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San Diego Company Owns E-Commerce
Kernel Panic writes "Looks like you can now be sued for using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site. As everyone who has an e-commerce site does. A company in San Diego was granted one patent for using graphics and text to sell things on the web and another for accepting information to conduct automatic financial transactions via a telephone line & video screen. They have started their crusade with smaller companies that do not have the financial resources to fight back so as to build a "war chest" to take on larger companies like Ebay and Amazon. One site has taken the offense after becoming one of the first defendants of 50 companies so far. Curiously it appears the company was formed in March of 2002, less than a month before filing for the first lawsuit."
why our founding fathers had such a dim view of IP rights.
Let's sell off San Diego to Mexico!
Something must be done... this is wholesale abuse
of the patent system. Patents and copyrights are
necessary to further innovation, but if this sort
of filthy lawyer abuse continues we may lose these
rights. Abuse a right, and lose it.
I'll bet that if they had tried really, really hard, they just might have been able to come up with a teensy weensy little bit of prior art.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Geeze/ 22/015241 &mode=thread&tid=155
thats another repost of a story less than a week after its initial posting...
come on guys...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10
thats ridiculous!! 1 day!
come on
I already know this because I read slashdot.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
and sue all those companies which are abusing the current patent law system 'till a new one is ready.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Parent Directory 23-Oct-2002 15:17 -
[DIR] stats/ 23-Oct-2002 03:33 -
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
yes, panIP sucks. no, it won't hold in court. yes, ip laws are awful. next . . . .
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Mess with the best, die like the rest. - Quote from the Movie Hackers.
/. em and show them how it is to mess with us online folk!
Thats right.. let's
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
And I thought I could BS a paper..just look at all of the crap in the "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" for both patents.
Even if you don't agree with the patents, you surely have to agree that these people clearly excel at the fine art of creating bullshit.
If only my English teacher could be as easily duped as the U.S. Patent Office.
One patent has been filed on November 1996, the other on September 2001. As the hyperlink patent controversy showed, all you need to do is to prove that the concept that's been patented preceeds the date the patent has been filled. I became an Amazon.com customer in August 1995 - more that a year before the initial patent has been filled. As such, the patents will be overturned as soon as a single entity challenges them.
the US patent office announced today that indeed, their collective heads are up their collective arses.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I had no idea anyone had patented this.
/.ers getting anything?
I better get in line to buy a license to this patent of theirs if I'm going to start my own web businesses. I'll just add this to the 'One-Click' and 'hyperlink' license expenses.
I'm having trouble finding an order form on their web site, though. Seems to be down or something. I better keep reloading until I get it. Any of you other
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
In Germany, and I believe in other EU countries, there is a law against mass lawsuits clearly designed to get money -- this is called an "Abmahnwelle" in Germany (literally means "wave of suits"). If some lawyer or company tried something like this, they'd get reprimanded and possibly even disbarred in Germany.
An example: about a year ago, a couple of clients of mine got notice of a lawsuit from some newly founded organization claiming to protect consumers; the clients' websites were supposedly in violation of an obscure and archaic bit of German law (basically they failed to note specifically on the site that information sent via an e-mail form is stored -- well, duh). Because of the "potential damage to consumers" due to "infringements on their privacy" (i.e. the theoretical number of consumers who could use the site was astronomical), the suit was valued by their lawyers at a high amount, thus theoretically forcing the clients to pay a minimum amount of damages to the organization if they chose to settle.
Word got around quickly that just about anyone with an e-commerce site got just such a letter, complaints were filed against said lawyer, and the lawyer got seriously shat on (and the suits were withdrawn) and the organization was dissolved.
Anything like this in the US?
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Just let me mod stories, that'd be fun.
5935 Folsom Drive.
La Jolla, CA 92073
619/454-4475
According to this brief.
He lost a prior suit for the same patent against American Airlines in 1994, charging that the SABRE online reservation system (and the Travelocity offshoot) infringed on his patent, according to this article.
I'm still hunting for other information.
If some of the larger companies, such as Amazon and eBay, were smart, and thinking ahead, they'd help fund some of these smaller companies defense funds, and back them up in court. Cut these idiots in San Diego off before they can build their "war chest".
