Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "We all know about NCR's lawsuit against Palm & Handspring, but I haven't seen much press about patent infringements they are claiming against some of the biggest sites on the planet. According to documentation that a friend's company has recently received, their patents protect everything from keyword searching to product categorization. Patents to look for (and filed in 1998) include 6,253,203, 6,169,997, 6,151,601, 6,085,223 and 5,991,791 . IMHO, this is absolutely outrageous and is likely to cause billions in both legal fees and eventual licensing fees (eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR). How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business."

An anonymous reader writes "We all know about NCR's lawsuit against Palm & Handspring, but I haven't seen much press about patent infringements they are claiming against some of the biggest sites on the planet. According to documentation that a friend's company has recently received, their patents protect everything from keyword searching to product categorization. Patents to look for (and filed in 1998) include 6,253,203, 6,169,997, 6,151,601, 6,085,223 and 5,991,791 . IMHO, this is absolutely outrageous and is likely to cause billions in both legal fees and eventual licensing fees (eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR). How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business."

An anonymous reader writes "We all know about NCR's lawsuit against Palm & Handspring, but I haven't seen much press about patent infringements they are claiming against some of the biggest sites on the planet. According to documentation that a friend's company has recently received, their patents protect everything from keyword searching to product categorization. Patents to look for (and filed in 1998) include 6,253,203, 6,169,997, 6,151,601, 6,085,223 and 5,991,791 . IMHO, this is absolutely outrageous and is likely to cause billions in both legal fees and eventual licensing fees (eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR). How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business."

Wojina writes "Microsoft has applied for a comprehensive patent on what appears to be the entire implementation of the .NET CLR (Common Language Runtime) and the framework APIs. Microsoft's CLR is an implementation of the CLI (submitted to ECMA for standardization). Does this bode ill for the Mono project? See the CNET News story." And a chaser: Nept points to this interesting Microsoft-funded .NET obfuscation project.

superflex writes "CNet and others have articles today related to a story that appeared here a couple months ago regarding Acacia Media Technologies, who hold several U.S. and international patents that they claim give them exclusive rights to compressed digital media transmission technologies. The previous article, for the lazy among you, was an AskSlashdot about whether the askers' pr0n site should pay license fees to these guys. Seems that since then, they've moved on to some internet radio sites, and are actually getting fees out of them. Their claims haven't been challenged in court yet, but they appear very broad, possibly covering PPV on cable/satellite as well as internet-based streaming. One wonders if they might try going after one of the big boys soon."

An anonymous reader writes "For those who think that online testing is an obvious idea, please be advised that the USPTO recently issued U.S. Patent No. 6,513,042 for online testing to two Ohio inventors. According to an article in NEOhio CrainTech, "As of last week, Test Central Inc. in Cleveland owns the U.S. patent to conduct testing via the Internet and, in essence, owns the online testing business.""

An anonymous reader writes "For those who think that online testing is an obvious idea, please be advised that the USPTO recently issued U.S. Patent No. 6,513,042 for online testing to two Ohio inventors. According to an article in NEOhio CrainTech, "As of last week, Test Central Inc. in Cleveland owns the U.S. patent to conduct testing via the Internet and, in essence, owns the online testing business.""

prostoalex writes "Wired News unveils the secrecy behind Overpeer, the company whose mission is to infiltrate peer-to-peer networks with low-quality audio and video files, or corrupted chunks of data which carry the same name and have the same size as originals. Apparently OverPeer even managed to procure a USPTO patent on (a) producing an advertising digital music file by deteriorating or damaging a sound quality of an original music file of a record of a cooperating record corporation; and (b) distributing the advertising digital music file through the communication network."

Ark42 asks: "Did the Unisys patent on LZW expire back on Dec 10, 2002? Does that mean we can all write GIF software royalty free now? From what I can gather, Unisys only lists patent number 4,558,302 for covering LZW, which was filed on Jun 20, 1983 and issued on Dec 10, 1985. According to this site patents filed after Jun 7, 1995 last 20 years from the file date, and patents on or before then last 17 years from the issue date. That means the LZW patent expired on Dec 10, 2002. Am I missing anything?" A deadline of 2003 was given in this earlier Slashdot article. Assuming .GIFs can't follow in the footsteps of Mickey Mouse, will the popular image format now be "web safe"?

John Miles writes "Offering yet another persuasive argument in favor of employee substance-abuse testing at the US Patent and Trademark Office, SBC Communications is asserting exclusive ownership of the concept of links in browser frames. With SBC's convenient new rate plan, now you, too, can afford to license your favorite HTML feature!"

theodp writes "Defending its decision to concoct recommendations to steer customers to buy items at Amazon's new Apparel Store, a spokeswoman said Amazon "felt it would be evident to people that since the store was so new, we wouldn't have the transaction history to create database similarities." But in this just-published patent applicaton, Amazon earlier told the USPTO it's able to use product viewing histories to determine the similarity or relatedness between products for which little or no purchase history data exists. So which claim should you believe?"

theodp writes "Looks like Amazon's really getting back in the patent game. Today, the USPTO published Amazon's patent application for conducting electronic commerce using multiple shopping carts. Using the invention, a shopper purchasing items for five relatives can set up one shopping cart for each relative, a shopper purchasing books for Johnny can name one of his shopping carts "Johnny's books", and a shopper can add items to multiple shopping carts with only two mouse clicks." This might also be a good time to point out to those who didn't see it the first time AOL's patent claims regarding "Instant Message" technology; you may be able to think of some prior art.

theodp writes "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is seeking a patent for coordinating the delivery of a gift. The invention was bundled with the 1-Click claims in this 1998 EPO filing, but its USPTO filing was allowed to lapse. Amazon refiled with the USPTO in July, 2002--a few months after settling the BN 1-Click lawsuit." Update: 12/13 05:35 GMT by T : Ben Silverman writes "Please note that Shel Kaphan is no longer the CTO of Amazon.com and has not been with the company for over three years. I apologize for any inconvience this has caused Mr. Kaphan and to readers for the error. Mr. Kaphan pointed out my error in an email this evening." (Kaphan is identified as CTO in the linked NY Post story.)

MiniGhost writes "Well... the USPTO is at it again! A recent search of their online patent database reveals a new patent issued on Nov 26, 2002. Apparently cisco has been issued patent #6,487,666, titled 'Intrusion detection signature analysis using regular expressions and logical operators.' So now they are claiming patent rights on the use of regular expressions and logical operators for IDS usage. It's only a matter of time before some corporation patents the stick man now!!"

Kernel Panic writes "Looks like you can now be sued for using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site. As everyone who has an e-commerce site does. A company in San Diego was granted one patent for using graphics and text to sell things on the web and another for accepting information to conduct automatic financial transactions via a telephone line & video screen. They have started their crusade with smaller companies that do not have the financial resources to fight back so as to build a "war chest" to take on larger companies like Ebay and Amazon. One site has taken the offense after becoming one of the first defendants of 50 companies so far. Curiously it appears the company was formed in March of 2002, less than a month before filing for the first lawsuit."

