Slashdot Mirror

"For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support":

Financed a fake grass-roots movement to undermine the democratically elected government of the United Stated of America.

`Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers'

"On January 5th, it was announced that Koch Industries had sued a Utah web host, Bluehost, seeking names of pranksters who had put out a spoof press release and then posted it on a website made to look like Koch's" link
--

anybody can buy OCP's stock .. what could be more democratic than that?, OCP

"Monsanto is more infamous for growing its genetically modified crops than its use of software, but a series of corporate acquisitions and a new emphasis on tech solutions has transformed it into a firm that acts more like an innovative IT vendor than an agribusiness giant."

The only 'innovation' Monsanto is borrowing from the IT sector is extorting revenue from farmers for growing crops from the farmers own seeds. Even if the seeds were contaminated by accident, such as by cross-pollination by a neighbouring farmers field. As such Monsanto are the Microsoft of Agribusiness.

"Monsanto is claiming rights not only to generation 1 seeds but every generation after that. You can't plant those generation 2 seeds for a crop without infringing the patent, they claim, even if you bought them from somebody else". link

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130531131600482

Hey Timothy, wake up! How about the link?

Here it is in case you can't find it:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130531131600482

"Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal ~pj"

. . . to Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Funds File Amicus in Support of Google in Oracle v. Google Appeal.

> A refrigerator doesn't do something completely different depending on what you put in it.

That is the crux of the issue than nobody besides computer scientists are not able to understand (well, at least they _should_ understand):

a computer will _not_ do something completely different depending on what you put in it.

A general purpose computer is designed to run software, it is what a computer do. Like a car is designed to drive, a computer is designed to run software. A computer do not care at all if your software is F-18 simulation, a video decoder, or video game or whatever.
For a computer it's just bits of 0/1 to be executed according to the specification of the computer.

You, as the human user, make the distinction that that software is a F-18 simulation and that software is a video decoder. And at the end there is always a human user operating the computer. Because we still not get any self-aware AI like in Terminator.

If you get one machine that is designed to be a F-18 autopilot, then your can patent that machine as a whole. But you can not (or at least you should not) put a general purpose computer and load some F-18 autopilot software and patent that. Because there is already a patent on a general purpose computer, and your software is just the algorithm.

The F-18 autopilot machine as a whole is also all the instruments you need to auto-pilot the air plane. Just like you can patent a car whose purpose is to drive, even if that car have a general purpose computer inside.

To make it clear: you should not be able patent your software and call it "xxx but with computer", with the stupidest arguments of all that your software is magically transforming the computer in a new device.

For better put arguments please see:
What Does "Software Is Mathematics" Mean? - Part 1 Software Is Manipulation of Symbols
What Does "Software Is Mathematics" Mean? Part 2: A Semiotics Approach to the Patent Eligibility of Software by PolR

> A refrigerator doesn't do something completely different depending on what you put in it.

That is the crux of the issue than nobody besides computer scientists are not able to understand (well, at least they _should_ understand):

a computer will _not_ do something completely different depending on what you put in it.

A general purpose computer is designed to run software, it is what a computer do. Like a car is designed to drive, a computer is designed to run software. A computer do not care at all if your software is F-18 simulation, a video decoder, or video game or whatever.
For a computer it's just bits of 0/1 to be executed according to the specification of the computer.

You, as the human user, make the distinction that that software is a F-18 simulation and that software is a video decoder. And at the end there is always a human user operating the computer. Because we still not get any self-aware AI like in Terminator.

If you get one machine that is designed to be a F-18 autopilot, then your can patent that machine as a whole. But you can not (or at least you should not) put a general purpose computer and load some F-18 autopilot software and patent that. Because there is already a patent on a general purpose computer, and your software is just the algorithm.

The F-18 autopilot machine as a whole is also all the instruments you need to auto-pilot the air plane. Just like you can patent a car whose purpose is to drive, even if that car have a general purpose computer inside.

To make it clear: you should not be able patent your software and call it "xxx but with computer", with the stupidest arguments of all that your software is magically transforming the computer in a new device.

