Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[martynj1980]

Here in the UK we have services where you can send a vehicle's registration number via SMS (text message) on your mobile phone to an operator and get back some info and history on the vehicle to your mobile phone for a fee.

Another similar type of service is where you can text any question to a service and they send you back an answer.

What, if any, part of these ideas are patentable?

This is not my idea, but lets say my idea is to send your social security number via SMS and receive your credit history back to your phone.

Is it possible to patent the idea of getting your credit history back to your phone by sending your social security number if the idea has not been done before?

[mk1023]

35 U.S.C. 101 Inventions patentable.

Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
--------------------------
Assuming those processes are claimed properly, it is possible they could be patented.

There are two main ways for a patent application to get rejected:
1) the claimed invention is not novel
2) the claimed invention would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art

So even if no one had thought of sending an SSN over a phone, an application for that could still be rejected (and is likely to be at first given the way the USPTO operates) as obvious.

It's important that you understand the way patents work. The essence of a patent is are the claim. It defines your IP rights.

Claim 1:
sending by a mobile terminal an SMS message containing a SSN
receiving said SMS message
transmitting to said mobile terminal a credit history associated with said SSN

Claim 2:
sending by a mobile terminal a first SMS message containing a SSN
receiving said first SMS message
retrieving, by a trained monkey, a credit history associated with said SSN
composing, by said trained monkey, a second SMS message containing said credit history
transmitting said second SMS message

If your application contained only claim 2, you're much more likely to get a patent. Of course that kind of patent would be worthless.

If your application contained only claim 1, you're very likely to get an obviousness rejection. An examiner could combine one reference teaching a first party furnishing a second party a SSN and receiving a credit history in return with a second reference teaching a first party transmitting a user identifier to a second party over SMS and receiving a reply SMS message containing information related to that user identifier.

[JustAnotherExaminer]

Here in the UK we have services where you can send a vehicle's registration number via SMS (text message) on your mobile phone to an operator and get back some info and history on the vehicle to your mobile phone for a fee.

Another similar type of service is where you can text any question to a service and they send you back an answer.

What, if any, part of these ideas are patentable?

This is not my idea, but lets say my idea is to send your social security number via SMS and receive your credit history back to your phone.

Is it possible to patent the idea of getting your credit history back to your phone by sending your social security number if the idea has not been done before?

Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

As someone who examines 709 stuff, utilizing SMS to perform communications is practically a design choice (and therefore very obvious). Is performing a known process (asking questions and answers) utilizing a known type of communication (SMS) patentable? No.

You would have an easier time attempting to patent how you provide such a service, ie the infrastructure and methods behind the scenes that the user doesn't see.  But again, if it uses known technologies, it may not obtain a patent.

[JimIvey]

I do precisely this sort of technology for a few clients and it is the sort of technology I get patents on.  Your biggest issue will be novelty and non-obviousness (in UK/EPO, novelty and inventive step).  You may also have "industrial applicability" problems (like our Section 101 for utility), but I generally find ways around that. 

Regards.