Preserved Topic: Ya ever patent anything? Help Me, Help you... (Page 1 of 1)

Ok well maybe just the first part..."Help me"

Here is the deal, some shiny new business associates are in the process of applying for a patent for a method of retrieving and using personal info online.

One of the partners in the company is a patent attorney who has informed us that it is in our best interest to NOT get this patented as a 'business method' patent. We have to claim invention of a new 'system', under the system patent claim we have to detail the systems and software used. This is the core of the problem, I can roughly explain what we will be doing but I don?t see how this has anything to do with systems or software.

I will be sketchy on a few of the details so I don?t end up getting that Non-disclosure agreement put in a very uncomfortable place...(like the back seat of a Volkswagen.)

quote:

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The problem...this will be a website that acts as an intermediary between two parties....for this discussion lets say the parties are Gun Dealers and Gun Buyers.

The Gun Buyer will log in, enter their information and select their gun of choice out of a list in the process; this will be free of charge to the Gun Buyer.

Our service will be in running the background check on the Gun Buyer with the appropriate state and federal authorities and if they pass the test we send an e-mail to the Gun Dealer telling them that there is a pre-qualified Gun Buyer who has no criminal record who wants the type of gun they sell. Simple enough no?

Gun Dealers and Gun Buyers will both have areas on our website to which they can log into securely. Gun Buyers will be able to see only that they passed the check and this has been passed on to a Gun Dealer they selected. Gun Dealers will be able to access more detailed info on the Buyers Background beyond the 'pass/fail' info. We bill the Gun Dealer an obscene amount of money for accessing this data and all is right in the world

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Fairly simple, easy to patent and understand? Hell no.

Now I have the Atty asking questions like:
"What computer systems will be needed to operate your website? What kind of database? What kind of internal network? How will you connect to the Internet? How will the web page be built? "

We allready have a 'patent pending' on the core concepts but this guy wants makes/models/os's/programming languages/etc. This all seems far too specific for a web based application, our servers can be any brand processor, routers...well ok we can specifically state which router we want to use but as to the language the database will be in...PHP, MySQL, ASP, will changing it effect the patent? What if we change servers, or system configuration, will that alter the patent?
Now I can see if we were pressing out widgets with the widgetifier3000 press, then all this would make sense but I dont see how all this crap applies to the web. <sigh>

I am asking here because when I posed these same questions to the lawyer all he heard was pure technoGreek, I might as well have slipped into a discourse about the Trial of Socrates and social contract for all he knew, he doesn?t understand any of this "Tech stuff".

Now, I have to explain all this on Saturday and I really don?t see how his question have any bearing on attaining the patent of the above system...can anyone offer anything?

If you go to the Patent Office's web site (can't remember the address, but if you go to FirstGov, you should be able to find it straight away) and look at the text of some of the patents there, you can see what kind of detail they go into. Maybe you can find some other idea-based computer patents (like one for one-click purchasing I found here).

If I remember correctly, you'll want to be general enough that your patent covers all current technology and foreseeable future innovations (so you can claim any combination of database product/internet connection/etc. is covered). Maybe your patent attorney knows best, but does he understand that the idea is designed to be used across any/all combinations of network/database/internet connection/etc.?

Hope some of this helps...



Odd behavior; even temperament...

I'll check with my wife. She works at one of the largest Intellectual Property firms around.

heheh....... Mallrats ruled.... although I liked Clerks better....

oh, I'm sorry.... you were talking?


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I liked everything up until DOGMA, I still havent seen JandSBSB. Clerks is by far the best of all of them.

Been working on the project a bit and I think I am just going to break everything out for the atty and let them go with whatever they want to do, there are investors let them burn their cash. No matter what they choose to do I get paid. The impression I get is that we are just going to push this until someone buys it up so these guys allready have an exit strategy, this is not one of thos 'labor of love' projects for them.


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