If I was in charge of an e-biz, and had a bit of cash in the kitty, you can be sure that it'd be going to the panip defendants war chest. This threatens every company in the world. Panip has decided that they are going to patent every piece of obvious technology left on the floor, and try to leverage themselves towards a big payday.
You'ld think there'd be a law or something.....
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I don't see how this can be allowed to happen. I am dumbfounded.
No. The American Trial Lawyer's Association has Congress giving it sexual favors. Laws against vexatious litigation are weak and unlikely to be strengthened any time soon.
Anyone else?
Finding God in a Dog
...if somehow Panip's servers were attacked using a type of machine that's connected to a telephone line and utilizing a video display?
Not this makes the granting of this patent any easier to swallow, but...
It should be noted that the patent which was granted seems to apply specifically to sales-content which is tailored towards specific users.
"individualized sales presentations created from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles" -- USPTO #5,576,951
Since most small e-commerce sites using GPL'd commerce software like Agora.cgi don't even support customer login, they'd be less affected by this than the big boys like Amazon and Ebay. (Not that this will ever hold up anyway).
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Is it possible to sue the patent office for approving such an obvious patent? After all, the defendents against this patent need to spend time and money in court because the PO royally screwed up. Someone needs to take this issue to court, get the patent thrown out, and then use that as a basis for a lawsuit against the PO. That would be a major wake-up call.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
If they sued me, I'd ask them to prove that an "infinite number" of customer profiles can really be created. Realistically, I think that would probably deserve a patent....
Could this really be a harbinger of something larger?
Already our movie screens are chock full of ideas that were created a generation or more ago, TV is full of shows following formulas that were moderatly successful the season before, and all we can think to patent is stuff that already exists.
My $0.02
It seems to me that this is yet another symptom of our country reaching towards equilibrium with the lowest (and I do mean low) common denominator.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks.
My understanding of the system they make it fairly easy to grant patents. Since all inventions filter into the patent office, it would be hard for them to get anybody who could make informed choices on everything. The technology is just too varied. How many folks here can speak on Nuclear facilities, chemical enginerring processes, and medical tools and be able to say which is good and which is bad? Besides, by definition, patents tend to have a lot of new stuff, that there are no experts in yet. How can you make a judgement if somethings a real invention, or just snake oil? You can't.
A granted patent isn't a guarantee. It is something that can be fought and contested. Here is where the system determines value. The good guy is supposed to win these. The problem is that the fight has costs. Even if you know you should win, you have to hire attorneys. You have to take depositions, find prior art, all that fun stuff. So a lot of folks with little cash take the only choice they can see, capitulate.
The problem is that we can't legislate ethics. there's no real law against somebody being a patent shark. Sure the guys a jerk for doing it, and the lawyer's a jerk for taking a case with no merits, but we'll always have slimeballs. You'll have low end companies filing nuisance suits, and big companies with more $200 an hour lawyers than you have total employees doing it.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a patent attorney. I am curious as to whether this is current practice.
...for these companies.
VC: "So what's your great new idea?"
Future CEO: "Oh, we don't need a great new idea...we just patented an great old idea."
VC: "And how are you going to make money off an old idea?"
Future CEO: "Simple...we just sue everybody. No engineers, no tech support, no salespeople, no advertising, just lawsuits"
VC: "Brilliant! We'll make millions! [to secretary] Lisa, Get my army of lawyers in here...and call my congressman, I need to pass a few new laws."
Look, this doesn't have to hold up in court. What he is doing is extorting - many companies have already settled. These are small companies that have limited resources, and that's who they pick on. Finally, a group of defendants is pooling resources, and yes, he will lose. But not before recouping his costs of the patent, and a whole lot more.
./ can IP restrict the comment page to those who actually READ the article?
Of course, all of this was in the original article...is there any way
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
So tell me what makes them different from the RIAA? If they are successful, will they get Congress to pass laws extending the life of patents indefinitely? Will famous celebrities (Britney, etc.) do public service announcements telling people not to violate these patents by patronizing the evil scofflaws that run e-commerce sites? Will we see ISPs forced to provide customer information, as they track down violators? Will sites providing free open source ecommerce software be taken down?
