What is the dysfunctional state of the patent system in Xerox's silly patent?

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)Every month, list one of the most obnoxious inventions with patent rights granted "Stupid Patent of the Month(SPM) "is announced. EFF cites a patent called Xerox 'patented method of sharing copies of documents on social networks' on January 26, 2016 in SPM and criticized as the patent system is no longer functioning malfunctioning doing.

Stupid Patent of the Month: Sharing Your Hard Copy Documents, but on a Social Network | Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/stupid-patent-month-sharing-your-hard-copy-documents-social-network

What's stupid this month: Xerox patents sharing documents online | Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/whats-stupid-this-month-xerox-patents-sharing-documents-online/

In January 2016 I was given the disgraceful title of SPM because Xerox's patent "(PDF file)U.S. Patent No. 9, 240,000"The title is" Social Network for Enabling the Physical Sharing of Documents "(social network that can physically share documents).

Regarding the content of a patent,ClaimsThe details requested to be granted as "claim" is clearly stated in the patent application document in the unit of "claim". For U.S. Patent No. 9,240,000, the contents of the patent are written with multiple claims, but EFF is making complaints about the unique expression of wording.

Taking U.S. Patent No. 9,240,000 claim 11 as an example, it looks like this. Supplements "a" and "b" are added to the claims called "Computing system for physically sharing copies of documents" for a long time.


In supplement a, there are a series of unfamiliar terms such as "multiple of program instructions stored on the medium". Besides that, on parade of an unfamiliar term, although it is written long for an ordinary person who is not familiar with patent documents, it is a lack of understanding what you want to say after all.

If EFF briefly rephrases this meaningless explanation, supplement a says, "Ask if you want to print a document to the user via GUI or record whether you want to share the document", supplement b is " If you want to share it, update the user status so that it displays the name of the document and the location where it can be read ", it seems to be simple.


According to the EFF, it is customary to write such a patent document in such a lengthy manner that it is difficult to understand without patent expert lawyer for various reasons. A patent expert lawyer says that all words are important in order to clarify the scope of patents and patent rights, but in EFF, most of them say "a plurality of It is a word that has little meaning in scenes other than the patent system like "Program Instructions". In addition, by dressing simple contents with modifiers that are complicated and difficult to understand, patents are granted to inefficient inventions that hinder understanding of what kind of patent and do not need to grant exclusive monopoly rights It is criticizing that it is inviting the situation that it will be done.

By the way, for EFF, patent No. US Patent No. 9,240,000 approved by Xerox, the technical idea is simply to electronicize "book lending record" used in the library from long ago It is also making a complaint to the scarcity of.