Slashdot Mirror
Liquid Audio Sues In Pitiful Attempt to Appear Relevant
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."
Seems to be the name of the game these days. Still, and publicity is good publicity - isn't it?
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
First Post claimed for the CLiT! Even at two posts a day we're still a force to be reckoned with!
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Well gee chrisd, thanks for giving us your commentary AND a title in the same text! killing two birds with one stone!
But seriously, I can't tell by the title what the hell it actually means. Want to actually give us the facts before your opinion? How about writing a comments so you can be moderated? Or are you afraid of something?
Such abuse of the US patent system is going to continue until tough civil and criminal penalties (how bout fraud and raceteering?) are enacted to discourage this.
Also, the USPTO needs serious reform, training, and procedural improvement. They should be REVIEWING these things for relevance, prior art, etc, not just rubber stamping.
Left as it is, the US patent system is going to hurt innovation, DISCOURAGE invention, and make our economy fall behind.
The next great world power is going to be a country that has less stringent IP laws, and a reasonable patent system, one that encourages invention and improvement of invention. Not one like ours that has basically become a corporate blackmail and extortion tool.
Corporatism != Free Market
The only winners in these spurious suits are the lawyers.
Note similar detrimental effects on healthcare.
So we need reform. The real question: what political candidates have the required fortitude?
Daresay the political landscape of the US is not promising...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The patent system used to promote innovation and research. Now it is a broken system that is only used to fuel future legal battles.
I once believed in the system because it rewarded those that came up with new ideas, but I am disgusted now how people try to use it to make a quick buck in the future.
I wonder how the system will have to change to be effective again? Or perhaps some patents will just have to be not granted because they are obvious, or just plain stupid.
Don't pet the burning dog
Cool, who would have ever thought of digging through DNS records to determine where someone may originate from? I know I wouldn't. I suggest you all stop using such patent infringing tools as nslint, dig, whois, nslookup, and even Arin immediately as you may inadvertantly (no excuse!) determine where a system may be. Heavan forbid that armed with such illecit knowledge you then try to distribute some content to them from a reasonable location.
A lot of people actually understand technology. They sort of see something wrong and think "hey, everyone's making money off the internet and computers, why can't I?" and they press charges, sue, or generally become another nuisance to those with enough intelligence to see what's going on.
Reminds me of homer simpson, "they have the internet on computers now?"
Territorial determination of remote computer location in a wide area network for conditional delivery of digitized products
Abstract
Digital products are delivered to a client computer through a wide area network such as the Internet only upon determination that the client computer is located in a geopolitical territory, such as a country or state, for which delivery of the digital product is authorized.
A server computer estimates the geopolitical location of the client computer from the client computer's network address through contact information in a network address allocation database.
Alternatively, the server computer estimates the geopolitical location of the client computer from the client computer's custom name, e.g., domain name. The domain name itself can specify a country within which the client computer is located. Such can be conventional or can be parse according to ad hoc patterns developed by large, international organizations identified by a root domain name. In addition, contact information for the domain name can be retrieved and geopolitical territory information parsed from the contact information. A super-classification of the domain name can indicate a geopolitical territory. Records associating geopolitical territories with network address ranges are stored in such a manner that maximizes resolution within a cache of such records, perhaps at the expense of reduce efficiency but so as to maximum currency and accuracy.
It almost sounds like they patented the use of somebody else's leg work
[sigh]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
WPIDalamar recently filed a patent that covers "Determining people's location from their postal address". No prior art was found on this, and he intends to charge royalties to anyout who uses an address to travel to, ship items to, or explain directions.
This is an on-going thread in Slashdot which appears to be uncovering important info. Any chance we could arrange a Slashdot interview with either the Head of the Patent Office (or their main P.R. guy) or with the Senator heading up the Patent Office Committee (whatever that is)?
link "Be at the Forefront of Technology At the USPTO, you have the opportunity to see new technology before anyone else." Really?
