source: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/wo..._64166/#uMYPBH

I searched for the Full Tilt application when Rush Poker first came out, but it had not yet been made public in the U.S. In fact, it appears that the U.S. application was not filed until January 2011. It claims priority to a January 2010 application in the European Patent Office, EP10250085.

The U.S. application was assigned to Pocket Kings Limited, Dublin, Ireland, after it was filed. Its abstract states that it relates to:
Bingo!

In an Office Action dated August 31, 2012, the patent examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected all 46 of the pending claims. Given that this is the first Office Action on the merits, this is customary. I have not read over the Office Action in detail to see what the basis of the rejections were (because I'm not getting paid). If you want to follow the saga yourself, you can do so here. Put this "13/006,620" with the Application Number radio button selected after going through the reCAPTCHA page.

For some reason it won't let me wrap the link to the Google Patents page around the text above, so here it is in ugly form: http://www.google.com/patents/US20110177863

Apparently you can't link directly to Public PAIR. Go to this page first, then click on one of the "Public PAIR" links you find on that page.

Looks like the examiner found prior art in this patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US20070155460

That's responsible for invalidating the bulk of the claims. The other claims are struck down because they're obvious given that prior art. The remaining claims were struck because they were reiterating other claims or not properly formed.

i hope a new company can make the poker market more competitive

A non-provisional patent application in the United States must include a set of at least one claim (in addition to a written description of the invention). The claims define the legal coverage that the patent will have if the Patent Office allows them.

Claims are commonly rejected when a patent application is first filed. In fact, they are so frequently rejected that *not* getting a rejection is a possible indication that they were not drafted as broadly as they could have been.

The ground for rejection is usually that another patent or printed publication, or a combination of multiple references, already disclosed what the applicant seeks to cover in his claims. Other less frequent rejections are on the grounds that the written description is somehow lacking or that the applicant is seeking to claim subject matter that is not permitted by statute.


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totally agree with u ! there is no competence

Update:

Based on the patent application publication US 2007/0155460 ("the Burnside reference") mentioned above by bluffold, the patent examiner entered a Final Rejection on October 1, 2013. The examiner basically said that he did not buy any of the arguments raised to distinguish the Burnside reference. I finally took a cursory look at the Burnside reference after all these months, and it is a pretty good piece of prior art. In other words, someone else beat Full Tilt to the punch by just over 4 years, filing their application in December 2005 for what appears to be the same invention.

Not all is lost for the Rational Group* yet. It can file a Request for Continued Examination to carry on the fight with the patent examiner, or file an appeal to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in the USPTO.

It is interesting to note that the Burnside reference itself is facing an uphill battle. The applicants received a Final Rejection back in 2009 and filed a Request for Continued Examination. As yet, they still have not received a patent (which is why I referred to it as a "patent application publication" instead of a "patent").


*Note: The USPTO database still shows the Full Tilt application as being assigned to Pocket Fives, meaning the Rational Group has not yet formally filed the paperwork to record their ownership of the pending patent application.

Further update:

Full Tilt/Rational Group's attorneys waited until the very last day they could, April 1, 2014, to meet the six-month deadline to file a Notice of Appeal from the October 1, 2013 Final Rejection.

Who filed for the other patent? Seems like PS would have gobbled that up by now.

Since Full Tilt was running fraudulently shouldn't all of their patents seize to exist or be turned over to PokerStars once they purchased the from the DOJ??

Too bad the owners of FTP were scum and ruined online gaming in the usa.

Full Tilt did not have issued U.S. patents. Read what's above. There isn't much. Then ask questions about what you don't understand.

The second part of you wrote makes no sense logically given that FTP was not the only site shut down.

It looks like PokerStars did gobble it up. The Burnside reference was originally assigned to a company named Hold 'em One, Inc. Then Pocket Kings bought it in October 2010. Then Rational FT Enterprises Ltd. bought it in August 2012.

Rational FT Enterprises also acquired the Full Tilt application in August 2012, but didn't record the assignment until November 2013. So now Rational FT Enterprises owns both patent applications.

Latest news

http://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/p...m-poker-12-05/

This is the Burnside reference discussed above. 54 claims were allowed on March 31, 2014.

One representative claim is reproduced below:
This first allowed independent claim in the Burnside reference is mainly about the mechanics of quick folding, whereas some of the dependent claims cover the aspect of maintaining the appearance that the person who quick folded is still active. I can see why the application that was the subject of the OP was rejected over this reference.