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For the record, here's the patent in question.

The problem is that there's a grey area in the law as what constitutes a computer program and what constitutes a piece of hardware that includes some software. The latter is patentable, the former isn't.

In this case the patent claims to be on the proxy server itself (ie the box), but if you read it closely there's nothing special about the box - the patent is really about the software. But this is a grey area, and there isn't enough legal precidence to rule this sort of patent out quickly on these grounds. In the end we shot it down on prior art (see my other post for details), and obviousness over the prior art.

- Fzz

The scheme would probably work like this:

1. Cap all traffic from everywhere at a certain rate or usage limit
2. Charge either provider or subscriber for a higher bandwidth cap on a site. A subscriber could have a list of sites they would like as "premium" - maybe even submit a bookmark list on a micropayment per address scheme. The provider would of course pay for their sites or even individual files to be "premium".
3. (obscene) Profit!!! Think of it as a modified cable business model.

12. A method for controlling the rate at which data is transferred between a source computer (140) and a plurality of requesting terminals (110) comprising the steps of:

• monitoring the rate at which data is transferred to each of the requesting terminals (110);
• determining account information for each requesting terminal (110);
• determining a level of service subsribed to by each of the requesting terminals (110) from the account information;
• comparing the rate at which data is transferred to each of the plurality of requesting terminals (110) and the level of service subsribed to by each of the requesting terminals (110);
• and controlling the rate at which data is transferred to each of the requesting terminals (110) based on the comparison

Actually, according to the patent we don't owe anybody anything.

If you were to RTFA, you would see that it says: A system for displaying the status of a plurality of threaded tasks operating in the background includes a status bar; a progress control bar in the status bar for a primary task operating in the background and including a progress bar and first and second action buttons; the progress bar visually representing progress of a primary background operation; the first action button being selectable by a user for initiating an action with respect to the primary background operation and the second action button being selectable by a user for alternately displaying and canceling a drop list of secondary progress control bars for secondary tasks also operating in the background.

WHICH IS NOT A PROGRESS BAR but rather a special status pane. I don't care if they patent that. I'll implement it with two or three different buttons. I won't use a button, whatever...

Please, don't mislead the readers. And don't consider going into patent law, actually don't consider going into law at all - you have to read the whole document.

On a side note, this is however, what Eclipse uses -- or the whole article. But since development of that falls under IBM, I think we have no problem using that also.

While this judge's message may seem absurd, remember to pay royalties when you code a progress bar in your application.

That's right, a whole lot of people owe William S. Andreas and Jeffery P. Foster of IBM a whole lot of money.

Oh, and this was filed in the U.S. but approved by a European patent office so I don't think it's fair for this judge to bash only us Yanks.

My church had a fundraiser once and I believe they used a progress bar on a website to track their earnings ... I should e-mail Mr. Andreas and Mr. Foster--the Catholic Church has got deep pockets!

Say, have any of you Java swing programmers ever typed

JProgressBar myJPB = new JProgressBar();

? Because I was thinking of starting a patent lawyer career, I just need you to reply with your name, contact information and the application you used it on and distributed.

The list of the members of this patent family is here.

According to espacenet.com Inpro Licensing have only got 6 EU patents. I don't know enough to guess which might be the one involved. I also don't know if this includes patents to which they've merely bought the rights (instead of filing themselves).

background to an amusing discussion I had with the UKPO a while back concerning this little gem

Faith in the patent system on this planet should quickly fade in anyone staring in disbelief at the word "GRANTED" rubberstamped across a document with lines like:

a gravity wave is bent around the craft enabling the craft to float. Reference is also made to the craft being capable of travelling at many times faster than the speed of light.

CLAIM

This specification is for a completely new system of travel to build a craft that can carry any payload to be able to overcome the problem envisaged by Einstein and is [sic] encountered by all rocket propelled craft that is of it's [sic!] mass increasing with speed so that all these craft are limited in there [sic(k)?!] speed to below the speed of light.