until I read this, I always wondered why spammers send mail about crap that is only available in the USA to me, when any fool with half an ounce of intelligence can tell from my address that I'm in the UK. Thanks for clearing this one up, /.!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The United States of America claim, in the year, 1776, to patent a method for breaking ties with your mother country and establishing a new autonomous country. Methods include guns, cannons, and other secret strategies involving tea. Use of any of these methods require a NDA to be signed and notorized. Any other countries for the next 250 years must pay royalties and licensing fees if they wish to do the same. A list of basic human rights is also claimed, with the right to free speech only allowable with our low cost licensing scheme.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
I agree this is a stupid patent, but I don't think it is quite as simple as "co.uk means the computer's in the UK". There's an extra portion to the patent which goes one step further, which is determining whether or not the digital content can be transmitted to the computer in it's current geo-political location. In essence, it sounds like a method to allow the implementation of national data filtering. For example, if it's illegal to view adult materials in a country, this patent covers any method which is used to determine that the client computer is in that nation, and then goes on to prevent the data from getting there.
Granted, that's my interpretation and I'm not a patent lawyer. On the flip side, I don't see how this patent could ever be used by someone, because I think it could be circumvented too easily. If you go solely on hostname, you could probably fake that out. If you're depending on the computer to verify this information via hardware or software, someone could get around this (like region-free DVD players).
I am looking at the patent, and it looks like the patent really and honestly is exactly as the slashdot submitter represents it, and contains nothing more than obvious ramifications of open, globally developed network infrastructure..
:)
But good Lord! 23 pages for this patent? How did they do that? Just look at that language, they must have been purposefully trying to write something so incredibly verbose they knew the patent office wouldn't bother reading all the way through.
So, just for fun, because i like Perl golf, here's a little Civil Disobedience Challenge for the slashdot populace: Who can create the smallest implementation of this patent possible? I'll bet you could fit the entire thing in half a page to a page of perl without even trying.
Post your entries as replies to this comment. Posters of the winning entries get absolutely nothing, except maybe a cease and disist order if you attach your actual account to the comment. C'mon, it'll be fun
Holy shit.
Yet another patent invented by millions of programmers around the world at various times with nary a second thought.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Well, it looks they'll have plenty of people to sue if this is possible. Analog also extracts the server's likely country of origin by parsing a resolved IP address, as do hundreds of other applications.
It's hardly a big deal to equate a TLD to a country, and whilst it may take a little longer to map IP addresses to geographic locations, this data is already in the public domain!
Last names are now officially patented by me, also known as surnames. I declare the use of a last name to identify a person, his living relatives, phone number, or any other source to be exclusively my Intellectual property. Anyone who decides to use this method of identification will now have to pay me royalties based on an agreed upon rate. Use of a last name without my express permission is a violation of my intellectual property rights and will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
:-)
(J/k, in case you couldn't tell.
~ kjrose
The method of penis insertion for purposes of pleasure and/or reproduction.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Liquid Audio Sues In Pitiful Attempt to Appear Relevant
Do we have such little trust for Slashdot's readership that they cannot come to the conclusion that Liquid Audio is 'pitiful' and 'irrelevant' on their own? Let's pretend, for a moment, that you work for a struggling company. Who wants to wake up in the morning to read that they are now pitiful and irrelevant. I know that the readers write the headlines, but... didn't someone submit something a little less condescending?
I mean, we're all grown-ups here, right?
How, what happends when someone connects to your megastore ? You do a DNS lookup of his/her IP address. And that is supposed to be a trustworthy way to determine the location of said IP address ??
Would someone with in-addr.arpa access please say something like D.C.B.A IN PTR whatever.co.uk.
99% of webd don't do a reverse lookup .. ...
That should teach'em
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I'm thinking about asking for the Patent on the idea that the US Patent Office is Just Plain Stupid when it comes to Technology... Then I would make tons of money every time these stories came out.
Your mammas flamebait.
That headline sounds like it came from the Onion....Nice editing, you wouldn't want to sound biased or bitter.
I new this patent stuff reminded me of somthing....
"My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament"
-- Dr. Evil
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Considering the late age of that, there's plenty of prior art. I can recall two commercial systems back then, not to mention some of my own junk source code doing just what they claim a patent for. Wonder if -they- or the patent office are the ones not checking, though..
Their problems aren't entirely their own fault. Read all about it here
Basically, it seems that congress has been using the patent office as a source of income, draining off millions of dollars that would be spend reviewing applications- seems like a good 15-20% of the fees that companies pay aren't used for reviewing applications at all.
