Slashdot Mirror
BountyQuest Announces First Winners for Prior Art
tessd writes "BountyQuest has been bragging for a few days that it was going to announce some winners -- looks like it wasn't kidding. Four winners -- $10k each -- with prior art that could bust patents held by Cisco, Walker Digital, InTouch and Oracle. Them's some big names. Check out the guy from Oregon who won $10k because he held onto an out-of-print copy of Snow Country magazine"
I very much suggest that in some fields, the USPTO examiners certainly do know more about technology than the slashdot readership.
If you'd like a suggested experiment, find someone who actually knows something about the technology behind biotech. (A bona fide molecular biologist would be a good choice.) Ask them to read /. comments on a biotech story, and tell you what they think. Even many of the comments upmoderated as "Informative" are full of misinformation.
Too often, moderators see a post that looks like it's full of facts and upmoderate it as informative, without doing the least bit of checking to see whether the facts are accurate or not. Since computers are not my field of expertise, I cannot gauge how often this occurs in computer tech articles, but I know enough not to accept anything printed in a /. comment as gospel truth without any outside confirmation, even if it's moderated up to (5, Informative).
Im pretty confident in my understanding of Computer Tech - maybe a USPTO examiner will have equal understanding, but you cannot suggest the total knowledge of that USPTO couldnt be 'aided' by the input of the "Slashdot" Readership...
I don't deny there are many intelligent, knowledgeable people here on /. If there weren't, I wouldn't be reading. But it seems to me the problem is separating the wheat from the chaff--it's a waste of the patent examiner's time to look through hundreds of things that are claimed to be prior art to find the two that actually are.
I don't have a good answer to this issue. If I did, I would propose it as a replacement to the current moderation system. I do know that the current moderation system does not adequately resolve this issue.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Exactly. Prior art is what this site is about, and that's great.
But the biggest problem with patents today is the "obvious" factor. Apparently, patent examiners think everything is non-obvious. And there's no really good way to prove something was obvious years after the fact.
For example, web searching - sure, it's obvious. But how could you, in 2001, prove to a judge that the concept of a search engine was obvious whenever that patent was granted? Well, it was obvious as soon as the web existed, because archie was doing the a similar thing for FTP sites, and veronica was doing exactly the same thing for gopher sites.
Prior art is just the easiest way to get patents invalidated, even if they should never have been granted in the first place.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
USPTO should run a website - maybe even slashcode that requests prior art from the public.
The USPTO see's issuing a Patent as revenue. More patents == more Revenue. If you read the USPTO 'newsletter' you will see that they consider their 'growth' a sign of success... completely opposite as most of us think. If they would simply make the prior-art search in a more public manner they would be awarding MUCH fewer patents. But if you read their website/newsletter they believe that the USPTO is a business - and its products are patents.. they feel they are doing an increasingly good job.
If they ran all potential patents through a Slash powered site you'd see 1% of the patents you see today.
The "government takes your money at gunpoint" is a bit melodramatic, I admit, but fundamentally, it is true
I disagree - that's not what the government does. The government is more analagous to a armed landlord saying "you pay the rent or you move out. If you don't pay the rent and don't move out, I'll shoot you." which, I don't think can be said to be taking your money at gunpoint, because you have the choice to not pay and not get shot by choosing to leave.
The government does not force you to stay in a society and incur the rent (taxes) that said society requires of you for the priviledges you gain from being a part of the society. (Unless you've committed a crime or something. (Which can of course, include previous attempts to use the priviledges without paying for them)).
You benefit immensely from being a part of a society, and if that society decides that some of the costs of those benefits should be met by taxation, (and furthermore, as a part of that society you have the right to try to change that decision) I can't see how claims of duress can be made. It kind of sounds like people want to have their cake and eat it too. Which is quite natural I guess, but hardly a challenge to justice.
Anyway I just had an interesting idea for a way to discourage bad patents. What about imposing a fine on companies who patent things that are subsequently invalidated due to prior art (or any other reason)? The amount of the fine should be equal to the amount of royalties collected on the patent and should be paid to the person (or group) who provided the proof needed to invalidate the patent? I think something like this would go a long way to discouraging the market for stupid and unethical patent measures...
