Patents? What are those?

[Paul Schreiber]

Well, I'll put in my 2 cents.

First, I'm NOT a patent lawyer, although I played one at Tandy for 6 years.
I myself have 9 patants, so I've been through this a time or two.

1) Rule #1: what is patented are the CLAIMS (at the end of the document).
What the pictures say, what the title is, what color underwear they have on
DOESN"T MATTER ONE IOTA.

2) Rule #2: Each claim STANDS ALONE. What that means is that if a patent has
17 claims, and 16 are tosssed out, the 1 remaining relavant claim ENFORCES
THE ENTIRE PATENT.

I have seen patents with over 100 claims. The best patent ever (IMHO) had 2
claims (more on this later).

3) Rule #3: probably 1/5 of the patents granted are additions (by the
competition) of somebody ELSE'S patent. Why? To get around the 1st one, of
course!

4) Rule #4: It is VERY IMPORTANT to look at EVERY WORD in the claims. Most
patents are NOT well written, and careful examination of the claims will
offer gaping loopholes big enough to drive a Moog 55 through.

5) Rule #5: Most people who think "patents are stupid and a waste of time"
don't have one, or have never successfully defended a product against it. I
gleefully watched AT&T/Olivetti drop $11 million dollars of laptop computers
into a crusher because the 5th District Court of Appeals decided (correctly)
they had violated one of my modem patents.

The reason Radio Shack has the only DVMs with true RMS for <$100 is that the
IC in there is a Doug Curtis/Paul Schreiber patented design. Tandy sells
over
200,000 DVMs a year with this chip in it. (No, I don't get 1 dime from
it!!). Actually, there are 4 patents on that chip!

Lastly, Rule #6: probably 20% of all GRANTED patents NEVER should have even
been granted in the first place, and under attack would probably be tossed
out.

Mainly, what tosses out a patent is PRIOR ART: somebody OFFERED FOR SALE the
same thing. I had this yo-yo come into Tandy insisting that he "invented all
telephones with a transistor in them...." when what the claims said was a
very (albeit quite clever) specific way the telephone was powered from the
phone line. This guy would NOT go away. We spent over $500,000 in legal fees
(he wanted $13 million) until he finally stopped the calls. This is a VERY
COMMON pactice.

What also happens is that since US patents are for 17 years, and

a) technology moves SO FAST and
b) people have short memories

it is VERY COMMON for a 12-14yrs old patent no one's ever heard of suddenly
gets shoved under your nose. You read it and think: "this guy invented
switching power supplies???" and it turns out by God he did!!!

The best patent ever wrtiten is only 2 pages long, and has 2 claims.
Paraphrasing, this is what is claimed:

"..visiual indicating means which changes visual states in a periodic
fashion to indicate the passage of time."

Or....the blinking colon in your watch!!! This little patent (from some
"inventor") got OVER $100 MILLION into his bank account. Absolutely true.

Another patent that got EVERYONE off guard (and over $10 million) was this:

"...momentary visual indication means to indicate proper display operation,
removed after a time period when power has been applied.."

Or...if I turn on something with a display, and all the segments light up
for 1/2 a second and then it goes back to normal (hmmm...like a DVM!!!),
that's
patented! You talk about PANIC when that guy walked into Tandy! Holy S**T!!
What's funny is that GM introduced the new 'Vette with the color LCD display
that did this that same year. Opppssss!

I can cite 100s of these (another favorite: Texas Instruments has the patent
for pressing 1 button to dial a stored phone number).

Buy a Radio Shack 22-174. Doug & I thank you!

Paul Schreiber
Synthesis Technology
www.synthtech.com