I'm not completely relieving the PO of blame, but it's something to think about anyway.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Is this really going to matter in the long run? I mean, apart from some lawyers getting a bit richer and a court being tied up for a considerable amount of time, will anything really change? What a waste...
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
Unfortunately, I think this is becoming the new business model.
Instead of:
1. Great new product
2. ???
3. Success!
We're seeing:
1. Can't think up great new product.
2. Get patent for something completely rediculous.
3. Sue everyone in town.
4. Success!
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Patent the idea of ridiculous patents.
Sue anyone who then tries to claim a ridiculous patent idea like this.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
In order to download PGP from the USA, you must live in the USA (by law). Last time I checked (several years back), the sites that have PGP decide whether you are in the USA based on your IP. So far as I know, this is not handled by Liquid Audio.
Is this not an example of prior art? Are all the sites which have PGP going to have to use Liquid Audio's system to avoid patent infringement?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
And how could it? If a company has its own international private net with one gateway to the internet behind a proxy, then any user, no matter what their location, would appear to come from the internic record location of the registrant or, if they did a traceroute (which they said they don't cause it's too time consuming) you might be able to determine where the proxy is located.
Such utter bullshit.
There are similar freeware/government/.edu developed tools floating around since the mid-90's, too. I seem to recall one from one of the national labs, LLNL or LBL? Many are mentioned in this Google Search.
It's been years since I monitored them, but UUCP Maps were common in the 80's. These generally are not IP, but they do show that folks were relating geographic locations to addresses a couple of decades ago.
I couldn't believe it myself:
Microsoft Patents Ones and Zeros
This space left intentionally blank.
The lawyers will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Related Link: NetWorldMap, a n interesting project to map IP addresses and physical locations (within 3-4 hours drive).
Why don't all of you stop complaining and someone write the patent office telling them to through out this patent on the grounds it should not have been issued in the first place.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
It would appear that www.panip.com has no website. Hacked, or taken down by management because they've realized too much attention has been drawn to their shaddy operation?
I used to think that too! My recent paedophilia convictions have changed my mind though.
:)
My house has been burned down and I got beaten by an angry mob! lol
At least you understand me. Thanks.
Yes, this one may indeed be "obvious" (and therefore invalid). It would have be well known to anyone who knew anything in this field in 1998 (when this patent was filed) that some URLs contain at least nominal indicators of geographic origin (like, doh). And it would have been obvious, I would say, to take advantage of this in order to qualify people on the Web (to an approximation) based on their location.
On the other hand, how much clout does this patent have, anyway? On a (very) quick reading, the claims of the patent all seem to be limited to making a go/no go determination based on parsing the "custom" (domain) name or retrieving registrar data on it and making some sort of classification or probablistic determination based on the retrieved information. This seems like a pretty weak test to me - it would seem to me that one could do a little better, perhaps, by analyzing the network address itself, which this patent doesn't seem to cover (i.e., analyzing the network address based on IANA assignments and database info as opposed to retrieving and working with the "custom name").
Does anyone know what the state of the art is these days in determining the true geographic location for someone accessing information over the Web? It seems to me that companies like Oracle (which provides downloads of software having export control issues) must have figured out a more reliable means than what is in this patent in order to verify a recipient's geographic location.
It seems to me also that the probabilistic techniques disclosed here would be more suitable for analysis (e.g., marketing analysis) than for deciding who to allow to download content. But the patent seems only to cover the go/no go stuff. Maybe it would have been TOO brazen to have attempted to get a patent merely on reading one's logs!
I would like to warn all Slashdot readers, I have a pending patent on using telephone area code and prefix to determine the likely physical location. This also applies to determining the physical location based on telephone country code. If you are using this technology then you should be aware that now that you have been informed of the pending patent the damages due to knowly making unlicensed use is double. Discontinue using our I.P. immediately until we determine how much in royalities we want to take from you.
For those that do not know us--Fast Tech has been the patent holders of the "wheel." Through our I.P. society has advanced. If it wasn't for us, no one would have realized that as the number of sides reaches infinty on a polygon with equal length sides then the shape becomes more useful for transportation.
that there are too many damn bored lawyers sitting around wrinkling the seats of their $1000 suits.
