Slashdot Mirror

No,

I'm not living in the USA.

If the lawyers you talked to disagree, they are idiots.

What happened to your google fu? http://www.iusmentis.com/datab...

Unless things have changed this is patently (pun intended) false information. You are able to make use of someone's patent. You can not sell it, you can not profit from it, you can not transfer it - even via gifting (AFAIK). I am not sure what would compel you to say such a thing. Now it is possible, still, to be illegally infringing on a patent even though it is private use but that does not mean that all private use cases are illegal. Consult a lawyer with expertise in the subject if you want more specific information.

My guess is that you are anti-patent and have been listening in an echo chamber. I do not know but that seems most likely. The reality is that, even if there were a chance that you were infringing, there is little chance of repercussion. That, however, does not make it legal, much like you are unlikely to be ticketed for a jaywalking offense. But, more to the point, private use (fully private - you can not even use patented technology on a public facing website that generates any revenue) is potentially infringing but is not infringing by default, it really depend on what you are using it for.

An example might be; If someone invented and patented a fuel injection system that resulted in a 2-fold efficiency increase then you can probably make that device and put it on your own car. You can not use that vehicle to conduct business nor can you transfer ownership of that vehicle with the altered device still attached. You may not even be able to use that vehicle for anything other than recreational activities.

I am not saying that the law is right. I am just showing you where you have been misinformed. It is possible to use patented technology in private but one must be very careful about doing so if they are worried about being sued for the activity. As always, consult a legal expert before taking mine or anyone else's opinion to be a statement of fact and consider that the ultimate decision may lie with a judge and the various procedures within the justice system in your country of residence.

More information can be had here:
http://www.iusmentis.com/paten...

Patent laws in most countries require some sort of commercial exploitation of the patented invention for the exploitation to be patent infringement. So, a private person can infringe if he, for example, makes the invention and sells it to his friends, or puts it on an advertisement-sponsored website. But if he makes it for himself out of curiosity, and only uses it himself, there is no infringement.

In the USA, also non-commercial use of the invention can be patent infringement, although it is rare for a non-commercial use by a private person to result in a lawsuit.

In practice, the chance of getting sued for patent infringement as a private individual is very slim. Patent lawsuits are very expensive, and most private persons will not be able to pay the damages to the patent holder anyway.

Apparently, fiction does count as prior art in some cases. I guess the requirement that a patent must be 'non-obvious according to the state of the art" is greatly undermined if some artists already had the same idea before. This might depend on if the patent just describes the crazy idea (in which case the artist could have filed the same patent), or if the patent describes a new technical solution to an otherwise old idea. The famous example is that a crazy idea to raise a sunken boat with pingpong balls was rejected because the exact same idea was featured in a Donald Duck story 15 years earlier.

Fiction is not prior art.

It is at least in some places in the world: Donald Duck as prior art

Regarding such a patent, you have to talk with Walt Disney & Carl Barks :-) Donald Duck & Prior Art on ship's recovery

Can they really claim that the sharer harmed the rights holder by distributing pieces which are unusable?

That's a bit of a philosophical question, really.

Let's say the piece sizes are 1MB each (not uncommon). Let's say this is on a movie that is 500MB. Let's further do a naive calculation and say the movie lasts 2 hours. 2 hours / 500 = 14.4s. Now let's assume assume that half the piece is useless because it's a bunch of P or B frames, but half-way in is an I-frame you can work from. I frames are bigger, let's say that takes up 25% of the piece. So 3.6 seconds of the movie would actually be playable from that chunk if you can find a video player willing to attempt decoding and playback. Can you genuinely say it's 'unusable'?
Let's also flip that around - let's say you are the only source of that piece. Without you, anybody downloading the movie will miss a 14.4s chunk of the movie - perhaps it'll even fail to play back. Wouldn't that imply that your piece is actually rather important?

But what if you're only sharing only 64kB? The odds that that 64kB also matches another 64kB chunk of a random and rights-free file - or at least not the file you would be accused of - are astronomical, but not outside the realm of theory.
There's technical hurdles there, though, as your torrent client identified the chunk as belonging to X, not Y. While you could try and use a 'the torrent client LIED!' defense, I'm not sure what NL judge would go along with that.