(...) is moor [ahem] than suitable as a cheep [OMG] method of launching space satellites with a great reduction of pollution.

background to an amusing discussion I had with the UKPO a while back concerning this little gem

Faith in the patent system on this planet should quickly fade in anyone staring in disbelief at the word "GRANTED" rubberstamped across a document with lines like:

a gravity wave is bent around the craft enabling the craft to float. Reference is also made to the craft being capable of travelling at many times faster than the speed of light.

CLAIM

This specification is for a completely new system of travel to build a craft that can carry any payload to be able to overcome the problem envisaged by Einstein and is [sic] encountered by all rocket propelled craft that is of it's [sic!] mass increasing with speed so that all these craft are limited in there [sic(k)?!] speed to below the speed of light.

(...) is moor [ahem] than suitable as a cheep [OMG] method of launching space satellites with a great reduction of pollution.

...which theoretical but apparently sound science provided the background to an amusing discussion I had with the UKPO a while back concerning this little gem:

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB23 47912&F=0&QPN=GB2347912

Publication No GB2347912 dated 20.09.2000

Examination requested 07.11.2000

Grant of Patent (Notification under Section 18(4)) 07.10.2003
        Publication of notice in the Patents and Designs Journal (Section 25(1))
        05.11.2003
        Title of Granted Patent ANTI GRAVITY CRAFT

(Sadly, the patent actually granted claims very much less than its title or the EPO application documents would suggest ;-)

They do have patents:
http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page2.html
Throw the numbers there into:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm
The EU site is below:
http://www.european-patent-office.org/
Which lead me to here:
http://www.espacenet.com/getstarted/index.en.htm
Which is where I stop before submitting this message to slashdot.

Look here. BTW, Amazon originally filed a non-disclosure request on this one with the USPTO, which has to be waived when filing internationally.

>>> "I'm not sure that there is any commerical solution that can support 1 million emails well. Hence why Yahoo and Google have built there own custom systems. Some engineering may need to be required."

Well if Yahoo and Google have already done it, then I'd approach them for a quote on using their engineers to implement your system. They could say f***-off. They might give a price.

They might come over all generous and hand you their email system implementation docs ... but I doubt it!

If you can't get the corps to play ball, find out who the lead engineers were and head hunt them. I reckon a one-million strong corporation could do this without blinking.

One other thought. Check for recent patent publications on email systems from either corp.. Long shot, but it may give you a start. This patent (http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=AU2 003299904&F=0) application from Google talks of an elision module - for removing header or repeating elements from mail. Which sounds like it might be a system for storing tokens in place of spam mails.

Or there's http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO20 05046111&F=0 from Yahoo ... but neither of these help particularly. One thing corps seem to do is use abstractions of descriptions of real systems for the patent disclosure. It might help. I think it was the Google one that mention the three-fold sub-division suggested elsewhere on this page.

>>> "I'm not sure that there is any commerical solution that can support 1 million emails well. Hence why Yahoo and Google have built there own custom systems. Some engineering may need to be required."

Well if Yahoo and Google have already done it, then I'd approach them for a quote on using their engineers to implement your system. They could say f***-off. They might give a price.

They might come over all generous and hand you their email system implementation docs ... but I doubt it!

If you can't get the corps to play ball, find out who the lead engineers were and head hunt them. I reckon a one-million strong corporation could do this without blinking.

One other thought. Check for recent patent publications on email systems from either corp.. Long shot, but it may give you a start. This patent (http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=AU2 003299904&F=0) application from Google talks of an elision module - for removing header or repeating elements from mail. Which sounds like it might be a system for storing tokens in place of spam mails.

Or there's http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO20 05046111&F=0 from Yahoo ... but neither of these help particularly. One thing corps seem to do is use abstractions of descriptions of real systems for the patent disclosure. It might help. I think it was the Google one that mention the three-fold sub-division suggested elsewhere on this page.

IIRC DPA is a subset of sideband analysis (or attack!). When I first came across this in a patent spec I thought "awesome" you can hack systems based solely on how much power is drawn??!!

