Slashdot Mirror

• force them to acknowledge that the information you provide is confidential, proprietary and intended only for a specific use;
• spell out what that specific use is; and
• restrict them from unobfuscating the code (which is not enforceable, but if you ever have to sue them, finding unobfuscated code on their servers is a lot more incriminating than just the code that they "forgot" to delete).

How about for violating AOL's patents on moderating online forums: 6336133.

Gotta love it.

Paul Mockapetris, creator of the Domain Name System was asked, what do you wish you had invented?

He replied, "A directory system for the Internet that wouldn't be controlled by the politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats."

The Internet is going to the dogs.

Fact: UDRP is not only imperfect and inconsistent - it a fatally flawed system.

Fact: You are being deceived - the authorities know the answer to trademark problems on the Internet.

The United States Department of Commerce and the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization are hiding it.

The US Patent and Trademark Office virtually admitted this, "The questions you raised with respect to trademark conflicts, as well as the proposed solutions, have their basis in good common-sense. As such, they have been debated and discussed quite exhaustively within the USPTO, the Administration, and internationally."

Honest attorneys, including the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III (UN WIPO panellist judge), have ratified the solution.

Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

This is most important - as Sunrise and UDRP abridges what words people can use in an open (repeat - OPEN) gTLD. They also give priority of one business over another.

Please keep re-reading last paragraph until you completely understand - they violate the First Amendment and go against Unfair Competition Law.

That is quite apart and separate from the fact that they know the solution.

Which is this:

User enters apple.com - is redirected to apple.computer.us.reg

User enters apple.newTLD - is redirected to apple.record.uk.reg

In the address bar - can you tell the difference between, apple.computer.us.reg and apple.record.uk.reg?

So, no 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off' there then.

A new restricted TLD, of .REG, for trademarks would act as certificate of authentication and directory, when entered directly.

Lawyers read feeble excuses link on my site before replying - I have heard them all.

Nobody wants the solution - because by not having it they gain. Primarily - Lawyers get loads of money from the conflicts and Big Business by muffling criticism and ensuring they monopolize their trademark words on the Internet.

My beliefs and findings, above and on my site, have proven corruption beyond all reasonable doubt - nobody can refute the logical conclusions made.

Please visit WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with United Nations WIPO.org.

The U.S. Patent Office just issued a patent for intelligent machines. I can't believe they granted this. It is ridiculously broad and general in scope. I would have rejected it on the basis that it is poorly written and isn't at all rigorous in the arguments that the author is trying to make.

FACT:
Microsoft has this patent:
System and methods for selecting music on the basis of subjective content.

OPINION:
I bet they'd love to get their hands on these logs/cache/whatever... if what people choose to listen to doesn't count as subjective, I dunno what does!

Draw your own conclusions. I am merely presenting facts and opinions.

Actually 2,984,574 is a patent for encasing sausage.

Fact - Sunrise and UDRP is against Unfair Competition Law and the First Amendment.

To explain:

Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over.

Most trademarks share the same words or initials with many others.

Any TM lawyer will tell you all that I write is true - though they will certainly disagree with my conclussion.

Most companies share the same word(s) for trademark, in a different type of business (classification).

But only one will be allowed to use it, to get the domain name in the American .US ccTLD.

For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone. Please check at USPTO.

In this example, only one can be WTO.us !!!

What about the other five ???

As this is the main American country TLD (ccTLD) - is it not unfair on the others, that one should be given priority over them?

The same goes for all words in the dictionary - a few will get priority over the many.

Point 1 - I thought it unlawful to award it to just one - is it not against unfair competition law?

Point 2 - This is abridgement of words that small businesses (without a trademark) and the American people can use - Surely it violates the First Amendment?

Perhaps a lawyer would like to address these two points.

None have so far - wonder why?

No - I don't wonder why - I know the truth of the matter.

My logical conclussion is this: Big Business is abusing the powers of their trademarks, the Lawyers are making a fortune out of it and the Authorities are corrupt.

The authorities know the solution to trademark conflict with domain names. It was ratified by honest attorneys - including the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III, UN WIPO panellist judge.

Please see it yourself at WIPO.org.uk).

No bull* propaganda or spin from trademark lawyers - see feeble excuses link on the site.

Unfortunately we're not free and can't be everywhere.