"What we find here is that people are deliberately trying to upset the applecart and punish these companies, and those who work for them, for doing what is natural, and trying to secure their futures."
The companies are sercuring their futures by destroying the futures of their competitors and open-source programming. Patents are inherently hostile.
"Why are they attacking the companies, when the companies have done nothing wrong?"
The companies in question have done plenty wrong. Nobody blames them for trying to secure their futures. These companies are laying minefields in legally uncharted waters. That is what they are being blamed for. This is not punishment. This is minesweeping.
"It is the patent system they should be attacking, and the government, through protest and through the ballot box."
Here I agree with you completely.
However, I don't see why anti-patent actions should be limited to the measures you suggest. The only legal way to fight the patent system within the patent system, is with prior art. If there was prior art, the company was wrong to apply for the patent, and the patent office was wrong to grant it.
I appreciate what you're saying, and I agree that the people working for the hostile companies should not be punished in any way. However, I don't see how this prior art competition is punishing those people. The offending patents are the target, not the people.
Does any of the patent "reform" that people are proposing really help inventors like him?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Well, it's a nice dream...
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Lets see:
a. Company X pays BountyQuest money to put this up
b. BountyQuest advertises $10,000 for finding prior art
c. you get 10,000, bountyquest gets whats left(prob more than 10,000), and company X gets a chance at invalidating some patent.
So, whats wrong with some company noticing that lots of companys want certain patents somehow done away with, some people want the entire patent system reformed, and just connecting the two for a piece of the pie? Seems like a decent hting to me . . .
Stuff like that scares big corporations. They invest a lot of money securing and enforcing their patents. I sometimes wonder if the world be better of if we followed some more opensource principles. Where as all information is available for the good of society. I think most of slashdot readers would agree that the opensource movement is a step in that direction. People still make money on the ideas, but their enhancements and the evolution of an concept(idea) is not left to stagnat because of a stupid patent.
I wonder what of world would be like if their was not such thing as patents? Your thoughts.
-Angreal
Companies feeling their profit margins slipping see collecting royalties on their patents as a way to make up for lost revenue, particularly with the US economy slowing down.
Besides all the patent lawsuits coming up out of nowhere, companies will increasingly see patenting everything they can think of as valid strategy for staying afloat.
It's up to us to stop them from trampling our rights. We are not microserfs; We should be able to use technology without having to pay tribute to the corporate lords.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
I am absolutely speechless. Perhaps certain affiliations of individuals really can overcome corporate hegemony. Sure puts a dent in my cynicism. Thanks Mr. O'Reilly for a great idea, and a truly heartwarming experience. As for that Bezos guy, well, we're not finished with you yet... =) Prior art on 1-click has to be lurking around here somewhere. BTW here's my implementation of a technology that innovates way past 1-click, I call it 0-click shopping: <img href="buyme.jpg" onMouseOver="document.basket.submit(); ">
cat
The award for the database copy should be thrown out. Oracle bought Rdb (I cant remember if it was from digital or Compaq) a few years ago and with it got all of their technology
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure - Fortune Cookie from an long lunch
only big corporations can afford it now! It usually takes at least one exchange where the patent office sends the patent back, usually with trivial complaints (ignoring the major problems completely). To get this done in a reasonable amount of time, you need a decent lawyer, and when all is said and done, you've paid a minimum of $15,000 for the whole process. Now if someone infringes on your patent, you're looking at a $100,000+ lawsuit to enforce it.
patents haven't protected small inventors for many years; long before software patents were legalized by judicial fiat.
Doesn't the first key investor have a problem with putting a bounty on this kind of thing?
Probably not. A lot of people acknowledge that Amazon was the first to implement one click shopping, but that doesn't mean it isn't an obvious idea. Some day when man colonizes Mars, people will set up shops on Mars, and there will be a shop which becomes the first to sell peanut butter. Although this shop was the first to sell peanut butter on Mars, this should not be patentable because it is obvious, it's only that it was not feasable until recent technology. The same holds true of the Amazon one click patent, it was not until cookies came around that they could implement it, but that does not mean it was non obvious, it doesn't even mean other people didn't think of before time they did, it just means they were the first to finish it. It's not the possibility of prior art which makes the One click patent a bad one, it's the obviousness of it.