PanIP, meet Hillary Rosen
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
This invention is directed to data processing systems designed to facilitate commercial, financial and educational transactions between multimedia terminals such as automated sales workstations, information dispensing networks and self-service banking systems. Specifically this invention is directed to a tool for augmentation of sales and marketing capabilities of travel agency personnel in conjunction with computerized airline reservation systems. This invention also relates to financial service application processing, and interactive delivery of informative, educational and recreational audio-visual programs to the home, school or office.
Interesting... the main focus of the primary patent is the Airline Reservation industry. The later patent adds the "Finacial Industry."
It should be interesting to see how this partnership group stands against a company like Oracle. Because, by this partnership's defined attack, Oracle is a prime target. And I know the Oracle folks have a ton of patents protecting their technology, which basically is the backbone of e-commerce.
In addition, Micorsoft's FrontPage is in direct violation of this patent. And we all know that Microsoft has its own wing at the patent office.
Should make for some serious attorney's fees for some lucky companies.
I do hope someone takes these clowns to court and challenges the incredibly flimsy patent upon which they rely.
And if they don't challenge an Oracle or Microsoft, maybe Oracle or Micorsoft should challenge them...
its very sad that we have people who would actually use and abuse a system put in place that give freedom to people who have REAL AND WORTHY ideas. all we hear now are the people who ruin the system for everyone else. but if this really pisses you off, go to http://www.youmaybenext.com and help out if you like. its a site with good info on this jacka**.
The sad thing is, panip has already had success doing this. Many victims settled out of court, as they couldn't take the financial risk. Of course, if they don't settle, panip mysteriously stops bothering them. This is blackmail, pure and simple.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Justifiable Homicide
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
When I talk about the scope of patents and copyrights being outrageous.
Life should not be patentable.
Business models should not be patentable.
Its fucking bullshit.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
From the website:
MAILING ADDRESS:
PanIP (Pangea Intellectual Properties, LLC)
329 Laurel Street
San Diego, California 92101-1630 USA
PHONE: 858-454-7095
EMAIL: rmercado37@yahoo.com, info@panip.com
FAX: 858-454-4358
PANIP LEGAL ADVISOR:
Kathleen M. Walker
3421 Thorn Street
San Diego, California 92104
PHONE: 619-255-0987
FAX: 619-255-0986
EMAIL: kwalkerlaw@cox.net
LP/LLC INFORMATION:
PANIP, LLC
NUMBER: 200207410071
DATE FILED: 3/12/2002
STATUS: Active
JURISDICTION: California
AGENT FOR SERVICE OF PROCESS:
William G Wilhelm
(858) 551-8299
California State Business Information
RESEARCH TEAM:
CHI Research Inc.
10 White Horse Pike
Haddon Heights, NJ 08035 USA
PHONE: (856) 546-0600
FAX: (856) 546-9633
EMAIL: info@chiresearch.com
WEBSITE: www.panip.com
Kudos to everyone on /.! We've successfully eliminated them! I can't even get to their website anymore! BWAHAHAHA! First Panip, tomorrow someone else!
/..
Never underestimate the power of
Wasn't Bounty Quest supposed to help fix this problem?
What happened?
Anyone know of any countercartels of small businesses organizing to put this stuff to rest?
Where are our lawmakers?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Hey guys. Took a quick look at the patent.
I think it may be invalid. I worked on Minitel in France in '86. Minitel did the same type of thing that this patent describes. There must be a few patents that pre-date and invalidate this.
If I recall correctly, minitel was initiated in 1976. It grew into a major structure by the early 80's in France. It was called teletext and you could buy online using a graphical interface.
Of course, I am not a researcher. Don't have time to spend on this.
Maybe one of you energetic folks could pick up the ball on this point.
1E6 Scary.
IE6 is scary, yes!
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Ok people, how do I get a job in the US Patent Office? This looks like the easiest damn job in the world. Some asks for a patent, I give it to them. I could do THAT.
Gizzusajob!!! Flippin' heck - is this the most stupid thing you've ever heard?
I'm amazed, truly amazed.
SABRE????? The same SABRE from the 1960s that every OS textbook in the world uses as an example of an early timeshare system? This guy is on more crack than /. moderators!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
There is an interesting FAQ about Graventreuth (in German) that you might want to read.
