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Patents The Courts Technology

Return To Sender: High Court To Hear Undeliverable Mail Case (washingtonpost.com) 141

Posted by msmash from the David-vs.-Goliath dept.
New submitter bluekloud shares a report: Mitch Hungerpiller thought he had a first-class solution for mail that gets returned as undeliverable, a common problem for businesses that send lots of letters. But the process he helped develop and built his small Alabama technology company around has resulted in a more than decade-long fight with the U.S. Postal Service, which says his solution shouldn't have been patentable. The David vs. Goliath dispute has now arrived at the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the justices will hear Hungerpiller's case, which involves parsing the meaning of a 2011 patent law.

"All I want is a fair shake," said Hungerpiller, who lives in Birmingham and is a father of three. Hungerpiller, 56, started thinking seriously about returned mail in 1999 when he was doing computer consulting work. While visiting clients he kept seeing huge trays of returned mail. He read that every year, billions pieces of mail are returned as undeliverable, costing companies and the Postal Service time and money. So he decided to try to solve the problem. He developed a system that uses barcodes, scanning equipment and computer databases to process returned mail almost entirely automatically. His clients, from financial services companies to marketing companies, generally direct their returned mail to Hungerpiller's company, Return Mail Inc., for processing. Clients can get information about whether the mail was actually correctly addressed and whether there's a more current address.
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Return To Sender: High Court To Hear Undeliverable Mail Case More

Return To Sender: High Court To Hear Undeliverable Mail Case

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  • I read this a few days ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @02:19PM (#58140704)
    and the patent looks like another example of stringing existing tech together for it's exact intended purpose. Similar to "one click shopping". It's just computers doing computer stuf. e.g. I think it would fail any test of novelty or newness.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nobody would ever get a patent on anything if the test was some beer-bottle patent attorney saying "oh yeah, I could have thought of that."

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Patents are supposed to be for inventions, not for ideas. This isn't a machine; it's an idea. Just like software and other abstract mathematics, it's not patentable matter according to the plain reading of the law.

        • Where do you draw the line between software and a machine?
          A clock uses gears with the right type and size to make it a good time keeping device. If I were to take a gear and swap it with an other, I could make the clock work backwards, or have it run faster or slower. In many ways the gear settings is the clocks software.

          Lets say I have a mousetrap, it works better then an other one, because there is software that uses all the newest buzzwords, to attract the mouse, and know when it is in prime location to

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            The actual trapping mechanism itself is rather basic, however all the work went into the software.

            If it's a "basic" trapping mechanism, chances are it's out of patent.

            And the software is under copyright, from the moment it was put into a fixed form.
            If I copy your code, I'm infringing your copyright.
            But you're not suppoed to get a patent on a mathematical algorithm, on top of that. I can write different code to attract the mouse, and I'm infringing nothing.
            That's the way the system is supposed to work.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Software is differentiated by being transient, i.e. it's (relatively) easy to change and not a permanent, fixed feature of the machine. Sure, you can replace gears in a watch, but then you are altering the machine itself. Software is loaded on to the machine and makes it perform certain functions, and is then discarded or replaced as a matter of course.

      • Re:I read this a few days ago (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @04:09PM (#58141254)

        Nobody would ever get a patent on anything if the test was some beer-bottle patent attorney saying "oh yeah, I could have thought of that."

        If you give the beer drinker the solution, and they say "I could have thought of that", then that doesn't mean much, because most innovations are "obvious" in hindsight.

        But if the beer drinker knows a bit about computers, and you ask them "How would you solve this problem?", most would come up with a solution involving a database and either a barcode or some sort of OCR. This is the true test of "obviousness", and this patent appears to fail it.

        • I haven't read the patent, so I have no idea what the patent covers. I don't know what the invention is that is patented. Have you read it? I might read it after I put kiddo to bed.