Needless to say, this is rather common in filing patents: grab more than you want, including possible cases that might infringe, as then you'll probably end up with at least as much as you wanted if not a bit more, as opposed to getting too little.
Now, of course, something like the Orcale database snapshot sounds like it's completely dead in the water, since the prior art completely nullifies the case.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
For example, Kahin sagely points out:
"In-house legal counsel advise against routine reading of issued patents because of the risk of treble damages for willful infringement."
In my opinion, such idiosyncracies in the U.S. Patent system only reinforce the probability of the U.S. government handing out specious monopolies.
I spoke to a former patent examiner a few weeks ago. He informed me that (based on his observations working for the USPTO) patent examiners typically spend about 7-8 hours examining individual patents, plus another 7-8 hours doing "other things." Additionally, he confirmed my suspicion that the USPTO rewards its examiners for approving as many patents as possible -- quantity over quality.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
Excuse me? Did i read that correctly? Are you saying that it is wrong for us to "punish" these companies / people by taking away their "livelyhood"?
Please realize that with the proof of prior art, these same companies that you are defending have done exactly that to someone else. By filing a patent and getting the Good Old USPO to accept, these companies are building their "livelyhood" on somebody else's hard work and ideas and have effectively taken away their livelyhood.
Why should we not take away something that was never rightfully theirs? While I may not have the most positive views about patents, I do believe that they have uses. Using patents to steal somebody elses work is most definately not one of them. If prior art to a patent exists and is signifigant (it should be pretty much the same as the patent), then in my view that patent is a tool of theft and should be treated as such.
maybe I'm ranting, but that's my thoughts...
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
I'd just like to point out to those people intent on bringing up the Amazon One-Click patent, that One-Click was one of the bounties - posted 10.18.2000, expired 1.18.2001
--
f prior art is A+B+C and the Patent is A+B+C+D, then the patent is invalid in my opinion (to a certain degree I must admit.
Were this true, most patents would be invalid. They are not. There are zillions of cases where patents meeting the criteria for "your opinion" have been held to be valid. In short, you don't seem to understand Section 103's requirements concerning unobviousness.
If so, you're a better (and richer) person than I am.
Patents are not an inherently bad idea. They exist to make it worth your while to do the research and create. The fact that patents are used for different reasons now is a good cause to revamp the system (as BountyQuest is doing), but not good enough cause to eliminate the system altogether.
IMHO, BountyQuest improves the patent system (by helping keep people honest), keeping it truer to its basically good function. If you throw out the patent system entirely, then you make R&D in many fields much less profitable, and thus much less R&D is likely to be done.
--The basis of all love is respect
This is true. Clearly bountyquest thinks so. All the prizewinners' prior art satisfied PRECISELY that criteria.
See http://www.bountyquest.com/arttutorial/arttutoria
Bountyquest only pays for prior art upon which the patent claims read completely. Earlier art which is read on by only some of the elements is ineligible.
Discussions on Slashdot about patent validity are mainly policy discussions by engineers. I view the constant harping on technicalities of specific legal challenges by some people merely as an attempt to sabotage such rational discussions of policy.
That's a shame. By ignoring seminal information and keeping yourself willfully ignorant of what you claim to be technicalities, you remain unable to discern what is relevant to the questions of policy and what is not. If the "technicalities" provide against that which you are criticizing, you will appear foolish when you try to make a change, and if the "technicalities" provide for loopholes, you will miss an opportunity to make real and useful change.
The actual parameters of the patent system are essential to these questions. If you don't understand them, you are out of the ball game, and will quickly find yourself marginalized and discounted.
Of course it isn't useful for purposes of demagoguery to confuse the issues with the facts -- its much easier just to wave your hands and whine. If I am being accused of calling irrelevant arguments irrelevant, I am guilty as charged. But there are good, strong arguments to be made, and the technical community (of which I am also a member) is best positioned to make them.
It would be a shame if those arguments were ignored because a few of us found it more politically expedient for us to remain in bliss.