That's what I call 1337!!1111

Did you notice the clue on a useful source of technical data ... try http://uspto.gov/ or http://ep.espacenet.com/

According to the ffii newspage http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn, there is a European equivalent to this patent: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP04 74717+&F=8, which has been expired.

In the legal status document (http://v3.espacenet.com/legal?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP047 4717+&F=8&QPN=EP0474717), it also says opposition has been filed by Philips and that it has been expired because the patent owner failed to pay it's yearly fees.

According to the ffii newspage http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn, there is a European equivalent to this patent: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP04 74717+&F=8, which has been expired.

In the legal status document (http://v3.espacenet.com/legal?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP047 4717+&F=8&QPN=EP0474717), it also says opposition has been filed by Philips and that it has been expired because the patent owner failed to pay it's yearly fees.

Go here http://ep.espacenet.com/ and click "quick search" enter "Nokia" in the search box then spend the rest of your life going through the 35747 hits.

No, Adobe patented it quite a long time ago already. E.g. US 5,546,528 and EP689133.

I doubt it.

prior art
more prior art

in pdf form

Note the claims section and references - they keep talking about Napster and Kazaa - nothing about anything that use hashes.

..a patent infringement lawsuit involving several patents related to Microsoft's implementation of "Chimney"

I could be mistaken, but I think this might be the "chimney" patent in question.

Oh, you mean brilliant new, intuitive interfaces like these?

http://webshop.ffii.org/

The problem is friend that any attempt at patenting software ultimately transpires as an attempt to patent an idea. Software patents are far more than just a threat to IT companies, it is a precedent for the commodification and monopolisation of all forms of human culture. Imagine if I could take a patent out on Literary devices, like Alliteration or the Rhyme, or methods like The Synopsis. Perhaps the latter isn't too far away from the absurdity of filing a swpat on the Preview Window http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewer?PN=EP5371 00&CY=gb&LG=en&DB=EPD

If programming is itself knowledge production (as so many agree), then we're all going to be pretty stupid in 10 years if Software Patents are allowed to take hold.

Care to put what you found on gauss?

http://gauss.ffii.org/

(disclaimer: site under developement)

The european Alnet patent has some comments already:

http://gauss.ffii.org/View/EP826181/Comments

You can find european equivalents here (we have not implemented that yet on gauss).

//Erik

One of their patents, "ADAPTING PORTABLE ELECTRICAL DEVICES TO RECEIVE POWER WIRELESSLY", is for a power receiving device plugged into the existing power adapter on an electronic device.

Prior art includes: 1)solar cells with a plug. 2)A coil of wire with a plug. 3)Stealing electric power from utility lines. 4)any detachable radio antenna when used with an RF powered device (such as a field strength meter).

Also, these are intended to be permanently attached to your cell phone or similar device. So, perhaps a better title should be "device for breaking the power connector on portable electronic equipment" because that is exactly what will happen in short order. Having the plug protruding from your portable device while you carry it around will expose the connector to stresses it will not withstand. To do this safely requires a hard case with a shroud around the plug, not just some cheesy stick on pad as they suggest in the patent.

I think it is highly likely many of their other patents infringe on prior art such as cordless toothbrushes, digititizer pads (summagraphics/wacom) - particularly those with cordless pucks powered by the sensor field, and the deactivator pads for anti-theft tags.

Your link is just about as shady as it gets. Look, it doesn't matter what patents IBM files.

It does matter that IBM is actively trying to expand the borders of patentable subject matter, and actively lobbying (both at patent offices and with politicians) to get the broken US system introduced in Europe.

Has IBM (in recent times) used it's patent portfolio to squash competition or to do generally evil things? No.

How many small European software companies do you think can play the patent game? Do you think IBM does not know this? IBM knows that no-one else can compete with them in the patent race, and even if someone else has a patent, they can get access to a cheap/free license because of the tons of patents they have.

See the remark at the top of page 4 of this testimony to the European Commission. That reference dates back to 1990, but there is no reason to assume that they stopped leveraging this competitive advantage while at the same time obtaining more and more patents, and starting to enforce their patents more actively from 1993 onwards (see slide 13, the curve does not flatten because R&D spending declines, but because patent license income goes up).