          The summary mentions that the invention uses gears and levers - er I mean bar codes and scanners, but doesn't tell us anything useful regarding what is patented. The guy didn't pay gears, levers, barcodes, or scanners. He built something using these parts plus more, and patented what he built.

    • The novelty is in the stringing. Every new invention is at least partly going to build on existing ideas. Patents can be awarded on processes, not necessarily an "invention."

      • And this is what bugs me, and maybe most people about patents. You can patent machine A and machine B, then some third party can come in and patent using machine A with machine B as an interaction of A and B...

        Over simplified example: Someone patents a light bulb, then someone patents a light bulb socket. In my opinion there should not be an ability to patent inserting the light bulb into the light bulb socket, since it is an obvious possible interaction of previous patents, there is no invention there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          To be fair your lightbulb example would be considered too obvious for patent protection AIUI.

          In this case they did a little more work, in that they selected a barcode system and created an automated scanning and notification process. So while it's obvious that it could be done by computer in an automated fashion, the exact details of how to do that may be worthy of a patent.

          The thing is such patents are usually very easy to work around, because they tend to be quite specific to that process. Trivial changes

      • The novelty is in the stringing. Every new invention is at least partly going to build on existing ideas. Patents can be awarded on processes, not necessarily an "invention."

        Yes, usually, but not in this particular case... Here's claim 1:

        1. A method for processing a plurality of undeliverable mail items comprising the steps of:
        encoding data including intended recipient identification information on each of a plurality of mail items prior to mailing;
        receiving those items of the plurality of mail items that are returned as being undeliverable;
        scanning and decoding the encoded data on the items of undeliverable mail to identify intended recipients having incorrect addresses; and
        electronically transferring to the sender information for the identified intended recipients for the sender to update the sender's mailing address files.

        1. Al, Charlie's assistant, writes Bob's destination address on outside of envelope. That's "encoding data including intended recipient identification information."
        2. Get mail returned ("receiving those items that are returned as undeliverable").
        3. Read address ("scanning and decoding data").
        4. Al sends email to Charlie asking for Bob's correct address ("electronically transferring to the sender information for the identified intended recipi

    • Except no one thought of it for hundreds of years until this guy did.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by B'Trey ( 111263 )

        The technology to make it work didn't exist for hundreds of years. Once the technology became available, it was thought of and implemented very quickly. That suggests that it was an obvious application of the technology.

        • You could probably make that claim of just about any invention. It wasn't possible for a long time for some reason, but once that reason went away someone was able to implement it. Personally I think the mark of a good invention is that it seems incredibly obvious in hind-sight, but for some reason wasn't done.

          For example, most Amazon packages I get have inflated plastic packing material instead of packing peanuts or wads of paper. I look at that and wonder why the hell it wasn't done that way previously

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AvitarX ( 172628 )

            I don't know anything about this case, so I will talk in generics.

            I think that we (in the US) have a problem in that independent simultaneous invention isn't an affirmative defense for obviousness. Often times 2 people invent independently pretty much the exact same thing, and one gets a patent and the other doesn't (famously the telephone, though there's evidence that espionage was involved there). I would argue if two people building on past tech invent something pretty much simultaneously, it falls into

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              I think that's an extraordinarily interesting position to take, that simultaneous invention is indicative that the solution is obvious. I've never heard that before. I wonder, though, if it's as cut-and-dry as you're presenting. How simultaneous? Two patent applications or journal publications (etc.) within a month of each other? What if one inventor took longer to prepare than the other? What if they can't pin down the exact day of "invention"*? What if that flash of insight takes thirty years to br

              • If two labs are doing the same thing to make the same chemical for the same purpose and both get to the same place within a short period of time (yes, what that means is left as an exercise for the courts, and is ambiguous) I would say yes, that is obvious to someone "skilled in the art".

                That's the point, people skilled in the art, not laypeople, are who it needs to be obvious to, and if the people skilled in the art are all doing the same thing to solve a problem independently it seems to me the solution w

            • CASS doesn't validate that the person lives at the specified address, only that it is a deliverable address.
              NCOA only works when the addressee goes out of their way to tell USPS that they are moving.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AvitarX ( 172628 )

                So this is for when people move, but don't update their address AND the new resident sends the mail back?