How much research should an inventor do? Enough research. And if he/she doesn't find prior art, and somebody else does, well, tough luck. You don't get to have a patent on something somebody else has already invented. Sorry. (Yes, I know that's not the ways the corps do it, but that's the way it's supposed to work, dammit!)
Right now, inventors can only make money (like being able to live comfortably money) by selling their inventions to companies who will produce them. What's NOT right is corporations who hold patents on stupidly basic concepts and use them to beat one another about the head.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The only patents that get busted are the ones that wouldn't have held up in court, at significantly less expense than taking them to court. The only livelihoods being damaged are those of lawyers. And that can't be causing all that much damage to society.
Of course, the Real Problem is that the Patent Office isn't doing its job, but that lot has pretty much come forward and said they see no reason that they should have to do their jobs, since they can just rubber stamp the patents and let the courts figure it out. Personally, I'd like to see the Patent Office fined for the cost of each bounty collected by this site, plus a fee for operating costs. Perhaps that would encourage them to reform their activities. One can dream.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is great that a few people are made $10k for finding prior art. But, in my opinion, it still doesn't address the fundamental problem of the patent office trying to determine what is "obvious".
The AltaVista patent is a good example. Given a problem (i.e. how to search the web) AltaVista claims to have patented a solution. But, as has been mentioned before, it is also the "obvious" solution to any Software Engineer faced with the problem. Hopefully, this patent will be tossed out due to the prior art from the guys who wrote the "gopher" and "archie" search engines, but it should have ever been allowed to be a patent at all.
Remember, its more than just "original" that defines what can be granted a patent. The U.S. Patent Office seems to have forgotten this...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
That is the entire point of the Festo case cited in my posting earlier this week. Now, if you ask for too much, and amend a claim *AT ALL* to narrow it for reasons related to patentability, you lose ALL RIGHTS to equivalents for that element.
Festo is huge in this regard, and the former strategy of starting by claiming the world and negotiating downwards is now a quick ticket to a malpractice claim.
The prior art appears to satisfy the requirements of the bounty, and appears to be covered element-for-element by the broad claims of the patent.
Almost certainly competitors of the companies owning the patents they're trying to invalidate.
and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?
Probably too much.
I do this sort of thing for a living--I'm a patent searcher at a Fortune 500 company. I work with patent attorneys and do prior art searches--both for our own patent applications, and sometimes in the hopes of invalidating a competitor's patent.
I estimate the cost to my company for me to do a prior art search--including my own time, and the cost of database searching (we use proprietary, for-pay patent databases which have many features not available through the free-on-the-internet databases such as USPTO and Delphion)--is typically in the range of $2000-$4000.
Why some corporations are willing to pay in excess of $10000 for something that someone like me could do for much less, I don't know. OK, that's not quite true--I do know, in some cases. It might be well worthwhile for things like the guy who had the old product brochure--things like that are virtually impossible to search by conventional methods. But in some fields, for a lot of the "bounties" that are up, if prior art exists, it is almost certain to be either in patents or in the research literature, both of which can be searched quite thoroughly by someone like me.
(Why don't I go and look for prior art on these bounties then? Well, for those in my field, BountyQuest's client is probably a competitor of my company's, and doing so would violate my employment agreement. I might try it at some point for some of the bounties in other fields, but I wouldn't expect to be too successful since the field is not my area of expertise.)
Not that I'm complaining--if you can get a company to pay you $10000 for information that they should be able to get for under $5000, more power to you.
How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
Because if prior art exists and they're aware of it, they must report it in their patent application. If they don't, it's grounds for invalidating the patent. Normally, it's very difficult to prove that a company knew about any given piece of prior art, so invalidations on these grounds are rare. However, if the prior art had been delivered to them by an outside company (and presumably this information could be subpoenaed), then it could be proven.
Can I say for sure that companies still won't use the information for their own patent and deliberately fail to cite the prior art they know about? No. But they're taking a very big risk if they do.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
A few years later, somebody turns up with evidence of prior art that your patent search missed. Should you now be treated like some kind of thief? How long should you have continued the patent search? You say "enough" should be done, but what does that mean? Keep seaching until you find something?