For better put arguments please see:
What Does "Software Is Mathematics" Mean? - Part 1 Software Is Manipulation of Symbols
What Does "Software Is Mathematics" Mean? Part 2: A Semiotics Approach to the Patent Eligibility of Software by PolR

Actually, it started just before the SCO fiasco, and was originally unrelated. However, it quickly refocused on SCO once that whole mess started, and from then on, things went pretty much as you said. However, I think it's interesting that it wasn't originally about SCO.

The oldest article in the site archives is about Grokster. The second article is about SCO. So, yeah, it didn't take long to shift focus.... :)

(The articles are also numbers 3 and 6 respectively. I'm not sure if that indicates that at least four articles simply haven't been archived, or if GL simply uses non-sequential numbering, but either way....)

Actually, it started just before the SCO fiasco, and was originally unrelated. However, it quickly refocused on SCO once that whole mess started, and from then on, things went pretty much as you said. However, I think it's interesting that it wasn't originally about SCO.

The oldest article in the site archives is about Grokster. The second article is about SCO. So, yeah, it didn't take long to shift focus.... :)

(The articles are also numbers 3 and 6 respectively. I'm not sure if that indicates that at least four articles simply haven't been archived, or if GL simply uses non-sequential numbering, but either way....)

If you accept the Church-Turing Thesis is true, then Groklaw has the best explanation why anything run through a Turing Machine is just math, and therefore not patentable.

There are in fact pro se defendants on some of these porn-troll-extortion cases. In one case Prenda counldn't easily dismiss a weak case because the the one pro se had already filed a response. So yeah, filing stuff is the right thing to do. Since he was quicker to answer than most of the lawyers, he's one of the ones who has a chance at receiving damages for the bogus suit.

You can follow it all at http://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/ and http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ and http://www.groklaw.net/index.php

But yeah if in addition to not being a lawyer, you're also a regular Joe who doesn't follow legal cases and read judgements relating to your industry, you'd probably be a fool. These trolls are starting to lose so badly and quickly in court now that it should be easy to find a pro bono working for the sanctions he can claim. When lawyers get fined for being naughty the money isn't collected by the government, it goes to the lawyers on the other side!

and sure enough, here we are today. what has happened already?

the #1 supporter of patent trolls gets shut down by his own court. Does he whine about it? you bet.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130510155818152

Groklaw is probably the best site for info on SCO(XQ)

ok...groklaw...looks good for some other stuff too...thankyou

Groklaw is probably the best site for info on SCO(XQ)

Yeah?

coverage: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/feds-may-use-subpoena-powers-to-study-patent-trolls/
explanation: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2013041110212889

give it a few months. The wheels are turning, slowly but surely.

This is a Florian Mueller article. It has no merit, no validity, and should be taken with the same grain of salt you'd take one of those folks who said the world would end in 12-12-2012.

Yeah, that was my initial response, "isn't "patent expert Florian Mueller" an oxymoron? IIRC that's the guy who claimed the GPL was a "source of infection", and Oracle was going to clean Google's clock. Over at groklaw that name tends to be associated with phrases such as "self-described patent expert" and "on Microsoft's payroll". He was also on Oracle's payroll.

Did they secure the rights and pay the royalties on this recording? Someone call the RIAA. I smell a copyright lawsuit!

I know you are joking, but unfortunately according to the horrible decision in Capitol Records vs. Naxos of America, Inc. those Alexander Graham Bell records are technically still under copyright.
http://http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050412225604578

To summarize the court case, Naxos, a classical music label, was taking old 78 RPM vinyl records and using modern technology to clean up the surface noise and putting them out on a budget label they run. This was perfectly legal in the EU and Asia as the recordings in question were over 50 years old and not under copyright in those places. Unfortunately they got greedy in the USA and released a CD of Pablo Casals' famous recordings of the Bach Cello Suites from the 1930s. There was never any doubt that these recordings were still covered by US copyright law and I remain amazed to this day that Naxos somehow believed that they could get away with this reissue in the USA, but Capitol (the US copyright owner of the recordings) found out about the release in the US market and sued them and won. In my opinion the court decision was far overreaching, ruling that every sound recording ever made in the USA before 1972 was still under copyright protection through state law and would remain so until the superseding Federal law covering copyrights allows those copyrights to begin to expire, which will be 2067 at the earliest. The case is somewhat involved but basically after realizing they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Naxos resorted to some legal trickery in arguing that the Casals recordings (they were all made in London, England) were not covered by US state copyright law since they weren't made in the USA. The court didn't buy it and ruled that everything ever released or recorded in the USA is still under copyright and since Naxos had no real way to argue the case any further (they did indeed violate US copyright law), this crazy decision remains the US law on the matter.