That's not as big an "unfortunately" as you might think it is. The bigger "unfortunately" is that the Brightmail website does not give enough information up front to decide if this product/service is suitable enough to be worth contacting the company about.

• It doesn't explain how the Brightmail server interacts with other mail servers and customer domains.
• It doesn't explain how Brightmail works with variant email addresses.
• It doesn't give any information whatsoever about pricing.
• It doesn't explain how it deals with issues of customer privacy and confidentiality.
• It doesn't explain what security audits have been done on the server software itself.

Of course no idea alone is patentable -- "A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine, manufacture, etc., as has been said, and not upon the idea or suggestion of the new machine." (1).

The current problem IMHO is due to the overturning of the business method exception (2) which almost allows just an idea to be a valid patent and were excluded with a 100 years of case law, that this type of business method patent was not the intent of the constitution, and also one of the reasons all these patents were available, since even though the basic ideas are very old (for instance Priceline patented a reverse auctioning business method) no one was able to patent them when they first appeared since business models werent able to be patented (with good reason IMHO) until 1998.

Does anyone know the patent number of the SightSound patent (or patents)? I was thinking about checking it out on the PTO website, PTO Patent Search, to see what it actually says. I thought it might be a good idea to read the patent before I made any sweeping generalizations about the patent system, American jurisprudence, or the character of the people enforcing it.

This is my favorite:

Number 115 on their list is a Method and apparatus for interfacing an elongated object with a computer system.

Is this just a joystick, or am I missing something? I skimmed the claims, but they're a bit hard to follow because the figures are missing (seems to be a USPTO link problem).

Stupid patent examiners are a problem.

There are certainly some ideas which are sufficiently new and non-obvious that they deserve patent protection. I think the Fast Fourier Transform would have been one of them. But right now there's a huge number of patents being issued for stuff which is neither new nor non-obvious... and that is where the problem lies.

Let's take an example... searching for patents which include the phrase "hash table" in their title reveals ten patents.

The first patent (Dec 2001) is on a hash table which uses key mod N as an index and stores key div N inside the hash bucket (instead of storing the complete key). Hello set-associative content addressable memory. Every major cpu manufacturer has prior art on this one.

I can't make any sense out of the second patent.

The third patent is on using a hash table inside a switch to speed up finding a MAC address/port combination. Obvious to anyone with a background in algorithms: If you want to find something quickly, stick it in a hash table.

The fourth patent is on using two hash tables, and placing records into the second if they encounter a collision in the first. Prior art: Any 1st year data structures & algorithms textbook.

I can't make any sense out of the fifth patent.

The sixth patent is on inserting data into a hash table by writing the data first and the key last, in order to maintain thread safeness. Obvious to anyone who has written multi-threaded code.

The seventh patent is on growing and shrinking a hash table when it gets too full (or empty). Prior art: Any 1st year data structures & algorithms textbook.

The eighth patent actually looks like something intelligent; the ninth patent seems to be a duplicate.

I can't make any sense out of the tenth patent.

Ok, so out of nine distinct patents, we have five which should clearly have never been granted based on prior art or obviousness; three which I can't understand; and one which looks to be worthy of patent protection.

Here's an idea: If the USPTO grants a patent, and someone later demonstrates prior art or obviousness, the person who invalidates the patent should get to claim all the fees paid by the patent filer. I have a feeling that if this happened, we'd see a very rapid deflation in the number of dumb patents on the books.

No, it's not an urban legend. It's US patent 5443036.

A US patent is "the right to exclude others from making, using, [importing], offering for sale, or selling" the covered invention. They probably won't come after you, but if your vendor infringes a patent by shipping their product, you also infringe by using it.

The rumored kyro 3 offering soon may to have to compete with nvidia's new tbr patent dated the 5th of febuary. Let's hope the best video card wins and nvidia doesn't just crush them with dirty tactics (warning pdf file linkage).

In the realm of patents, you have no rights unless you are an "inventor." The test for inventorship is stated in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (available at The United States Patent & Trademark Office website) in section 2137.01:

"The definition for inventorship can be simply stated" 'The threshold question in determining inventorship is who conceived the invention. Unless a person contributes to the conception of the invention, he is not an inventor . . . .Insofar as defining an inventor is concerned, reduction to practice, per se, is irrelevant [except for simultaneous conception and reduction to practice, Fiers v. Revel, 984 F.2d 1164, 1168 (Fed. Cir. 1993. One must contribute to the conception to be an inventor."

