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Patent Cases Hurting Small Businesses
smudge writes "An Information Week article states that multiple small businesses with Web presence are being sued by PanIP LLC. The claims in these patents being asserted in the lawsuits refer to 'a
computerized system for selecting and ordering a variety of information, goods and services' and 'an automatic data-processing system for processing business and financial transactions between entities from remote sites.'"
wow a first post and I don't even have anything interesting to say about it?
if ( firstpost ) karma--;
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Completely Offtopic (but Interesting):
Kevin Mitnick will be on Art Bell's radio show tonight at 2am Eastern. Tune in! Call in!
Mod that fucking cunt up.
I don't know about the suit, but I do know that DeBrand's here in Indy makes damn good candy
The coolest patent I have ever seen
patents were made to stifle innovation, they were made to promote it
Are you missing a not in there?
just bring back public stoning
Reminds me of a funny story I heard shortly after 9/11. A Philly Daily News reporter asked a local prominent defense attorney if he'd defend Osama bin Laden. He basically responded "Sure! Be the easiest case ever. I'd just tell the jury that they should acquit him and let societal forces take care of him within the next week."
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Our economy has always relied on small businesses to keep the economy afloat. It's one of the arguments that politicos have used against things like universal health care and minimum wage hikes.
And now patents fall into this issue as well. And washington has not yet acted on it -- and frankly kids, I don't think they ever will. There's a war, on Terrorism, afterall. And IRAQ has Weapons of Mass Destruction.
I am beginning to wonder if our best strategy in the linux world is to submit patents on the technologies we create. Why? To give us leverage -- even if it doesn't make us any money.
Let's say VA Linux patented sourceforge. Now, Microsoft releases their shared source initiative -- this would have been a clear patent violation of the sourceforge technology. So VA Linux would have two options.
1. Sue Microsoft themselves.
2. Or negotiate with Microsoft for a patent cross-license to be given to authors of software using OSI approved licenses.
Now those are the traditional means. I have a new way outlined here.
1. Get the patent.
2. Allow Some Legal Firm to represent you pro bono. They get %100 of all revenue, you get 0% and incur no costs.
3. Tell them to go after Microsoft. Screw the cross-licensing negotiations. Milk and extort the monopolists.
The idea is to make it so reasonable for legal firms to take on your case and make life miserable for MS that MS lobbies congress for a change in the law. This would work if there were 20 or so pending patent lawsuits that filed injunctions keeping MS from releasing products such as MS Word, Win2004 and so on.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Crime statistics show that burglary, violent assault, and robbery are much higher in England than in the United States. This despite England's repressive gun control regime. Therefore, I posit that gun control causes more crime. You may rebut this statement by saying that the USA has higher rates of rape and murder, but this is only because America's Negro population is much larger than England's. Rates for rape and murder are about the same as England if you discount areas of high Negro concentration.
To balance out the two countries, I recommend shipping lots of Negroes and guns over to the UK.
This theory also explains why white societies in which guns are commonplace -- such as Switzerland -- do not experience the same amount of violent crime as the US. Responsible, law-abiding citizens can handle the responsibilities of gun ownership without any difficulty. Niggers can't.