Cheers,
Ethelred (who's glad he has legal insurance and a good lawyer)
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
These keep coming up and up and up. When they first started I was still convinced that patents where needed, but after a few years to think about it, I don't think they are good for anything. The usual arguments are
A) Patents secure investment.
Bullshit, making profits secures investments. If you spend millions developing a drug, then sell the drug and make your money back. Sure someone else can just reverse engineer it, but you went to market first and you should be able to copyright the name, etc. If you patent it, realize you can't make money, then it just sits there and you make money off nothing. Sell you research, data, etc.
B) Patents encourage invention/invation.
Again BS, making money does that, plain and simple. Patents seem to be only applicable to small things these days anyways. You can't patent something like MS Word, or Winamp, that's what copyright is for. No, you patent the MP3 codec, or some stupid alogrithm that calculates grammar.
Copyright servers the real purpose, not the patent.
It has been a long time since something was such a great new idea that it deserved a patent. Even new transitor technology doesn't deserve it, mainly because it is based on years and years of others time and thought. Without all the academic bodies working on these things do you think we would really be at 90 nm manufactoring processes. Intel and the like may make it a reality, but they sure as hell don't deserve all the credit. Patents take away the credit.
Anything worth patenting would require years of R&D. Someone maybe able to reverse engineer for a fraction of the cost, but more then likely would rather just pay you for the data, etc.
Even if someone bumped his head on a toilet and invented a time machine, I still don't think it should be patentable, why, because with most technology it should be very carefully handled. Coroporations care about bottom line, and rarely about the right and wrong of something.
I'd be willing to compromise and just change the laws. Pretty simple. Can't patent a naturally occuring substance, ie. a gene, and can't patent a concept, must have a working prototype in order to obtain the patent, and no prior art. Also, the law should patchable. Basically allowing congress to easly remove a concept or an idea from being patentable. If the law was already that way, it would be easy for congress to pass an amendment saying genes couldn't be patentable.
The "a senior executive at Pan IP" bit is almost surely bullshit, but the post is worth answering, because it represents some common misconceptions about both what IP law is for and about the "average /.'ers" feelings on the matter.
/. or anywhere else, feel that IP laws (patent, copyright, trademark) are fundamentally wrong and broken and should be done away with. I'm not one of them. The Constitution spells out the purpose of IP law very nicely; "to promote ... progress" and "limited time" are the key phrases. Good grants of IP protection serve this purpose, by rewarding the genuinely innovative thinkers who keep our world moving forward. Bad grants of IP protection, such as those used by PanIP, do precisely the reverse.
A tiny minority of people, on
Not everything should be patented, copyrighted, or trademarked. There are some ideas (e.g. "buying and selling things over the Web") that are a) not the invention of any one person or group of people, b) immediately obvious to anyone with a brain, and c) so widespread that any attempt to enforce IP law on them would have crippling economic effects. Generally speaking, I think falling into any two of those three categories ought to be enough to remove something from IP protection. I'm particularly concerned about (c) because it seems to be something that a lot of IP vultures Just Don't Get: when a bunch of people are doing something and nobody's bothered to file an IP grant application on it, just because you did file the application does not give you the right to deprive a whole bunch of other people of their livelihood.
And, oh yeah, on the off chance that you actually are "a senior executive at Pan IP": you and others like you are scum who contribute nothing to the world in which you live. You create no value of any kind, and would be of more service to humanity shoveling shit.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
There are a few things here which speak loads about the US business/legal model (and no, this isn't meant to be US bashing)
- Someone can get granted a patent for doing something that's already being done at the time of the filing. It may not hold up, but it provides ammunition for lawsuits, and isn't that enough for most people? Enter the almighty dollar.
- It takes years to get a patent. During this time, the "innovative" thing you've thought of becomes commonplace, and by the time you actually have the patent, other people have gotten so rich off the idea that they can sue you into the ground.
- People are so afraid of lawsuits and lawyers that they're willing to hand over good money to avoid your countrys' legal system, regardless of whether they're wrong or right. Doesn't that say enough right there?