IBM has invented a good chunk of the technology out there today. The article mentions pursuing patent claims against Oracle, well, IBM invented the relational database!

Yes, and IBM tried to claim it invented case conversion using a lookup table (click on the patent number to get the pdf). Fortunately, there was prior art.

You also seem to assume that because someone did something first, they have a natural right to a monopoly on doing that. They don't. Patent law is a purely economical law which introduces artificial monopolies in the market. You only do that if you find out the market is running completely haywire due to the absence of such monopolies. IBM's early software work was not patented either, simply because there were no software patents. Did IBM suffer because of that? Of course not, they benefited a lot from he fact that the creators of VisiCalc hadn't patented "the database", even though they "invented" it.

Software patents are not necessary to keep the software market at large innovating or functioning correctly. Even enquiries by pro-swpat institutes like Max Planck and Fraunhofer show that competition is the main driving force to keep innovating. If you don't innovate, your competitor will and you lose.

Time to market and copyright give you a small lead time advantage, and the fact that the resulting monopolies are either fairly narrow but long (copyright) or broad but short (trade secret) means that the industry can keep moving at a high pace and does not require the high transaction costs associated with patents (and without requiring huge cross licensing deals between large companies).

A lot of companies exist and make lots of money based on technologies that IBM invented but did not pursue.

And IBM makes a lot of money on innovations from other people. Additionally, you don't hear about the individual cases where companies like IBM press other companies into paying for licenses, unless they go to court (which is only a very small fraction, who can fight IBM in court?). Companies also do not publicise that kind of things, since the fact that they have to pay 1% to 5% of their revenue on a product to IBM (or anyone else) is not good publicity.

Exactly because such cases are not publicised by anyone, there are

Many of the companies listed (IBM, etc.) actually DO innovate,

and use the patent system the way it was intended

At least the software patents from IBM are generally not particularly better than anyone else's. And unless you consider "patent everything you can so you can afterwards extract licensing money from everyone else" (and apart from that use the patents you have to force everyone else to give you access to their patents, so their patents become worthless in so far competing with you is concerned) as the way the patent system was intended to work, IBM is definitely not (only) using it as intended.

RESULT LIST
Approximately 100000 results found in the Worldwide database for:
IBM as the applicant

RESULT LIST
Approximately 100000 results found in the Worldwide database for:
IBM as the applicant

You mention a company where I have a foot (actually only some toes) in door, and I already had a lot of informal discussions with my contacts about this issue. But typically they're too distanced and too busy minding their own corner to care. With a wait-and-see approach businesses in Belgium tend to be very reactive regarding politics.

I've also talked to a quite highly positioned person at Alcatel, but they take a very, very pro-patent stance since they feel it's a thing that can protect them from Chinese competition/rip-offs. Being a big business, they don't care about the cost, as the lawyers add to their meat mass and hence their visible profile.

Non-IT businesses are even worse. Talking to them about this is like talking about a math problem to a baker. They simply have other things to do.

I was curious and did a search on patents held by Eolas and invented by Michael Doyle, and I found this patent
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US66 16701&F=0

Entitled "Method and apparatus for identifying features of multidimensional image data in hypermedia systems", it only seems to be a patent describing ways to view or manipulate 3 dimensional images in a web brower, the method of which being execution of a "Program action"

The program action can include, for example, browser redirection, encapsulated HTML, dynamic HTML and downloading and running full-frame applets in the user's Web page.

They're not even trying to compromise of course: they're trying to pretend to a lay audience that a return to a strict interpretation of the EPC's exclusion of computer programs, maths etc. will bring down the WHOLE PATENT SYSTEM!!! They are desperate and it is a heartening thing indeed to see this kind of hysterical nonsense. To see what it is they stand to lose, take a look at the patent applications waiting in the database (search for IBM, Hewlett-Packard etc.) and consider why these companies have begun to flood the EPO/UKPO with applications that are so clearly for business methods and pure software if they have taken seriously (as the rest of us are expected to do) the UKPO's insistence that such abominations will never be patentable.