On the other hand, if you're asking if the rights holder is 'harmed', then there's plenty of people who will say that even if you shared the entire movie the rights holder isn't harmed because the people downloading likely wouldn't have purchased the movie anyway - better yet, some of them might be swayed to purchase it after seeing the downloaded copy and the rights holder actually stands to win from your sharing.

Good luck figuring all that out - like I said, it gets a bit philosophical (and/or academic).

But back to NL law - yes, they can claim that. Arnoud Engelfriet (who is probably as close as you're going to get to an authority on the matter) also points out that it doesn't matter that you share but one small part while others would have to share the rest; you're not allowed to upload even those parts.

I don't think 'citation' as used by Arnoud there is limited to literary works, by the way. Here's his writings on citation laws when dealing with images/video:
http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/citeren/beeldcitaat/
( Google translate makes a bit of a mess of it, but I'm sure you get the gist. )

[...] you can't go after uploaders who use protocols like BitTorrent, because any of them taken individually (usually) only upload pieces of files, not entire files.

Slight correction in the case of NL: This is still illegal.
http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/inbreuk-bittorrent-torrents/
In essence, the fact that you're (presumably) only uploading small parts of the work, rather than the whole work, doesn't matter. The only situation in which you're allowed to distribute fragments of a work is when you're using it as a citation. Since the fragment isn't discussed or criticized, laws governing the use of citation don't apply.

He then goes on to explain that, potentially, you might get a lesser sentence if you only uploaded two fragments (as opposed to many more, presumably), and that anybody offering the .torrent file itself is not making a copy of the work. Nevertheless, if you offer enough of them you can still be hit with a 'structural facilitation' of copyright infringement, etc.

I don't recall there being cases about uploaders getting chased down in NL, despite the commonplace bittorrenting, though - they tend to go after the indexing/hosting sites and sometimes the ISPs.

Are you kidding me? I mean, the EU has some pretty solid consumer and worker protection laws that I like quite a bit, but let me get this straight, they mandate the duration of warranty? Does this mean secondhand sales are illegal? What about consumer products not intended to last two years, are those just banned outright?

Thank God you've got France right there, or else you might not have enough cheese to go with all that whine.

It depends on the member state, but in the Netherlands there is no fixed period but a phasing that specifies "reasonable" warranty duration, where reasonable is determined by case law, product price and similar products. However, for most devices there is an absolute minimum of one year (eg. a cheap netbook) or three years (for more costly goods like washing machines and other long-lasting hardware).

Nobody says you have to buy Apple's products. Your opt-out is your wallet. I'm sure there are smartphones, computers, and tablets available with more favorable terms of warranty. What is the justification for this kind of heavy-handedness?

No, it isn't. When I buy something and its crap, I'm screwed, and I can't "vote with my wallet". There is no decent, reliable source of information that provides me with insight of who produces crap, so I can't vote with my wallet beforehand (except for the typical blog postings and tweets, which are usually baseless shouting and/or completely anecdotal). There are a few consumer programmes on TV, okay, but the whole point of those is for corporations to get their shit together and do things right. If I throw out all the companies that were featured on such a programme in the past I couldn't actually buy anything any more.

On another note, the Dutch consumer authority is currently also considering steps. However they're required by law to first discuss with apple, which they are currently doing (see this article (Dutch, with some legalese)).

Remember that in the US, until it changes next year, it's "first to invent" not "first to file". This page: http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/uspto-epodiff/ as well as a few others lead me to believe that is not the case in Europe.

Presumably, Apple didn't invent this in 1992, so the "touchscreen toggle design" may be prior art. However, it's pretty plausible that they invented it before the N1M came to market (it was announced in 1st quarter of 2005 and the Apple patent application was from later that year). If that's true, the N1M "doesn't count" and it's a more subjective judgement on whether the touchscreen toggle is similar enough.

Another key point is that the Dutch patent has apparently been through a court, whereas the American one hasn't. That means that the only people who have considered prior art for this are a small number patent examiners.

You can still have pseudonymity, just sign up for an e-mail address and don't use your real name.

Or...set up a real anonymous email account with a nym server...?

Set up this account that bounces through a few remailers....will be a real email account, but virtually untraceable.

