PTO Requests Working Model of Warp Drive 277
aborchers writes "According to Patently-O: Patent Law Blog, the PTO has requested a working model of a Warp Drive for which a patent was recently applied. From the article, "Among other rejections, the Examiner has asserted a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 for lack of utility -- finding that the invention is inoperable." At least one examiner is paying attention!"
Wont they be suprised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wont they be suprised... (Score:5, Funny)
Then I wouldn't be surprised if the inventor begins with "Greetings, hoomans!"
Re:Wont they be suprised... (Score:2)
At the Bottom of the Gravity Well (Score:2)
Just speculating on the availability of appropriate test facilities, to prove that the device actually works. Good try on the part of the alledged inventor.
Re:At the Bottom of the Gravity Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it a cobbling together of parts in an imagined configuration, borrowed for a well known fictional source, without having actually invented any of the needed sub components, except for the usual nuts, bolts, screws, etc. But not really. There is not real confusion, as the concerns from fiction might be based in actual possible Very Bad Side Effects(tm), among other things.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Of course, Arthur C Clarke is credited with the invention of the Communications Satellite, based on a detailed technical destricption he wrote in a magazine, back in 1947. (If I recall correctly)
Re:Wont they be suprised... (Score:2, Funny)
or if the PTO dusts off some shelf and discovers this patent was actually granted to Worsley and Twist back in 1836 as well.
Re:Wont they be suprised... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wont they be suprised... (Score:3)
I probably just got trolled, and someone is probably laughing his ass off at my expen
About darn time they paid attention. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:About darn time they paid attention. (Score:2, Funny)
MacGyver built his already on episode 842, out of monkey blood and a half sprig of mint!
Re:About darn time they paid attention. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:About darn time they paid attention. (Score:2)
Re:About darn time they paid attention. (Score:5, Funny)
I have a working model. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have a working model. (Score:2, Funny)
I believe you meant to say "I HAD a working model...". Because if you HAVE a working model it can't be stranded in a different galaxy, but the one you had, before it became stranded......
Re:I have a working model. (Score:2)
An example of a good patent (Score:3, Funny)
Actually let them patent it now (Score:5, Insightful)
Essay: A Violent Protest Against Patents [slashdot.org]
Re:Actually let them patent it now (Score:5, Interesting)
The warp drive will not be used down on earth, and will probably not even be constructed planetside (and if it is, it is more likely to be built in Chana than the US anyways), so it will be outside the USPTOs jurisdiction.
Re:Actually let them patent it now (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Actually let them patent it now (Score:2)
Re:Actually let them patent it now (Score:2)
Re:Actually let them patent it now (Score:2)
You're probably right, but It'd sure be something to get sued in Court over a warp drive patnet.
My rights online (Score:4, Funny)
So this is how he makes his $$$ (Score:5, Funny)
Legal Action (Score:5, Funny)
Hello Earthlings,
I'd like to inform you, that ony of my many clients has in posession the MWOCPT titles to all kinds of warp drives. I think that if you where to see the patent, you'd understand we've got everything covered. Obviously, you (Earth) haven't developed gravity control yet... so, because of evolutionary "process" clauses in the Federation, we can't show you the patent. Besides... it's a 18.65TB PDF.
It's quite obvious that all your human efforts will fail, until you attaint a little bit of element 115. I'll leave you with that. Just so you know, the Orion Confederation doesn't take lightly to violations of Intellectual Property.
Thank you very much for your attention, and I hope this doesn't repeat itself,
-Stitch
Presently @ MilkyWay.Sol.3 (aka, Planet Earth)
BTW: If you want to survive the next galactical gravity fabric quake, we suggest you hurry up your nanotechnology advances...
Re:Legal Action (Score:5, Funny)
Dumb question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dumb question (Score:2)
So, the goal would be to get some capital and within a few years, bring it to market. (Some people have said they last 20 years... I doubt it would take 20 years to bring a product to market... really) Then you make your fortune before the patent expires. By the time it ex
Re:Dumb question (Score:2)
Re:Dumb question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dumb question (Score:2)
Re:Dumb question (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I was thinking this guy's warp drive, for one.
Re:Dumb question (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dumb question (Score:5, Informative)
Easy Answer (Score:2)
e.g. a warp drive becomes possible in say 2046 - and the patent on the warp drive expired in 2023 because it was granted in 2006.
Voila!
Re:Dumb question (Score:2)
Re:Dumb question (Score:2)
Proposal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Proposal (Score:4, Funny)
Add your punchline here. (Score:2, Funny)
1. It should be no problem building a working prototype of this thing -- once they find a supply of dilithium crystals.
2. Cap'n, she canna work in her current condition. Impulse is the best I can give ya!
3. ?time warp engines these mean you do What
Take it away ...