Kernel Panic writes "Looks like you can now be sued for using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site. As everyone who has an e-commerce site does. A company in San Diego was granted one patent for using graphics and text to sell things on the web and another for accepting information to conduct automatic financial transactions via a telephone line & video screen. They have started their crusade with smaller companies that do not have the financial resources to fight back so as to build a "war chest" to take on larger companies like Ebay and Amazon. One site has taken the offense after becoming one of the first defendants of 50 companies so far. Curiously it appears the company was formed in March of 2002, less than a month before filing for the first lawsuit."

theodp writes "When Amazon's Honor System debuted, some questioned if Amazon would try to patent it. More than 18 months later, the USPTO has provided the answer with the 8-29 publication of patent applications 20020120568 ("User-to-user payment service with payee-specific pay pages") and 20020120567 ("Hosted services for collecting payments from and providing personalized content to web site visitors"). Both list Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as an inventor and use the Amazon Honor System to illustrate a commercial implementation of the inventions." Hmm...wouldn't eBay's point system be prior art in this situation?

theodp writes "When Amazon's Honor System debuted, some questioned if Amazon would try to patent it. More than 18 months later, the USPTO has provided the answer with the 8-29 publication of patent applications 20020120568 ("User-to-user payment service with payee-specific pay pages") and 20020120567 ("Hosted services for collecting payments from and providing personalized content to web site visitors"). Both list Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as an inventor and use the Amazon Honor System to illustrate a commercial implementation of the inventions." Hmm...wouldn't eBay's point system be prior art in this situation?

_ph1ux_ asks: "I have an idea that i would like to patent. I have called several patent attorney's in the San Francisco Bay Area and inquired about the costs associated with doing a patent search and filing. I was quoted a flat fee for the search by some, ranges by others - and some more sound sounding advice from others. Some attorney's want $450 for the search and a range of $3-6,000 for the filing - with up to six months before they are ready to just file the application for you. I have been researching on USPTO website to see if there are any pre-existing patents that cover my idea now for several days, and so far have found none. In the past I was able to quickly locate existing patents that thwarted my previous patent attempts - so this time it looks promising. My personal feelings for attorneys and lawyers aside - I want to know what have other slashdotters done with regards to pursuing patents, specifically if it is at all possible for an IANAL to successfully apply for a patent (cheaply)? Can you tell me what other avenues there are for me online or otherwise, while not giving away a large stake in my invention?"

David Lee Ludwig writes "Earlier today, I ran across an article regarding an issued patent on e-mail forwarding. According to the president of the holding company, they're interested in making the technology open-source, however I fail to see where the innovation is. The full text of the patent (6427164) is available online." Sadly, we've run altogether too many patent stories of late. In related news, the PTO has been sued to stop shredding the original documents related to the patents. Read on for more on that... mgarraha writes "A Washington Post article reports that the National Intellectual Property Researchers Association is suing the US Patent and Trademark Office to stop them from destroying their archive of paper documents. NIPRA claims that PTO's new patent database is not good enough to go completely paperless. PTO had planned to begin disposal today, but they are still negotiating with the group that will take the paper off their hands."

gondaba writes "The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted an all-encompassing patent to ActiveBuddy that covers every step of IM botmaking technology. According to internetnews, ActiveBuddy now plans to enforce the patent, even though the existence of prior art is well-known and documented."

While the US Patent and Trade Office sparks more discussion on Slashdot, the European Patent Office and the patent examiners who work there do much the same job as their US counterparts, although they work under a different set of laws and regulations. John Savage is a European patent examiner, and he has kindly consented to answer questions from Slashdot readers about the EU patent process. Usual rules apply: One question per post, we send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to John about 24 hours after this post appears, and run his answers verbatim when we get them back.

Emily writes: "Another case of patent abuse similar to the PanIP nonsense previously reported in Slashdot. This time, it's Liquid Audio suing geotargeting company Infosplit over patent infringement. I read their patent, it's hilarious! Liquid Audio basically received a patent for saying that a domain ending by "co.uk" is in the UK. More seriously, these lawsuits represent a serious threat to innovation in this country."

jorhan writes "Darren Reed, the author of IPFilter, recently posted this message to the IPFilter mailing list. Apparently IPFilter may infringe upon USA patents owned by Bay Networks, specifically, #5790554. The patent might seem to own just about every conceivable way one might wish to filter and forward data packets, but trying to read through all of the "wherein said first condition" started to give me a headache (ObIANAL). But when you read what application the authors specifically had in mind, it really has little to do with network layer firewalling. Even more important is the question Darren's mail indirectly poses, "Anyone know of any prior art?""

Karin Kosina writes: "Real-time Free Software solutions are moving forward with the first release of ADEOS, a hardware abstraction layer allowing a real-time kernel and a general purpose kernel to co-exist. RTAI will eventually use ADEOS services, thus offering a real-time kernel based on a principle clearly different from the 5,995,745 US Patent. Read the official press release by Philippe Gerum, Karim Yaghmour, Paolo Mantegazza et al. for details."

Marsala writes "Apparently Red Hat has filed two patent applications for stuff related to the TUX webserver. The patents are for Embedded Protocol Objects and Method and apparatus for atomic file look-up. One has to wonder (if their patents are granted) what their licensing terms will be.... free for open source, or a tool to try and screw other Linux distros?" As reported by Linux Weekly News.

Marsala writes "Apparently Red Hat has filed two patent applications for stuff related to the TUX webserver. The patents are for Embedded Protocol Objects and Method and apparatus for atomic file look-up. One has to wonder (if their patents are granted) what their licensing terms will be.... free for open source, or a tool to try and screw other Linux distros?" As reported by Linux Weekly News.

Matt Van Gundy writes "In another brilliant move by the well loved U.S. Patent and Trademark Office a patent (6,368,227) has been granted to a Mr. Steven Olson for inventing the method of swinging sideways on a swing. The patent even lays claim to "inducing a component of forward and back motion into the swinging motion, resulting in a swinging path that is generally shaped as an oval." I claim prior art, but perhaps I am one of the few fortunate ones who enjoyed this method of swinging long before its 'invention' by Mr. Steven Olson. " My favorite line from the patent : "The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. Actual jungle forestry is not required."

Ana anonymous submitter wrote: "C|Net News is reporting that Overture is suing Google over its AdWords advertising method since it may be infringing upon Patent 6,269,361 'System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine'."

Ender, Duke_of_URL writes: "The Federal Register (PDF) announced the April 12th deadline to nominate someone to the US Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Public Advisory Committee. You can nominate any US citizen by sending a letter and the person's resume can be sent by email."

Ender, Duke_of_URL writes: "The Federal Register (PDF) announced the April 12th deadline to nominate someone to the US Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Public Advisory Committee. You can nominate any US citizen by sending a letter and the person's resume can be sent by email."

joeblake writes: "nVidia apparently thinks that because they have control of the computer graphics market, they can control the world. nVidia has filed a patent stating their ownership of 'Interactive Gaming Servers and Online Community Forum'. How nVidia goes from graphics cards to gaming servers beats me."