                How much of that really happens? I guess a lot if this guy created an industry out of it?

                • I guess a lot if this guy created an industry out of it?

                  I guess.
                  Also enough that the post office is spending a butt load of money in legal fees because they want to do it too, over a patent that expires in a little over 3 years.

        • You mean computers and barcode scanners were invented? Barcode scanners and computers have been working together since the mid 70's
          And very quickly, 25 years later, this guy patents using them for this purpose.
          "The very first scanning of the now-ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode was on a pack of Wrigley Company chewing gum in June 1974"
          It took until this guy thought in 1999 - "why don't we put one of those on letters and if they are returned to sender, all we need to do is scan the barcode to

      • Except no one thought of it for hundreds of years until this guy did.

        Except that companies are paying this guy to do this for them. What do you think the companies did before he started offering this service? Yes, that's right, they did exactly the same thing (perhaps not with "a computer", but the same thing) all on their own. In hundreds if not thousands if not hundreds of thousands of places.

        Can I get a patent on a business process that has been used all over the world by every company that ever sent a piece of mail?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Similar to "one click shopping". It's just computers doing computer stuf. e.g. I think it would fail any test of novelty or newness.

      Which was partially upheld, then the broadest claims restricted to a shopping cart and upheld too. Long story short whether /. think something is novel is not a good indicator of how patent law actually works but in this case yes the patent itself has been completely shot down both by ACA review and the appeals court. From what I can read of the legal papers, the government can't be sued under ordinary patent law just a special provision that is more eminent domain-like. The USPS asked for a patent review t

    • I think it would fail any test of novelty or newness.

      It did. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board held the claims unpatentable after the USPS challenged them, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed. That's why the case is now at the Supreme Court.

    • and the patent looks like another example of stringing existing tech together for it's exact intended purpose... I think it would fail any test of novelty or newness.

      FTA: "Even early on, the Postal Service expressed interest in Return Mail’s invention, Hungerpiller said. By 2006, the government and Return Mail were talking about licensing options and a formal pilot program."

      The Post Office was negotiating with Hungerpiller before they went and violated his patent, so presumably they thought there was "novelty or newness". I'm reminded of another patentability test - the "obvious to a person skilled in the art" criterion. The problem with both criteria is that thin

      • Something can be a good and useful service, but still not patentable.

      • Story told me by patent atty when I was applying.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @06:29PM (#58142032) Journal

        ... things become obvious in hindsight, and we tend to forget they really weren't so obvious before the fact. If the idea / process / procedure hadn't been implemented yet, in spite of the tech required having been available for quite some time, then was it really obvious?

        Story told me by a patent attorney when I was applying for one. (I say this because I didn't look it up myself.):

        He said the classic case of inventions only being obvious in hidnsight was a challenge to the patent on the
        Ray-o-Vac "leakproof" "sealed-in-steel" battery (a classic carbon-zinc dry cell).

        Such cells consists of some variant of this: a zinc cup (the negative electrode), containing a corrosive paste (which either IS the positive electrode or contains it (i.e. manganese dioxide) at its center) and a carbon electrode to contact the electrode to provide the positive terminal. Early "dry cells" were capped with things such as asphalt and wrapped with a printed carbon label.

        The corrosive pastet eating the zinc cup was what powered the cell. So before it was actually dead the corrosive would have eaten a hole in it, wetted the cardboard, and started eating the flashlight or whatever. (Assuming swelling of the internal components didn't rupture the zinc cup first, with the same result.)

        Needless to say this didn't make users happy. So the various battery companies did a bunch of research to try to design a variant that didn't do this. For years.

        Story goes that one of the researchers came home really depressed one day and his wife asked what was the problem. So he explained it. Says she (while opening a can of soup, as the story goes): "Why don't you seal it in a steel can?"