Re:Add your punchline here. (Score:2)
Re:Add your punchline here. (Score:2)
Re:Add your punchline here. (Score:3, Funny)
Some common sense in the patent office? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that normally, the patent clercs simply shake their heads, say "don't understand it, but since they wanna patent it, it's prolly working" and pass it. In this case, though, at least "warp drives" are so well known to be science fiction and far from a working model, that it rang someone's alarm bell.
I wonder, though, if a quantum singularty drive would have been shot down as well. It's not really common knowledge anymore that those don't work (yet) either. Worse yet, they won't be used in Federation starships.
I really sometimes wonder what kind of approval course a patent has to go before becoming patent. Does anyone who has a clue take a look at all?
Re:Some common sense in the patent office? (Score:2)
I'm submitting one for a molecular transporter....
Re:Some common sense in the patent office? (Score:2)
The "inventor", on the other hand, apparently passed some brain before applying for a patent.
Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Solution (Score:2)
Reading the patent.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Reading the patent.. (Score:2)
I like the part in the technical example (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2)
Otherwise the surface will get to insane speeds..
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2)
At 1.5 million RPM this means a molecule on the surface of the sphere would be travelling something like 4.7 million meters/second.
Google kindly provided 299 792 458 m / s as the speed of light which means to me that the molecules of the sphere are already traveling faster
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2, Informative)
Google kindly provided 299 792 458 m / s as the speed of light which means to me that the molecules of the sphere are already traveling faster than light.
4.7 million is more than 299 million?
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2)
You misspelled "minute".
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2)
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2)
It might travel 187 thousand miles in one second, but when one second maps to five years... its not even coming close to c.
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:2)
That said, 1.5M rpm for 1m diameter gives a tangential velocity of ~4,712 km/min = 282,74 km/s which is about 94.3% of c; that's a mass enhancement factor of about 3 for the fastest-moving part. Still, the total required energy even according to plain classical mechanics is of the order of 10^20 Joules. Good luck to whoever is trying for the working prototype
I think one of us has a broken calculator (Score:2)
How did you get that?
If I did my math right, 1,500,000 revolutions per minute X 3.14159264 equals 4712388.96 meters per minute, which equals 78539.816 meters per second, which equals 78.539816 kilometers per second.
Re:I like the part in the technical example (Score:4, Funny)
The only thing that could possibly power it is
I bet that (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I bet that (Score:2)
Re:I bet that (Score:2)
You posted that in jest, and got moderated as funny, but that isn't such a stretch. If you go to Groklaw and read the reports by people who were at the patent reform conference, you'll see that at least one patent examiner present at the meeting mentioned Slashdot as a good source of prior art information.
Slashdot ran a previous story on the warp drive patent application, so it's not unthinkable that the application was reviewed by a Slashdot reading patent examiner.
PTO waking up or is NASA greedy?? (Score:2)
On the otherhand, I don't believe for s second that this guy really has invented a WORKING FTL drive.
Re:PTO waking up or is NASA greedy?? (Score:2)
Even if presented with a working model... (Score:2, Funny)
-- Scott
have the rules changed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents on "ideas" (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Show no prior art
2. Has intent to use said patent.
Patents are meant to protect a inventory from LOSS due to stealing of a persons idea. They where never meant as a profit center.
I should not be able to think up and idea and then just sit on it until someone else decideds to try and use it.. Wait even longer then sue them for using it once they are worth money.
It's not stealing (Score:2)
<pedantic>
It's not "stealing" because when you copy someone else's idea, you do not take that idea away from them. They still have the idea after you have copied it.
</pedantic>
Re:It's not stealing (Score:2)
Re:It's not stealing (Score:2)
But then I would guess your someone who copies music from the internet and other people because its not "stealing" and therefore with your logic your not hurting anyone.
A persons choice to download instead of purchase and support the artist, and there family is not "stealing", your just maki
First CPU... (Score:2)
Whoaaaa (Score:2, Funny)
That's actually bad news (Score:3, Insightful)
This just means ... (Score:2)
They'll probably submit it a few more times, with different titles and slightly different wording, until they hit a patent examiner who's not paying attention. Then they'll withdraw the others.
Or maybe they won't withdraw them. If I have N slightly differently-worded patents on the same thing, can I sue someone N times for violating all of them, and collect N x damages?
IANAPL, but it'd be nice to know such things, to get an idea of just how absurd the patent law t
Stark contrast.... (Score:3, Informative)
The difference? I can't really determine the exact reasons, not being privy to the cirumstances surrounding the prosecution of each application, but one fact is that each was examined by a different examiner. I can speculate on the disparity of treatment, however. It is another fallout from PTO management's 30+ years of emphasis on meeting production and timeliness goals over substantive quality aspects of examination, quality meaning finding and applying relevant prior art and passing judgement on issues such as operability (I don't include aspects such as including software and business methods as patentable subject matter or creating a high standard of proof to support obviousness rejections, since these have been imposed externally by the courts).