Anonymous Coward sent in a note about Microsoft being granted a patent on a "Digital Rights Management Operating System". Anything more to say? Nope, don't think so. After Windows XP will be Windows DRM.

melquiades writes: "A recent story raised concerns that Apple's patent on some forms of alpha compositing was blocking the development of PNG, MNG and SVG. Not so, says Greg Roelofs, a member of the PNG group: 'The PNG group did discuss the Apple patent several weeks ago, and we decided it was completely irrelevant to PNG itself, almost certainly irrelevant to the pnmtopng utility and to PNGs animated extension, MNG, and probably irrelevant to SVG as well.' Here's the article on OS Opinion. So if it's not a big deal, why was there a general call for prior art to overturn Apple's patent? It looks like some PNG developers got worried, but the core team thinks there's no problem. Is this just a case of the right hand not knowing that the left hand is paranoid?" Once bitten, twice shy?

jalefkowit writes: "More follies from the US Patent & Trademark Office ... now IBM has been awarded US Patent #6,304,886 for software that automatically "generates [a] customized Web site without the Web site creator writing any HTML or other programming code", based on "a plurality of pre-stored templates, comprising HTML formatting code, text, fields, and formulas" that are then customized through the process of asking the user a few questions. In other words, they've patented the ubiquitous wizards found in FrontPage and other newbie-oriented HTML editors. This was submitted to the USPTO on June 19, 1998 -- surely someone out there knows of prior art for this?"

jalefkowit writes: "More follies from the US Patent & Trademark Office ... now IBM has been awarded US Patent #6,304,886 for software that automatically "generates [a] customized Web site without the Web site creator writing any HTML or other programming code", based on "a plurality of pre-stored templates, comprising HTML formatting code, text, fields, and formulas" that are then customized through the process of asking the user a few questions. In other words, they've patented the ubiquitous wizards found in FrontPage and other newbie-oriented HTML editors. This was submitted to the USPTO on June 19, 1998 -- surely someone out there knows of prior art for this?"

Vergil Bushnell was on his way to testify in hearings at the Patent Office's headquarters outside Washington, D.C. when a hijacked jetliner slammed into the Pentagon, and arrived just after news of the attack reached the hearing room. He sent in this description of the experience. If you witnessed any of today's attacks, this is the place to add your account.

I was scheduled to testify today at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's "Patent Theatre" in Crystal City, Virginia, on the intellectual property aspects of the proposed Hague Convention on Jurisdiction. I had sweated for days over a prepared oral statement about the treaty's implications for student coders and journalists.

My friend Rob Carlson and I left Baltimore early (shortly after 7:00 a.m.) and deposited ourselves at an outlying Metro stop, intending to take the subway into Crystal City. We arrived without incident.

Upon disembarking at Crystal City, I gave the sounds of various sirens little heed -- even as the municipality's Battalion Chief (fire department) roared past, red and white lights flashing.

"There must be a fire nearby," Rob said, glancing upward as fluffy chunks of ash drifting down into the USPTO's courtyard like huge downy feathers.

The hearing room was uncharacteristically vacant. I sat down next to my former boss, Consumer Project on Technology director Jamie Love, and flipped open my laptop to read over my prepared oral testimony.

"Did you hear? A plane hit the World Trade Center in New York!" Jamie whispered excitedly, ensconced in a pile of laptop peripherals and scattered newspapers. I froze momentarily, floppy disk half inserted into my laptop. Looking up, I noticed most of the hearing's attendees appeared to be in shock. A few sat rigid in their seats, hands folded in their laps, staring ahead in numbed silence. Others milled about, busily discussing the foreign policy ramifications of the morning's events. No one seemed to be concentrating on the hearing.

Federal government officials present -- (I recognized members of the U.S. State Department, Copyright Office and PTO) reacted differently -- receiving the sporadic stream of dispatches and rumors from PTO staffers running in and out of the Theatre with detached contemplation. It appeared that the Feds had discarded their usual mantle of chatty, diplomatic ambiance, and had switched into Crisis Mode.

"If anyone really wants to testify now, they can. At this time, we are not evacuating the building," proclaimed a Patent Office functionary. No one took her up on her offer, and several folks murmured quietly about the inappropriateness of proceeding with the hearing given the context and magnitude of events.

More runners entered the Theater, bearing news of additional disasters -- some alleged, some actual. Rumors about the destruction of various Washington agencies and landmarks whipped throughout the conference room.

I closed my laptop, which had been teetering idle on my lap for several minutes. People started for the door, hesitating in case the unspoken consensus for scrapping the hearing was improbably reversed. Cell phones were whipped out of suit pockets and family members dialed to no effect.

"You can always submit written testimony." declared U.S. delegate to the Hague Conference and PTO attorney-advisor Jennifer Lucas as the long-planned hearing disintegrated.

I felt a mix of emotions: disappointed that I wouldn't have the chance to testify and lock horns with the MPAA and other industry lobbyists, and guilty for having such self-centered thoughts during this crisis.

Rob and I headed out toward the lobby. He decided that we should skip the elevator and go down a flight of stairs to the lobby.

The courtyard of the Patent Office facility (which had been nearly deserted when we arrived) was packed with a milling, chattering crowd. Security guards peered about pensively as if reassuring themselves that the building was indeed still standing. Soon after, a shout went up that the Patent Office was being evacuated.

The head of the U.S. Delegation to the Hague Conference (and State Department legal advisor) Jeff Kovar brushed past me with an associate in tow.

"We're walking to the State Department." Kovar grimly mentioned to no one in particular, and started the long hike back to his office.

Rob and I weaved our way through gridlocked traffic and headed toward the Crystal City Metro station. Several Federal Marshalls stood about -- one wearing a boxy bulletproof vest, another wearing a pink blouse with a lanyard ID. Military personnel huddled together on the sidewalk, segregated according to the hue of their uniforms. Fast moving, thin white clouds rushed overhead. I wasn't sure if they were really smoke pluming from the Pentagon.

We jumped into a Yellow Line train alongside a pair of blue-shirted Air Force officers. I watched as an orange ladybug crawled up the silver-stitched epaulet of the officer closest to me, and informed him of its presence. He stared at me for a silent moment before carefully removing the insect.

"That's the least of my problems," he said. "Thanks anyway."

Vergil Bushnell was on his way to testify in hearings at the Patent Office's headquarters outside Washington, D.C. when a hijacked jetliner slammed into the Pentagon, and arrived just after news of the attack reached the hearing room. He sent in this description of the experience. If you witnessed any of today's attacks, this is the place to add your account.

I was scheduled to testify today at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's "Patent Theatre" in Crystal City, Virginia, on the intellectual property aspects of the proposed Hague Convention on Jurisdiction. I had sweated for days over a prepared oral statement about the treaty's implications for student coders and journalists.

My friend Rob Carlson and I left Baltimore early (shortly after 7:00 a.m.) and deposited ourselves at an outlying Metro stop, intending to take the subway into Crystal City. We arrived without incident.

Upon disembarking at Crystal City, I gave the sounds of various sirens little heed -- even as the municipality's Battalion Chief (fire department) roared past, red and white lights flashing.

"There must be a fire nearby," Rob said, glancing upward as fluffy chunks of ash drifting down into the USPTO's courtyard like huge downy feathers.

The hearing room was uncharacteristically vacant. I sat down next to my former boss, Consumer Project on Technology director Jamie Love, and flipped open my laptop to read over my prepared oral testimony.

"Did you hear? A plane hit the World Trade Center in New York!" Jamie whispered excitedly, ensconced in a pile of laptop peripherals and scattered newspapers. I froze momentarily, floppy disk half inserted into my laptop. Looking up, I noticed most of the hearing's attendees appeared to be in shock. A few sat rigid in their seats, hands folded in their laps, staring ahead in numbed silence. Others milled about, busily discussing the foreign policy ramifications of the morning's events. No one seemed to be concentrating on the hearing.

Federal government officials present -- (I recognized members of the U.S. State Department, Copyright Office and PTO) reacted differently -- receiving the sporadic stream of dispatches and rumors from PTO staffers running in and out of the Theatre with detached contemplation. It appeared that the Feds had discarded their usual mantle of chatty, diplomatic ambiance, and had switched into Crisis Mode.

"If anyone really wants to testify now, they can. At this time, we are not evacuating the building," proclaimed a Patent Office functionary. No one took her up on her offer, and several folks murmured quietly about the inappropriateness of proceeding with the hearing given the context and magnitude of events.