What we need to do is to thin the ranks a bit and also ensure that fewer people enter the legal racket^H^H^H^H^H^H profession.
I propose that we summerily execute one third of lawyers as they receive their diplomas and another third of those who pass the bar exam.
Furthermore, lawyers who lose a frivilous case will lose one of their fingers.
That way you'll only get those who REALLY want to be lawyers.
Check out the Super Happy Fun Slander Corner for a more ummm colorful discussion of this stupidity.. it's always a laugh to see failing dotcoms engaged in a death struggle :)
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
I work for a large telco in the UK.
Our patent policy is that if a patent is only likely to be granted in the US then we don't file for it. Basically the patent lawyers feel that it will be too weak to stand up in any european or asia-pac court.
Anybody have any similar experiences?
Hilarious.
I'm assuming you mean USA, but it could apply in many countries. IIRC the concept of patents and copyrights originated in the UK, to protect the business of player piano scrolls, no less, and between the brits, EU and rest of the world, the IP concept is dangerous everywhere.
Sunday I was lamenting the sad shape of internet audio and video. Proprietary standards abound, fragmentation and general unwillingness for all the players to adopt a universal standard and just work on creating the best player (yeah, I know, MS would make some PoS and bolt in it to Windows and try to leave nobody with a choice, like they do now with Windows Media)
If Bill Gates, Steve Balmer (I always want to say Embalmer, hmm), et al believe they represent true innovation, then I'd absolutely love to hear how they would have visualized the introduction of Radio and Television in the USA... 5 different standards, 5 different TV's to try watching broadcasts from stations who adopt a single standard.... Yuck. PAL/NTSC is bad enough, as it raises a barrier between world broadcasts and the people of the USA (note: I don't say USA market, because that commoditizes people and is demeaning) There's something like this for the bandspread of radio in Europe vs USA, but many inexpensive portable radios can be found which switch 9/10 (you just have to locate the little switch.)
The answer? Encourage adoption of open standards, write to your congresscretin and senatoadies. Express to them how and open and unified standard really encourage innovation.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But who/what are they?
Like many of you, I'm a (lifetime) student, a CS Major and a hobbyist. I love computer science, physics and math (in that order). I write software for grocery money (independent of some corporate entity..), do network administration and high-level training (i.e. teaching an IT department how to use samba.. etc). I'm also into hobby electronics, amateur robotocs, etc. As an individual inventor/hobbyist it is hard to see the US patent system as a means of anything but reinforcing corporate interest. There are only four possibilities, really:
1. Hobbyist has patent, Company has patent. This one plays out in court. Likely, who has the most money wins. At the very most for the hobbyist, I'll bet you the ruling says the hobbist and the company developed the same thing independently.
2. Hobbyist has patent, company doesn't but is granted patent. Again, this one will probably play out in court. The hobbyist is more favored, but legal representation matters.
3. Hobbyist has no patent, Company has broad umbrella patent. Again, it plays out in court. What are the chances the court would decide that the hobbyist independently invented?
4. No one has patents. This one is tough, though usually the company in question applies for a patent then initiates legal action with the hope that by the time it comes to trial, they will have been issued a patent. (findlaw)
See a recurring theme? As a hobbyist, I worry about being brought into court, for no good reason, based on some good idea I have. I can't afford that. Its a drain on the soul as well as the coffer. I also get the feeling that I have to prove I'm innocent of alleged patent violations. It tends to make me bitter, and no longer a jubilant inventor. Whats worse, I'm told that if I invent something independently and realease it to the community I can be held accountable for abitrary amounts that represent "losses" in revenue of the patent holder if they make a strong enough case. Review the Ogg vs. Mp3 initial corporate statements that were tantamount to "Yeah, they may have worked independently, but this mathmusic thing is so complex, they must have ripped us off. No one would think of that!" Fortunately, I'm still a poor student and have nothing anyone could take.
Baubles to you and I, in the hobbyist electronics/software algorithm sense, are incomprehensible to the court, and just about any argument can be made as to what they are, how complex they are, and how reasonable it would be to argue that a particular patent is a logical conclusion of other thoughts or a completely original thought.
