Slashdot Mirror
Patent Warfare
H310iSe writes: "The California Recorder has an article covering another of the many ridiculous Web patents out there, this one held by TechSearch claims rights for a "'remote query communication system' patent, which covers a method for compressing and decompressing data transmitted from a server to an end user." Basically they're patenting Web servers. What's interesting is their selective enforcement, they are currently suing Greg Aharonian, one of their most vocal critics, for infringement on their patent. He's fighting it.
TechSearch has quite a history of aggressive patent enforcement ("extortion" claims Intel's spokesperson Chuck Mulloy), some major players like United Airlines have caved in; Intel, however, has not (surprised?)."
Everybody is irritated at the idiocy of patent claims in the US, but the article touched on another issue as well, one that is likely to be the deciding factor in this particular patent claim. The article states, rather obviously, that Intel has deeper pockets with which to fight the action.
Money is an issue that distorts justice far more than the recent patent nonsense, and I bet that nobody sees any light at the end of that tunnel. The legal profession has very effectively perverted the course of justice in that regard, and the perversion is so endemic that we consider it quite normal and the status quo.
These two things are actually related. After all, the people that chase down patents are not productive contributors to society's building of a better world. They create nothing, but merely leech off the creativity of others. They are the fine upstanding members of the legal profession, for whom logic and commonsense can be freely disregarded when sophistry and technicalities are judged to yield a better paycheck.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
While intel's attempts to stop clones are underhanded and harmful to the consumer I can't agree it is in the same ballpark.
For one thing intel's new archetecture is non-obvious and involved a great deal of intellectual effort. Selecting what instructions to include in a chip is a non-trivial task especially with something like EPIC. As we want companies to put in the effort to come up with these sort of things there is a valid argument that intel should gain some advantage over clones because of its research investment.
Now it may be true that the individual instructions patented by intel aren't particularly novel but these appear to be the way intel can protect its novel contributions to its instruction set.
Personally I think we need an entire new system to control patents/copyrights in `standards.' The problem in intels case is not that they get rewarded for their instruction set but that they get rewarded disproportionatly. Because of intels market share this instruction set will become a standard and intels patents will give them far more money than the novel ideas in the instruction set are in fact worth.
What is necessery is some system to seperate the component of value in the actual technological innovation from the component of value inherint in the standardization.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Oh, just an amusing story along with it... i saw it in a forbes magazine just laying around the house, thought /.'ers should see it. Went to forbes.com, found the online version, submitted it for posting. Doesn't seem to have made it to the front page, but hey, the link's still useful.
~the Koosh man
This is not really very interesting news. We all knew that companies would commercialize the internet. And we complained. Then we knew that companies would take over the internet and restrict our rights. And we complained. But what gets me is that people don't seem to mind seeing the internet restricted more and more. They don't mind regulations. It's true. If it wasn't, people would really start doing more. They would stop talking and they would start acting.
Now, for those folks that are going to refute these claims, I have to laugh. You can talk about Open Source and the EFF all day. You can talk about how your vote counts and how you are trying to make a difference. You actions, while brave, are futile. You simply are not doing enough to combat the corporations. They feed your family and put you in a big house with a big car. You, and a huge army, would need to fight these changes to the internet. You would also need to give up on the things that comfort you. Golden handcuffs.
Cable companies will control your access to the internet. They will govern you bandwidth. They will get richer and you will be limited to seeing what they want you to see. They will think nothing of cutting you off for saying things against them. They will get warrants through the FBI and take your computers too.
Governments will regulate your transactions and they will demand to know what you are doing. They will work with Amazon and Yahoo! to kick your ass.
Medical companies will compile a huge database full of data about your genetic profile. Your medical history will be referenced to your bank account and you will denied insurance and care. You are in an at-risk group and your race will be used against you.
Oh sure, call me crazy. Tell me that I am full of shit. That's fine. My point is still hanging out there: Despite the alarms going off right now, people are rolling over and allowing corporations to control them. You rely on them for your paycheck. They babysit you. They watch you and play with you like a sad little toy.
Let's take a real example. Every day more and more web pages are created and new domains are being bought. These pages are not personal nor are they for small organizations. Instead, they are pages owned by huge corporations. Or the media. When you look for news, do you go to Jo Bob's web site? Do you trust Jo Bob? I doubt it. You will seek out the "truth" at MSNBC, CNN, ZDNet, and Yahoo.
End of Line.