More runners entered the Theater, bearing news of additional disasters -- some alleged, some actual. Rumors about the destruction of various Washington agencies and landmarks whipped throughout the conference room.

I closed my laptop, which had been teetering idle on my lap for several minutes. People started for the door, hesitating in case the unspoken consensus for scrapping the hearing was improbably reversed. Cell phones were whipped out of suit pockets and family members dialed to no effect.

"You can always submit written testimony." declared U.S. delegate to the Hague Conference and PTO attorney-advisor Jennifer Lucas as the long-planned hearing disintegrated.

I felt a mix of emotions: disappointed that I wouldn't have the chance to testify and lock horns with the MPAA and other industry lobbyists, and guilty for having such self-centered thoughts during this crisis.

Rob and I headed out toward the lobby. He decided that we should skip the elevator and go down a flight of stairs to the lobby.

The courtyard of the Patent Office facility (which had been nearly deserted when we arrived) was packed with a milling, chattering crowd. Security guards peered about pensively as if reassuring themselves that the building was indeed still standing. Soon after, a shout went up that the Patent Office was being evacuated.

The head of the U.S. Delegation to the Hague Conference (and State Department legal advisor) Jeff Kovar brushed past me with an associate in tow.

"We're walking to the State Department." Kovar grimly mentioned to no one in particular, and started the long hike back to his office.

Rob and I weaved our way through gridlocked traffic and headed toward the Crystal City Metro station. Several Federal Marshalls stood about -- one wearing a boxy bulletproof vest, another wearing a pink blouse with a lanyard ID. Military personnel huddled together on the sidewalk, segregated according to the hue of their uniforms. Fast moving, thin white clouds rushed overhead. I wasn't sure if they were really smoke pluming from the Pentagon.

We jumped into a Yellow Line train alongside a pair of blue-shirted Air Force officers. I watched as an orange ladybug crawled up the silver-stitched epaulet of the officer closest to me, and informed him of its presence. He stared at me for a silent moment before carefully removing the insect.

"That's the least of my problems," he said. "Thanks anyway."

Jim Madison writes: "Today, the Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it is soliciting public comment in a Federal Register notice on the databases it uses to find prior art relevant to its examination of software-implemented business method patents. We've discussed this topic ad naseum, so here's an opportunity to make sure that policy-makers understand our perspective. Maybe slashdot mgmt. could even forward the top rated comments to them directly!"

And an unnamed reader points out that tomorrow is the due date for comments on the Interim Report of the Second WIPO Internet Domain Name Process, which "has some crazy suggestions such as reserving domains using pharmaceutical names and bolstering the claims of commercial entities against 'cybersquatters.'"

People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made. Law professor and copyright expert Jessica Litman takes a hard look at the process which makes copyright law, and most readers will likely finish her new book, Digital Copyright, with their respect for the law substantially lessened. This is the book for everyone who has ever gotten fed up with IANAL posts and wanted answers that were a bit more informed, everyone who's gotten tired of soundbite analysis of Napster and overheated mailing list discussions. If you're looking for one book to help you understand the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the past and future of copyright law, this is it.

Digital Copyright author Jessica Litman pages 208 publisher Prometheus Books rating 10/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 1-57392-889-5 summary how copyright law is like sausage-making

For a free introduction to Professor Litman's work, you may want to see her webpage, taking special note of the various articles and papers linked at the bottom. Several of her previous articles have been revised into chapters of Digital Copyright, so if you don't find them interesting, the book isn't likely to interest you (though the book is written for a slightly more general audience than the papers).

Almost every discussion of copyright on the web degenerates into name-calling between a faction that insists "copyright is property - you're STEALING!" and a faction that insists "copyright is a bargain between the public and producers, it exists solely to promote the progress of science and the arts, and the producers are trying to gouge the public within an inch of its life". Litman's book will show you the roots of those two viewpoints, the heavy propaganda effort by the copyright industry that has made that shift in law from the second to the first and is trying to make that shift in public perception, and you'll be one up on the average copyright debater.

She goes into excruciating, fascinating, absorbing detail about the process that produced current copyright law and is highly likely to produce future copyright law - the bribes to Congress, the back-room deals, the slimy public relations tactics, the elected officials who don't want to spend the time to learn about a tangential, unimportant issue like copyright. The history of copyright law shows that this is not a new issue - these same battles have been fought over each new medium of storing or transmitting information, and Litman mentions, at least briefly, each of those battles. With each new medium came an expansion of copyright law to cover that medium and a narrowing of the rights of readers/viewers/listeners, until we've reached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which arguably allows publishers cradle to grave control of every copyrighted work they produce.

One of the major themes expressed in the book is the disconnect between how the average layman supposes that copyright law is and how it actually works. In general, people who haven't read copyright law have many misunderstandings about it, and often refuse to accept the real law when it is presented, because it doesn't make a lot of sense and they have a fundamental belief that law should make sense. Indeed, the odds are (at least in my experience) that any individual random person asserting facts about copyright law is dead wrong.

When you have laws that have been written and revised for one hundred years with no significant input from the public, only people who want to maximize their profits from the resulting law, there's going to be a disconnect.

And that's the "sausage" aspect of this book. Most people respect the law, even copyright law, even if they don't understand it (they obey what they think the law is, or what they think it should be). But after reading this book, I think most people won't respect copyright law any more - they'll realize that copyright law is just a method for a very few companies and industries to maximize their profits at the public's expense, and they'll simply cease to respect it. I'm not at all certain this is a bad thing. A little less respect for authority would probably do American society some good. But be aware of the consequences: if you want your daughter to grow up thinking that making an MP3 from a CD you own is theft, don't use this book for bedtime reading. It will warp impressionable minds.

Chapter 1, Copyright Basics, is just as you'd expect: an overview of copyright law. It's not deep, but the rest of the book does not require in-depth knowledge of copyright law. It's a book written for a popular audience, with enough footnoted references that scholars won't be disppointed or short-changed.

Chapter 2 is available online (so is the introduction). Litman maps out where she intends to go in chapter 2, so it's really the best sales pitch for the book: read it, and you'll either be hooked or not.

Chapter 3 covers compromise - the compromise between copyright interests that creates modern copyright law. When you realize that Congress literally and explicitly (and apparently, shamelessly) rubber-stamps the law written from start to finish by corporate copyright interests, you may feel the bile rise in your throat.

Chapter 4 is a short thought experiment: if you were a lawyer representing the public, and the "bargain" of the 1976 copyright statute was presented to you, would you accept it?

Chapter 5 is an important chapter for advocacy efforts. It covers metaphors, and the important role they play in debate. We've seen this play out in recent news as perjorative terms like "pirate" are applied to organizations like 2600, which, after all, is not even accused of copying a single thing unlawfully, while the New York Times and other large publishers, which freely admit that they copied tens of thousands of articles which they had no rights to in order to sell them for a profit, are called pirates by no one (one newspaper article, in the Christian Science Monitor, mentioned that the individual writers describe this as "cyber-piracy" - that's the closest I got to an adverse characterization of the publishers' position). This "piracy gap" illustrates perfectly Litman's point - controlling the metaphor for any given debate or conflict is of utmost importance.