Intellect, the UK subsidiary of EICTA, managed to get the DTI to include 'software R&D' in exemptions from tax recently. Lord Sainsbury is convinced that software patents are of little importance or relevance to society but will be a good measure of UK "innovation". He thinks that he will be able to count all those large (mostly hardware) manufacturers' software patents as a measure of the UK and Europe's success in competing with the likes of Japan and the US (that's what the Lisbon Strategy, which is at the root of this mess, is all about - the technological competitiveness of Europe). It doesn't seem to matter to him that 75% or more of those patents will in fact belong to corporations mostly from - yes, you guessed it - the US and Japan!

DP-Tek developed this for laser printer devices, but the idea applies to other technologies. Basically, you can place a physical line between adjacent laser scan lines, using the analog memory of the OPC drum.

No, actually they are.

Check out European patent EP0,129,439. This is the European version of the infamous "gif" LZW patent that was enforceable in Germany, France, Britain, and Italy until June of this year.

Although "technically" the European patent offices are *not* supposed to allow patents to software, they routinely allow patents on what is actually a software invention (and have been doing so for decades). The problem is that the line between a software invention and a non-software invention is a really fuzzy one. Unfortunately, to suggest that software patents are not currently a problem in Europe (as has often been suggested on /.) is just plain wrong. They are already a problem and have been for many years...

The city of Munich's switching project to an open-source based infrastructure with a standardised Linux base client is eagerly watched worldwide. Meanwhile, attacks are taking place against open-source projects by means of lawsuits against important reference customers. These lawsuits are initiated by companies whose financing clearly stems from declared enemies of the open-source movement (1). We have done a patent search to reveal possible patent risks of the base client in its current form. The indicated patents can be searched at (2) and have for the most part been taken from (3). The patents mentioned below should be understood as being just examples of the 30,000 patents submitted to the European Patent Office. It may be assumed that at least 10-20% of these 30,000 patents are applicable to the client. To point at future threats, a part of patent applications have been taken into account; the acceptance rate for the European Patent Office is greater than 50% (4). In brackets, software packages of the planned base client are indicated.

[Image with a caption about the danger of JPEG and MPEG]

1. http://www.statskontoret.se/pressrum/press/2003/pr ess030915invandning.pdf
2. http://ep.espacenet.com/
3. http://swpat.ffii.org/, http://patinfo.ffii.org/, http://patdb.ffii.org/, ...
4. The average processing time for a patent application has been halved in the past 10 years and lies between 11 and 12 hours.

Many companies (IBM for instance) have technical bulletin libraries for exactly this purpose; if they can't justify the cost of the patent process for a particular idea, then they publish the idea to record a date for prior art 'discussions'

With non-software patents (i.e., where the invention/innovation lies in a novel way of using physical forces/material), how far exactly you are allowed to abstract is mainly limited by three things:

1. You can't abstract the claims until only the forces of nature you are harnessing remain, because those are not patentable;
2. You can't abstract the forces of nature you harness out and remain with some generic algorithm/method that could apply to anything, because then your invention (novel way to use those forces) is no longer part of the claims;
3. You're of course also limited by prior art (you invent a new car, but other cars already exist -> you can't claim all 4-wheeled vehicles etc) and whatever the patent office deems too general (after all, society grants you a monopoly in return for disclosure of an invention, so those two should -in theory- be proportionate).

1. There are no unpatentable basic "forces of information";
2. Since what you start with is already some abstract method/algorithm, no matter how much you abstract it further, you can always argue that your invention is still embodied in those claims;
3. This one is the only thing left.

Let me begin by saying though that the FTC report is meaningless. It is constantly derided as "so what" because the FTC has no say in patent matters as well as the fact that it is easier to criticize than to fix. I can tell a fat person to eat less, but that doesn't really fix the problem, nor is it really an insightful comment (the FTC's comments that is).

