Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:A middle schooler could have reached that resul (Score 5, Informative) 44

Okay, in fairness, I went back and read TFS, and it looks like the real problem here is Soulskill's poor writing skills. A transitional sentence was needed to indicate that the "+/- 20 years" prediction was an old prediction, and that scientists did a new analysis in 2012 that suggested that a large earthquake was imminent (and which happened not long thereafter).

Comment A middle schooler could have reached that result (Score 1) 44

Seriously, this sounds like a math problem for a middle school math class:

Fred found out that an earthquake happened in 1850, 1900, and 1950. When should Fred expect the next earthquake to happen?

A. 2000
B. 1951
C. 2013
D. This is a bogus question because it makes unfounded assumptions as to how earthquakes work without any true understanding as to the underlying mechanics

Comment FOIA (Score 4, Insightful) 183

These records would seem to be responsive to a proper FOIA request, and if the government already has already-paid-for access to the records, they would be required to pony up those records at the cost of duplication (which would arguably get around the third-party fees this company would charge).

Why they didn't just give all this stuff to Google is beyond me. I'm sure they'd love to have a project like this, and they'd probably make it publicly available for the price of ads.

Comment Re:Companies (Score 4, Interesting) 91

The summary actually isn't spot on, because Lee was appointed as the deputy director. She will be the "acting director" until the President appoints a new director and the Senate confirms him or her.

There is actually a concern that this appointment is not valid, because the law requires that the deputy director be appointed by the Secretary of Commerce after being nominated by the USPTO director. We don't actually have a USPTO director currently, so it's not clear from where the authority for this appointment is derived.

Comment Re:Have some time to help nuke JP Morgan on this? (Score 2) 292

A preliminary amendment filed on the filing date along with the application can avoid excess claims fees. In other words, they filed a continuation that included claims 1-154 (because a continuation is supposed to have all the same stuff that the parent has, and this ensures that there is written description support for the parent's original claims in the child case), but then they amended the claims on the same day to cancel those claims and only present claims 155-175 (21 claims). So they owed us $80 for one excess dependent claim, which they paid.

Also, there are ways to submit third party prior art submissions into an application. You would have until 5/28/2014 (six months after publication) to submit such prior art. There's even a fee exemption if you file only one such submission and it has three or fewer documents listed. This is a much better idea than trying to contact the examiner directly, since they are forbidden from discussing the application with an unauthorized party.

Slashdot Top Deals

One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.

Working...