Chapter 6 covers the collision between copyright lawyers and computers/the internet. Imagine: a world where every single use of any piece of information involved making a copy, if only in a computer's RAM. Suddenly, the right to "make copies", which once covered only the initial production of copyrighted materials, is invoked with every single usage of a material. And instead of revising the law to have roughly the same effect as it used to, copyright interests seized on revising the law in favor of its letter, not its spirit. (Though Litman doesn't mention Lessig here, she's making exactly the same argument that Lessig is in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace , and I wish it was expanded just a bit.) The chapter generally covers the efforts in the early 1990's that will lead up to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Chapter 7, Creation and Incentives, examines what sort of incentives are actually needed to get people to create copyrighted works. In the face of all evidence, the copyright industry argues that massive incentives are needed. There's a great hypothetical, which I won't ruin for you here, that looks at the copyright incentives needed in two major industries today.

Chapter 8 is titled "Just Say Yes to Licensing!". I don't think I really need to discuss the subject matter here, do I? She points out that the paper which led to the DMCA recommends massive citizen re-education programs - since the law didn't fit with public perceptions, clearly the public's perceptions were at fault, not the law.

Chapter 9 covers the DMCA's passage - each little bargain hammered out by one copyright interest or another, all at the public's expense.

Chapters 10 and 11 cover Napster, DeCSS, and similar areas that regular slashdot readers will be familiar with.

The final two chapters examine the requirements for a digital copyright law that will comport with the expectations of Americans - whose expectations include items like being able to read a work they've published on a device of their own choosing without violating copyright law - and yet still provide an incentive to authors. Although there is nothing wrong with the solution Litman proposes, one gets the impression that it is a sort of pro forma exercise, that she knows there is no realistic hope of her solution being implemented.

Overall, the work is both a strong piece of scholarship (Litman has been studying this for years, and it shows in every footnote) and solid read. Readers on a budget can get the flavor and most of the arguments by reading her papers online, but the work as a coherent whole is solid addition to the library of anyone who cares about copyright issues. Highly recommended.

I'd like to also mention another book about the DMCA, one that I'm not going to do a full review on. Marcia Wilbur has a self-published book titled DMCA, which can be located through various booksellers. I received a copy from the author, and it is about as different from Digital Copyright as night is from day. DMCA draws very strongly from online debates -- it's fast-paced, rushed, very much a persuasive work rather than an informative, scholarly one, and could use some serious copy-editing. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read, and the only paper work I've seen to date that accurately captures the flavor of online discussions about the DMCA.

You can purchase Digital Copyright at Fatbrain.

People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made. Law professor and copyright expert Jessica Litman takes a hard look at the process which makes copyright law, and most readers will likely finish her new book, Digital Copyright, with their respect for the law substantially lessened. This is the book for everyone who has ever gotten fed up with IANAL posts and wanted answers that were a bit more informed, everyone who's gotten tired of soundbite analysis of Napster and overheated mailing list discussions. If you're looking for one book to help you understand the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the past and future of copyright law, this is it.

Digital Copyright author Jessica Litman pages 208 publisher Prometheus Books rating 10/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 1-57392-889-5 summary how copyright law is like sausage-making

For a free introduction to Professor Litman's work, you may want to see her webpage, taking special note of the various articles and papers linked at the bottom. Several of her previous articles have been revised into chapters of Digital Copyright, so if you don't find them interesting, the book isn't likely to interest you (though the book is written for a slightly more general audience than the papers).

Almost every discussion of copyright on the web degenerates into name-calling between a faction that insists "copyright is property - you're STEALING!" and a faction that insists "copyright is a bargain between the public and producers, it exists solely to promote the progress of science and the arts, and the producers are trying to gouge the public within an inch of its life". Litman's book will show you the roots of those two viewpoints, the heavy propaganda effort by the copyright industry that has made that shift in law from the second to the first and is trying to make that shift in public perception, and you'll be one up on the average copyright debater.

She goes into excruciating, fascinating, absorbing detail about the process that produced current copyright law and is highly likely to produce future copyright law - the bribes to Congress, the back-room deals, the slimy public relations tactics, the elected officials who don't want to spend the time to learn about a tangential, unimportant issue like copyright. The history of copyright law shows that this is not a new issue - these same battles have been fought over each new medium of storing or transmitting information, and Litman mentions, at least briefly, each of those battles. With each new medium came an expansion of copyright law to cover that medium and a narrowing of the rights of readers/viewers/listeners, until we've reached the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which arguably allows publishers cradle to grave control of every copyrighted work they produce.

One of the major themes expressed in the book is the disconnect between how the average layman supposes that copyright law is and how it actually works. In general, people who haven't read copyright law have many misunderstandings about it, and often refuse to accept the real law when it is presented, because it doesn't make a lot of sense and they have a fundamental belief that law should make sense. Indeed, the odds are (at least in my experience) that any individual random person asserting facts about copyright law is dead wrong.

When you have laws that have been written and revised for one hundred years with no significant input from the public, only people who want to maximize their profits from the resulting law, there's going to be a disconnect.

And that's the "sausage" aspect of this book. Most people respect the law, even copyright law, even if they don't understand it (they obey what they think the law is, or what they think it should be). But after reading this book, I think most people won't respect copyright law any more - they'll realize that copyright law is just a method for a very few companies and industries to maximize their profits at the public's expense, and they'll simply cease to respect it. I'm not at all certain this is a bad thing. A little less respect for authority would probably do American society some good. But be aware of the consequences: if you want your daughter to grow up thinking that making an MP3 from a CD you own is theft, don't use this book for bedtime reading. It will warp impressionable minds.

Chapter 1, Copyright Basics, is just as you'd expect: an overview of copyright law. It's not deep, but the rest of the book does not require in-depth knowledge of copyright law. It's a book written for a popular audience, with enough footnoted references that scholars won't be disppointed or short-changed.

Chapter 2 is available online (so is the introduction). Litman maps out where she intends to go in chapter 2, so it's really the best sales pitch for the book: read it, and you'll either be hooked or not.

Chapter 3 covers compromise - the compromise between copyright interests that creates modern copyright law. When you realize that Congress literally and explicitly (and apparently, shamelessly) rubber-stamps the law written from start to finish by corporate copyright interests, you may feel the bile rise in your throat.

Chapter 4 is a short thought experiment: if you were a lawyer representing the public, and the "bargain" of the 1976 copyright statute was presented to you, would you accept it?

Chapter 5 is an important chapter for advocacy efforts. It covers metaphors, and the important role they play in debate. We've seen this play out in recent news as perjorative terms like "pirate" are applied to organizations like 2600, which, after all, is not even accused of copying a single thing unlawfully, while the New York Times and other large publishers, which freely admit that they copied tens of thousands of articles which they had no rights to in order to sell them for a profit, are called pirates by no one (one newspaper article, in the Christian Science Monitor, mentioned that the individual writers describe this as "cyber-piracy" - that's the closest I got to an adverse characterization of the publishers' position). This "piracy gap" illustrates perfectly Litman's point - controlling the metaphor for any given debate or conflict is of utmost importance.

Chapter 6 covers the collision between copyright lawyers and computers/the internet. Imagine: a world where every single use of any piece of information involved making a copy, if only in a computer's RAM. Suddenly, the right to "make copies", which once covered only the initial production of copyrighted materials, is invoked with every single usage of a material. And instead of revising the law to have roughly the same effect as it used to, copyright interests seized on revising the law in favor of its letter, not its spirit. (Though Litman doesn't mention Lessig here, she's making exactly the same argument that Lessig is in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace , and I wish it was expanded just a bit.) The chapter generally covers the efforts in the early 1990's that will lead up to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Chapter 7, Creation and Incentives, examines what sort of incentives are actually needed to get people to create copyrighted works. In the face of all evidence, the copyright industry argues that massive incentives are needed. There's a great hypothetical, which I won't ruin for you here, that looks at the copyright incentives needed in two major industries today.