Why couldnt the patent's be setup for a 'peer review' before being validated? I wouldnt expect a clerk to know enough about how the internet works to validate the patent or not. Something like a temporary patent for a period of a month, etc, until it gets reviewed by people who know what it is!
No I didnt spell check this post...
Solution for you karma problem : when moderator pick an active user, mod down 5 of his recent posts as trolls. This will get your karma to 0 but strangely enough you will still be a possible moderator
I don't moderate anymore. it seemed like a waste of time.
RMBS if you are a shareholder....and if you are a shareholder you've seen what excessive litigation does to the bottom line. Rambus shareholders may have started to realize that the way to profitable technology is not via litigation, it is via great technology.
Liquid Audio has not figured this out...it is only a matter of time before the attorneys suck every last dime out of Liquid Audio. We can only hope.
-ted
This type of behavior (DNS encoding of geographical location) is already described in RFC 1712.
It is dissapointing to see a system designed to protect innovators being used to stagnate new discoveries.
Money Corrupts.
//radiotakeover.
The patent cannot be found invalid unless they decide to sue someone for infringement.
Oh, wait.... they are.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Why dont we patent as many methods of Digital rights management, music and video encryption and copy control ahead of them, and sue them all for trying to use them...
:-P
Hmm.. We havent got long.... What Patents could be exploited to our general advantage - by patenting the use of wordprocessors in documents, or patenting the use of instruction code to control and manage the basic input output systems of a computer. Hehe....
Can the FSF or similar groups file patents?
Unfortunately I am in the UK... So I will leave it to one of you american slashdotters to do it..
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
What about the W3C? I thought they owned patents surrounding these issues. Couldn't common sense be used in this sort of situation? I think that company is just trying to get a cashgrab because their quarterly earnings were a horrid $130,000. Pretty pathetic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
an idea/innovation existed prior to the creation of a patent, has just been filed by yours truly. I can't believe they fell for it!
You people can't expect the patent examiners to have degrees in micro biology, genetic engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, etc... So they can't truly examine a patent. I think the better solution would be to allow a company that's supposedly infringing on a patent, have a "grace period" where it's allowed to find prior art or show that the patented thing is a common idea. If it finds prior art/common idea, the patent has to be thrown out.
Maybe there should be a penalty too for the company that files the bad patent. This would deter companies from filing patents, but if a company does file a patent and takes it to court, it will give them a stronger reason to fight so they don't get penalized.
Of course this doesn't solve the problem of the multibillion dollar corp defending their patent against Joe Bobs startup company. But that's another whole issue...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I think this may be the only way to fix the problem. The more outrageous it gets, the more attention it will eventually get, the sooner congress can address it.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
They haven't cared about the people. In fact, even after Sept. 11th they didn't care about the people. They used it for a politcal agenda. 'Vote for us in 2004, we worked hard after 9-11 to defeat terrorists.' Not to mention throw away our rights, walk on our constitution and alienate our public. Democrats and republicans alike are the slime of the earth. You have your right wing, christian coalition, business banging, revenue generating, self serving machine running one half of the government and then you have your left wing, give all of our tax money to everyone who is not a citizen, expand the size of our already goliath bureauocracy, exploit the services, whine bitch and complain, sue sue sue, ACLU(another sue) lovers running the other half. Both are linked by one common thread: they are both owned by a couple individuals/corporations with a lot of money. We all know that the rich like to ride the wave of their congressional support. For how many years has enron gotten away with fucking with its accounting? Now look at how many people lost their jobs because of someone's greed. What did the government want to do about that? Our courageous, terrorist-fighting madman of a prez. wanted it forgotten real quick. HM, I wonder why? Only when a company that has no relation to him or his administration falls (worldcom) does he take action and look ridiculous in the process.
In short, our government, if placed in the right hands would work correctly. However, since power corrupts, we have consistently placed losers to rule us, losers who will take anything and everything from you, even the clothes off your back, if it makes them happier for at least one more moment. With the exception of maybe John McCain (who I don't consider to be a republican as he always disagrees with his own party), you have no one in power that cares about you. Just remember that.