Here is it, thanks to Barns & Nobles:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/105113-microsofts-android-bullying-revealed-by-barnes-noble

More details
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2011111122291296

TLDR:
1) Background image loading
2) Operating system provided tabs.
3) Handles when selecting text.
4) Annotation of electronic documents. (annotating them without changing the original document)
5) Web browser loading status icons.
6) Simulating mouse inputs using non-mouse devices. (basically everything with a touchscreen infridges)

uh, what? I'm not joking.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2013041110212889

No, the title of the action is Motorola Mobility, Inc. v. Apple Inc. (warning: PDF), case 1:12-cv-20271-WJZ

They only asked him about Samsung

That's not correct. Samsung brought this up in their appeal.

Jury foreman Velvin Hogan failed to disclose truthfully during voir dire that he had sued and been sued by his former employer, Seagate, despite the Court’s express question asking him whether he had ever been a party to any litigation.

In the jury selection Hogan failed to mention the seagate lawsuit, but rather deflected by citing a smaller lawsuit that wasn't actually brought to court. link to pdf of questioning

Maybe I misunderstood your original statement... You said "From what I could tell, the jury foreman lied by omission when he was being questioned about his previous relationships with Samsung/Seagate." He was questioned about whether he had any relationships to the parties in the case, Samsung and Apple, which is what I thought you were referring to. He was never questioned about his relationship with Seagate. From the opinion denying juror misconduct:

Despite [the Seagate/Samsung] relationship, counsel for Samsung did not ask Mr. Hogan about this relationship with Seagate, and did not seek to elicit any information about whether that relationship might influence Mr. Hogan’s view in any way.

He was also asked if he had been in any litigation, and as you note, he failed to mention the prior trial... However, during voir dire, Samsung looked into Hogan's file and saw the bankruptcy proceeding, and then ignored it:

Samsung has waived its claim for an evidentiary hearing and a new trial based on Mr. Hogan’s alleged dishonesty during voir dire. Prior to the verdict, Samsung could have discovered Mr. Hogan’s litigation with Seagate, had Samsung acted with reasonable diligence based on information Samsung acquired through voir dire, namely that Mr. Hogan stated during voir dire that he had worked for Seagate.

As I said earlier, it's likely that Samsung did know of Hogan's relationship to Seagate and kept that information secret so that they could bring it up, as they did, in the event of an adverse jury decision. I'm sure they would have kept it silent if he had been biased the other way, filled with loyal feelings for Seagate/Samsung, and the jury came back with a decision of non-infringement. That's not allowed in real court, though, even if it's standard fare for Boston Legal.

Notice I used the word "dubious". I was referring specifically to Hogan's seemingly weak patent on a tivo-like technology, and how that could be seen to bias him towards defending flimsy or overly broad patents. As you say, Samsung should have taken this into consideration.

(i) What makes that "seemingly weak"? I mean, check out that independent claim - it's huge, and really narrow. It's a weak patent from an enforcement perspective, but less so from a validity perspective. Plus, it's not even a software patent - it's only claiming a hardware machine.

(ii) In my experience, many inventors think that their patents are strong and valid, while others are flimsy or overly broad. Nothing leads to the conclusion that an inventor must think their own patent is flimsy and therefore want to defend other flimsy patents, as opposed to the conclusion that the inventor thinks their own patent is strong and wants to get rid of flimsy patents to clear the chaff from the wheat.

Honestly, jury selection is complicated, with factors on both sides. Samsung may have kept Hogan on the jury because, being an engineer, they thought he was like many Slashdotters and would be anti-software patents (particularly wit

They only asked him about Samsung

That's not correct. Samsung brought this up in their appeal.

Jury foreman Velvin Hogan failed to disclose truthfully during voir dire that he had sued and been sued by his former employer, Seagate, despite the Court’s express question asking him whether he had ever been a party to any litigation.