The rights of corporations to have inventions assigned derives from the fact that they pay inventors to invent for them. Thus, unless your beta testers contributed to the conception of part of the invention, they are not inventors and have no rights. "[O]ne who suggests an idea of a result to be accomplished, rather than the means of accomplishing it, is not a coinventor." Ex parte Smernoff, 215 USPQ 545, 547 (Bd. App. 1982).

Copyright is different. Where patents protect functionality, copyright protects the expression. Thus, while you may copyright source code, someone else may write different code to accomplish the exact same result without infringing on your copyrights. However, for a beta tester to have rights in this area, they would have to contribute code (source or object).

Generally, beta testers are compensated for their effors through reduced license fees for the finished product (or even free copies). However, this is usually done before allowing someone to be a beta tester. Depending on the details on the situation, it may be well worth your while to consult an attorney who specializes in IP issues. The typical patent infringement battle, depending on the complexity of the technology and claims asserted, can run well in excess of $500,000. Fees in the multi-million dollar range are not out of the ordinary.

Trademarks can be registered on either the "principal" or the "supplemental" register. Trademarks on the principal register can be enforced against others. Trademarks on the supplemental register can't be enforced against others, but prevent others from claiming you are infringing their trademark. If your application for registration on the principal register is rejected, you can often get a registration on the supplementary register, for which the standards are lower. In particular, you can usually get a supplementary register trademark on a commonly used word, which is valuable for domain purposes.

Either way, you get to use the ® symbol, and you're protected against any trademark-related claims on a domain.

If that were true, why would they share the same office? Answer me that!

Here is a link to the US Patent Office Guidelines on Determining Utilitity, especially for gene patents.

Note that the 'responses to public comments' are more interesting than the guidelines themselves. But in short, they are supposed to have a specific, known utility before allowing a gene sequence to be patented.

Guidelines
It starts halfway in the first page. (pdf)

In certain cases, no license fees may be required

OK, so that potentially makes LZW-writing software gratis, but gratis != free. As I stated above, the typical Unisys LZW license "does NOT permit copying [or] modification" and thus prohibits use of LZW technology in free software as defined by FSF or by the Debian social contract.

There are fewer than 17 months left in the U.S. patent on LZW, which expires no later than June 20, 2003 (filed + 20 years).

The patent was granted in 1985. 1985+20=2005

You're assuming granted plus 20 years plus end of calendar year. This is not the case in the United States. For some U.S. patents, the equation is filed plus 20; for others, it's granted plus 17. According to US Patent 4,558,302, filed plus 20 = June 20, 2003, and granted plus 20 = December 10, 2002. (Unlike copyrights, patents do not extend to the end of the calendar year.) To be safe, use the later date.

Probably because any potential action's not based in copyright, but in trademark.

thorough description of how it works

I found a few patents on fuel efficient carburators, but I didn't find anything called "100-mile-per-gallon" carburator patent.

Are we walking into a case of patent infringement

Have you searched?

The patent actually reads: What is claimed is: 1. A method of synchronizing a server and a client on behalf of a user, comprising the steps of:... - from the patent database

Link to the patent is here.

1. 1 protecting the rights-managed data from access by an untrusted program
2. 
   2 refusing to load the untrusted program into memory
   3 removing the rights-managed data from memory before loading the untrusted program
   4 terminating the execution of the trusted program
   5 renouncing the trusted identity before loading the untrusted program when the untrusted program executes at the operating system level
   6 securing the rights-managed data written to a page file
   7 prohibiting raw access to the page file
   8 erasing the page file before allowing raw access to the page file
   9 terminating the execution of the trusted application
   10 encrypting the rights-managed data prior to writing it
   11 protecting the trusted application from modification
   12 refusing to attach the untrusted process to the trusted application
   13 preventing the untrusted process from accessing memory
   14 restricting a user to a subset of available functions
   15 restricting a user to a subset of functions available for modifying the trusted application
   16 (nothing)
   17 operating system causes the processor to create a trusted identity (Requires RightsManagement CPU?)
   18 operating system further causes the processor to protect the rights-managed data
   19 secure the rights-managed data on the page file from access
   20 causes the processor to erase the rights-managed data
   21 revoke the trusted identity and terminate the trusted application prior to loading an untrusted program
   22 obtaining, from a computer processor, a first value for a monotonic counter (Requires RightsManagement CPU!)
   -22a receiving, from the trusted time server, a certificate ... a trusted current time (Requires Net access!)
   -22b determining whether to load the trusted component
   23 [presenting] the monotonic counter occurs on a pre-determined schedule (Requires continous internet checks!)
   24 date and time at which the trusted component becomes invalid

It looks like Micro$oft patented it. Can you use it in an open source software without being processed?

