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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."
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
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)?
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
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).
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!
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.
10 A$="U.S.A";B$="Rest Of World"
20 Input "Where are you from?",IP$
30 If IP$ = A$ Then Print "Due to Copyright Resrictions you are not allowed to listen to or view this Liquid Audio Media!": GOTO 50
40 If IP$ = B$ Then Print "WTF? Only Patent Office fearing Americans may listen to or view this Liquid Audio Media! Not some godless pirates the likes of you! Away foul beasts!":GOTO 50
50 Print "Your Name has been entered into our database of repeat offenders. An agency ending in 'AA' should be visiting you shortly. Thank you."
60 End
Sorry I didn't comment the code very well...
No, what somebody has to do is create a scoreboard, where you rate the superperfluousness of the patent, and then try to estimate their success in litigating a profit from it.
.. we need to see if this really does work, and then feed that info back to these software companies .. to either encourage it until it flat-out breaks the system, or discourage it because it don't make no money.
Like cybersquatting - which, as far as I know, has been shown to be relatively unprofitable, despite every Tom, Dick and Harry seemingly getting into the act -
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You people can't expect the patent examiners to have degrees in micro biology, genetic engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, etc...
The actual fact of the matter is that patent examiners usually do have a technical background complete with the degrees you mention.
The reason we are seeing too many bad patents is because the US patent system has some real flaws, including not-strict-enough criterea for unobviousness and utility. Other fixes that would help include publication of applications and allowance for commentary by other parties as part of the application process.
because the US patent system has some real flaws
Such as the fact that it's in the best interest of lawmakers to encourage numerous patent filings (regardless of legitimacy) because the Office of Management and Budget can shuffle funds from the patent filing fees (which are supposed to hire and support engineers, scientists, researchers, etc. to verify claims) into the general fund. Worse, there's little oversight since none of the fees are taxpayer dollars so they fall under the radar. When you need some extra cash for your pet project this sort of thing is great.
How much money are we talking about? The USPTO receives zero taxpayer dollars -- its entire budget is based on its fees. The fees amount to $710 to file an application, $1,240 due at issuance, followed by periodic maintenance fees of $850 due 3-1/2 years post-issue, $1,950 at seven years, and $2,990 at year 11. These fees are reduced by about half for independent inventors and small companies.
The fees are supposed to nearly exactly track the actual costs of maintaining patents and paying researchers. However, when Congress can freely dip into the pool for cash it's not hard to see why they resort to retarded monkeys that wouldn't know prior art if it crawled up their ass and died.