Bullet dodging patent withdrawn … but downloadable here for your viewing pleasure

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Noah at Danger Room noticed that the patent has since been withdrawn.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.

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Steve Feb 18th 2009 misc Tags: , , 5 Comments

5 Responses to “Bullet dodging patent withdrawn … but downloadable here for your viewing pleasure”

  1. Sven Ortmannon 18 Feb 2009 at 12:38 pm link comment

    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.

  2. Steveon 18 Feb 2009 at 12:39 pm link comment

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

  3. Sven Ortmannon 18 Feb 2009 at 7:49 pm link comment

    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.

  4. Steveon 18 Feb 2009 at 7:53 pm link comment

    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.

  5. Deathbunnyon 28 Feb 2009 at 6:59 pm link comment

    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.

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