inadequate, especially in light of a Sun Microsystems patent whose title kills IBM's patent outright:

United States Patent 5,761,662 Dasan, June 2, 1998 Personalized information retrieval using user-defined profile

Now, for those of you who know anything about expert system database alert systems (i.e., a database with alert triggers, a decades old field), look at the crappy non-patent prior art considered:

Other References "Design of a General Clinical Notification System Based on the Publish-Subscribe Paradigm", A conference of the American Medical Informatics Association. By, A. Geissbuhler, M.D., W. W. Stead, M.D., Oct. 25, 1997, pp. 126-130, XP002179981. cited by other . "Exploiting an Event-Based Infrastructure to Develop Complex Distributed Systems", Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference in Kyoto, Japan Apr. 19-25, 1998, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, IEEE Comput.Soc, US, Apr. 19, 1998, pp. 261-270. cited by other . Icc.net Internet Commerce Corporation on website ICC.net/Services/Infosafe and ICC.net/Services/Infosafe/

Technology, 2001. cited by other . Arnold et al, "Discourse with Disposable Computers: How and Why You Will Talk to Your Tomatoes", USENIX Proceedings of the Embedded Systems Workshop, Mar. 29-31, 1999. cited by other.

Not one article from the any ACM publications and conferences on database systems, alert systems, message analysis systems, push, or expert systems, and only one article from the IEEE. Grossly inadequate, and IBM knows it. To cite nothing from SIGMOD or DEXA makes this patent crap. So maybe IBM should spend less time doing searches against other companies as part of its scam public patent review project, and more time doing searches of its own crap. Excrement, as in the language of claim 1 (the only claim as well, probably too long to not be workaroundable and thus unenforceable):

The invention claimed is: 1. A data processing apparatus for providing a publish/subscribe message dissemination service on behalf of publisher and subscriber programs comprising: means for receiving a published message from a publisher program; means, responsive to identification of one or more message subscriber programs subscribing to messages of the type of the received message, for forwarding the received message to the one or more message subscriber programs; and one or more matcher components for: comparing the received message with stored message subscriptions to identify the one or more message subscriber programs; generating an alert when an alert condition is satisfied; and comparing the generated alert with stored alert subscriptions to identify one or more subscriber programs subscribing to the alert; and means for forwarding the alert to the one or more subscriber programs subscribing to the alert, wherein the message and alert subscriptions are stored in data storage in association with message topic information, the one or more matcher components including means for retrieving stored subscription information by reference to message topic information of a received message, rules procedures for generating and determining required dissemination of alerts are stored in association with the message topic information,

NOTE: so far, this claim is nothing more than the many push systems popularized in the Internet era - no innovation here. And as a good example to deceive the Patent Office, the word "push" doesn't appear in the patent, depriving the examiner the opportunity to think about PUSH and search for Marimba's patents.

wherein the one or more matcher components are adapted to identify a relevant rules procedure by reference to the message topic information and to forward to the identified rules procedure: a message subscription list; a list of authorized recipients; and an identification of one or more subscribers for alerts; thereby to enable generation and determination of required dissemination of an alert; the one or more matcher components includes: means for performing an authorization check to identify a subset of the identified one or more message subscriber programs which subset of programs is authorized to receive the message; and means for generating an alert when the authorization check identifies an unauthorized message subscriber.

NOTE: actually, even this far, this claim is nothing more than the many push systems popularized in the Internet era - no innovation here. This patent is nothing more than an IBM ploy to clog the patent system with a patent application embodying little to no innovation - a tactic IBM has used for thousands and thousands of patent applications. A tactic warmly embraced by David Kappos. Who should not be appointed next Director of the PTO.