2010-03-04

2010-03-04

Photos · Comment · March 4, 2010

Haliburton patents frivolous patenting?appft1.uspto.gov

Filed in 2007, Patent Acquisition and Assertion by a (Non-Inventor) First Party Against a Second Party:

Methods for a first party to acquire and assert a patent property against a second party are disclosed. The methods include obtaining an equity interest in the patent property. The methods further include writing a claim within the scope of the patent property. The claim is written to cover a product of the second party where the product includes a secret aspect. The methods further include filing the claim with a patent office.

Alas, my prior art has been one-upped by a comically evil corporation.

Link via Doron

Links · Comment · March 4, 2010

OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass

After watching this (unsurprisingly) spectacular OK Go video I was struggling to remember the name of a similar contrivance in Vik Muniz’s Rebus exhibition. I found it, along with lots of helpful commentary over at Chris Devers’s blog.

A few things that struck me:

  • This is not your typical Rube Goldberg machine — it’s messy, destructive and the band members stand in as “props that can reposition themselves” (as Chris nicely puts it).
  • The open letter seems to have worked. Even recording industry lawyers are apparently powerless to this kind of strategic bad publicity.
  • On the other hand, the last few seconds of this video indicate some kind of compromise on the part of the band. It pushes this music video into the direction of “novelty viral advertising.”

All that said, I’m happy this exists. I’m also happy the marching band version exists and glad the video embedding issue has been set aside for now.

Link

Videos · Comment · March 4, 2010