As (mobile) technologists we must be aware of and recognize the potential for harm when obvious/weak-patents are granted by the Patent Office. We should be able to trust the patent system, but the system is weak.
In particular I am here writing about the USA patent 6,199,048 (PDF) titled “System and Method for Automatic Access of a Remote Computer over a Network” by NeoMedia which was part of EFF’s Patent Busting Project. I’ve written about NeoMedia back in 2006 and now I find myself once again writing about it.
As a technologist in the field of software and specifically mobile computing, I will say that the patent ‘048 has no merit. And that it is unfortunate that our PTO is weak in understanding the foundations of the web (on which ‘048 is based) and what is obvious vs. non-obvious concepts and variations. The ‘048 patent is totally based on existing Point of Sale (POS) and Web concepts (even for 1999 when it was filed). That an index or key (i.e. code) is entered by hand or scanned and is then mapped by a remote computer and related information is returned, this has existed years before in POS systems. That a URL is returned and used later on for the initiation of a connection to a particular resource on the Internet is at the heart of the Internet and the Web, even before 1999. While I do recognize the inventors’ vision, their claims are or should be invalid due to non-obviousness and prior-art.
It is my personal opinion that honoring this patent is harmful to the industry, and that the EFF while having good intentions failed by initiating a process which gave NeoMedia the opportunity to “strengthen” its position from the PTO perspective, resulting on the narrowing of some of its claims vs. invalidating the patent per-se. That said, the narrowing might turnout to be a success all on its own, as by narrowing the claims it allows for alternative paths or workarounds. At the end patents are about protecting a set of claims, which also is the weaknesses of patents.
I want to point out the fact that the PTO first granted, then invalidated, then narrowed the claims for ‘048 is proof of the PTO’s incompetence and lack of proper expertise thus failing at its duties. You will hear from lawyers that this happens all the time, but it still shows the lack of expertise by the PTO as this specific ‘048 is not rocket science to get.
The community must recognize the harm of granting obvious patents such as ‘048 which is going to be applied in strength by NeoMedia to everything related to digital-to-physical world connections, such as “mobile barcodes” and even potentially to NFC-based interactions; the latter harder to protect as the ‘048 is mainly about barcodes yet it is up to interpretation as the ‘048 does mention “RF”.
This is a serious matter and I predict the ‘048 patent is going to be a heated topic in the future.
ceo