        Thus (with the addition of composition changes to avoid swelling enough to burst the can) was born the sealed in steel leakproof dry cell.

        Of course Union Carbide (Everready) challenged the patent as obvious. "Oh?" says the judge. Turning to the Ray-o-Vac folk he asks: "How long did you work on this problem before you though of the can? How many engineers worked on it? How much did you spend?" Turning back to the Union Carbide guys he asks them the same thing. Answers: Years of work, lots of guys, lots of bux. "It's only obvious in hindsight. Rule for the defendant."

      • other companies showing interest in your service can be evidence of non-obviousness of the underlying patent, but it's only evidence. often it doesn't add up to much, and the evidence has to line up specifically with the claims of the patent at issue. lot of times the license being sought is for a service that the patent doesn't actually specifically cover.

    • Patents are granted for---

      1. Frivolous prior art we've been doing for hundreds of years already. (like rounding corners or traveling on 2 wheels)
      2. (established processes) on a computer. (like handwriting, mail delivery return*, and composing)
      3. Every 100th application in the monthly stack of frivolous (but paid) applications. (like the monthly IBM collection)
      4. Every application that lands on So-and-so's desk, that chick approves everything.
      5. Anything to do with A/I, deep learning, machine learning, or pe

    • and the patent looks like another example of stringing existing tech together for it's exact intended purpose. Similar to "one click shopping". It's just computers doing computer stuf. e.g. I think it would fail any test of novelty or newness.

      So obvious and yet no one but the guy in the story that connected the dots. Seems like a legit patent to me (since no one else, not even the postal service put the elbow grease to get the existing pieces to work.)

  • The rest of the original article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @02:20PM (#58140710)

    actually tells why the guy is being heard by the Supreme Court.

    TLDR? The US postal service are assholes.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The issue the court will rule on is whether or not the Postal service counts as a "person".

      This has pretty interesting implications if they postal service is not a person, but companies are people. That means that in this case, companies have much more rights/power under the law than the government.

      • Still probably an unintended consequence of the intent of the law. The law should be amended or rewritten. For better or worse, companies are already considered people in a lot of cases (Super PACS are a notable exception).

      • They're not, and courts don't, measuring if the Postal Service counts as a "person."

        They're measuring if the wording in a specific law is including the Postal Service when it uses the word "person" in a particular provision.

        There are no implications outside of this exact narrow issue of patent law involving restrictions on when the Government can request a patent review.

        Companies are not considered "people" by the court. That's just a colloquial simplification that isn't literally accurate. They're consider

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But US government-run healthcare will be different.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        And it was different. You lost your doctor, your insurance rates more than doubled, and you got shit to replace it. See, different.

        • "And it was different. You lost your doctor", er, no..."your insurance rates more than doubled", um, no, went down..."and you got shit to replace it", ah, no need. Think Different.

          • Yeah, I've never understood this complaint. My premiums are a quarter of what they were. Had a coworker complaining about it saying the premiums are $1000 dollars higher. OK, what is the total reduction in your premium for the year? About $1000! Only now you get the HSA, which our company contributes $600 to annually. People just seem to get fixated on the one number were cost increased and refuse to look at the big picture.

      • But US government-run healthcare will be different.

        Totally off topic, but I was just discussing this elsewhere earlier today.......

        https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]

    • actually tells why the guy is being heard by the Supreme Court.

      TLDR? The US postal service are assholes.

      Hmm, looks like you are right:

      Even early on, the Postal Service expressed interest in Return Mail’s invention, Hungerpiller said. By 2006, the government and Return Mail were talking about licensing options and a formal pilot program. Partnering with the Postal Service, Hungerpiller said, would have “changed my life.” But the Postal Service ultimately developed its own, similar system for processing returned and undeliverable mail, announcing its launch in 2006.