And, for the obligitory joke, I now intend to file a patent for "stuff", which will "facilitate doing things in some manner", for the purpose of "getting things done, via this stuff paridigm." My revolutionary "stuff" lawsuit will ensure that no-one can ever again do "things" without my express, written consent. And, further, I plan to use my newfound economic power to push for digital copyright restrictions to be placed on "stuff", to ensure that the "things" facilitated by unlicensed copies of my "stuff" cannot be completed. Then, when everything is running on licensed copies of my "stuff", I will the AutoUpdate feature authorized in my "stuff DCP" EULA to sneak in fixes that will not let "stuff" work without calling home to tell me what "things" it is doing. And then, finally, I will take my fortune, close the company, and shut down the server, ensuring that "stuff" cannot call home to report its' "things", and making all the "stuff" shut down across the US.
Then, maybe, with no "things" to do or "stuff" to do them with, all the idiots who made this mess will get their "heads" out of their "ass" and start using their "brains".
10 DO end_rant; GOTO end
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Tell 'em directly.
usptoinfo@uspto.gov
800-786-9199 (U.S. and Canada)
703-308-4357
I'm going to patent closing up shop in the US and moving operations out of the country.
But, seriously, if enough tax revenue starts leaving the country the US gov't may start to consider patent reform.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
You create no value of any kind, and would be of more service to humanity shoveling shit.
Or, to quote a certain Klingon, being shoveled AS shit.
Folks like these PanIP folks should be locked away for the rest of eternity. They are a clear and present threat to the USA. Of course, so is the patent office, which should just be closed down. I'm sure they do some good, but at this point it's overwhelmed by the harm they do. I mean, heck, the DC sniper probably helped an old lady across the street once in his life, but it hardly makes him a boon to society.
-Rob
Don't forget, I have a patent on working for exchange of money, goods or services.
If you really are an "executive" of Pan IP...
Patents can provide a valuable service. I work for a non-profit research company who takes out patents on medical treatments to insure they are available for everyone to benefit from. To specifically prevent some hoser like you from keeping people from benefiting from innovations just to pad your pocketbook.
How the heck are your patents "protecting people who create value from those who would steal it"? You freely admit you didn't even do any of the inventing! You just pick up patents from others, and exploit them for your own profit!
How is this "protecting" anything? The only thing it's protecting is your greedy, greasy little hands.
We need a patent office, or something like it. We also need a copyright and trademark office, or something like it. It may be that the current setup is broken and needs to be done away with, but it's not fundamentally evil. Actually, I think blaming it on the bureaucrats who have to deal with increasingly absurd and self-contradictory laws while their funding is being slashed to pay for blowing the shit out of illiterate peasants on the other side of the world isn't quite fair ... The best solution would be a complete, ground-up rewrite of IP law based on the Constitutional principles authorizing it, and the money to enforce the law properly. Given the influence of the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, TLA, etc. on "the Senator from Disney" and other key political players, don't hold your breath.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They know it won't stand up. That's why they're going after real small "mom and pop" businesses. Somebody who doesn't have lawyers on retainer, who can't afford the time away from running their business to fight it.
Think they'd try this with walmart.com or Amazon? The article implies they are considering it, but you know that's just bluster.
These sleazeballs aren't stupid enough to pick on sombody who could fight back.
Typical abuse of our legal system.
It is a company claiming they own e-commerce with patent #5576951. Hmm same company too. Either I'm not the only one who saw this this morning or someone stole my post.
In any case one of the patents actually applies to an airline reservation system, that I think they are trying to stretch scope of to include e-commerce to get money.
Only 'flamers' flame!
The title should say: San Diego Company Pwns E-Commerce.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
How on earth could that possibly work? You're saying that the government should stay out of the economy, but that the economy should still take on goals of the common good. You can't make people do that unless you have government of other structural coercion, because an economy of the "people" will almost certainly lead to concentration of power around money, and the individuals who have money will likely not be interested in the goals of the average individual. It is inevitable that someone will have power over others in any functioning economy, be it the government in a socialist system or the greedy capitalists in ours. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it allows society to function without chaos and tyranny of the majority. The problem is just trying to make sure that there is a balance between different groups with power, rather than allowing it shift completely to one group.
There's nothing inherently wrong with capitalism, and much that is very good, since it tends to regulate itself pretty well. But it does need government checks from time to time, so it's important to have a strong government as well.