Chapter 8 is titled "Just Say Yes to Licensing!". I don't think I really need to discuss the subject matter here, do I? She points out that the paper which led to the DMCA recommends massive citizen re-education programs - since the law didn't fit with public perceptions, clearly the public's perceptions were at fault, not the law.

Chapter 9 covers the DMCA's passage - each little bargain hammered out by one copyright interest or another, all at the public's expense.

Chapters 10 and 11 cover Napster, DeCSS, and similar areas that regular slashdot readers will be familiar with.

The final two chapters examine the requirements for a digital copyright law that will comport with the expectations of Americans - whose expectations include items like being able to read a work they've published on a device of their own choosing without violating copyright law - and yet still provide an incentive to authors. Although there is nothing wrong with the solution Litman proposes, one gets the impression that it is a sort of pro forma exercise, that she knows there is no realistic hope of her solution being implemented.

Overall, the work is both a strong piece of scholarship (Litman has been studying this for years, and it shows in every footnote) and solid read. Readers on a budget can get the flavor and most of the arguments by reading her papers online, but the work as a coherent whole is solid addition to the library of anyone who cares about copyright issues. Highly recommended.

I'd like to also mention another book about the DMCA, one that I'm not going to do a full review on. Marcia Wilbur has a self-published book titled DMCA, which can be located through various booksellers. I received a copy from the author, and it is about as different from Digital Copyright as night is from day. DMCA draws very strongly from online debates -- it's fast-paced, rushed, very much a persuasive work rather than an informative, scholarly one, and could use some serious copy-editing. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read, and the only paper work I've seen to date that accurately captures the flavor of online discussions about the DMCA.

You can purchase Digital Copyright at Fatbrain.

Slashback tonight with more on patents, Douglas Adams, and becoming a Jedi in New Zealand. Please read below for the details;)

Fitting tributes? SEWilco writes "New Scientist reports that an asteroid was officially named "18610 Arthurdent" on May 9; it is not known if Douglas Adams heard of it before he died May 11."

And dclydew writes "We at Binary Freedom would like to propose "Towel Day." May 25, two weeks after Douglas Adams' passing, all fans worldwide are encouraged to carry a towel around for the day."

It would be nice to see Thursday renamed as well.

Wait till the Jedi control the Senate. Slightly aging news, but CuriousGeorge113 writes "According to this Theage.com.au article, the Australian Government has issued yet another warning to Star Wars fans intent on writing in 'Jedi' as their religion in the upcoming census. It appears that this e-mail is beginning to pick up some steam."

Join the parade. Macki writes "Three weeks ago, Ford Motor Company sued 2600 over a DNS entry pointing FuckGeneralMotors.com at the Ford website. A hearing is set for May 18th in Detroit. Supporters are invited to join a caravan to Detroit that will go through up state New York and Canada in time for the hearing. A motion has already been filed for a protective order from legal shenanigans while in Michigan-- it's a good read and gives a thorough run-down of the case."

Open for the public, yes. Delphion may be about to start charging for certain of its formerly free services, but my note that the USPTO should put more documents on the Web was too harsh. A USPTO employee helpfully wrote:

"The United States Patent and Trademark Office offers the entire USPTO Patent database online for free (we've been doing this for some time now) -- just click any of the Search Patents links to get started.

You can search text for all patents since 1976 and view images of all patents since 1790 (except those files lost in the early Patent Office fires and fractional patents). We have the entire available patent database on line. You will need a TIFF image browser plugin (we offer a link to a free plugin on our site).

We also offer Patent Application Publications online. These are pending patent applications received after the new rules went into effect (from March 15 2001 through the present weekly issue). The database consists of the full text of US published applications (including new utility and plant). The full text of a published application includes all bibliographic data, such as the inventor's name, the published application's title, and the assignee's name, as well as the abstract, the full description of the invention, and the claims. All of the words (text) in the publication are searchable."

Thanks for the information. Sorry for being the source of FUD. Now where are the searchable PDFs? :)

That's a large part of the intent of the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments, tempered by other countries' desire to have their copyright and patent laws enforceable worldwide, too. Today I attended a public roundtable discussion about this treaty proposal at the U.S. Library of Congress. (more)

Representatives of "copyright holders" heavily outnumbered freedom advocates, as is typical at this kind of event, but the leadoff speaker, Michael Davis of the Progressive IP Law Association, started the session by talking about how hip-hop sampling would be killed by the Hague Convention if it is ratified in its present form, which has "fair use" provisions nearly as onerous as those contained in the DMCA.

Interestingly, Marilyn Cade of AT&T spoke out against much of the Hague Convention's intent; her company's concern, she said, is keeping global communications and ecommerce free and easy. A representative from Yahoo! was even more negative about this treaty, which would make U.S. authorities responsible for enforcing other countries' copyright and IP laws, and vice versa.

Think about this spectre, which another participant raised: a court in Moscow, Iran or China could decide something posted on a Web site based in the U.S. violated their countries' laws and, as Hague Convention signatories, demand that U.S. authorities force the Web site owner to remove the offending material. This is not a far-fetched idea; remember Yahoo! and the French government's objection to Nazi memorabilia sales?

At the other extreme, the American Society of Media Photographers loves the idea of a treaty that will help its members collect royalties from foreign media that use their images.

Not Just Speaking to the Peanut Gallery

I only counted 36 people in the audience; intellectual property issue discussions never draw mass attention. But the only audience that counted today was the U.S. Hague Convention delegation, and they were here, sitting up front, listening to every panelist's words, asking questions, and generally trying to learn what various constituencies want (and don't want) in the way of intellectual property treaties before they go off to the next negotiating session.

A Nationalized Movie Industry?

Jared Jussim of Sony Pictures talked at length about the "entrepreneurialism" of the movie business and how vigorous international copyright enforcement is needed to keep the movie business healthy. He said, "If we could have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act extended throughout the world, I would be ecstatic about it."

Jussim ranted hard about online freedom-seekers; he dumped on "professors" who "cite each others papers in a big circle" and how they are all "liars." Strong words. But that wasn't enough for the man. He directly stated that if movies or even pieces of them were distributed online or through other means not approved by the movie companies, the entire industry would eventually shut down; that "you would pay a tax" to finance government-produced movies; and that government flunkies would decide what movies got made and what you saw in theaters and on TV. Horrors!

The spectre of a government-controlled film industry obviously is enough to make any right-thinking person want to see all possible copyright protection added to every possible intellectual property treaty.

Faced with this potential evil, it is obvious that the ACLU and all those professors who yammer on about fair use, freedom of speech, constitutionality and similar silliness must be ignored.

Media Attention

The Washington Post showed up. A cameraman from TechTV shot a few moments worth of tape, without sound. One of the local tech newsletters sent a reporter. And me. These were all the "known" journalists I spotted, but others were taking notes, so who can say? Perhaps one of the quiet people in the front row was a secret representative of the Today Show, but somehow I doubt it.

The Hague Convention could make major changes in the way intellectual property and copyright laws are handled on an international scale, but "the public" probably won't hear about any of this -- and won't care if they do -- unless there is some sort of corporate aggression under the Hague Convention that affects as many people as the RIAA's anti-Napster actions. Then you'll see the big-time pundits weigh in. But at this point in the game, they are nowhere to be found.

