not to be a buzzkill, but it'd be beneficial to reduce the data set examiners (and defendants) have to sift through to find relevant prior art. speaking as an ex-examiner, that's the biggest problem, separating the signal from noise from an already poorly written data set.
a couple of nits on twistedmack's generally good response:
* a prior art search is not required (that's the PTO's job) but i usually recommend it since it'll save money in the end if there's dead on prior art. it's also required if you want to expedite the process at the PTO.
* you can file for a provisional first then have a year to file a non-provisional based off that.
on your follow up: the time process varies wildly but its in the years time scale (not months or shorter). anecdotally i just gave the PTO a call regarding an application that has been sitting around waiting for an initial response for 2.5 years now, which is somewhat uncommon but not out of the realm of possibility. you can speed up the process, but the PTO charges a rather hefty fee for it.
disclaimer: i AM a patent attorney (and former examiner), but i'm not your attorney!
a silly patent (even by design patent stds), but the complaint illustrates that this patent is a pretty small part of a [smallish] thicket of patents on the ribbon concept, as well corel pretty brazenly trying to capitalize on the Office UI (whether that is a legit claim or not is up for debate) back when MS was pushing it (and of course MS allegedly meeting with Corel to "resolve" it after finding out). personal opinion is that it may have been a compelling claim in 2007/2008, but now just gives you that slimy feeling again. another good fact (probably irrelevant) is that microsoft is now (and has been) encouraging people to use the ribbon metaphor (as far as i can tell).
if you're looking for public transportation options, this is probably the best bet. getting from NYC airports to penn station (where the Vermonter leaves from) depends on whether you fly into JFK/LGA or EWR (Newark, NJ). for JFK/LGA it's easiest to just take a cab to penn station (it's a flat rate of around 50 dollars i think, but be careful because some cabs are known to try and sucker people). if you fly into EWR you can just take the train from the airport right to penn station (NJ Transit) for much less. just be sure to build in extra time since google maps is notoriously optimistic with NYC transportation (imo)
FWIW, i used a mid-2011 2.3Ghz i5 with 8 GB of RAM for about 4 years as a lightly used dev machine (read: basically ruby/rails, pg, and sublime text with some crud stripped out and running on OS X [not server]) that also hosted about 25-30 (low bandwidth) rails apps for internal use that did a lot of text processing and never really had too many complaints. flash forward 2 years of sitting idling without any activity and it's a bit sluggish now (granted that's because i've done literally nothing on the machine other than let it run)
congrats on the launch, linking figure/element numbers to is a feature i've had on my list of features of things i'll never build for awhile. also, have recently added thumbnail search results (think google patents had this ages ago, but has since retired it if they did) and a smarter weighting of keyword search (e.g., filtering out noise from sections and boosting hits in claims/abstract/etc). would love to help out if needed (contact info in profile)
Thanks so much for the feedback! I'll contact you soon after today's launch is over and I get some sleep lol. The problem we're tackling now is automatic citation in the spec. so that highlighting text gives you the column and line numbers.
Almost certainly invalid today (as to all claims). Even before recent decisions, the method claims in particular were pretty much rejected as a matter of course (see e.g., https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=143311033686351...) (specifically the claim appendix at the bottom)
The main reason is to fund the office as it's one of the few agencies that is 100% funded by fees (versus appropriations). So much so that Congress often skims money from the fees they collect. The fact that the office is sort of set up like a traditional corp. (i.e., earning revenue, paying salaries, getting "taxed" by Congress) colors a lot of discussion on how the office operates, in my opinion. Also, the percentage of patents that are actually asserted in court is extremely small compared to the number of issued patents.
Cost. Cost is the biggest issue with post-grant proceedings. I don't know how many times I've seen people that have air-tight cases but they, understandably, won't, or can't, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars (filing fees and attorney's fees) to pull the trigger. The cost for these things is truly astronomical compared to quite literally every other aspect of the patent office. Even more astounding is that there is no reduction in fees for entity size (like almost every other fee). So a solo inventor and a Fortune 500 company pay exactly the same amount in filing fees, which is absurd and makes zero sense (even the older, reexamination route has fees based on entity size. e.g., large companies pay 12k, while "micro entities" pay 3k). I'm hoping, but not holding my breath, that eventually the fee structure will change; but given the popularity of post-grant proceedings, I can't imagine the PTO pulling the plug on a solid money maker for them. Here's a quick scatter plot of fees for micro entities, try and guess which are post-grant filing fees: http://i.imgur.com/F1Q2E1l.png
The attorney's fees aren't the PTO's fault, that is just what good talent costs.
The fees are large but an post grant proceeding isn't just a patent reexam. It's a mini-trial. There is a lot of manhours required on the USPTOs side of things.
In an ideal world, the patent system and the legal system in general would be substantially simpler, and premium talent wouldn't be required. For really clear cut cases you wouldn't need an attorney at all.
Same thing with the mini-trial. In an ideal world the system would be a lot more efficient and cheaper for everybody.
An interesting question, I would assume this would be governed by the sites TOS which usually prevents "unauthorized" use which implicates trademark issues, which in turn gives TM holders footing to petition the site to remove "offending" account names. For example, github's TOS requires "You may not use the Service for any illegal or unauthorized purpose. You must not, in the use of the Service, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws)." I would presume that overall most of these would be somewhat "amicable" versus domain squabbles, but that is situation-specific.
One progression is "Amazon" on twitter which appears to have been registered by an unaffiliated developer and transitioned (rather quickly) to Amazon Inc.:
Not surprisingly, Twitter's TOS at that time was almost identical to github's current TOS: "You must not, in the use of Twitter, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws)."[0]
Some may also remember firefox.com having a thanks message for the domain, which is somewhat in a similar realm.[1]
In short (insert, the usual this is not legal advice disclaimer), companies would leverage existing laws (primarily, or exclusively trademark) to point out TOS breaches to service providers. The TOS provides for "termination" of an account upon breach and the account is effectively transfered to the complaining party. Depending on the parties' attitudes there may be some delay to wind things down etc, but legally the provider can presumably immediately deactivate and transfer as they see fit (subject to the TOS).
