AutoMARK Gets a Patent for the "Ballot Marking Device"

Wilms

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Sat Jul-29-06 08:38 PM
Original message

AutoMARK Gets a Patent for the "Ballot Marking Device"

AutoMARK gets a patent for the "ballot marking device"

Joe Hall

07/29/06

snip

Vogue Election Systems, Inc. and AutoMARK Technical Systems, LLC are the most successful ballot marking device developers with their AutoMARK Voter Assist Terminal. It was only natural, I suppose, that they seek to patent their innovation. Eugene M. Cummings of AutoMARK Technical Systems, LLC was awarded patent no. 7,080,779 for a ballot marking device on 25 July 2006 (filed 11 Dec. 2003).

snip

This will make it much more difficult for other vendors to develop their own similar ballot marking device and could pose problems for non-profit groups (like the Open Voting Consortium) which might be developing ballot-marking devices or devices based on similar architectures. I hope AutoMARK TS, Inc., is open to licensing their technology, and hopefully at reduced royalties for non-profit groups. Seeing as how they've signed exclusive marketing and manufacturing agreements with Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and how competitive the voting systems market is, I'm not holding my breath.

snip/links

http://josephhall.org/nqb2/index.php/2006/07/29/automarkpatent

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Bill Bored

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Sat Jul-29-06 08:43 PM
Response to Original message

1. Well tell that to Populex.

I'm not seeing a major differece between this and the 'Mark at the moment.

The orginal Populex has been enhanced to read back the ballot to the voters, just like the AutoMark. So what did they patent, Wilms?

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OnTheOtherHand

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Sat Jul-29-06 09:04 PM
Response to Reply #1

2. dunno if this answers your question, but...

1. A voting system for recording a voter's selection of one candidate from a slate of one or more candidates, comprising

a hand-markable physical ballot for receiving at least one voter-detectable mark indicating the voter's selection of a candidate from the slate of one or more candidates, said hand-markable physical ballot providing the names of and an associated marking space for each candidate in said slate of candidates;

a ballot marking terminal including a display screen for displaying to the voter one or more menus presenting a choice of candidates from said slate of candidates, and for receiving an input from the voter indicating the selection of a candidate from said slate of candidates, said ballot marking terminal receiving said hand-markable physical ballot and in response to said voter input, marking the marking space corresponding to said selected candidate with a voter-detectable mark and returning said hand-markable physical ballot to the voter; and

a ballot scanning device for receiving said ballot and recording said voter-detectable mark in said marking space associated with said selected candidate as a vote cast for said selected candidate.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week30/OG/html/1308-4/US07080779-20060725.html

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Wilms

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Sat Jul-29-06 09:30 PM
Response to Reply #1

3. Guess what, Bill. I ain't gonna do it!

I'd need access to engineering descriptions of the Populex machine to compare with the patent's 60 ( :wow: ) claims before I'd even guess.

But I'm sure a few lawyers are looking at this now. Some biting their nails, others licking their chops.

A saying I heard...

"Where there's a patent, there's litigation"

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