In the jury selection Hogan failed to mention the seagate lawsuit, but rather deflected by citing a smaller lawsuit that wasn't actually brought to court. link to pdf of questioning

So should no one who's an inventor on a patent be involved in a patent trial?

You're right that we shouldn't bar experts and those knowledgeable in the field, and that holding a patent isn't, by default, indicative of bias. Notice I used the word "dubious". I was referring specifically to Hogan's seemingly weak patent on a tivo-like technology, and how that could be seen to bias him towards defending flimsy or overly broad patents. As you say, Samsung should have taken this into consideration.

Yes, when a large animal is dying, you can still be mortally wounded by their death spasms.

I'm more worried by Apple, but Apple has already lost the server wars, and seems to be starting to lose in the smart phone & tablet space. I think we are starting to see manufacturers & OEMs (those in the consumer electronics and phone segments) that are beholden to neither Apple nor Microsoft, start moving up the food chain - the current battleground is tablets, next is laptops...

Note all eBooks are based on Linux, and so are 'smart' TV's. There are probably people who boast that they are totally Microsoft, but don't realize that they already have Linux in devices they own, except that it is not widely known.

Essentially companies can innovate faster with Linux. Also, the cost of maintaining & enhancing Linux and associated software is shared by a very large group of companies (some very large like IBM) - so the real cost of using Linux for a company is less than that of a proprietary operating system (even for the likes of Apple & Microsoft).

Having the source code means that companies can make changes very fast themselves, such as when they can use a cheaper support chip. Note that companies that compete bitterly at marketing, can cooperate in enhancing the Linux kernel. Also everyone knows what's coming up in the next release of the Linux kernel, unlike a Microsoft O/S - see the court case where Microsoft did the dirty on Word Perfect.

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20130226153347343
[...]
Novell's arguments are clear and powerful. "A reasonable jury could find that Microsoft's conduct was anticompetitive because it harmed Novell, was not competition on the merits, and was reasonably capable of contributing significantly to maintaining Microsoft's monopoly power in the operating systems market," Novell writes. Nowhere, it says, does Microsoft defend Microsoft's conduct as competition on the merits. And Microsoft's brief neglected to mention to the appeals court, or respond to, the District Court's conclusion that a jury could have found Microsoft's justifications for its conduct "to be pretextual." Worse, Microsoft is asking the appeals court to confer immunity on it "for deception of competitors regardless of the effect on competition."
[...]

It takes several years for companies to build the skills & experience of creating a good user experience using Linux, and now several companies have already mastered that hurdle for phones & tablets. Hence Apple's initial advantage is evaporating here.

I and my youngest son (15) both have Linux laptops that never had Microsoft installed. He prefers it to the Apple desktop, but he had previous experience of Linux on the desktop. When he was 9 he did a poster for school showing the advantages of Linux, something to do with economics I think.

Just for posterity, the proper acronym is "IANAL" for "I Am Not A Lawyer". The alternative is "IAAL" (I Am A Lawyer) or perhaps "IANYL" (I Am Not Your Lawyer). Perhaps you did not know of the acronym, or perhaps you find it offensive or uncomfortable. Either way, please don't write new acronyms for things that have been well established. If you search a site like Groklaw, you will see the acronym used heavily.

There is a whole Wiki page devoted to this acronym and it's relatives.

You're getting your facts wrong. Sun *approved* of Google's efforts, publicly and officially, in the forum of their CEO's blog.

Search (e.g., Groklaw) for Jonathan Schwartz's blog from November 5, 2007:

• "I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of others from Sun in offering my heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android, Congratulations!"

And it continues in that vein, referring to Android as a Java-based platform.

This is after much discussion between the companies. The context matters. Google weren't being jerks.

Read up on the Oracle's lawsuit at groklaw for more factual background and generally reasoned commentary on the Oracle suit.

Larry

You're getting your facts wrong. Sun *approved* of Google's efforts, publicly and officially, in the forum of their CEO's blog.

Search (e.g., Groklaw) for Jonathan Schwartz's blog from November 5, 2007:

• "I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of others from Sun in offering my heartfelt congratulations to Google on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android, Congratulations!"