Are we talking about the same FTC report? The FTC doesn't simply say that there are too many patents or that there is a quality problem (they mention that as well, but that's not all). They also say that economic effects and effects on competition should be taken into account when extending the scope of patentable subject matter, or in general whenever patent-related decisions are taken. They also interviewed a lot of people from the business and the field to find out what they thought (after all, the patent system is there for them, right?).

They may have no a say in patent matters, but that doesn't mean their report is non-sensical. On the contrary, I think points 6 and 10 of IPO's response to the FTC report to be completely crazy and unworldly, even though they have a lot of (indirect and direct) say in patent matters.

I completely disagree with this statement. While it sounds reasonable, I have yet to be shown anyone that acted this way. Look at Edison (1,093 patents). Look at Hammond (800 patents). These people got patents and kept innovating, often in the same areas of technology. A 20 year patent is great, but why not extend your monopoly by improving your tech and filing a patent on the improvement. *BAM* 25 year monopoly (assuming 5 years between filings). The lazy inventor is a reasonable idea, but not a realistic one.

It is used a lot by parasite companies like EOLAS (browser plug-ins), Forgent (RLE compression in JPEG), Acacia ("video streaming"), ... . They have made a whole new business model out of this idea. It would surprise me if other companies did not do this on a smaller scale.

In practice, programmers can barely understand the legalese of software patents.

This is because a) the patent is written poorly or b) the programmer is lazy. Seriously. I have written several patent applications that contain no legalese except for the language in the claims (the enabling detailed description uses all English or trade language). I have also asked programmers what they thought their previous patent applications (filed by another firm) discussed and their repsonse was "I don't know, I couldn't be bothered to read it." The ONLY reason I write claims in "claim-ese" is because certain words mean certain things in the patent world (e.g., avoid "contains" because it is exclusive).

There are many poorly written patents (yes, I have read already a lot). And the claims are also quite important, since not all programmers work in the context of a large company where they can afford a lawyer to sit next to each programmer to check when a design decision infringes on a particular claim. In fact, even large companies don't do this. Companies like IBM simply count on their huge portfolio to get a cross-licensing deal if necessary.

To summarise it as one interviewee in the FTC report said: "There is too much information and it's no longer meaningful". As far as programming is concerned, the patent database is one huge collection of ideas. A programmer in general does not have a problem coming up with ideas. Time is spent designing them into an application, implementing them and testing them.

And in case a patent is about more than some general idea, as in case of e.g. one of the mp3 patents, you end up with claims so broad they include everything but the kitchen sink. I'm still w

European Patent Application EP1338960
US Patent Application US2003156138

Alongside your existing directory tree, an automatically maintained virtual directory tree of the form [Calendar Date]/[Subject]/...

Claim 1:

1. Calendar-based interface software in a computer readable medium, comprising:

• a system activity monitor that monitors user activity on a user-operated computer;
• a calendar system database of metadata relating to objects stored or activities carried out on a computer;
• a similarity system that determines a degree of similarity between at least a pair of computer files or objects;
• a chunking system that uses the degrees of similarity determined by the similarity system for a set of objects and groups them into a number of sub-groups; and
• a calendar user interface system that utilizes information stored in the calendar system database by the system activity monitor, and information determined by the similarity system and the chunking system to display in a calendar format time-based information relating to objects stored or activities carried out on the computer.

Note that MS is claiming the idea of arranging the files by date and then by automatically analysed subject-area -- the patent is directed entirely to the user-interface concept, not any particular algorithms to deliver it.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a digital video compression system which effectively implements a two-dimensional discrete cosine transform of blocks of the picture.

IANAL, but I doubt that you need to mention all the the potential uses for the techniques you describe. Just because a technique only uses a subset of the ideas in your patent doesn't necessarily mean (to me) that the idea is not covered by your patent. Clearly, their behavior is shady, but I suspect that they actually have a case (at least based on the technology). Can someone clarify this?

Everything that appears in the "description" part is simply the "invention" that justifies the fact that they got this right to exclude others from using run length encoding, but is otherwise completely independent from the monopoly they received.