We all know that .com/.net/.org aren't restricted to the United States anymore, but even ccTLDs aren't necessarily geographically restricted. Years ago, there was a poster in one newsgroup I followed. I don't remember his name, but I recall that even though he was here in the US, since he worked for Ericsson, his email address ended in .se (this would've been before they snagged a .com address).
There's also the little matter of ccTLDs (.to, .tv, .nu, etc.) that have been opened up to everybody. If for some strange reason I decided to register alfter.tv and associated that with my home server, I would be disappointed with a geolocation system that concluded from my domain name that I was on a tiny island in the south Pacific.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I work in R&D for a large company (but I bet this is pretty typical of many tech companies). Each organization has a patent quota. Periodically we all get together in a nice, off-site day-long meeting to try to come up with ideas for patents.
At the last such meeting we had people suggesting patents for:
These people aren't ill-intentioned but sometimes company policy disguises that fact.
Since our pay is indirectly tied both to the number of patent applications submitted and to our "team-player attitude", my impulses for screaming, laughing or making suggestions that we should try patenting arithmetic weren't well received. I could just hope that reviewers, lawyers, and the PO would toss these as clearly absurd. Recent history suggests I might be too optimistic.
So, does the /. readership have any suggestions for developers stuck in a patent mill? The pay's good and I'm not developing weapons of mass destruction, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.
(My personal feeling is that the patent system is probably broken right now and we need to have some kind of moritorium until we understand how to get it right).
If you're going to make a word bold, please try to spell it correctly.
Who cares? The patent office is nothing more than a glorified time-stamping and certification system. The most important job they do, is say "By giving you this number sir, i verify the date and time of when you submitted your patent".
Having something post marked by the mail service is almost as legally binding.
Everything else is, in the end, is up to the courts. Just because you have a patent doesn't mean you are free and clear. If there is prior-art, or the patent is too broad, or too obvious, the courts will smack you down and void your patent.
As for creating criminal penalties for these individuals and companies that patent like mad, no we shouldn't. Think about it, the best penalty is to let them keep giving non-refundable money to the government. We should raise the patent application process fees (while at the same time, creating some sort of young-Edison fund for inventors who can't afford it, but those should have peer review) and rape the big-companies and stupid-individuals for millions.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
So, you signup for an AOL account and now have access to all the information that was previously only available to people in Virginia.
When you try to open the link to the patent, you'll get refused. Do the open by copy/paste, so you're not referred by /.. For me, I simply highlighted the URL in the addressbar and hit enter.
Liquid Audio basically received a patent for saying that a domain ending by "co.uk" is in the UK.
M-x what-domain
Domain: uk
UK: The United Kingdom of Great Britain
Richard's gonna love this..
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
This patent should be easily declared invalid due to prior art. For example, NetGravity did domain based geotargeting as early as 1998 in AdServer 3.5.
I read the patent too. The claim (which surely can be beaten by prior art) is much less pitiful than ChrisD states. What is being patented is the ability to decide whether to reject or accept a request for web content, according to whether a URL implies that the request is legal. A web site deciding in which countries it can show nazi memorabilia might have to license (or challenge) this patent.
I remember a teacher telling a stoay about a bet 2 guys made. A man bet that he coulod get a patent within a set amount of time. He could not get anything to go through until at the last minute he tried to patent the wheel. Nobody had applied for that before and it worked.
The bet was for a case of Rolling Rock.
Sotfware patent are not legal (yet ?) in Europe. Yes, EPO can give you a patent for a "computer-implemented" invention, proven that there is a "further technical effect" (whatever this means, if it is really much simpler than "as such". See the FFII web site for discussion about it). But for now, every times a software patent has been brought in front of a (national) court, it has been judged as illegal (decisions are here). So, yes, EPO grants software patent, but no, they are not legal in front of a national court.
So, we, european developer, could develop open-source project without caring about software patent. At least until we put the executable on the web. You can be judged as infringing a software patent if you distribute an executable. And severals judgment have set that "putting on the web" is like "distributing for the world". Finally, the Sklyarov stuff have shown that if you are found guilty of something in the us that is still absolutely legal in your country, it's not a good idea to go to the US. So, for now, the solution is to put a kind of message on the web page, like "sorry, if you are in the US, you don't have the right to download the software".
Fine. But in fact, in front of a court, this could be judged as not enought. A court could ask you to put a real filtering on your web page (see the Yahoo stuff). But if the filtering itself is patented in US ? Do we have to put a pre-filtering for US citizen ? Or does this means that wherever you are, if you put something on your web page, then you are bound by the US patent laws, even if you have different laws in your country ? At least the Yahoo case required only the filtering for French citizen...
Okay.
So.
Let me get this straight.
You are saying that if someone has a patent on something, they should not enforce it? Or is it only some patent holders who should not be allowed to try to exercise the rights granted to them by the people, by way of a patent?
Which patents are they? ones that you yourself determine are 'lame' ? Who decides?
The USPTO is handing out patents. That means those who get them have the right to try to enforce them. IF you want change, attack the USPTO, not the people applying for them.
What is pitiful about enforcing your patent?
Why doesn't anybody declare a contest in which the participating would have to find the "silliest" patent in the USPTO database. The one who comes up with the far silliest patent would win.
I don't have anything to contribute with in terms of a prize, neither do I have the time to arrange such a contest, but if there is somebody out there who could consider such an endeavor, perhaps we could learn of even more silly patents..? It would just seem to be amusing I think.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
Finally. Joke code posted on Slashdot that I can read!
Lack of creativity is no excuse for not having a
But there are also things you can do to protect yourself. Anyone with a patent will already know this, but most of us don't have patents. In any patent dispute, your best asset is documentation. Accordingly, the best thing to do is keep a bound lab notebook (not looseleaf) and sign and date every page. Get a witness to sign the page too, when it is appropriate. Write all your inventions or work towards inventions down. If there is stuff that can be printed out rather that written, glue it into your notebook pages, describe it and sign it.
This is of course a huge burden, and requires a completely different way of doing things to be effective. But it is cheaper than lawyers. And it is pretty much the only way to convince a judge that you really did develop an idea yourself, and before the other patent was disclosed.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Some of the other patents mentioned as references are either a good laugh or a sad commentary on our patent system, depending on what mood you're in:
5366276 - delivering music over the Internet.
5944790 - localization.
5930474 - using clickable maps as a UI.
Patents like the above are free money for bottom-third-of-their-class lawyers. Patent searches used to mean something, but obviously a software patent search is almost wasted effort nowadays. I wonder why the software industry as a body hasn't raised hell by this time? If a few of the bigger companies kicked in the missing $33 million or whatever with no strings attached, they would probably save themselves many times that in nuisance litigation.
Or, how about funding the Patent Office with a royalty system? Say the gubmint gets a 1% royalty on every patent they grant? Sure, more big brother, but it would give the Patent Office itself financial incentive to investigate and determine infringement, and to become more capable at determining which patents are enforceable. Both things would automatically benefit legitimate patent holders.
It struck me as odd that upon reading just the beginning of the patent (the Abstract) a couple of typos were immediately evident: "Such can be conventional or can be parse according to ad hoc"... ..."perhaps at the expense of reduce efficiency but so as to maximum currency and accuracy."
So this makes me wonder: were these errors part of the original patent application as written, or were they simply a result of data entry inaccuracies? Either way, what are the implications of this?
Excuse me for laughing derisively. The more to the patent is using the result of the geographic locality check to decide whether or not certain content should be sent? Perhaps you're not a programmer, but that boils down to a hash table lookup and an if statement. That's something your average second-year computer science undergrad should be able to come up with. Patents are awarded for innovations "not obvious to someone skilled in the art". The "more" that you are suggesting is patent-worthy is obvious to someone JUST BEGINNING TO LEARN THE ART.
In general, what you are saying is that given a method to determine some critical piece of information X, you should be able to patent using X to make a simple yes-or-no decision. That's ridiculous. Humans have been doing that for tens of thousands of years. "I am hungry. There is a fruit-bearing plant in front of me. Is the fruit poisonous or harmful to me in any way? If no, then eat it; if yes, then don't. Oh wait, I can't make a decision based on derived information because that's a patented process." With as little faith as I have in the USPTO, I think even they would reject that one.
-----Chaz
Ha, ha!!! Certainly show how bad their system is, if it can't even handle a slashdotting...