So - as an example - the "copy" of a CD's audio content as it passes from the disc to the speakers by means of decoding and amplification circuitry. Is that a copy of the music? It's as permanent as the data stored in RAM during the execution of software and is no more useful. You can't duplicate the game from the content of the PS's RAM; you'd be lucky to reconstruct all the data & program files from what passes through memory during an execution.

IANAL, and I definitely am not an expert on UK copyright law, but the current US construction of digital copies is that, in fact, the replication of digital materials in RAM for the purposes of using the information is , in fact, a copy. There are elements of the current code that try to work around it, but the basic principle is essentially held as appropriate.

This rather bizarre construction was first put forward during the Clinton administration, when the National Information Infrastructure task force examined intellectual property in the digital age. Their report can be found here: Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure - see pages 64 et seq. for the statement of this principle, now embedded in the DMCA.

Tragic, ain't it?

As long as the distribution does not use the file layout of the "original" OpenBSD (the layout is copyrighted by Theo), it should be legal. OpenBSD is just an OS name, like Linux.

Stangely, OpenBSD does not appear to be registered with the US Patent Office (check in TESS). Note that this is unlike Linux, which is:

Word Mark LINUX
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer operating system software to facilitate computer use and operation.
FIRST USE: 19940802.
FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19940802
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 74560867
Filing Date August 15, 1994
Published for Opposition June 13, 1995
Change In Registration CHANGE IN REGISTRATION HAS OCCURRED
Registration Number 1916230
Registration Date September 5, 1995
Owner
(REGISTRANT) Croce, William R. Della, Jr. INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES 33 Snow Hill St. Boston MASSACHUSETTS 02113
(LAST LISTED OWNER) TORVALDS, LINUS INDIVIDUAL Assignee of FINLAND 5774 CANNES PLACE SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA 95138
Assignment Recorded ASSIGNMENT RECORDED
Attorney of Record ROBERT T. DAUNT
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Affidavit Text SECT 15. SECT 8 (6-YR).
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE

Hyperchip: 2 patents, not 3.

Stephan
PS1: I'm not counting the first patent because it contains the word hyperchip but the owner does not seem to be affiliated with Hyperchip.
PS2: I know the number of patents doesn't define the worth of a company, but then again Hyperchip doesn't seem to think so.
PS3: Actually, I take back everything I said!!! A company with a flash web site SIMPLY HAS TO BE cutting-edge. Where do I sign up!

Hyperchip: 2 patents, not 3.

Stephan
PS1: I'm not counting the first patent because it contains the word hyperchip but the owner does not seem to be affiliated with Hyperchip.
PS2: I know the number of patents doesn't define the worth of a company, but then again Hyperchip doesn't seem to think so.
PS3: Actually, I take back everything I said!!! A company with a flash web site SIMPLY HAS TO BE cutting-edge. Where do I sign up!

they claim to have 41 patents issued... I found 3:


I/O and memory bus system for DFPS and units with two or multi-dimensional programmable cell architectures

Efficient direct replacement cell fault tolerant architecture

Fault tolerant data processing system fabricated on a monolithic substrate

From these it appears they are fabricating wafers with lots of semi-independent processing nodes, which are tolerant of failures of some of the nodes (and can therefore take into account chip production glitches on part of the wafer).

This could give them a potentially large performance advantage, if they can do it right.

they claim to have 41 patents issued... I found 3:


I/O and memory bus system for DFPS and units with two or multi-dimensional programmable cell architectures

Efficient direct replacement cell fault tolerant architecture

Fault tolerant data processing system fabricated on a monolithic substrate

From these it appears they are fabricating wafers with lots of semi-independent processing nodes, which are tolerant of failures of some of the nodes (and can therefore take into account chip production glitches on part of the wafer).