Get a decent anon proxy

Any suggestions?

Create a disposable email account.

Do the nym accounts still work out there....tools like mixmaster....bouncing things about remailers encrypted on each step....having final post as encrypted on a USENET group...etc?

Been over a decade since I last played with stuff...but when I tried awhile back..most of it seemed dying or dead as far as nodes go...or dependability of uptime on the ones that did still seem to work.

I always thought that was pretty darned anonymous.....

http://www.iusmentis.com/trademarks/crashcourse/limitations/

"In the USA, the trademark holder cannot act against domestic resellers of products he put on the market himself. The same applies if the product was manufactured by a third party with permission of the trademark holder (a licensee). This is called the "first sale" doctrine. The idea behind it is that the trademark holder has had a chance to ensure the quality of the product and to make money of the first sale, and then he no longer has a right to control further distribution of that product. Of course it only applies to the particular products he put on the market, making an exact copy of that product and selling that is trademark infringement."

Wrong. A Donald Duck story from 1949 was once cited as a prior art example, denying a patent on a method of raising a sunken ship. Link.

They can consider it patentable all they want, but to patent something (which I have done) you MUST file before you exhibit it publicly. If you exhibit a technology publicly before filing a patent, you lose the right to patent it. What could possibly be more of a public exhibition than releasing an implementation's source code under a public license?

Making available and exhibitions of products

Publicly available products also count as prior art, even though it may be very difficult to determine exactly what the product is made of or how it works. If a device is put on the market before the patent application filed on a feature in that device, the feature is no longer novel. Usually, the sale or other disposal of the product is enough to make all its features prior art for later filed applications. If the product is not sold, but only demonstrated to the public, then only those features which the public could observe count as prior art.

http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/

However....this does seem an interesting trend to helping to get laid a bit more often, can't ever get too much of that.

"Step 5: Change phonenumber a few times after being bothered too much by crazy cat-owning psycho's who want your babies."

Hmm..would setting up a google phone thing help with this?

I was also considering trying to set up an NYM email account again, to join with...that would help keep things more untraceable too.

And there's no requirement that they not be obvious

US patent law requires an invention to be non-obvious

I think your comparison with a newspaper breaks a little. First off, a newspaper does not publish all user content (which youtube does). Second, a newspaper cannot be corrected after publishing (unlike youtube, where a video can be removed later).

Holding youtube responsible for all the videos that are posted is rather obviously impractical. This is why in some countries (for reasons of copyright infringements, but lets not go there), websites like youtube are required to have a working notice-and-takedown system (if you're Dutch, see this blogpost).
Asking youtube to check all videos and somehow identify everyone in them, then also asking youtube to find these people and request their consent, is even less practical. Imagine I make a video of a concert I've seen. Hundreds of people are on such a video. It would be far more practical to ask youtube users to check a box "Everyone in this video has approved of the posting of this video". Even that would be strange.

To go back to your newspaper; if such a paper obtains illegal content (say, ACTA treaty leaks or secret documents that provide proof of fraud), is it illegal for them to report on this? I believe this is not so. The same goes for your example of public figures, assuming the content is newsworthy. In cases where the content is not newsworthy, the notice-and-takedown system is in place. This way, normal people can enjoy exchange and enjoy videos. If the said measure is taken, youtube would drown in claims from copyright owners and other such people that would otherwise just have used the notice-and-takedown system. I don't think a lot of average people would consider that a very reasonable thing, regarding youtube's popularity.

As a last argument, the bullies that committed the crime have been caught because the video was posted. How is this a bad thing?

Well, there are ways to be about 99.99% anonymous on the internet. One way is to set up a nym account, that bounces through serveral remailers like Mixmaster...and basically have the final hop on those to be one of the anon groups on USENET. That way, they don't know who it is reading one of thousands of pgp encrypted emails out there.

However, when it comes time for the internet to intersect 'meatspace', like when you want to get money. Well, now that part is gonna be a little tougher to do...much easier to track the money.

Well, you can also set your email coming to you and going out, to hop through several remailer servers, and a nym server .

Sure you still have a hole on the receiver end if they don't encrypt, but, it sure can make it hard for the govt. to see where you're sending to...or receiving from. If you really want to make it hard...have the nym server send your messages, encrypted to a USENET group...you can retrieve it from there and no one will be able to really trace what you're doing.

tab is not a complete documentation of a song in almost all cases and almost ever includes the timing.

I've seen tabs that use the spacing between notes to indicate rough timing. PC tabs are generally shown in a monospace font, and in many cases, the width of each character's glyph represents the duration of an eighth note or a sixteenth note.

you can't take hendrix, lock him in a room with the tab for some recent metallica song and expect him to come up with something more than vaugely familiar.

"Vaguely familiar" can go far to establish substantial similarity, especially if other facts of the case show intent to reproduce.

How long after the fact is irrelevant unless the time exceeds the copyright.

I'll grant that. But it is relevant for statutory and case law forbidding the misappropriation of "hot news". See, for example, INS v. AP and discussion of the hot news doctrine.

It is also relevant for trespassing laws. Ordinarily, to observe a sporting event in person, one must carry a ticket. Consideration for a ticket to an event often includes requirements other than a monetary payment. In this case, it may require that the person not publish, or cause to be published, any detailed description of the event within x amount of time of the event.

Does prior art still count if it's in another country?

In the USA it counts only if it is printed:>

The USA regards oral disclosures as prior art only if they were made in the USA (35 US Code section 102(a): "known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or another country"). A therapeutic technique orally handed down from one generation to another by a tribe in South America can thus still be patented in the USA, despite it being publicly known (but not from a printed publication) for many years.

I would imagine there are printed descriptions (service manuals, sales brochures, etc.) for arcade games, if so I think this would count.

"The whole of Europe uses a unified system that permits such patents but forces them to jump through rigorous test to cut the crap that is patented in the US and that clogs up the US patenting system and cause endless costs and angst in the software community... See for a brilliant simple description : http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/software/epc/"

Unfortunately the Ius mentis description is dated and misleading anyway:

http://webshop.ffii.org/
http://legal.european-patent-office.org/dg3/pdf/t030424eu1.pdf

Dear All, It is with amazement that I read of the polarized debate going on in the US. The present US software patenting system is broken and the proposal to abolish software patenting would throw the baby out with the bathwater. The whole of Europe uses a unified system that permits such patents but forces them to jump through rigorous test to cut the crap that is patented in the US and that clogs up the US patenting system and cause endless costs and angst in the software community. In Europe software is patentable only if it has technical effect, is non-obvious and doesn't simply automate a process (to describe some of the constituents) . See for a brilliant simple description : http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/software/epc/ So, for example, a colleague (the inventor) and I patented and made work in principle a revolutionary new way to detect touch which is superior to methods existing, simple and cheap (which Tyco Electronics bought and called acoustic pulse recognition). The method could only be expressed and operated in software . If the software for making that technology work was not patentable, I would not have funded the project and taken the extensive grief over five years and the technology would not have been developed . Even though the returns were modest, such an outcome is necessary to undergo such sweat and tears. By contrast in the US, parties are roving the US patenting or buying up patents for software that covers obvious processes, where the application took five minutes and no risk capital was involved, and then suing people. US industry (especially the vulnerable smaller companies) runs scared of infringement because there is no way of checking all the software patenting filed or applied for effectively to check if you are infringing.. I appeal to your sanity. Just copy the European software patenting system lock stock and barrel and you will live happily ever after in this part of life! Graham Cox

Well, you want to make sure it IS from the person you think it is, but, that doesn't mean you have to know who the person IS in real life.

It would be cool if these email plugins would help make it easy to register and use the nym servers. This way you could set up an email address on each end. PGP sigs can be used, but, there is plausible denyability as to who really is at each end of the email.

Of course if you're really worried about tracability, then set up a nym account to send out on, but, on return messages...just have it post encrypted to one of many USENET groups. You then really have a disconnect 'cause there's no good way to monitor around the world who gets what messages of USENET.

one of those "Why didn't I think of that?" moments.

No, actually, your product or process does have to show all the elements listed in the patent.

One great example is that lawsuit against Nintendo http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/08/ 2138250 over the Wiimote, because it has a "trigger" button underneath. And coincidently, the Wiimote also has buttons on top just like the item that Nintendo is supposedly infringing on.

Lets face it, it is just not possible to enforce this kind of law.

With Onion Routing Networks, Mixmaster Type II Anonymous Email, GPG/PGP Type I Anonymous remailers , and bidirectional encrypted anonymous e-mail addresses that can deliver to a news group
Add to this the use of unsecured 802.11 networks and there is just no way to stop a person that truly wants to be anonymous on the internet.

Unfortunately most do not know how to use them, so most of the internet is only sudo-anonymous.

Takes a bit of study and all, but, this is a pretty secure method of email...multiple hops with the messages encrypted on each leg of the way...and if enough hops, very difficult to trace origin and destination.

Another nice tutorial for this is HERE too.

yeah, I have one. it's in dutch, so it will probably not tell you much...

http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/nl/thuiskopi e/

http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/

So why is this even on slashdot? Its about as newsworthy as me patenting bread or the wheel. Its pretty obvious that apple had their product line before any patent was awarded. Seems pretty closed book to me.

http://www.iusmentis.com/auteursrecht/nl/thuiskopi e/

It's worse than that IIRC. "Technical effect", "computer-implemented invention" and the like are not phrases used by any computer professional I know. They are code-phrases for "'pure' software". "Technical effect" is not the same as "physical effect", one-click (TM) has a technical effect but who (in their right mind) argues it is a good patent? Write to your minister, your MP and your MEPs clarifying this (for their own benefit. of course). The argument is:

'To be patentable, an invention must have technical character. This means that the invention must relate to a technical field and solve a technical problem. A computer program has a technical character if it causes a technical effect when run on a computer. This effect must be more than the "normal" physical interaction between program and computer. In practice, this requirement is rarely a problem for inventions that use software for their realization. So it should not come as a surprise that there are many European patents covering software-related inventions.' [Ius mentis]

"See No ePatents and No to swpats for sensible arguments.

You are full of shit.

You're an IP lawyer. So what?

I bet you just made that up so you get modded up and present an entirely false argument to readers.

He's quite correct actually.

What happened was: * the concept of excluding "computer programs as such" has been refined over time:

... by the patent administrators of the European Patent Office, in contradiction with several treaties and laws (TRIPS article 10, EU Software Copyright article 4, Berne Convention, ...) and against most economical studies that software patents are bad for the economy. Hence, his comment that it's a wishlist by the patent offices is correct.

software patents are allowed _only_ if they should a concrete "technical effect" (in the US, it is different: they only need to be "useful and produce a tangible result") by case law and appeal board hearings;

Too bad that technical in patent jargon is completely undefined and as such means squat, and has over time been interpreted by the EPO to mean basically anything useful. Read this page by a colleague of yours, especially under the heading "When is something technical", and especially the second and third point.

Making a program run faster or use less memory is interpreted as a technical effect on the way the computer works. And using a computer to run a business method is technical, because it "provides surprising speed or economy of scale benefits"

* over time, the national courts have adopted subtly different principles;

A few national courts actually, and mostly the UK one at that

. * to resolve this, the EU directive is proposed that enforces a common approach across the EU (and, upon any members of the EU that are part of the EPC).

The Commission and the Council promote the approach of the European Patent Office, which has no safeguards against software patents or business software patents. The Council's version was even written by people from the patent offices. You know, the people that have to abide by it, but haven't until now, got a chance to rewrite their own laws. Quite convenient, no?

Let me re-iterate: * if this EU directive does not go through, then _software will still be patentable_ -- do not labour under the false impression that this directive is able enabling software patentability: software is _already patentable_, this directive _does not change that_ (in fact, it actually restricts it slightly).

Software patents are only enforceable in a few countries currently, and not even that always pans out evenly. The originally proposed directive by the Commission and the new proposal by the Council want to put it black on white that software patents are enforceable. That is a change. It's less of a change to render them unenforceable, as until now they've been unenforceable in more cases than where they were when considering the EU as a whole.

* thus, software will remain patentable, but not in a consistent way: this is even worse because some member states may actually take a very relaxed approach and allow patentablity of software.

Please stop your lies. The Irish proposal literally states:

A claim to a computer program, either on its own or on a carrier, shall not be allowed unless that program would, when loaded and executed in a computer, programmed computer network or other programmable apparatus, put into force a product or process claimed in the same patent application in accordance with paragraph 1.

When removing the double negation, we get:

A claim to a computer program is allowed when running that program on a computer does something t

The "deal" that the grant of a patent expresses is that in exchange for sharing the invention with the public, the inventor gets exclusive use of the invention for a limited time. If the public already knows about the invention, then there is no point to granting a patent to someone as a reward/compensation for disclosing the invention. That's why prior art invalidates patents.

In order to qualify as "prior art," public disclosure of an invention potentially doesn't have to be very public, if it was known or someone was using it in the US (I assume you are asking about US patents) before the "inventor" trying to obtain the patent invented it. See 35 USC 120. Prior art can also be public disclosure after invention but more than a year before the patent was filed.

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or
. . . .

A useful basic article entitled "When is something prior art against a patent?" can be found at
http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/.

no.. not that fact. it is legal though. if you understand dutch, here's a link which explains it all. yes, those guys are lawyers.

At first sight, this indeed looks great, but there's a really insidious backdoor: it says that the test "shall be used" (so if a computer-implemented invention passes the test, it makes a technical contribution), but not that it must be passed for the cii to make a technical contribution, nor that it is the only test to be used (so the EPO can keep on using its other battery of tests, mentioned under "When is something technical" at iusmentis.com; tests include "increasing speed", "reducing memory usage", ...). The amendment does not say this test must be anded with other tests nor that it is a required test, it at most says that it is a sufficient test.

You may think I'm paranoid, but twisting this amendment would be the same as how they twisted the "computer programs as such are not patentable" statement in Art 52 of the European Patent Convention. This statement meant "You can't get patents on computer programs (as such), but adding a computer program to another - patentable - invention, does not render this invention unpatentable."

Now how did the Commission/McCarthy and EPO twist this: "A computer program as such not patentable, but if a computer program has a technical effect, we call it a computer-implemented invention and then you can get a patent on this computer-implemented invention". So in this case, the granted patents does apply to the computer program as such (which is simply called differently).

• Industrial application: the EPO interprets this as "usable in a way that makes money". Don't believe me? One of the biggest proponents of software patents said so himself in the JURI meeting, when other proponents mentioned they were afraid that this requirement would exclude too many software patents.
• Technical effect: first of all, the "normal physical interaction between a program and the computer" is nowhere defined. Furhter, technical is also nowhere defined (and they don't want to define it, they say it has to follow from case law). In other words, you need anundefined effect apart from something which is not defined, so what could that be? Plenty of things, it turns out (see the heading "When is something technical"). Examples: processing data representing an image, saving memory, increasing speed, using computers instead of humans to process secret/private/sensitive data and automating a known process if the automated process provides surprising speed or economy of scale benefits.

For information on her other claims, please read the the English translation of the letter I sent to most Flemish MEPs, as well as this short overview of why software patents are bad.

Thanks for writing your MEPs, and keep it up!

• Industrial application: the EPO interprets this as "usable in a way that makes money". Don't believe me? One of the biggest proponents of software patents said so himself in the JURI meeting, when other proponents mentioned they were afraid that this requirement would exclude too many software patents.
• Technical effect: first of all, the "normal physical interaction between a program and the computer" is nowhere defined. Furhter, technical is also nowhere defined (and they don't want to define it, they say it has to follow from case law). In other words, you need anundefined effect apart from something which is not defined, so what could that be? Plenty of things, it turns out (see the heading "When is something technical"). Examples: processing data representing an image, saving memory, increasing speed, using computers instead of humans to process secret/private/sensitive data and automating a known process if the automated process provides surprising speed or economy of scale benefits.

For information on her other claims, please read the the English translation of the letter I sent to most Flemish MEPs, as well as this short overview of why software patents are bad.

Thanks for writing your MEPs, and keep it up!

In this article on patents, it reads:

A famous example is the case of a method to recover sunken ships by filling them with buoyant bodies fed through a tube. This method was used in 1964 to recover the freighter Al-Kuwait from the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The Danish inventor Karl Kroeyer tried to get a patent for this method, but his patent application (amongst others, in the UK GB 1070600 and in the Netherlands NL 6514306) was rejected for lack of novelty. The prior art? In 1949 the Donald Duck story The Sunken Yacht (by Carl Barks) shows Donald and the nephews raising a ship by filling it with ping pong balls shoved through a tube. Since ping pong balls are buoyant bodies, and they were fed to the yacht through a tube, the Donald Duck episode was considered novelty-destroying prior art.

If that's not an urban legend, I'll eat my mouse.

Bon appetit.

http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/

Web sites offering legal information (DISCLAIMER: which is not the same as legal advice) disagree. This page claims: "It is always permissible to use a patented invention for research purposes," but this page denies the existence of such an exception to the patent monopoly.

Any lawyers in the audience?

And then he/she will approve it anyway.

A patent on a business method will be approved if some technical considerations or a technical effect is involved in the invention.

See http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/businessmethods/e poexamples/ for examples.

Unlike some national patent offices, the EPO has no outright bar on computer-implemented business methods. This directive will force its interpretation on the rest of Europe.

From what I can see, the Patent Office isn't enforcing the non-obvious to a person skilled in the (relevant) art part of the patent criteria in a way that normal people would expect.

Apparently, obviousness in patents is based mostly on previous publications not actual obviousness, and the Patent Office has bizarrely decided that non-computer based business methods don't count as prior art for computer based business methods.

My humble suggestion is that the patent office should change their criteria for obviousness so that real world (non-computer based) business processes count as prior art for computer based business processes that do the same thing.

Hell, the Patent Office should change the criteria so if a bunch of college seniors respond with "no duh" to a patent application, it's classified as an obvious idea ;)

I was going to ask if the legal use of the word "obvious" is different than the common-sense one, but google quickly answered my question.

I won't try to summarize the document, as I'm sure I'd butcher the meaning, but short answer: Yes, patent law use of the word "obvious" is somewhat contrary to common sense. In retrospect, I guess this should have been obvious to me. *rimshot*

It is frightening to think that something that any group of 5th graders might come up with in a brainstorming session could qualify as non-obvious, but it sounds like this could be the case.

Traditionally, patent protection was awarded only to technical inventions, such as light bulbs, shavers, medicines and so on. New financial techniques or ways of selling things were often explicitly excluded in patent laws. As electronic commerce became more popular, new ways of selling things were offering services over the Internet were developed. Since these new business methods involved computers, communication systems and other technical things, many inventors in this field tried to obtain patent protection. The 1998 State Street Bank decision in the USA ruled that patents on business methods were as valid as any other type of patent. The combination of these two of events resulted in an explosive growth of the number of business method patents.

Which led to this.

Like the article states, any kind of patent can be invalidated by the demonstration of prior art. This particular patent seems a bit too general to be nontrivial when it was filed in 1996.

The actual fees (starting at $570 annually for a company with a revenue of $100,000) aren't really all that large, though. My website would probably only have to pay $14 a year! But I do understand how this whole patent nonsense is spiraling out of control.

We can either work hard to prove prior art, or we can work hard to get the IP system restructured. Or we can just shell out the money and be done with it...

*GROWL*. Two typos, one in the actual link and on in the text.

http://www.iusmentis.com/copyright/crashcourse/dur ation/

US copyrights may last significantly longer than European ones,

Alas, no. EU copyright lasts until 70 years after the author's death. Later, the US had the Sonny Bono act to put theirs in line with the EU copyright. In both cases, this was applied retroactively.

See e.g. http://www.iusmenties.com/copyright/crashcourse/du ration/

The post you were replying to was just spreading FUD, as far as I can see.

For UK, please check with a UK patent attorney or a sollicitor. And check the UK patent law first, this might even save you the first attorney fees. It's probably on the net.

With respect to your question: too bad. Legal help is expensive, especially in the UK (compared to mainland Europe). After a (European) patent has been granted, it's split into separate patent rights for the designated countries and the patent has to be attacked in each country separately.

- I am a dutch & European patent attorney trainee, so of course, this is no legal advise :-P

for more information, you may want to check this site, a patent info site for techies set up by a colleague of mine.

Check out www.iusmentis.com for free (basic) IP advise. Colleague of mine. Groote Ka