      “I was crushed. I go

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Nah, we here at slashdot love or hate patents based off the story. This is big bad government that should be replaced by private companies vs plucky innovator, so naturally slashdot is generally on the side of the person they can relate to.

      • Yeah, it sounds like the Postal Service wanted to hire him to provide a service, and he wanted to get license fees instead, and he wasn't wise enough to see that his patent was obvious (as in, the details were already obvious to him when he thought it up, it wasn't something that required R&D).

        Of course they implemented it themselves in that scenario.

        Not every new business makes sense as an IP provider, most businesses only have operational value.

      • By 2006, the government and Return Mail were talking about licensing options and a formal pilot program.

        That is the part I'm not certain about because it is vague. What process was he using in negotiation? What was the deal/option he wanted? Was it appropriate? Also, a similar system does NOT mean it is a copy of a patent. If the system has only partially similar to his patent claims, then his patent is not covering the system. Business method has specific steps to execute especially in his patent. So the system may or may not be infringing his patent [uspto.gov].

  • Sounds like... (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @02:29PM (#58140752)

    ”He developed a system that uses barcodes, scanning equipment and computer databases to process returned mail almost entirely automatically. His clients, from financial services companies to marketing companies, generally direct their returned mail to Hungerpiller's company, Return Mail Inc., for processing. Clients can get information about whether the mail was actually correctly addressed and whether thereâ(TM)s a more current address.”

    So basically he patented outsourcing? Rather than the client companies doing the verification work, his company did it. All the barcodes seem likely to have done is to make his company’s job easier to automate... and probably accomplished some lock-in.

  • Do it on a computer (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MNNorske ( 2651341 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @02:34PM (#58140788)
    Basically it sounds like he just took an existing process/job and did it on a computer. Prior to this a person would've gone into the contact spreadsheet or database and marked the entries as invalid. All he did was take that existing job and put a computer readable barcode on stuff and had the computer do it faster. Very useful for the companies as it saves payroll, but it does not sound like something that should've been patentable to me.

    • Basically it sounds like he just took an existing process/job and did it on a computer. Prior to this a person would've gone into the contact spreadsheet or database and marked the entries as invalid. All he did was take that existing job and put a computer readable barcode on stuff and had the computer do it faster. Very useful for the companies as it saves payroll, but it does not sound like something that should've been patentable to me.

      I feel kind of bad for him that he implemented a great idea, then the post office decided to do it themselves. But if you can't provide a better/cheaper service, being first isn't going to sustain a business.

    • The market is full of these holes - little needs that no one is taking care of. If no one else has found a novel process for doing it "on a computer" then he has a valuable, patentable method - even if it uses existing technology. Instead of criticizing his patent, just get out there and go get your own if it's that easy.

      • Re:Do it on a computer (Score:4, Informative)

        by MNNorske ( 2651341 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @04:01PM (#58141222)
        I'm not saying that his idea isn't valuable. He obviously had a great idea and was able to build a business around it. But, the idea itself doesn't sound patentable to me. His specific implementation may be patentable, or aspects of what he has built could be. But, should the concept of scanning a barcode and marking an entry in a contacts database as invalid be itself patentable? I would argue not because the action itself is a standard business process that has been done before albeit manually. Plus the post office already had mail sorting hardware/software that would use OCR to decode the address on envelopes, apply barcodes to the envelopes, and then route said envelopes through massive sorting systems. So all they are doing on top of that is building a list of invalid addresses in a database when the envelopes route back through the sorting machine. So they already had most of the pieces he put together into his patent. Only the output was different.
    • The only reason I think he may have a patent able idea is that, according to him, the Post Office talked to him about licensing his patent before developing their own implementation. Usually, such conversations involve finding out how the process works. The key question to me is, how far had the Post Office gone towards implementing their own system when they started talking to him (assuming that they actually did)?
      Perhaps, they discovered that they had already worked out to do what he was doing and th
      • If the post office decided this was a good idea after hearing about his company they probably had someone do some basic research and saw on his website that he listed a patent. So the business people went in thinking it was a valid patent and that it would have to be licensed. They came back and talked to some engineers, and those engineers pointed out that 90% of what the patent covered is stuff they already do. You get some back and forth then between the engineers and the patent lawyers who dig throug

    • Basically it sounds like he just took an existing process/job and did it on a computer. Prior to this a person would've gone into the contact spreadsheet or database and marked the entries as invalid. All he did was take that existing job and put a computer readable barcode on stuff and had the computer do it faster. Very useful for the companies as it saves payroll, but it does not sound like something that should've been patentable to me.