What happens if a frivolous lawsuit is ignored?
A summary judgment is likely to be issued, right? Or is it a criminal offense to fail to answer a civil summons? OK, so I appear in court and sign whatever it is I need to sign to avoid committing contempt or whatever. Then I ignore the plaintiff.
What happens if the plaintiff tries to collect the judgment, and the defendant ignores the bill collectors?
Do civil courts have the power to send the police to an ISP not named in the lawsuit to confiscate equipment? What can the plaintiff really do to enforce compliance with frivolous judgments?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Of course since Slashdot accepts advertising revenue that would mean that this site is using text and graphics for commerce - so pay up guys.
As the poster above pointed out, the government is generally IMMUNE from these kinds of suits.
But it IS a time-honored sport to challenge the validity of patents (in a lawsuit against the patent owner) and then seek to take depositions of the patent examiners who were involved in the grant of the patent. Though the Patent Office will try to limit the examiners' testimony to essentially zero, it still REALLY tweaks them no end to have their examiners called to the witness stand.
This patent, by the way, looks like a complete piece of garbage that had claims tacked onto it years after the fact. These later-thought-up claims had virtually no relationship that I can see to what was actually disclosed when the thing was originally filed.
It's an ABOMINATION.
I plan to patent the process by which you can render a undesirable company's website effectively useless by repeatedly posting stories about it to /.
Dupe posts are
I disagree that it is possible to move towards a classless society. There is no way that everyone in the world could live at US standards of wealth without draining the Earth's resources, so those who have wealth now would have to give it up. And because wealth is power, that will never happen. It doesn't matter who has the power, the government or the rich, but someone WILL always have power because people are inherently selfish as individuals and some people will always be in a position to take advantage of others. That's not a flaw in the system, that's life.
I can almost forgive reposting a story once... but 3+ times? It can be found here here and here
:) So I have great interest in this topic... But it would have been as simple as reading the submitted story, clicking on the website and seeing the big PANIP banner at the top, then tabbing over to your browser that has slashdot in it, going to the bottom of the page and typing panip in the search box. No more difficult than that, you can take the extra minute to check the story out...
I only know this off the top of my head because I am the developer of one of those sites
Sometimes I think the posters get caught up in the same FIRST POST mentality when they decide to promote a story submission to the front page.
blah.
Maybe I wasn't clear before, but an economic system does not carry values, good or bad. A system is good when it minimizes general human suffering, and no system exists that could do that better than capitalism at the moment. The problem with replacing the system as it exists is that there would be nothing to regulate wealth anymore. Environmental destruction is in some ways a failure by the government to regulate industry and a sign that power has swung too far from government, and in other ways it is the INEVITABLE consequence of massive overpopulation.
Companies are simply a tool for giving the economy (ie the "People") what they want, and the People are demanding more conveniences etc at the cost of the environment. The problem is not capitalism, it is the fact that we have 6 billion people and growing on a planet that should not be able to sustain even a fraction of that.
Duplicate articles!
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
If the patents are invalidated by the courts and there is any evidence that the company might have known, then all the people who settled can civil sue for their money back plus punitive damages. Last I heard in California punitive could be as much 300% of actual damages.
For instance, the fictitious loan officer may ask, "Are you familiar with our loan repayment schedule?" If the customer desires to read the loan repayment schedule, he would indicate his choice. The loan schedule would then be textually displayed. After reading the text, the applicant would proceed to more questions 147 presented by the fictitious loan officer. The customer could continue to additional textual displays about legal responsibilities of obtaining a loan or return to the fictitious loan officer who would continue the presentation.
It seems pretty obvious these people have locked up a completely new form of electronic communication. Let's see . . . where's that "fictitious" button? All I see is preview and submi
Just frivilous lawsuits.
If a judgement is entered against you, the plaintiff can file liens against your property, and ask the local sheriff's office to sieze your property (personal or otherwise) and sell it at auction. If you don't respond to the lawsuit, the judge will issue a summary judgement against you, and you won't be able to appeal, since you've got no grounds. You'd have to be a complete and total idiot to ignore a summons on a civil suit.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
This is going to burn out pretty quickly.
