Headline news today on the patent troll front: http://www.businessinsider.com/ntp-...rosoft-and-motorola-over-email-patents-2010-7 The above is why companies settle. They do not want a huge jackpot scored against them the way the patent troll firm NTP did to Blackberry. Now NTP is at it again, as their "patent roadblocks to progress" have been overstepped and they are looking for another free lunch at the expense of real producers.
Fair enough - not meant personally , but merely as a way of expressing my own frustration with what I saw as the same repeating arguments that you were posting, which appear to me as unfounded. But moving on, I will go through the claim construction process for US 6,772,132. The standard priority for construing the meaning of any term in a claim is first to look for an explicit definition in the specification, or a term may be implicitly defined in the specification, if not then it should be given the standard definition by a skilled person in the art (the particular field of technology that is the subject of the patent), if not an art term, then an appropriate dictionary definition with regard to the intent of the specification. It is also generally held that when ever possible every word in a claim should be taken as to have a meaning, and when ever possible different words should be construed as having different meanings. The separate integers of claim 1 are presented below in bold with any relevant construction below each integer: A method of placing a trade order for a commodity Defines the minimum capability of the method, and commodity is defined in the spec as being anything that can be traded with quantities and/or prices. on an electronic exchange having an inside market with a highest bid price and a lowest ask price, This can be taken as normally understood by a skilled person. using a graphical user interface This is not defined so is taken as normally understood. and a user input device, This is described as being a mouse in particular, but also as any suitable input device - so should be read as any user input device that would be used to interact with a computer terminal. said method comprising: The term comprising is usually construed as non-limiting â meaning including at least the steps of⦠setting a preset parameter for the trade order Preset in the spec appears to only refer to order quantity and should be construed as such. displaying market depth of the commodity, Market depth is defined as the current bid and ask prices and quantities in the market - limited by what information the exchange provides and what depth the user wants displayed. through a dynamic display of a plurality of bids and a plurality of asks in the market for the commodity, As described, the bid and asks are displayed in columns, and the positions of the bids and asks move to correspond to the prices at which they are presented to the market. including at least a portion of the bid and ask quantities of the commodity, The bid and ask columns include quantities, while portion refers to the limitations of market depth as above. the dynamic display being aligned with a static display of prices corresponding thereto, The price ladder on which the corresponding bids and asks are displayed against is static, which is defined to mean that the prices do not normally change position unless a re-centering command is received â the re-centering command is only described as being a click of a mouse button â the implication being that it is limited to a manual re-centering, as that would be the most consistent interpretation given the object of the invention. wherein the static display of prices does not move in response to a change in the inside market; As above it is only moved manually. displaying an order entry region aligned with the static display prices comprising a plurality of areas for receiving commands from the user input devices to send trade orders, The price display is can be horizontal or vertical, and the order entry region is aligned next the to price display. It does not appear necessary that the order entry region is the bid and ask column, although it is the preferred embodiment. each area corresponding to a price of the static display of prices; Requires that each area of the order entry region directly corresponds to a displayed price. and selecting a particular area in the order entry region through single action of the user input device Selecting is described as being a use of the user input device, while single action is defined as any action by a user within a short period of time, whether comprising one or more clicks of a mouse or other user input device. with a pointer of the user input device positioned over the particular area to set a plurality of additional parameters for the trade order and send the trade order to the electronic exchange. Requires that the user input device actually uses an on screen pointer, and selects a number of parameters based on the layout of the screen, which results in the order being sent to the exchange. Accordingly, for any method to infringe the claim, it must include every one of the above integers. It must actually perform every part of what is claimed â not simply be capable of, or could do if other things were changed or added to. Any one comparing a potential infringing act need only look at each of the above integers and if they can positively tick everyone of them off, then they would be infringing. Likewise for novelty â if some one was doing something before the filing date of the patent that would infringe the above claim, then the claim is not novel. The interpretation of the claim as pursued by TT is irrelevant â as nobody has ever thought that it