Bullet dodging patent withdrawn … but downloadable here for your viewing pleasure

Posted in Other Gear & Gadgets by with 6 Comments
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The IBM bullet dodging patent story, which originally broke on this blog after being discovered by reader Daniel E. Watters, created quite a lot of noise on the internet.

Noah at Danger Room noticed that the patent has since been withdrawn. It seems odd to go to all that work writing a patent, paying lawyers, only to withdraw it after news of its existance hits the internet days later. Anyone know if this happens frequently?

I had already used pat2pdf.org to convert the patent to a PDF. So here is patent number 07484451 hosted on scribd for your viewing pleasure :)

The lesson here is that you cannot deleted stuff off the internet, someone, somewhere, has a copy.

Steve Johnson

Founder and Dictator-In-Chief of TFB. A passionate gun owner, a shooting enthusiast and totally tacti-uncool. Favorite first date location: any gun range. Steve can be contacted here.

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  • http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/ Sven Ortmann

    Maybe it was meant to become one of the secret patents but something went wrong.

    By the way; some large corporations use patents less to protect their inventions than to prevent other’s innovations.

    • http://www.thefirearmblog.com Steve

      Sven, in the IT world they almost always patent to prevent innovation, rather than protect a “real” invention!

  • http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/ Sven Ortmann

    Another trick of large companies is to send a pack of lawyers to file patent challenges into many nation’s patent offices to challenge the patent (a huge problem in the EU) – even if they have no basis for their claims.

    The costs for the rightful inventor to defend himself with his lawyers (one lawyer per country, of course) is often prohibitive.
    The invention became public in the patent writing, but patent didn’t become effective – invention is open domain.

    That’s why many smaller businesses (up to nine digit annual turnover businesses) don’t file small patents any more, but instead keep their secret and care for their employees so they won’t leave to competitors.

    TV news annually announce patent quantity ratings for countries as if that would tell about innovation – it’s ridiculous.

    Anyway; patent stuff is so complicated and perverse that dozens of obscure reasons might have driven them to withdraw.

    • http://www.thefirearmblog.com Steve

      Sven, very interesting. I had not heard of that tactic, the patent/copyright industry is a blot on capitalism, that would not exist if governments did not protect it.

  • Deathbunny

    They should call it the “Twist and Shout” because that’s not going to be pleasant to be on the receiving end of.

    All they need is one joker with a paintball auto using radio-opaque paintballs making some VIP do the funky chicken on TV and… yeah.

    Fun.

  • Matthew Morris

    My guess, they realized it was too expensive and overall not cost effective. Why they wouldn’t have figured that out BEFORE hiring a bunch of lawyers is beyond me. But their lawyers are probably always on retainer or something.

    They also could have just gone through with the patent just so they have it, instead of a competitor having it.

    Honestly, I really want to know why they aren’t working on this, because this is a project I was incredibly interested, and maybe would want to be involved in someday (I’m an electrical engineer).