Wouldn't it be funny if they went chapter 7 and the attorneys didn't get paid?
-ted
I think there might be prior art on this, but I'm not sure. We should grant it for now, just to safe.
Patent Granted
- sigs are for wimps.
Which simply can't be done....if it could be, there'd be only one white pages, not the dozen or so that are available here in LA.
This results in two possible cases, neither good.
- A department in desperate need of expanding has it's revenue siphoned off and is unable to properly do its job.
- A department becomes bloated when it is needed, but does not reduce itself when it's services are no longer relevant. Ever hear of the Rural Electrification Administration?
Fixing this problem would require an act of Congress - which would really require an act of god since they aren't about to cut off their money machines or favourite pork-barrel projects.-- Will program for bandwidth
It doesn't really matter whose fault it is. The patent office has gotten so bad we'd be better off without it.
Mind you, even with a careful and efficient patent office I wouldn't support software patents. That's just a bad idea. But the patent handling process in general is so bad that we'd be better off without it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
A few years back, during the time when encryption controls were still in place, some websites would only let you download encryption software or stronger encryption version of their product (ie and netscape come to mind) if you were coming from a domain based in the US.
the more the world changes, the more it stays the same. Been true for thousands and thousands of years.
It's not just domain name based.
From my reading of the patent, it's not just the domain name in use; they also parse out the whois information for the owner information from the relevent whois information, and they support the concept of zoning by delegation (e.g. "freebsd.org" is in the U.S., but "uk.FreeBSD.org" is in the U.K., etc.).
Basically, they have an entire process based on the information that was generally available at the time the patent was filed, and the information that was expected to be available, based on geographic information draft RFC's published around the time, and the ratified-but-seldom-implemented RFCs for inclusion of missle coordinates in your DNS, in case you wanted to inte an ICBM to land in your swimming pool.
So it's technically patentable as a process patent, though I would certainly argue that it was obvious to a skilled practitioner in the arts.
-- Terry
Damn straight, McCain seemed like a politician I could respect (if not always agree with). He seemed different, and I would've voted him into the white house quicker then Keanu can say "whoa..."
I wonder if these people ever read any of the stuff at the XTraceroute page http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d3august/xt/ or whether they read the RFCs mentioned http://rfc.net/rfc1712.html and http://rfc.net/rfc1876.html
Seems like they are just reinventing the wheel but calling it seomthing new and marketable. Typical.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
In the non-computer world, you can generally only patent specific tools, not concepts of tools. For example, if a pharmaceutical company comes up with a medicine that cures cancer, they can patent that particular medicine. They can't patent the concept of using medicines to cure cancer. Thus someone else could develop a different medicine to cure cancer without infringing on their patent.
In the computer world this doesn't seem to be enforced.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Liquid Audio basically received a patent for saying that a domain ending by "co.uk" is in the UK.
.se
.se *domain* would still be resolved as being in Sweden, even if the email addressee wasn't physically there. There's no easy way around that short of getting inside the corporate intranet - and we all know what happens to naughty little hackers! That's right - LIFE!
Years ago, there was a poster in one newsgroup I followed. I don't remember his name, but I recall that even though he was here in the US, since he worked for Ericsson, his email address ended in
But the
Seriously though, it sounds like it's just a dns lookup + whois database. Oooh, that's hard. Not. Patent material? Hardly.
That should be wale =)
There are some rather clear cases of prior art here. Back in the days when US export restrictions were slightly harder, I remember being stopped from downloading numerous pieces of software (for example, various Kerberos packages from MIT come to mind) by websites claiming that my computer was not located in the US. I have some vague recollection that Eudora and maybe also Netscape had similar protection.
I made som experiments and, IIRC, I was allowed to download the software from, in some cases, an IP address that had a PTR record to a domain registered to an entity in the US or, in other cases, one that had a PTR record to a domain under a non-cc TLD (even if it was registered to an entity outside the US).
If someone knows how to report prior art to the PTO, please feel free to do so. Unfortunately, the places that I remembered as having protection like that once now either have no protection (due to relaxed legislation) or other forms of protection.
This story
After reading the patent, I was reminded somewhat of a humor article I read in which Microsoft gained a patent for the semicolon. They were then able to charge programmers a per-usage fee......