It seems to me that once somebody has done a reasonable search for other pending patents, they should be allowed to go forward with their invention without fear of reprisal.
Software is another matter entirely... I don't think patents should apply to instruction language. That should be covered by copyright, exclusively. (IMHO, of course.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I just left the employ of Motorola, where I had a QUICC manual on my desk. If only I'd known it was worth $10,000...
"members of the PAN Network were a major force in the creation of the MIDI digital audio standard" Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Its about communication. S'got f'kall to do with audio.
If you look at their fee schedule, in "poster's world", you'll find that the person or company offering the bounty pays:
o The bounty
o a $2500 listing fee
o 40% of the bounty if an exact match is found.
Their "about" section is meaningless. All we know that is that they're a: a company, b: partly owned by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Besos. Of course we all know that Jeff Besos is responsible for one of the more ludicrous "business logic" patents.
If you look at their corporate identity, all they talk about is how they're trying to "Market Reform" the patent process. What does this mean?
It seems to me that
a: they're a for profit corporation.
b: they have clients.
c: these clients pay for their services.
My question is this: Who are their clients, and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?
How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
Slashdot has had so many articles about patents and patent-law that I know this is a moot point, but I'll repeat it anyway.
Just because there is prior art does not mean that the patent will become invalidated.
Read this response by werdna to the article about Archie posted a few days ago, I think it's very clear on this point.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
this sounds a lot better than kicking in doors in trailor parks for $300 a pop.
when it comes to software patents, there's no (business) incentive to write narrow independent claims. your average patent attorney seems to tell you, "write the claims as broadly as you possibly can, making sure that your actual invention (the thing you really understand to be your idea) is described in a dependent claim somewhere." so if you think you're patenting a novel method of toasting bread, you may wind up effectively patenting the concept of toasting bread.
if the USPTO lets it slide (which they often do not, but sometimes they do), you totally win. the fact that there's prior art only helps someone who's really willing to fight in court instead of (1) settling or (2) licensing or (3) entering into a cross-licensing agreement.
if they do catch you in the application process, you just rejig the application or file a continuation in a way that preserves the original filing date - no harm, no foul.
While that used to work, it will no longer. I cannot emphasize enough how enormously, incredibly, utterly huge the Festo case is in this regard. Any strategy that began with a few broad claims that were amended to make hay is destined to yield a meaningless patent -- the doctrine of equivalents now has absolutely no application to any element that was the subject of an amendment related to patentability.
Having actually tried a number of these cases, I can tell you that when literal infringement is all that is on the table, patents are easily --often trivially-- engineered around; you simply substitute any known equivalent for something in the claim and you are out of court on Summary Judgment.
And, the neatest thing is this: Festo applies retroactively!!! All those cruddy patents with six-year prosecution histories are suddenly toothless.
Read the case. It will make you smile.
Patents for which there is prior are are just plain invalid - they damage the overall economy, and it's the filer's own fault for not doing the reseach before filing.
God forbid we should try to prevent people from getting government-protected monopolies on the obvious! It will wreck the nation!
Sheesh.
The patent system will be effected. They are attacking the companies that took advantage of the weak system. By doing so they are forcing the patents to only be of value if the are actually for innovation. I applaud what they are doing and hope they keep it up.
-chaswell
If you can get decisive information that the patent you were going to apply for has prior art, it could save you a lot more than the $10k bounty.
If Mr. Bezos puts up $10k for some seemingly simple, obvious patent, and nobody can refute it or come up w/ prior art, he can feel pretty secure about going ahead with it, and saving court costs down the line...
---
Nothing wrong?!?! Excuse me, but they've patented something they had no right to. They've threatened people with lawsuits for 'infringement', when they themselves have either no right to make the claim, or are guilty of the same offense. There's nothing wrong with making an honest living ... threatening other people with cease-and-desist orders, and extorting money, when they have no legal right to do so, does not qualify as 'honest'
BountyQuest agrees, Werdna agrees, and I agree completely: for legal challenge, that's the strongest evidence you can find. My point is that creating a strong legal argument isn't the purpose of a Slashdot discussion.