meant that. There is no point being concerned about the effect of their imagined patent monopoly that was denied. Their intent of the scope of the patent when they filed it, is clear enough from the wording of the patent itself. Their subsequent arguments were made because people found ways around the patent so they did their best to convince the judge otherwise, and failed. - Importantly though, they always included a means for centering â which due to the wording and apparent intent, had to be interpreted as manual centering only. They had either never intended auto-centering to be included in the scope of the patent or didnât realise that it would be useful â which is tough luck for them. Their arguments in no way demonstrate that the patent shouldnât have been accepted - they can say what ever they like after the patent has been granted â it doesnât actually change the patents scope. Your statement that the claim is impossible to avoid infringing obviously needs some sort of qualifying statement. Impossible to avoid infringing when doing what? If there is a method earlier than the patent that you know of, which would infringe the claim, then please elaborate, as that would clearly demonstrate invalidity of the patent. However that method, on its own, must include every one of the integers of the claim to show lack of novelty. You can't chop and change and say 'well this part is 'public domain' and this bit is from this method' and so on. It must all be in the one known method. Inventive step on the otherhand is a whole different issue My reference to a direct connection of the mouse to the exchange was to point out the apparent absurdity of your claim construction â no one skilled in the art would ever consider that performing âone action on an input device to send an order to an exchangeâ is nonsensical or impossible because the terminal itself is not directly connected to the exchange. In any case, the specification clearly describes the requisite path for orders to travel through to get to the exchange and shows the various networked components in a diagram. There appears to be little doubt that the specification has described enough for a skilled person to perform the invention. Even so, it wouldn't be unsual for a patent to rely on the mundane knowledge of a skilled person to enable an invention. Especially in regard to an aspect that is well known and unrelated to the proposed novel and inventive features.
Funky: Thanks for the lucid tutorial! I see that, amongst other things, you are a patent attorney. Looking at some of your other posts it would appear you are an IB customer and I'm assuming that you are familar with BookTrader. If this thread is correct in its assumptions, TT is going after IB. BookTrader has had, for the five or so years I've been using it, an auto-centering feature. Reading your comments, as extracted and quoted above, I don't understand how TT could have a valid claim against IB. Would you care to conjecture as to IB's reason for going to the two-click method in TWS 906? Jack
Although I have been an IB customer, I'm not very familiar with booktrader as I always used buttontrader. Assuming the patent we discussing here is actually the one being enforced against IB, perhaps booktrader is infringing because it includes the option of manual centering as well as the auto-centering? They're not mutually exclusive features, so the presence of both would still be an infringement.
The version I'm running (904.6) has two options - "Center around last price" and "Center around midpoint of bid/ask." However, as you are probably aware, IB makes little changes from time-to-time, and does not document them well, if at all. I think there used to be an option for no auto-recentering some years back but I've had no reason to look at that feature for some years. Of course, you may be correct in surmising there is another patent involved. Thanks. Jack
You can vote against the booktrader popups in the interactive brokers feature poll forum: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/general/poll/poll.php?sid=5922 ok - won't help for legal problems, but however - let's try.
From what i know Ninja settled with TT years ago. So every Ninja user is paying a fee indirectly to TT. Thats why i would never use Ninja because i dont want to support TT with their lame patent policy. 'Furthermore, TT granted Ninja a license under which it will pay to TT a variable royalty of at least $.10 per side for all contracts that trade in conjunction with the NinjaTrader SuperDOM trading screen.' http://www.tradingtechnologies.com/article.aspx?id=141
If you have a dialog going with them on this, maybe you could find out from them how long they will support the version before 906. We'll know how long we can use it before change would be required.
IB needs to stop messing around with their tools unless they are going to improve them. The new chart colors are too bright, keep the old ones. Book Trader, by the time you click on the popup, your price isn`t there anymore, the antithesis of scalping: where you have literally a second to get that price before it moves. We pay IB , and if they are going to offer these tools, then they need to pay whomever (if this is the true reason for the popup) so we get good trading platform tools. There are things I don`t like about NT that I do like for BT, and frankly TT is too expensive for what you get different from BT. But I am not sure this is the issue as IB makes changes that suck like for example now the new version has your fill boxes on the chart, i like the fill dots, but I don`t want the fill boxes with prices, it just muddles the chart -gets in the way! And I doubt this is a patent issue!