Enter RMS, Stage Right

Richard M. Stallman, representing the League for Programming Freedom, was scheduled to take part in the afternoon session but he showed up shortly before lunch and was immediately buttonholed by the Washington Post reporter. He spent the lunch break charming a member of the trade delegation, who said she was surprised that she had not heard "strongly" before about any of the intellectual freedom concerns brought up today by Stallman and other panel members. And listen to Stallman she did, with total concentration, while eating a sandwich and drinking a soda on the front lawn of the Library of Congress's Adams Building.

Stallman was not alone in speaking about the rights of intellectual property creators and users. Laurie Racine, of the Red Hat-sponsored Center for the Public Domain, did a turn, as did representatives of the Trial Lawyers of America, a blacksuited young attorney from the MPAA, Jamie Love from the Consumer Project on Technology, people from BMI, ASCAP,AAP, and other "interested parties."

Love brought up a hypothetical situation: Cuba copyrighting the "cuban beat" and demanding 5% royalties from all American music performers who use it -- and under the terms of the proposed Hague treaty, having the legal right to force U.S. officials to help them collect.

But proceedings like this one are basically dominated by lawyers. "What if?" questions get asked and debated. Ties between copyright laws and other cross-border civil and criminal situations get discussed in detail so excruciating that it could make non-smokers want to take up the habit just to have an excuse to slip outside for a few minutes now and then.

Not Just the U.S.

Even if the U.S. delegation to the Hague Convention come down totally on the side of the angels, they will still be just one of many delegations, and other countries may have other ideas. A number of people here today have talked about how, when it comes to copyrights and patents, the U.S. is one of the most restrictive nations around, so American copyright holders probably have more to fear on that front from the rest of the world than the rest of the world has to fear from us.

Where ordinary Americans may lose out is on freedom of speech issues. Many countries have far more restrictive policies on libel and on what citizens may or may not say about touchy subjects like politics or religion, especially if those opinions are published on the Internet.

RMS vs. Sony

Imagine Stallman being accused of "not speaking for the public" on copyright matters by Sony's Jussim -- who also managed to get in a plug for movies being a great entertainment value compared to live theater or professional sports. Imagine Stallman calmly -- aside from a gleam in his eyes -- reminding the poor flak that more money goes to promote movies than to make them, so that more money in the studios' pockets wouldn't necessarily lead to better movies.

This was the first moment of passion in over an hour. Sadly, it only lasted a moment. Then it was back to drone, drone, drone.

"The ISP Community" and "The Content Community" were phrases that got thrown a lot. In the legal sense, we heard, the question of whether "publication" takes place on a server or on the client where it is displayed hasn't been settled yet.

And so on.

Toward the end of the day Jamie Love said, "There hasn't been a single American newspaper article about this treaty, and here you are getting ready to create the Magna Carta of cyberspace."

Love didn't blame the people on the U.S. delegation for working in comparative secret. "I've called reporter after reporter [about this] and their eyes glaze over," he said.

So Slashdot was there. And if you want to read the text of this treaty, it's online here.

And if you are a U.S. citizen who wants to get in touch with the people representing you at the next Hague Convention meeting (in June), three good people to contact are:

Jennifer Lucas at USPTO (jennifer.lucas@uspto.gov)

Jeffrey D. Kovar at U.S. Dept. of State (kovarj@ms.state.gov)

Maneesha Mithal at the Federal Trade Commission (mmithal@ftc.gov)

vergil asks: "I've been researching software and business method patents issued by the U.S. PTO and placing choice examples here. Recently, I stumbled upon an interesting Microsoft patent (6,175,833) filed on April 22, 1998, granted on Jan. 16, 2001 and entitled 'System and method for interactive live online voting with tallies for updating voting results.' Is anyone aware of substantially similar web polls (WhizQuest, perhaps?) that were in use before Microsoft filed for this patent and might qualify as prior art against any of this patent's claims? This nugget of intellectual property seems to cover many fundamental aspects of web-polling - such as the Slash pollbox, for example." In light of the things that can get patented these days, I'm hoping it shouldn't be all that hard to find suitable examples to bust up this one.

"The patent above appears to claim an automated, database-run webpoll that:

• Has an automatic 'authoring tool' that allows an editor to create and store polls (claim 7), including fields for question text, numbers, and answers (claim 4).
• Total votes and percentage fields for displaying poll results (claim 5).
• A 'votes table' to track users that have already voted, a "totals table" to contain vote tallies, a 'vote handler' that processes votes, and a 'survey index table' that displays either the poll questions, or results, depending on whether the user has voted (claim 1)."

Jamie and I looked into this and it appears that the Slash Poll feature does appear to be at least a partial implementation of what's listed in the patent. However it's not real clear, from what data we could retrieve out of the database, exactly when Slashdot started it's online poll. The Earliest live poll on record is titled "Corel" and is dated March 24, 1998.

Of course, the voting system has evolved quite a bit since March of '98. Our current polling system, like the patent, uses 3 tables: one table to keep track of the questions (pollquestions), one to keep track of the answers for each poll (pollanswers), and another to track the individual votes made to the active poll (pollvoters). However, back in March of '98, the system was only two tables: pollquestions, and pollanswers, with pollanswers pulling double duty as the place where the votes were counted. Duplicate vote checking wasn't implemented until the creation of the pollvoters table, waaay back in Slash v0.9, which was released in the beginning of 1999, almost a year later.

Still, as I understand it, you don't need to have prior art that's an exact implementation of a patent to break it. I think that as long as enough core ideas of a patent are exhibited in a piece of prior art, then there may be grounds for the patent to be invalidated, but I Am Not A Patent Lawyer, and unfortunately, I won't have time to contact one before this story runs.

So, is Slashdot's Poll feature enough to constitute prior art in this case?

Regardless, we're looking for other examples prior art (the more the better), to try and break yet another example of a Patent That Should Never Have Been. There is always the worry that Microsoft can begin acting in the same fashion as NCR has recently (since the patent has been issued), and start throwing lawsuits at every online poll they can find on the net.

Including Slashdot's.

Update: 03/16 07:24 PM by C :According to CmdrTaco, the poll system had it's earliest incarnations in the beginnings of Slash, way back in November of 1997, however that system wasn't SQL based, it was text file based (with judicious use of various unix tools [sed, grep, wc] to cull the voting and catch dupes). You can see a mention of the old system from this archived story from the earliest days of Slashdot...way back in November of 1997. The first SQL implementation of the poll is the March, 1998 version. And there is even more existence of online polls from Slashdot archives, including an even earlier article which mentions a ZDNet poll in the comments! Just so you know, even though the dates in the comment say 1998, they do indeed come from 1997. Blame CmdrTaco's bad code. ;)

JakusMinimus was one of several readers to point out that -- note my spelling carefully now -- etoy, the envelope-pushing European art group, has filed a lawsuit against eToys, the money-losing California company. I spoke with etoy's lawyer last night; he said that he has been trying to negotiate with eToys for six months, but that eToys is (not surprisingly) continuing to pursue its trademark on "ETOYS", which etoy (not surprisingly) feels endangers its right to continue using its name. etoy wants to see eToys barred from using that name in business, including using the domain name etoys.com -- basically, it wants the company to change its name. Here's the Reuters story, and here's the etoy press release. My thoughts below.

Is there confusion between the two names? eToys seems to think so, since it got etoy's website taken down in December 1999 for exactly that reason. The site was put back up later, and eToys' legal action halted, mostly because etoy was using its name, and had its website, long before eToys even existed.

And I can especially see why etoy is worried, since eToys has also filed a trademark application on "ETOYS" in the context of providing "interactive and arcade games via a global computer network." Which is, well, pretty darn close to what the artistic group has been doing for the last five years.

