Any idea who has been challenging these patents?
I agree it seems like a strech to patent the storage and retreival of data from a moving magnetic medium.
They must have really had to write some doozy of an argument as to why such a method is not obvious to someone
skilled in the craft. And and even better job of patenting the storage and retrieval of data by a computer....
If there's some unique cleverness in such an automation scheme, I can't imagine what they thought it might be.
ON the other hand, if they did sucessfully get a patent issued, it may be that the examiner was
insufficiently educated in technology, and simply duped.
When I was patenting a device, I was shocked at how little background the examiner had in
electronics, to the point of not understanding that capacitors block DC voltage.
I thought I was going to be defending a critical advancement about electron mobility,
and the examiner doesn't even know basic electronic theory?
That's a letdown. It was like trying to have a graduate-level discussion with a 4 year old.
I wanted to be challenged on the claims of what it accomplished and how it exceeded all existing technology.
The USPTO demonstrated an amazing lack of curiosity in the heart of the invention itself, but was certainly prepared
to bring up all sorts of irrelevant prior art ( the capacitor thing) to prove they didn't understand ANY of it.
It's as if their only tool is a hammer, so that's the only way they work.
No amount of facts was of any matter to the USPTO, seems they simply wanted me to eventually use the
services of a Patent attorney, who was able to have the dismissal reversed and/but had to add a
few ( irrelevant ) physical claims to get the patent to issue.
I'm awfully afraid that the agency is staffed with people who only pretend to know about things,
but are now no more than bureau-bots, just like no one at the FCC seems to understand RF or electronics anymore.