Of course they only pay for that kind of information; I didn't say anything to the contrary. BountyQuest tries to find prior art for legal purposes. Slashdot is not a court of law; we discuss policy.
The actual parameters of the patent system are essential to these questions. If you don't understand them, you are out of the ball game, and will quickly find yourself marginalized and discounted.
I understand the legal issues just fine. The question underlying discussions on Slashdot, however, is what the policy ought to be and whether current legal practice expresses those policies.
I believe that in this case there is ample prior art that ought to be relevant. Based on what I know, it also appears that such an argument would be difficult to make in court, precisely for the reasons you keep restating.
So, current legal practice is very relevant to the current discussion. The very fact that the definitions of prior art for patent purposes are, as you keep pointing out, so narrow and that they are likely in disagreement with the intuitions of actual practitioners is an indication that the law and legal practice need to change.
Patent law is not divine, it is created by humans for utilitarian purposes. We need to figure out whether it serves those purposes and fix it if it doesn't.
Only in the literal sense. Look at it this way - if a mugger says "Give me your money or I'll get a gun out of my car and shoot you", is that or is that not, for all intents and purposes "at gunpoint" (presuming, of course, he actually has a gun in his car)?
The "government takes your money at gunpoint" is a bit melodramatic, I admit, but fundamentally, it is true.
The government says "give me your money, or I'll send somebody with a gun over to take it from you, and throw you in jail and/or shoot you."...
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
So, current legal practice is very relevant to the current discussion. The very fact that the definitions of prior art for patent purposes are, as you keep pointing out, so narrow and that they are likely in disagreement with the intuitions of actual practitioners is an indication that the law and legal practice need to change.
Your claim is that the law is at variance from the uninformed intuition of what is the law. So what? This is true, to some extent, about almost EVERY substantive area of law. While it might seem nice if lawyers were not necessary to give sound legal advice through the mine fields of various areas of the law, there doesn't exist a developed nation that has figured out quite how to do that.
With respect to your suggestion about patent law, even if I were to grant your proposition, I seriously doubt that arguing that patent law is "counterintuitive" to some lay audiences would ever yield meaningful, or perhaps even positive, change by policymakers, who are far more concerned with far more practical issues.
At any rate, you are making an argument different from the original subject of this thread, which was the suggestion that a patent owned by Altavista somehow "covered" Archie -- by reference to the legal questions of validity and infringement. The article and responses made assertions about the legal validity of patents, and I responded to clarify the finer points of law.
You didn't find it relevant or interesting, but many others did. I agree that on Slashdot, we are free to argue what the law should be -- and to raise and debate questions of policy. Right on! However, it is silly to argue about what is the law, and to criticize what is the law, without knowing what is the law.
At any rate, it is long past time for us to simply agree to disagree, at least for this thread. Perhaps we can engage once more on the next substantive question.
I don't doubt that an informed discussion of policy is important. So is an informed discussion of the law supposedly supporting that policy.
The fact remains that one of the best bets for having a patent invalidated is published prior art that is not already cited in the patent. That is exactly the prior art BountyQuest is looking for.
The article you refer to doesn't even make this point. Werdna argues that for prior art to be useful in a legal challenge it needs to be compared point-by-point against the claims. That, too, is missing the point in finding prior art in the first place. You need to identify potential prior art before you can do the point-by-point comparison. In addition to prior art, there are challenges based on "obviousness". They are a lot harder, but they, too, require identifying related work.
But discussions of prior art and practice doesn't just serve specific legal challenges, it also helps us with applying political pressure on the patent system. A system that grants patents on techniques that were published decades ago in textbooks, and that entangles users of such techniques in long legal battles, is broken, and the more examples we can find for that, the better.
Discussions on Slashdot about patent validity are mainly policy discussions by engineers. I view the constant harping on technicalities of specific legal challenges by some people merely as an attempt to sabotage such rational discussions of policy. The lawyers that challenge these patents in court presumably know what they are doing and don't need our advice.
It all ammounts to a massive PR campaign to make one of the worst villians of patent law look like one of our best heroes. (cough *Bezos* cough)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.