In the PanIP complaint, they demand a trial by jury. I can't imagine any (competent) jury in the United States that would award anything to PanIP for this.
It's almost as if they were awarded a patent for a device that absorbs nasal discharge via a paper wicking system. An ingenious idea, certainly, but an obvious one.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
Why don't we (as in the geeks of the world) get together and patent EVERYTHING we can think of. If the corps want to play the IP game, why shoudn't we?
In my view, patents provide a valuable service in our society, protecting people who create value from those who would steal it.
No, in your view, patents provide a way to make money. If you were really interested in protecting those who create value, you'd be focusing your efforts elsewhere. No value was created by the filing of the patents that you are now trying to "enforce". The real value was created by the architects of HTTP, SSL and HTML, as well as the multitudes of programmers and web designers who actually put in the work to make the World Wide Web what it is today. What did your client contribute to this edifice? Nothing, and you know it - if not now, then soon, when you're sued into oblivion. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Perhaps you should take up something easier, like selling Amway products?
And then firebomb the patent office and all their fuckin' archives.
This is absolutely stupid.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Much as I hate to say it, you're wrong. There is no such thing as "Fair Use" of a patent. You're thinking of copyrights. Patents are completely exclusive, the patent holder may dictate EVERYTHING about their patent. If they want to give away rights to the patent to everyone, that's their prerogative. If they want to make you pay $1M for rights, that also their prerogative.
Patents are so exclusive that, if two people independently come up with the same idea, only the person who gets the patent granted to them gets rights to it. The other person has no rights to it whatsoever.
It sucks, but that's the way it goes...
actually it's extortion, not blackmail.
Back in the day, we'd just find the loser who claimed such things, grab a rope and string him up. People were a lot more polite back then, especially about making wild claims about owning "unownable" things.
Imagine a snooty lawyer trying to tell a texas cattle baron that he owns a patent on branding cattle, and the cattle baron must pay him a royalty for each branded cow. I'm sure the lawyer wouldn't have lived through the day if he pressed his claim. I don't see how this sort of patent abuse is much different, except that we've given the lawyers all the power.
Maybe we need to start hanging crooked lawyers again...
I think I will patent the litigation process, so that no one can sue, except with my permission...
Muhahahaha!!!!!
I definitley dont want that GPL'd!
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Well, from a brief glance at the patent in question, it appears to NOT be a patent on "using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site." as the writeup claims.
It is more along the lines of using these elements to create a customized presentation based on an individual's profile. To quote the first line of the patent (Emphasis mine):
"A system for composing individualized sales presentations created from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles."
So it's not quite as absurdly broad as the article makes it out to be. Not quite, I said.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Divine Intervultures^H^H^H^H^Hventures here in Chicago is up to the same stunts. Sadly, the only reference I can find for this is on a pay site, chicagobusiness.com. I'm really starting to wonder if a patent is actually the mark of the beast. This is getting completely out of control.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
- the act or process of consolidating : the state of being consolidated
- the process of uniting : the quality or state of being united; specifically : the unification of two or more corporations by dissolution of existing ones and creation of a single new corporation
- pathological alteration of lung tissue from an aerated condition to one of solid consistency
(Aside: I have a feeling the third definition doesn't fit in this current discussion. Link: http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=DictionI'm pointing out this vocabulary word because I'm trying to say that all these VICTIM companies must band together in an effort to wipe out these criminals, and furthermore, to take legal action against the government for allowing a ridiculous patent, which was OBVIOUSLY issued in malice, to be issued in the first place.
Oh yeah. And don't forget to spell "consolidation" twenty five times and to use it in three sentences.
From the article:
"automated sales and services system,"
Prior to their patent, In 1988/89 I coded a program that did just that for a Food Distributor. Salesmen would dial a 800 number, and without any human intervention, the program would take the sales order, process it, and service it by adding the items to the stores next delivery. The salesmen were using symbol barcode readers with 300 baud modems.
"automatic business and financial transaction-processing system."
This is the patent that confuses me the most. I worked for a Bank. I moved money through the FED nightly. Our own patent office doesn't recognize how the FED works?
Is this company prepared to sue the FED???
I have source code available for lawyers to review once they have cleared it with my previous employers.