And it continues in that vein, referring to Android as a Java-based platform.

This is after much discussion between the companies. The context matters. Google weren't being jerks.

Read up on the Oracle's lawsuit at groklaw for more factual background and generally reasoned commentary on the Oracle suit.

Larry

In other words, you could have the most novel and nonobvious algorithm in the entire world, and the USPTO could literally spend the entire GDP of the United States searching for prior art and interviewing every engineer, mathematician, and programmer in the world, to be told unanimously that this was a literally once-in-a-lifetime idea with not even a hint of relevant prior art out there, and it still would be unpatentable if it were just an algorithm. You could invent the mathematics that allow time travel or teleportation, winning the Nobel prize for your utter genius, and nonetheless, if it's just the math, it's not patent eligible.

So, this has nothing to do with novelty or obviousness, and, since the Bilski decision came out long after this patent was issued, there's nothing unbelievable about the USPTO thinking it was patent eligible. That was the state of the law back then. It's a good thing it's changed, but that doesn't mean that anything done prior to that change is an unbelievable departure from common sense.

That's not free software according to the FSF because it is BSD licensed rather than GPL. Also it was 'written solely to undermine freedom'.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100806143457345

36:50
What we are entering in upon then is our maturity. It isn't that GNU is finished. GNU, fortunately, is renewed all the time and is becoming renewable. In the same way that there was a moment a few years back when I talked to Leon, and I realized that there were a bunch of young hackers in their late teens who were getting into apps and that's going to have an enormous effect in renewing what was there. We are gonna have a flood of people towards GNU, and that's going to make an immense difference.

It's going to happen everywhere. But Mr. Jobs is investing heavily in LLVM solely so he can stop using GCC, lest the patents somehow leak across the GPLv3 barrier, and we become able to use his claims. Nobody has ever tried before, to build a multi-platform C compiler solely in order to undermine freedom. [laughter] A hardware manufacturer or two has done something here and there -- we had a little bit of BSD interest in non-copyleft compilation -- but here's the man whose selfishness surpasses any recorded selfishness. [laughter/applause]

38:26
It's unfortunate. But writing software is what we do best. And catching GCC with LLVM isn't going to be easy. [?] you know, there's lots to do.

Basically the FSF's objection to LLVM is that it duplicates functionality in GCC and that they don't control it so they can't put it under GPVv6 when an angel reads that out to Stallman in a toejam inspired hallucination.

The strange thing is that bad mouthing competing projects because you don't control them is the sort of thing Jobs or Ballmer would do.

It's been pretty obvious from the start that Koh was in the tank for Apple. I suspect at this point, she's worried about what the appeals court might have to say about her conduct, especially if they can't find grounds to overturn her verdict.

I suspect that Koh pretty much handed Samsung grounds for appeal when she ruled the Court has identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award, and cannot reasonably calculate the amount of excess while effectuating the intent of the jury. Groklaw saw this coming from day one.

Further Groklaw noted months ago that

The jury appears to have awarded damages for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE infringing — $219,694 worth — but didn't find that it had actually infringed anything

.

And of course there was Lucy Koh shooting off her mouth about the Galaxy 10 being in obvious infringement (even imposed an injunction, since lifted), when in fact it was found not to infringe by the jury. Ooops, how embarrassing.

Koh is probably going to get overturned entirely on this trial. It hasn't even gotten to the appeal stage yet.

MS wins more than it loses and it's up to "who" lets them win more than if the company is second rate. Simply put, they come a knocken send them packing or you'll pay for it! I don't like their way of doing business but it's how I see them.

Guess what, they will be right back knocking on your door threatening patent infringement of hidden patent lists: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2011111122291296

Sure you could fight - or you could partner, CEO/board cashes out and lets their company nosedive.

...and his Holyness Ellison will bring all the joys of Java (and Ask.com) to the mobile experience! Read all about it on Groklaw!

@loucatellia: "How did you feel about your portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley, and who do you want to play you next in a movie"?

@thisisbillgates: "That portrayal was reasonably accurate"....
--

"We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage". Bill Gates

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS," Bill Gates

Comes v. Microsoft
Microsoft Litigation

@loucatellia: "How did you feel about your portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley, and who do you want to play you next in a movie"?