This could give them a potentially large performance advantage, if they can do it right.

they claim to have 41 patents issued... I found 3:


I/O and memory bus system for DFPS and units with two or multi-dimensional programmable cell architectures

Efficient direct replacement cell fault tolerant architecture

Fault tolerant data processing system fabricated on a monolithic substrate

From these it appears they are fabricating wafers with lots of semi-independent processing nodes, which are tolerant of failures of some of the nodes (and can therefore take into account chip production glitches on part of the wafer).

This could give them a potentially large performance advantage, if they can do it right.

Microsoft HAS to lock down security BIGTIME.
Microsoft just got a patent on Digital Rights Management Operating Systems.

If you read the patent you'll see they plan to keep the user locked down with an iron fist.

If you secure an operating sytem from attacks by authorized users, what chance does an unauthorized attacker have?

-

For example, it seems MS now holds a patent on alpha blending. Scary.

Well you asked...

Employment Announcements at USPTO

Also the main USPTO site is here.

Well you asked...

Employment Announcements at USPTO

Also the main USPTO site is here.

Actually - Windows is a registered trademark of the George M. Leader Family Corp for patients with Dementia. Microsoft just has Windows XP trademarked. Sounds like dementia infringement to me ..

Oh and by the way BSA is a trademark of the Boy Scouts of America.... seems that they are violating Trademark and Copyright laws themselves.

Just curious, I tried to look up the trademark for X Window System in the U.S. Trademark System and cannot find it or any mention of X Window System. Looking at x.org they claim registered trademarks for OSF/1, OSF/Motif, and Motif but the uspto site has them all listed as "Dead" trademarks. The "X Window System" has never even been submitted - so the claim would only be somewhat valid in the jurisdictions they operate.

It's a great way of establishing prior art or what will become prior art, in protecting something from such constraining IP grabs.

There is a growing list of people opposing Intellectual Property constraints like copyrights and patents.
Petition Against Software Patents (I'm signer 1552... look who the signer 1551 is!). Maybe you'd like to sign too?

For more fun on the value of distributed information and how it can be used to protect, see comment #4:
Issues Related to the Identification of Prior Art During the Examination of a Patent Application
or
for an html versions of comment #4

YES! Usenet is a useful tool because it distributes along with an unbiased date time stamp.

Is it really paranoia? If MS combine this programming platform with the recent patent of a Digital rights management operating system where basically any form of reverse engineering violates the DMCA we may have a situation in a few years where Linux may just be starved for drivers, etc. There is a summarised discussion on the patent at Kernel Traffic (issue #148)

Regardless of whether this patent and .Net and whatever else MS has cooked up recently makes it this way or not, I can see a time where important parts of Linux are illegal (perhaps distributed P2P?) because of the increase of patented / protected material. What would have happened if the original IBM BIOS was not reverse-engineered?

I find myself responding to so much ignorance and stupidity in this discussion that I am going to put everything in one post and use small words to make it easy on all of you. First off, trademark laws differ from country to country. I am going to discuss US trademark laws not because they are the laws in this case but because they clarify some misconceptions in general. From the US Patent Office - A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. In other words, Oracle has a trademark on the word Oracle (which is a real word) for computer software and database design for others (as well as other things). They have exclusive right to create a software product with the name Oracle. Fedmet Resources Corporation also has a trademark on the word Oracle. Their trademark is for refractory or ceramic brick. You can see that few people would confuse an Oracle database with a brick (no comment). So a company doesn't "own" a word by trademarking it. They reserver the right to sell particular products with that word as its name. I hope this clarifies things for some people.

Believe it or not Coca-Cola actually has trademarks on several items including mousepads, kitchen timers, salt&pepper shakers, notepads, and a lot more. I didn't see software in the few I looked through but if their lawyers missed it then you are good to go. Check out Tess and search for Coca Cola.

While laws are pretty screwed up here in the US, they seem even worse in Germany. If you want to see all the Crayon trademarks in the US then just use TESS. That's the US Trademark Electronic Search System. You can see that you can use Crayon as long as you don't use it for a product similar to the ones listed there.

There are various patents on this or similar compression techniques, for example US #5,533,051, US #5,488,364, US #5,486,826, or US #5,594,435.

There are various patents on this or similar compression techniques, for example US #5,533,051, US #5,488,364, US #5,486,826, or US #5,594,435.