I mean, it ought to have been discarded as obvious in any case, but maybe sticking this in the PTO's face would help. Do you have any evidence?

The intermediate format was to send a TIFF file to an e-mail server ... this sure sounds a lot like the patents being foisted upon small businesses today. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of either device, but I've got a picture of me hiking with my kids in one of these company's t-shirts. More to come!

I guess lawyers don't read the terms and conditions when they use websites, either.

I've certainly had to get "work-for-hire" verbiage stricken from client contracts, but I'd love to be wrong about that.

As far as I'm aware though, except for that, copyright is granted to the "artist" who created the work[1].

[1] With one famous exception: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110713/11244515079/can-we...

Since his assertion has no basis in copyright law either: (a) he has an honest confusion regarding how that area of the law works or (b) he was relying on the reporter's assumed ignorance of the law to engage in some good old fashioned baseless legal intimidation in order to get his way. But that's not something a patent troll would do.

ugh.

Sorry to be slightly off-topic here, but it grinds my gears when using a made up quote by someone famous who didn't say actually it (and never likely did historically) doesn't add any real value to a conversation.

-JFK

I don't think this is any less unethical that what the patent trolls are doing, but at least it may force the issue to come to a head.

Does anyone know how this applies to online companies that are registered and operated outside of the US, but still make a portion of sales from US customers?

I'd assume many startups are susceptible to infringing on patented ideas that were never implemented; and leave them vulnerable to this sort of stupidity.

That's a good conspiracy theory :)

Or maybe it's the way he justifies (rationalizes?) his actions to himself.

That, and reporting bias.

Reporting bias can be effectively eliminated by collecting your data from multiple sources, i.e. visiting different web pages. Of course, you could then introduce your own bias by choosing which sites to visit, but you can at least try to be consciously aware of this and avoid it as much as possible.

Not when there is a systematic "newsworthiness bias" that all of the suffer from. People just doing their job never gets reported. People doing their job exceptionally well gets rarerly reported, but horror stories of incompetence and corruption are certain to make the headlines.

Other than a repeated reference to an OCR wrapper, I don't see how this has to do with email, printing or using a single button to send. In fact, it seems like Mr. Klien is asserting that he has discovered middleware. In 1998.

Is there some other non-referenced case law that narrows the scope of this patent to the above printer scenario?

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/09/pat...

Unless I was running a massive company I would ignore this. It would be nowhere near lucrative enough for them to risk the case.

Do not underestimate Bryan. He's a brilliant and highly competent lawyer, a seasoned litigator, and a very focused individual. He knows the tech industry from the inside; in one incarnation, he was general counsel at Micron Technology. IIRC correctly, after that he was a partner in Brobeck's Austin office before that firm imploded. Personally Bryan is indeed a nice guy, but by no stretch of the imagination is he a pushover.

With a weak patent you do not want a single victim with deep enough pockets to fight it. You want a large number who will pay you something to go away and stop ruining their lives.

"It'd be a shame if something happened to your little business..."

"Second: Farney said that his client is going after scanner users, not to avoid doing battle with big scanner makers like HP and Canon but because there’s no other use for the patents. Because of the way the patents are written, MPHJ actually can’t go after scanner manufacturers. Only the whole “system”—putting the scanner together with a network—infringes.

“The devices can be used in plenty of non-infringing ways," Farney explained. "Several of the major manufacturers have talked to us about these patents, and they agree with us. The product they sell is not infringing. It’s putting the whole system together. If you have an office scanner that scans with one button, is hooked up to a network, and can send e-mail—you infringe.""

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of patents, but I would've thought they protected the interests of the inventor against competition by other inventors rather than users of an invented product?

"or doing something completely obvious."

This is also discussed in the article. Many things that many people (especially engineers) would consider 'obvious' or 'simple' really aren't under patent law (again, this mans claims), and in some cases, things that are 'obvious' now weren't when the invention was done. Which, to some degree, is true.

"Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent of patents, but I would've thought they protected the interests of the inventor against competition by other inventors rather than users of an invented product?"

No, the point is to protect inventors by giving them a way to control under what circumstances (i.e., in most cases, after how much money has been paid) their invention can be used. Patents aren't about preventing other from inventing the same thing again, it's about having a monopoly on using/commercializing the invention.

What might happen? Would this decrease patent hoarding and trolling? Would options to buy make waiting periods ineffective?

Also, consider when StartupX is bought by BigCo., and BigCo wants to simply keep the company running exactly as it was. Clearly someone else is controlling the patents than the original owner of the company.

Your second point cuts to the heart of the issue, should patents be treated as traditional assets? One possibility: Once you sell your patent, it loses legal protection and becomes merely a trade secret.

Training employees to do this would cost less then $1000/employer that the patent holder is asking.

"If you said you hooked it up to the Internet, and in one button, you can scan and e-mail directly out—yes, you have violated the patent that we own."

But seriously, these people should be disbarred.