The maker of over-priced printer ink, HP, has just decided that it invented reminder messages and has scored itself a patent from the daft US Patent Office.
The silly patent was spotted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. United States Patent No. 9,715,680 (the '680 patent) is titled "Reminder messages." While the patent application does suggest some minor tweaks to standard automated reminders, none of these supposed additions deserve patent protection.
Although this claim uses some obscure language -like "non-transitory computer-readable storage medium" and "article data" - it describes a quite mundane process.
The "article data" is simply additional information associated with an event. For example, "buy a cake" might be included with a birthday reminder. The patent also requires that this extra information be input via a "scanning operation" (e.g. scanning a QR code).
The '680 patent comes from an application filed in July 2012. It is supposed to represent a non-obvious advance on technology that existed before that date. Of course, reminder messages were standard many years before the application was filed.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks