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Actually, he did say quite explicitly that the name, arguments, and behavior of individual methods are not copyrightable. Oracle argued that their organization of 6,000 methods into 300 classes in 37 packages was a copyrightable "taxonomy." It wasn't a silly argument. It really could have gone either way. But in this case, the judge ruled that that taxonomy was an essential part of the Java language itself, and so anybody making an implementation of Java needed to be free to replicate it. I did a white paper on the case. May as well link whore while we're discussing it.

I could create software, hardware, an image, a document, an audio recording, it doesn't matter as soon as I create it and release it somehow I automatically get my rights to it. If someone were to copy it, regardless of weather or not I held a patent, I could raise legal action against them (unless I had already released it under a particular license which granted them use).

Yes, absolutely. But that still doesn't get you where you need to be. For example, let's say that I invent a brilliant new circuit, and do up a nice schematic of it. I have a copyright in that schematic. Maybe I'll even register my copyright. And if you copy the schematic, you infringe my copyright. But if you get a copy of my schematic and build the actual circuit, you have not infringed my copyright. The only way I can keep you from building the circuit is by patenting the circuit.

The company I am a part of provides such development services as well, and I'm fairly confident if the author claims his system is as simple as he states it is we could have developed it for him into a product for less than $5,000US and in less than a few months.

You ought to send me your contact info. I sometimes have inventors who need that kind of service. It's nice for them to have options. Contact info.

Also be sure to hire a registered patent attorney (he or she should have a USPTO registration number). Even if your attorney does other IP work, or is a successful patent litigator, if he's not registered, it's illegal for him to file your patent application, or even help you prepare an application to file for yourself. I'm not surprised that Joe Public doesn't always know this, but I am surprised at how many general practice attorneys don't. A good place to start is the USPTO's Attorney/Agent Search Page, where you can find a patent attorney in your area. Or you can just hire me, of course :-)

Another point: The poster seems to have confused patentability and infringement. Basically, if your idea is new, non-obvious and useful, it's patentable, whether or not it infringes another patent. For example, if you came up with a brilliant improvement to Google's search algorithm, you could get a patent on it, even though you would infringe Google's patent if you implemented it.

Your bias is showing.

Says the guy with the .sig "The patent system. The whole edifice is based on handwaving."

You're right about one thing. A patent != invention. A patent is an exclusive property right in an invention. But I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. I am not "assuming" that they are the same thing. I am well aware of how they are related. For example, the title of 35 U.S.C. s. 101 is "Inventions Patentable." The text is "Whosoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." A patentable invention is one that is novel (see s. 102), non-obvious (see s. 103) and useful (from s. 101).

Now, as for your patent search, the fact that a patent has the word "software" somewhere does not make it a "software patent." Most patents will mention software somewhere if they have anything to do with technology. And since I doubt you have read and analyzed all those claims, your blanket statement that most of them are obvious looks a lot like "handwaving." If you were just going off of the titles, you need to learn how patents work. It's fine to think the system is broken, but understand it before you complain about it. Here's a pretty good primer one of our partners wrote. You ought to read it, even if you think you understand patents (he made me read it when I started, despite the fact that I was already a registered patent agent, and I learned some things). Remember, if you're going to go crusading, you should at least know what you're fighting against.

The whole point of the GPL is to game the system: either you say copyright doesn't matter, and the stuff is free to share, or you say it does matter, and the GPL says the stuff is free to share.

No, I don't miss the point. I am pretty well versed on the GPL. I've even written a paper on it, which I share with my clients who want to use GPL in the back office. Here's the problem. If there is no copyright, there is no "copyleft." Microsoft can take your code and roll it into the next version of Windows and turn a deaf ear to your complaints. They can still use "product activation" to cut down on pirated copies. They can go even more draconian with the DRM. And you would have no recourse because there's no copyright.

Sure, DRM can be broken, and no system is perfect. But most people don't know that, and they can't be bothered to fight the DRM. Microsoft would still be the dominant player, and every time you wrote a handy little utility, you would be taking the risk that you are donating code to them.

The GPL has the power to protect the "freedom" of your code only because copyright law gives it teeth. Without copyright, even if you had a valid contract, you would never recover anything. Contract will only give you the benefit you lost, and if you're giving away code for free, you didn't lose anything of tangible, provable economic value. And since there are not punitive damages in contract, Microsoft would have your code locked up as their trade secret, and there'd be nothing you could do about it. Bottom line: if you want free software, copyright is your friend.

(Shameless plug for my own GPL paper. With good examples! I send it to my clients all the time. Bottom line: the GPL is not simple. And this doesn't even include the v.3 stuff.)

The problem I see is you're conflating two complaints. If you think it's obvious, fine. You gave some reasonable grounds for why you think some limitations might be obvious. But that's not the same thing as saying, "They're trying to patent sandwiches!!1!1 They can't do that!" There's no reason an improved method for making a sandwich can't be statutory subject matter. It's a method of making something. That is exactly what method patents are supposed to be. If it also happens to be new and non-obvious, hooray, you have a patent.

I suspect that you and I will not agree. You seem to be hostile to IP as a matter of principle. You're entitled to that opinion, and I'm not likely to agree. IP is my bread and butter, and most of the time, from what I've seen, it is used right (though I also have clients who have been sued on stupid patents). But if you're going to go on an anti-IP crusade, at least know what you're talking about. Try this paper written by one of the partners I work for. It's a very good, very accessible layman's primer on IP. And being informed makes you much more persuasive.

This was an appeals court decision. The appeals court doesn't decide all those things. The legal issue was whether the license was enforceable under copyright law, or whether it was a "mere covenant," meaning that Jacobsen would get nothing because he was not making money off the software. The lower court had ruled that it was a mere covenant. On appeal, the Federal Circuit vacated that ruling, which means it now goes back to the trial court to apply the "correct" law as announced by the Fed. Cir.

Two takeaway lessons, one for Big Business, and one for developers. For Big Business, you can't infringe on the copyrights of open source developers with impunity. For developers, even if you are doing open source software, REGISTER YOUR COPYRIGHT. If you register your copyright up front, you can get statutory damages and attorney fees if some idiot from Big Business decides to try this kind of stunt. Those damages are almost always more than the "actual" damages you'll get for software that you give away for free (as in beer). If you wait until after somebody infringes before you file your copyright, it's too late. And registering is cheap and easy. In many cases, you don't even need to get an attorney involved (although if you need a patent or trademark or help with a copyright, I know this really great IP attorney who also posts on Slashdot and is clued in on open source.

And despite the stuff above that may look like 'advice" to the untrained eye, this post absolutely, positively is NOT legal advice.

You don't automatically get any rights by possessing a copy of the software. If you have a piece of GPL software, the only thing that gives you the right to use or distribute that software is the GPL. Section 5 of the GPL even points out that the license is the only grant of rights you have. It speaks specifically of modifying and distributing, but the effect is the same if you just use it. You don't have the right to do that except by virtue of the license.

Shameless Plug---I wrote a short guide to the GPL that I sometimes send to clients. Check it out.

Patents are just a generic tool, a tool that can be used by both small players and big business, mainly in proportion to their financial power. Patents in no way change the balance of power, except by adding huge overheads to everyone in society.

From your .sig, it appears that you either fundamentally misunderstand the theory of intellectual property (which is intentionally geared toward creating artificial scarcity by granting a limited monopoly), or you have a fundamentally socialist view of property. Either way, there is a major gap between us in one or both of understanding and philosophy, and I won't try to bridge it. But for the benefit of anybody else, I would like to point out a couple of issues with this.

Yes, patents are just a generic tool. I didn't say that they couldn't be used by both big guys and little guys. I said that what the USPTO is trying to do will ensure that the little guys lose their share. And no, it's not in proportion to their financial power. Very big companies have had to pay out hundreds of millions to little guys for patent infringement. If your patent is valuable enough, you'll be able to find an attorney to take it on contingency. Even my firm, which has a long-standing policy that we just don't take stuff on contingency, is starting to look at taking patent infringement cases on contingency because they're worth a lot.

For every small entrepreneur helped there are any number of industry monopolies and cartels locking out new players. It is disingenuous to claim that patents protect the little guy from big business. On average they do not, and to claim otherwise is dishonest.

That's not a bug, that's a feature. Patents are and always have been limited monopolies. The system doesn't ask how big you are. It just asks whether your invention is new, non-obvious and useful. And I never said patents only protect little guys from big guys. I said that proposed reforms would ensure that they no longer do.

Particularly when you consider how broken patents are on everything from simultaneous invention to inventions whose time has come, from crazy time limits to government bureaucracies acting as gatekeepers on all of technology, from guilty till proven innocent to even what an invention or new idea is.

Now you betray the real disconnect in your reasoning. Think about all the "patent trolls" you hear about; the ones that have you up in arms. What is the real problem? Is it that a little guy got a big judgment from a big guy? Is it that Microsoft or IBM lost a case? No, of course not. But you and many others on Slashdot conflate the issues. The real issue that most people have is that some troll hit up Big Blue or RIM or whoever for hundreds of millions of dollars on a patent that seems really obvious to you. I won't try to evaluate every single "troll" and determine whether their inventions are really obvious, or just obvious in hindsight. But change up the facts a little. Joe Inventor builds a working quantum computer. He takes it to Big Blue and says, "I have this working quantum computer. Can you help me manufacture it?" Big Blue analyzes the computer, tells Joe, "Sorry, we're not interested," sends him packing, and immediately starts building quantum computers on his design. Are you going to scream "TROLL" the minute he sues (I guarantee you, IBM will)? The real problem is not the tactics used by patent trolls. It's the fact that many of the inventions look obvious.

Fix obviousness, and I say let the NPEs be as aggressive as they please. Let them sue in the Eastern District of Texas. Let them ask for permanent injunctions. Let them collect hundreds of millions of dollars. If they have given the world technology we would not otherwise have, they deserve it.

But if we dilute patent protection across the board, the only way they have any value is if you have a

Poster's name must be one of these:

http://www.jw.com/site/jsp/attylisting.jsp?sort=lastname

One of two things will happen. One: the trademark is granted, Drew gets some laughs, lawsuits, and the TM gets taken away. Or two: the trademark is denied from the beginning.

Or three, there is a distinct possibility that the mark will be perfectly valid, will be granted and will be upheld in court. Or four, something else could happen. Or five, another something else could happen ...

I know that this has to be said every single time there's a trademark story on Slashdot, but this is not that big a deal. If somebody gets a trademark, that doesn't mean nobody can ever use it again ever. It means nobody can use a confusingly similar mark in a confusingly similar manner. The purpose of Trademark is to identify the source of goods. It's not like it's a patent on the word. I think a lot of people could benefit by reading a good IP primer (find "Intellectual Property Basics" at the bottom of the page and download gratis---written by my practice group leader with 30 years of experience as an IP attorney).

A few years back, there was a story on Slashdot about a manufacturer of tennis balls who had trademarked the smell of freshly-cut grass. Everybody was up in arms. But there was no problem---it was a GREAT trademark because it was arbitrary. It was not too closely tied to the function of tennis balls. And it doesn't mean you infringe on their trademark rights if you cut your grass. It means you infringe on their trademark rights if you sell tennis balls that smell like freshly-cut grass. And maybe you do if you sell a tennis racket. And maybe you do if you sell balls that smell like old grass clippings. Trademark rights really aren't that broad.