Just because a product emulates a look and feel doesn't mean it's BAD does it? Since when was there a patent on a GUI?

Ever since Apple got US patent number 2002089529 , titled Media Player Interface. Look at the drawings -- that's iTunes. That probably also explains why LSongs has the player controlls at the bottom of the screen.

While the submarine-enforcement of the MP3 patent is bad, the actual patent is perfectly valid. Why shouldn't Fraunhofer IIS get royalties for the technology they paid for and developed.

There is no single MP3-patent, it's covered by a lot of patents. The basic one covers iterating *any* mathematical function over a sound sample until you can represent it in a desired number of bits. That's it. You can find the claim (in German) at the EPO, here's the English translation:

Digital coding process for transmitting and/or storing acoustic signals, specifically music signals, comprising the following steps.

• N samples of the acoustic signal are converted into M spectral coefficients;
• said M spectral coefficients are subjected to quantisation at a first level;
• after coding by means of an entropic encoder the number of bits required to represent all the quantized spectral coefficients is checked;
• when the required number of bits does not correspond to a specified number of bits quantization and coding are repeated in subsequent steps, each at a modified quantization level, until the number of bits required for representation reaches the specified number of bits, and
• additionally to the data bits the required quantization level is transmitted and/or stored.

And that is the basic problem with software patents: there is no way you can put in the law that they can't be as abstract as this one. Even if you have some innovation in abstract reasoning that is such an achievement one could think about granting its discoverer a temporary monopoly, the resulting monopoly is way too large compared what was discovered.

If you can patent an improved screw head ("Torx(R) Plus"), why not an algorithm? If you developed a new compression technology or a new encryption technology, why is that any less of an invention than an improved screw head?

You are asking the wrong question. The correct one is "Will granting patents on new compression algorithms make sure that more and better compression algorithms will be developed?". All empirical studies carried out until now answer that question with either a "We don't know" or "NO!" (Bessen&Hunt, FTC study, European Commission Directorate General on Research study, ...).

What we really need to fight are bad patents. Amazon's "one click" patent is one. Patents are *bad* when they are to broad or don't cover a real invention. But bad patents are a problem with the review system.

It's not just a problem with the review system, but with the patent system as a whole being unfit for monopolising advances in abstract reasoning. See this discussion between a programmer and the Deputy director of the UK patent office. The latter concludes with:

However, they [patent examiners who are also programmers] might express the communication problem the other way around - it's very difficult to persuade programmers that just because an invention is "easy", does not make it any less patentable.

Patents were never intended to sort out brilliant inventions from stupid ones. The "non-obvious" condition is simply not fit for that purpose.

This is so fitting with the Slashdot mentality that "software should be free" and that "copyright is bad".

I don't know about the rest of slashdot, but in case of software patents, the opponents are actually great proponents of copyright. The problem is that software patents completely undermine copyright. What good does it do that you have the right to sell you self-written program if even its publication is prohibited because someone own a software patent it infringes on?

From a case law perspective!

But we talk about statutory law. Lawyers do not understand software. Only parliament has legislative powers and can express the will of the people. Lawyers may not reverse the meaning of the law they can oly adopt it. And when they reverse the meaning of it, they have to be stopped by a clarified law. Yes, the patent courts are influenced by the patent attorney industry that is intrested in widening the scope of patent law so that everything under the moon can become patentable whether it is economically justified or not, whether it harms the economy or not. When law has cancer we need to cure it.

I don't want my grandmother to buy me a shirt. I don't want to understand the crap misinterpretations of patent attorneys. Read a few patents, dig further into the law and get yourself informed. So when the lawyers fail then we have to clarify and defend the law.

And old Frisian proverb says
"Wer nicht deichen will muss weichen"
Who does'nt want to dike will have to leave the land!

Lawyers - the vampires of information society.

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you misunderstood mean: you can patent an algorithm as embodied in a software program,

--> a "computer-implemented invention"

but you cannot patent the algorithm itself

--> in some parts of the world, you cannot make a real distinction. Usually algorithms or complicated stuff is not patented but the pretty obvious.