@thisisbillgates: "That portrayal was reasonably accurate"....
--

"We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage". Bill Gates

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS," Bill Gates

Comes v. Microsoft
Microsoft Litigation

@loucatellia: "How did you feel about your portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley, and who do you want to play you next in a movie"?

@thisisbillgates: "That portrayal was reasonably accurate"....
--

"We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage". Bill Gates

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS," Bill Gates

Comes v. Microsoft
Microsoft Litigation

@loucatellia: "How did you feel about your portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley, and who do you want to play you next in a movie"?

@thisisbillgates: "That portrayal was reasonably accurate"....
--

"We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage". Bill Gates

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS," Bill Gates

Comes v. Microsoft
Microsoft Litigation

HTC's problems werent from Microsoft.. HTC was the target of the opening salvo of mobile patent lawsuits, initiated by Apple.

N.B. I'm not saying that Microsoft's patent attacks directly went against HTC. HTC's poblems seem to be largely from redirecting R&D in the direction Windows Phone. Have a look at exactly when the competitiveness of their phones went down and it's exactly the time when they must have been directing a large effort to porting Windows to their hardware. What I'm saying is that it was partnering with Microsoft that damaged HTC. That at least partly will have

When the first wave of the mobile lawsuit armageddon geared up, the three companies distinctly absent from either end of these lawsuits were Google, Palm, and Microsoft (citation.)

A long time ago Microsoft even opposed patents. That attitude, however changed much earlier than people realise. Please remember that Microsoft v. TomTom took place in 2009 noticably before Apple started suing HTC.

To accuse Microsoft of being somehow a big offender is ignoring the history of these battles. Patent lawsuits wasn't how Microsoft operated, and to a large extent still isn't because nearly every lawsuit that targets Microsoft or is initiated by Microsoft ends in a (cross)licensing deal rather than a judgment and that includes Microsoft taking the short end of it (ex: licensing from Acacia Research.)

Microsoft has repeatedly spun off or supported companies like intellectual vendors which are archetypal patent trolls. Microsoft funded SCO in several direct and indirect ways (see groklaw.net for details) and it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that soon after Microsoft funding SCO started talking of patents. Microsoft claimed in 2007 that "Linux violated 235 of their patents" and it took years to prove that they were lying. They are circumspect; they do attempt to do most of their patent extortion behind NDAs. However that does not make things better. The opposite in fact. Microsoft is trying to use patents to set up a system where it alone has control of all software. Companies like Google which stand up to this should be seen as heroic.

I do understand that Microsoft is one of the only companies that have gone after Linux, and its probably unforgivable, but that doesnt make them one of the big offenders in mobile patent lawsuits. Making that claim just doesnt hold up to reality.

Microsoft extorted more from Android vendors than they charged for Windows 7. Most of this action was done under NDA and it wasn't until Barnes & Noble exposed this that it was clear how outrageous and ridiculous Microsoft's patent claims that they managed to get away with elsewhere are. Even then, Barnes & Noble were forced into selling off part of their E-reader business to Microsoft and investigating windows for tablets. Where Apple is a street punk, Microsoft is a mafia don. You hear more noise from Apple's legal action than Microsofts simply because the level of intimidation is lower and so people are more likely to stand up to them.

if this goes through, I'd be happy to double or even consider tripling that.

reality says it never will, though. Hell, groklaw offered to store the documents themselves.

TSG (and I was way ahead of the curve calling them that a few years ago, when they were dragging the SCO name through the mud) is the zombified shell of what was once the Linux company Caldera Systems. Several years ago they purchased most of the assets of the company which was known for years before that as SCO - the Santa Cruz Operation hence SCO.

This purchase was technically structured as a merger with a holding company involved, to produce a 'new' business called "The SCO Group", which then went berserk, forgetting its own history entirely, and attempted to create a new business model by claiming to own Linux and shaking down companies using Linux for 'license fees' supposedly owed. They wound up suing IBM and eventually losing hard, then filing bankruptcy.