      It's amazing how many slashdotters go for the "all he did" argument. It's as if automation is not a thing, or just a trivial simple thing even a caveman can do.

      • Automation is most definitely a thing. It's a thing I and many other engineers do every single day. My entire career is built around automating processes that either were manual processes or would have to be implemented as a manual process if not for the software I architect and write. That doesn't mean that every piece of automation I work on is unique enough to justify a patent. If he designed and built specific machines to support his business those should be patentable. Any software he or his compa

  • ...for the purposes of the act.

    I suspect that the Post Office has in the past had patents assigned to it. and if it can be 'someone' which can own a patent, it is also 'someone' who can invalidate a patent. Also companies are 'people' for some legal processes, so I see little reason why government bodies can't also be 'people' for legal actions.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DarkFlite ( 807709 )
      If the Post Office isn't a person for this purpose, than no corporation could challenge a patent. The Supremes aren't going to toss out corporate personhood over this.

      • If the Post Office is not a person, why can you sue it for violating a patent?

        Personally, I think it would be all kinds of exciting for plaintiff to win here, so we can shave down the "rights" of the legal fictions called corporations. But I suspect the Supremes will see the trap.

  • Summary doesn't mention what's contested!? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HeckRuler ( 1369601 ) on Monday February 18, 2019 @02:49PM (#58140860)

    Let me guess, the actual issue is some overly broad software patent.

    He scans barcodes on mail [google.com] and looks up a database.

    • This popped up in other news sources: Part of the argument is this: "....A person can challenge the patent....". Is the postal service a person in the context of this argument?
    • Why use a database? Why not just encode the entire address in the barcode? Unless the address changes...

      • I think the problem here is analogous to using a MAC address vs a DNS address.

        Most mail is intended to go to a person, but you have to send it to a place. Hence mail forwarding. The address is the last known location of a person. If the person changed location (changed MAC/IP), you want to find out where the new place of that person is (fresh DNS address).

        A unique barcode could identify a person (think SSN or the like), and the database has the most current address for that person, if the first try fails.

        So

      • The USPS does encode the entire address in the barcode. Every piece of mail is either already tagged at sending (bulk mail for large senders getting a pre-sort discount) or gets tagged by the post office (in the case of individual, hand written, or smaller batch mailings) with an Intelligent Mail Barcode that, among other things, includes an 11-digit code that covers every possible address in the United States of America. This code consists of ZIP (5 digits) plus 4 (obviously, 4 more digits) and delivery

    • My employers have been doing this since roughly the same time period. Because it's obvious. As soon as bar code scanners with ps/2 keyboard in/out jacks came on the market, we had people handling our return mail this way. DB and everything.

      Postal service is right and this Hungerpiller rube is a rent-seeker, not an innovator.

  • To mail letters fo free. Put the address of the recipient in the return address section

    Drop it in a post box and it'll get returned to sender to the address you out as the recipient.

    But tricks that bypass a stamp is illegal and stamps are cheap anyway.

    Hehe

  • Interesting, but I think there were pre-existing efforts and publications in this area. I was peripherally involved in some systems that related to address matching - and one of the data points included in the barcodes was a "customer id" field that was going to be used for automatic unclaimed mail management - the sender of the mail would receive a list of returned mail from the post-office - and the postage would be destroyed.

    There's even some of the original documentation around for parts of it (though

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