Just read a few software patents, for instance Sun's shopping cart ( it's a long description of simple applied web design every php programmer does without even thinking of inventions),
Expace net Shoppingcart patent
Sun's claims:'1. A computer-executable process, embedded in a computer-useable medium, for supplying items on a network (46), the network having at least one computer-server (20) for communicating with users employing a browser program on a terminal/computer (35) at a location remote from said computer-server, said embedded process comprising the steps of:

receiving (152), at the computer-server, a transmitted command from said browser program for a shopping page (40);
in response to said transmitted command, generating (154) a shopping page file and transmitting (156) the shopping page file to said browser program;
receiving (168), at the computer-server, at least one user selected item from the shopping page received (158) by the browser program;
creating (174) a list at the computer server;
at the computer server, adding (178) to the list each user selected item received by said receiving step;
returning (184) from the computer server the list of items in an entry of a shopping page file to said browser program; and
continuing user selection (200), receiving (168) data strings, adding (178) items to said list and returning (184) said list until termination by the user. [and so on] '

Or take a look at this graphic
http://plone.ffii.org/prmat/EP1278133a2/i mage_view

Yes, there are software patents in Europe, most of them trivial and x-applied by non-Europeans. For me the question is not how to improve their legal securtiy (EU-Commission), but how to get rid of them.

Does Starbucks have a license for this groundbreaking innovation from the patent owners at FPDC inc?

"System for reproducing information in material objects at a point of sale location"

And before any europeans in the audience start chuckling, it's patented in Europe too.

It is possible that he filed a registration patent in Russia. However a registration patent is filed essentially as a copyright would be, when you file what amounts to be an invention disclosure. This simply provide one "proof" that the purported "invention" existes as of the date filed.

If one wishes to "enforce" a registration patent, one must prove in court, during litigation, that the registration should be accorded legal rights.

It's unfortunate that news sources don't take the time to research stuff like this.

A patent was filed early 2001. The 'problem' is that soon after that, a company took a license on this technology, and required to keep confidentiality. This implies I can not show pictures, or give details or comments about the way this works.

European patent search

DEVICE FOR STEERING A HELICOPTER, filed 24-03-2003, inventor Van de Rostyne, Alexander, number WO03080433; on this link, simply click on the number again to get access to 31 pages (each in one PDF document)..

The original link is slashdotted, but at least we can admire this guy's "secret" patent.

If I remember corrently, the original patent for the use of thermostable Thermophilus aquaticus DNA polymerase belongs to Roche. Before I posted this comment, I checked in espacenet for any patents by Invitrogen regarding "thermostable" or "thermophilus" or "aquaticus". I couldn't find any hits.

You are right, however, there are a number of patents regarding Taq polymerase, but they actually patent a method using this enzyme, or a laboratory-made mutation of this enzyme, mostly with the goal of improving fidelity of DNA replication. That is in accordance with established copyright laws (afaik -- ianal), they didn't simply patent something they found, but a method that uses it.

If you are a researcher at a non-commercial institution, you are if I'm correctly informed, exempt from certain patent laws, and I heard of people who have their own expression vectors for Taq polymerase, and use it to produce polymerase for their lab's use.

Also, no biotech company would go to the point of "harvesting" the polymerase from Thermophilus aquaticus, when you can have your friendly E.coli make the same protein in a much easier way.

Copper will lift with current applied using the Biefeld-Brown effect discovered by Thomas Townsend Brown in 1928.

This is a real effect, NASA has patented its use.

Many people around the world have created small anti-gravity lifters with this effect.

If anyone wants to take a look at the actual patent from the EPO, and not just the information which FFII has, go here. Also note that this a divisional application of EP902381 and has an effective filing date of March 17, 1999.

If anyone wants to take a look at the actual patent from the EPO, and not just the information which FFII has, go here. Also note that this a divisional application of EP902381 and has an effective filing date of March 17, 1999.