The PTO's response to issues of quality has been to establish an entire subbeaurocrocy dedicated to "Quality Review", which has all the pitfalls of centralizing such essential values outside of the main operation. The main failure is how one expects a small core of people, no matter how expert they are in the examination process, to possess the same depth of knowledge as even a mediocre examiner in a give art. PTO management then compounds this with a punitive aspect; if QR "kicks back" an application the examiner will get charged with an error, yet the QR reviewer doesn't have the same kind of production pressure as the working examiner to grind out cases; telling someone "you should have spent more time searching this case" isn't particularly helpful if it doesn't explain how one chooses the other applications from which this time should have been taken.
The negative publicity concerning examination quality has, finally, reached the attention of PTO's upper level management, but, it is an open question if they will recognize that just heaping more "review" on the process will not actually result in an improvment, but that a fundamental return to the ethic of a genuine quality examination is the way to go.
no, wrong point of view... (Score:2)
It could go badly (Score:2)
just at that moment some Vulcans will come to earth and we will enter a new era of utopian communism .
Thus any point the patent had will be worthless , they simply can not win.
Booo what a pity! (Score:2)
Re:Booo what a pity! (Score:2)
No way, it has to be patented already! (Score:2)
PatentDot ??? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a Slashdot for Patents???? Given the knowledge and interest I've seen displayed here, and the fact that the SlashCode is available, I really think this could work!
Features: Here's a rough, back of the envelope, sketch of how it could work:
Getting patents A demon could periodically check the USPTO site, and create an article for each new patent application it finds.
Categorizating Patents would be categorized into different "departments". Hmmm, could a Bayesian filter come up with a short list of recommendations? These could be attached to the article as options for "High-Karma" users to select (or offer something better). As soon as some threshhold (say 10 votes) is reached, the article is moved from the NEW department to the selected department.
Moderating This could procede as it does here on slashdot, but the comments' focus could be to examine the patents:
Benefits Offhand, I see this would:
What have I missed? I know there has to be SOMEthing! Thoughts? Ideas?
Re:j public requests release from corepirate nazis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:j public requests release from corepirate nazis (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Too bad... (Score:2)
Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as your typical Slashdrone comment regarding software, however, there's a fairly low burden of showing something will work in software just because there is so much flexibility when writing code. The same is even more true with r
Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrongo, legal fanboi. They don't know jack shit about "electrical arts", or else they'd have a real job actually building something instead of shuffling papers in a government cubicle.
If they had even the slightest bit of talent, they would be embarrassed to categorize the most trivial of ideas to be "non-obvious".
And they DEFINITELY understand the patent system better than idiots like p
Re:Too bad... (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a toy or shut up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Too bad... (Score:2)
The collection also caught fire and a substantial part of it was destroyed, even twice (IIRC - the story goes that at one time some were actually saved by PTO employees throwing the "best pieces" out of the window).
Anyway, for software there would hardly be a storage problem (at some US$400
Re:Too bad... (Score:3, Funny)
Inside the working models of radiation shielding.
Re:Too bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
I respectfully disagree. I submit patent applications as an IBM employee, and while I don't have the resources to ever bring my ideas to market, IBM can certainly bring to bear just about anything I submit that they deem worthy. But why would they ever tool a manufacturing line and build a working demo of every invention *before* having a patent covering the idea? I started to develop a residential answering machine that allows a family to setup individual profiles with independent mailboxes, greetings, and email addresses to forward messages as attachments. I did my due dilligence and found too many related patents and applications out there. Even if someone hasn't developed a working demo yet, I can respect that they claimed the idea as their own. Why can't you? And why don't you feel that "Joe Inventor" who works in his garage for 20 years trying to find the next big thing should be allowed to make money by documenting cutting edge ideas just because he can't afford to fab circuits, develop code and burn EEPROMS?
Kicking it up a notch, how about IBM implementing a new chip design? We can simulate complete chip designs entirely in software. Why should they spend a billion dollars to fab the first version of the chip just so they can ship it to Washington so a patent clerk can validate its worthiness? I feel this position was borne from the fact that a tiny fraction of the folks we meet and work with in our daily lives are actually backed by an organization that may at one point actually do something with our ideas. You certainly don't mind demanding that those of us who *can* spend millions of dollars in development actually *do* spend that kind of money. Obviously, software patents are a different story, but you didn't say "all software inventions". You want every patent application accompanied by a working model.
Re:Too bad... (Score:2)
Because if they want to bring the idea to market, that's one of the hoops they have to jump through.
Even if someone hasn't developed a working demo yet, I can respect that they claimed the idea as their own. Why can't you?
Because coming with an idea is the easy part. I can sit on my ass for an hour and think up a hundred good ideas. But if I'm not willing to do the work
Working Models (Score:2)
Silly rule (Score:2)
In general, the office is freq
Re:Too bad... (Score:2)