[blhack]

No. As I am not a patent attorney and do not speak legalese, I had to concern myself with the abstract descriptions only. Have you? These appear to cover what is essentially the * symbol appearing over your "notifications" icon after a timeout on facebook, or the (1) appearing on twitter if you leave it idle for long enough and a new tweet appears in your stream.

Do you think that this is unique enough an idea that others should have to pay Paul Allen's company for the rights to use it? This was something that I was going to implement on thingist. Should I not do this because I would be infringing on a legitimate (legitimate in the spirit of patent law) bit of intellectual property?

This is why patent trolling is so damaging to the community. I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea. The best I can do is read the abstract of a patent (if I can even find it) and try not to step on anybody's toes. For somebody like me, a lowly 23 year old kid making side projects in his spare time and day-dreaming about someday moving to San Francisco and getting to hang out at the cool kids table, this stuff is terrifying. Paul Allen, a multi-billionaire with a fleet of private jets and private yachts and private submarines and private multi-million-dollar-per-year-retainer lawyers might SUE ME.

SO I have a couple of choices. I can implement what seems like a completely obvious feature and risk being sued by the largest Goliath in the industry, or I can follow the written law and not.

What should I do? What would you do?

[tkeller]

That's kind of my point. The title means nothing. The abstract means almost nothing. The figures mean almost nothing. Have a look here for a brief guide to reading a patent, written for nonlawyers. http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-...

[blhack]

Do you think this sort of thing (that programmers would have to concern themselves with reading patents beyond their description) is acceptable?

[tkeller]

Do I think it's acceptable that adults are required to have some understanding of how the world around them works? Yes, I do.

[blhack]

That isn't what I asked. This has nothing to do with understanding the world around you, this has to do with understanding things that were written down on small slips of paper and filed away in boxes inside of a building in Virginia.

The slips of paper (which have now been scanned into a computer; images of them are now available on the internet) are there to mark the occasion of the first person writing that particular series of symbols down on that particular piece of paper. The idea is that if you write a certain series of symbols down on the paper, you are the only person that is to be allowed to do whatever it was that you described with the symbols. If somebody doesn't know about the occasion of you writing down the symbols and does whatever it was you described (well, in this case, predicted they might do), then you are entitled to a portion of that unlucky person's assets.

The entire thing is absurd, and if you can't see that, then I suggest you devote more time to "understanding how the world around you works".

[mkramlich]

> That isn't what I asked. This has nothing to do with understanding the world around you, this has to do with understanding things that were written down on small slips of paper and filed away in boxes inside of a building in Virginia.

Unfortunately, the Vogon Destructor Fleet was not moved by this appeal to reason.

[gfodor]

His point is that people who read the abstract to a patent and declare that it's not novel are making the people who actually read the patent and come to the same conclusion look bad.

The abstract is not the patent. It's not meant to be the patent. It's not a legally binding part of the patent. So talking about it in a way that refers to its novelty is just as useful as talking about the novelty of the typeface they used or the brand of paper they used.

[mdda]

Lawyers are just programming in a language that looks like English.

[mkramlich]

And they inhabit bodies which just look human.

(With apologies to decent attorneys everywhere. Joke too good to pass up.)

[noonespecial]

Understand that the patent is really just a pretext. If Paul freakin' Allen the billionaire wants to make trouble for you, he can and will. He probably won't. Just do your thing. If there's something you can do to get his attention on that level, you win.