So if there's confusion, it really seems like eToys brought this on itself. When it set up in the first place, simply checking for the singular version of its corporate name would seem to me like a gimme. Failure to do so would seem like a clear-cut case of infringement.

Things are a little more confusing than that, though. The trademark that eToys bought was actually registered by an unrelated company in 1990 ("Etna Toys") -- the law starts to give me a headache at this point. Only a lawyer could love the difference between a trademark application and an Intent To Use declaration, I think. The resolution of this one may come down to whether it's appropriate to purchase a trademark of another company without actually purchasing the company itself, or any of its equipment, inventory, etc. In other words, are words themselves, words given legal protection by our government, subject to being bought and sold on the open market?

An interesting question. Not the same question as whether etoy.com and etoys.com should be able to coexist on the same internet despite unreconciliable philosophical differences, but ... an interesting question.

We'll keep you posted on how this one turns out. It's essentially the inverse of the fiasco in late 1999, with the lawsuit (apparently) pointed in the correct chronological order this time. Whether eToys will even exist as a company by the time this suit is resolved is, unfortunately, an open question.

JakusMinimus was one of several readers to point out that -- note my spelling carefully now -- etoy, the envelope-pushing European art group, has filed a lawsuit against eToys, the money-losing California company. I spoke with etoy's lawyer last night; he said that he has been trying to negotiate with eToys for six months, but that eToys is (not surprisingly) continuing to pursue its trademark on "ETOYS", which etoy (not surprisingly) feels endangers its right to continue using its name. etoy wants to see eToys barred from using that name in business, including using the domain name etoys.com -- basically, it wants the company to change its name. Here's the Reuters story, and here's the etoy press release. My thoughts below.

Is there confusion between the two names? eToys seems to think so, since it got etoy's website taken down in December 1999 for exactly that reason. The site was put back up later, and eToys' legal action halted, mostly because etoy was using its name, and had its website, long before eToys even existed.

And I can especially see why etoy is worried, since eToys has also filed a trademark application on "ETOYS" in the context of providing "interactive and arcade games via a global computer network." Which is, well, pretty darn close to what the artistic group has been doing for the last five years.

So if there's confusion, it really seems like eToys brought this on itself. When it set up in the first place, simply checking for the singular version of its corporate name would seem to me like a gimme. Failure to do so would seem like a clear-cut case of infringement.

Things are a little more confusing than that, though. The trademark that eToys bought was actually registered by an unrelated company in 1990 ("Etna Toys") -- the law starts to give me a headache at this point. Only a lawyer could love the difference between a trademark application and an Intent To Use declaration, I think. The resolution of this one may come down to whether it's appropriate to purchase a trademark of another company without actually purchasing the company itself, or any of its equipment, inventory, etc. In other words, are words themselves, words given legal protection by our government, subject to being bought and sold on the open market?

An interesting question. Not the same question as whether etoy.com and etoys.com should be able to coexist on the same internet despite unreconciliable philosophical differences, but ... an interesting question.

We'll keep you posted on how this one turns out. It's essentially the inverse of the fiasco in late 1999, with the lawsuit (apparently) pointed in the correct chronological order this time. Whether eToys will even exist as a company by the time this suit is resolved is, unfortunately, an open question.

Calle Ballz writes "According to an article on Despair's Website, they are suing 7,000,000 email users over trademark infringment for using the :-( 'emoticon'. I can't tell if it is a joke or not, I would like for it to be. The trademark registration is valid and is listed here. *sigh*" I would just like to say that our use of :-) is covered by fair usage. And that this is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.Update: 01/26 04:18 PM by H :Check out the press release about it - that's one of the best pieces of satire I've seen in a while. Kudos to Despair for making a mockery of trademarks. Update: 01/29 04:52 PM by CT : Apparently a bunch of retarded Slashdot readers couldn't discern that this was parody and mailed despair to complain. Little itchy on the flaming finger guys? Here's the NY Times story

4/3PI*R^3 asks: "The US Patent Office has brought into full production its Electronic Patent Application Filing System (EFS). With so many patents being issued so quickly (161,000 last year alone) how will this affect the application process? Will more patent applications be submitted since there is one less barrier to filing? Will the increased accessiblity make the USPTO more selective in assigning patents? Read thePress Release and visit the Patent Electronic Business Center. Which department of the US Federal Government is the most technologically advanced from a customer service stand point? The USPTO is now searchable via the internet and applications can be submitted and tracked via the internet. It seems to me that most USPTO customer service functions now have some sort of internet access. Is it possible to completely do business with the USPTO over the internet?"

4/3PI*R^3 asks: "The US Patent Office has brought into full production its Electronic Patent Application Filing System (EFS). With so many patents being issued so quickly (161,000 last year alone) how will this affect the application process? Will more patent applications be submitted since there is one less barrier to filing? Will the increased accessiblity make the USPTO more selective in assigning patents? Read thePress Release and visit the Patent Electronic Business Center. Which department of the US Federal Government is the most technologically advanced from a customer service stand point? The USPTO is now searchable via the internet and applications can be submitted and tracked via the internet. It seems to me that most USPTO customer service functions now have some sort of internet access. Is it possible to completely do business with the USPTO over the internet?"

We've all read about some of the dumber patents issued recently by the United States Patent and Trademark Office [USPTO]. The Slashdot community is full of talent and creativity, so why not come up with our own stupid patent ideas instead of waiting for Amazon or Priceline or some other company to come up with something amusing? First prize is a $50 ThinkGeek Gift Certificate that I am paying for out of my own pocket, and will personally sign. The winner will be chosen on the basis of originality, believability, and humor value. To start things off, I will describe my own personal contribution to the Stupid Patent Pool: Zero Click Shopping.

As you know, Amazon has successfully patented "One Click Shopping," Barnes & Noble is angry about the patent, and Apple has bought into the idea. Such tomfoolery! This concept is no more deserving of a patent than something as basic as, say, the hyperlink.

So I decided to go Amazon one better and invent Zero Click Shopping:

"A method of using javascript or similar technology to produce a series of Web page-displayed images that, when "rolled over" by a customer's mouse in a predetermined order, either causes a purchase to be consummated or causes a series of preselected items to be placed in a single customer-accessible data file so that the customer can purchase all selected items at the same time instead of having to perform a series of separate transactions."

Remember, you saw it here first!

If anyone tries to patent this silly, rather obvious concept from this day forward, you can point them to this article to show that is was instantly obvious to anyone familiar with the "state of the art," which means that this idea should not be patentable.

But nowadays, the head of the USPTO seems to believe that every boneheaded concept deserves patent protection, and that if you don't like a patent, you are supposed to hire a lawyer and take it to court. Gaaah!

So let's take the idea and lampoon it -- minus the legal fees, of course.

Write a patent summary. It can be for anything, as long as it sounds credible and is written in patent-talk or a reasonable parody thereof. Post it here. We'll let the Slashdot moderators decide which ideas have merit (or at least humor value) and which don't.

The Slashdot Authors, acting in all of their usual chaotic glory, will decide which of the highest-moderated pseudo-patents wins the grand prize.

Three Honorable Mention winners will each receive a Slashdot t-shirt from ThinkGeek.

You must be a registered Slashdot user to win. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. (2359) GMT on Friday, October 13. Winners will be announced on Tuesday, October 16. Judges' decisions are final. (If you don't like them, hold your own contest, okay?) The purpose of this whole thing is to laugh, not to get rule-bound, so post away, have a good time, and may the dumbest... er... best ... idea win!