Since the original threats and claims were made, through the resulting court battles and judgements, many legions of articles have been posted on this subject. Most readers are well aware of who TSG is, although certainly taking the time to add a link to an overview of some sort would have been a good move. But, that would require an editor actually editting. If you think that will happen you are definitely new here. We get short blurbs that still manage to be wrong most of the time and we like it! If you want to more accurate and in-depth information about this story try http://www.groklaw.net/

clueless pricks in the legal system extending jurisdiction to a field they have no knowledge of but feel they need to be responsible for

heh, never read Groklaw or you'll get a migraine.

The latest paper uses anti-lock braking as an example. You can't get much more car analogy than that.

I haven't heard a single valid argument for why software is any different than any other discipline.

Really? Oh. Here are a whole bunch of them, each one carefully reasoned out and commented on: http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=Patents2

"Software Patents Here are some of the articles Groklaw has published on software patents, particularly in support of the claim that software is mathematics and hence unpatentable subject matter."

But those papers fail to address the actual patents at issue. Contrary to Slashdot and Groklaw belief, "software patents" are not patents on software. Software is unpatentable. However, you can patent a software-executed-by-hardware, or a machine that executes software, neither of which are reducible to mathematics via Curry-Howard, or at least, no more so than a car or an aeroplane.

I haven't heard a single valid argument for why software is any different than any other discipline.

Really? Oh.

Here are a whole bunch of them, each one carefully reasoned out and commented on:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=Patents2

"Software Patents
Here are some of the articles Groklaw has published on software patents, particularly in support of the claim that software is mathematics and hence unpatentable subject matter."

No I meant exactly what I said. Microsoft is no stranger to doing this sort of thing. They also did a nice little FUD campaign to camouflage their actions. Not that the FUD went 100% like MS wanted but MS still managed to kill Linux on netbooks. And netbooks.

Yawn, the battle was lost with Apple long ago,

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110929014241932

Groklaw was cheering Apple on. They and their audience(just like Slashdot) seem more concerned on bringing Micrrosoft down rather than fight for true user and developer freedom.

This is so well documented that your denial is absurd. There are numerous online histories of this whole sordid mess. Here is one: http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20071217022527429

I find Groklaw to be filled with amateur web sleuths who have nothing better to do with their time than to shake their angry fists at successful corporations.

Ah, yes, like the way Groklaw shook its fists at that successful corporation SCO.

A better source of information on patent law is FOSS Patents.

Indeed.

As has been discussed pretty thoroughly at Groklaw, there are ways to overturn a jury verdict. One of the ways is to prove juror misconduct. The question at hand is whether the jury foreman is/was guilty of that or not. When you take all of the evidence into account (including, btw, that there was no such thing as a 10 year limit during the jury selection), I think it's pretty clear that this juror had an axe to grind and failed in his duty.

Don't believe me? How about the official record?

Microsoft threatened vendors when they wanted to put other browsers on their OEM builds and that's what made it illegal.

Do you have a citation for this? I've never heard this particular statement before. Furthermore, if the problem was that they threatened vendors, shouldn't that have been what the lawsuit was about, and not about bundling the browser?

It seems silly to me that the argument went like: "You are threatening vendors and forcing them to not put other browsers on OEM builds. Therefore, we require that you remove your own browser, even though that's not the problem, that's not what was illegal, and there's nothing wrong with you having it there."

It wasn't simply IE. It was repeated things about many MS products and MS forcing OEM vendors to do things that would promote MS at the expense of competitors. IE is just one example - threatening vendors if they included Netscape on the install, for example. They did similar things with Office and other products (MSN).

And if you're really interested (and have the time), take a look at Groklaw's Comes Exhibits. There's lots of juicy things in there about what Microsoft did and why, and how much they knew it would hurt competitors (like Netscape, Novell, WordPerfect, etc.) in numerous areas (OS, Web Browsers, Office Productivity).

In the meantime, you can do something useful by submitting prior art.

Well, gosh, that would be true if it weren't simply false! Samsung most definitely has said they didn't know until after the trial. In the reply that lead to this decision: "The court held only that claims of misconduct 'must be supported by proof that the evidence of misconduct was not discovered until after the verdict was returned,' which is precisely what Samsung has shown here." (Emphasis mine.)