Ok, calm down, have a beer (gulp). Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
...to ask about contributing to a defense fund (after reading about this on /. a few days ago). Here's what they had to say:
Thanks for your support. We are currently in the process of setting up the Group Defense and the PANIP Group Defense Fund. We hope to have it set up by the end of this week giving people a chance to contribute online through a PayPal account. The response has been very encouraging.
Stay tuned in and help us spread the word. PANIP thought they could extort money from small businesses without them making much noise. They were wrong.
Timothy Beere
DeBrand Fine Chocolates
http://www.debrand.com
http://www.youmaybenext.com
I'll also pick up some chocolates for my wife at their site...that way I can help their business and score some points with the bride at the same time. Double bonus!
100 bucks says that PanIP sues the "You may be next" website for taking donations since they're engaging in some kind of commerce or financial transaction over a network. It will be pretty fucking scary if they get away with that.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
or prior story?
2 41 &mode=thread&tid=155
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/22/015
you let this one slip by for two days guys, you all are slipping....
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
and recreational audio-visual programs to the home, school or office
Recreational audio-visual programs?!? Well looks like everyone on slashdot is gonna get a letter from PanIP's lawyers...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
A reliable webserver.
Moderators, you screwed up on this one. This post should be "5-Funny"
CLAIMS: liberation of the economic sphere by the appropriage use of bludgeoning and cranium-shattering implements applied to the external surfaces of the body of mister Lockwood, until biological functions cease consecutively to mechanical lesions that prevent the nervous tissues from being innervated properly by nourishment and oxygen hemoglobin-based transfer fluid.
i worked for a company in horseheads, N.Y. called IST (www.istcorp.com) developing their new webpages. We got this lawsuit and were all astonished about its vagueness and absurdity. So astonished, in fact, that i sent a post in to slashdot asking to start a dialogue about this. needless to say, being that the moderators of this board are soo friggin stuipd, they didnt deem it worthy. needless to say, i did some investigation on my own. The owner of these patents is one Lawrence Lockwood, who i tracked down and tried to call. If you do some reasearch online, this guy had sued a few companies a few years ago, and appearantly won. We got this lawsuit, and after seeing that all of the patents have to do with airline ticket distribution systems. We figured that what they were doing was "shotgunning" their lawsuit. By that I mean, they were planning on suing a lot of smaller companies who cant stand for themselves, and hoping that they would settle out of court. Well we didnt, we called their bluff. And appearantly that was the last we heard of them.. mewonders if they got more persistant?
"Once upon a time men were lions and machines were mice, but since it was so long ago, now its twice upon a time."
http://www.blackanddecker.com
.. Stanley Tools lost the ability to protect the colours Yellow & Black (in association with their name & brand) because Dewalt Tools produced power tools in those colours for X years and stanley didn't file suit.
.. Since last i checked .. the colours Yellow and Black were not exactly paid royalties for their 'creative process'.
lets see how this company takes on a
multinational coorporation that is notoriously paranoid with patent laws - and has a legal precident along these lines. [Branding and presentation]
I'm pretty sure the cat is out of the bag on this one. [aside from the fact that I had thought you only have a limited amount of time before it becomes an almost impossible battle to win.]
For example
When they TRIED [because Dewalt was gobbling up their professional market presence] they were rebuked and basically told 'You should have done something about it 5 years ago.'
This, I would think certainly sets precident, of WHAT im not sure
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Was this story so good it had to be patented and published again?
Same reason that they picked smaller companies. A larger company might have a legal relationship with a national law firm. A small company, if they have representation at all, will most likely only have a relationship with a local law firm. Dealing with court appearances across the country makes a legal defense more expensive. If they sued my company (in So Cal) I could cobble together a holding action defense out of a minimum number of attorney hours, personal time, and no travel costs.
If you read PanIP's initial complaint setting forth the "grounds" for its lawsuit, it is pretty clear that all the allegations are mere conclusory statements. "Defendant is infringing on our patent #whatever and continues to do so." ... stuff like that does not give adequate notice per Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 8(a)(2). Just saying "you're infringing my patent #1234567" isn't enough. Gotta give some minimal explanation as to how they are infringing your patent.
Check out Gen-Probe, Inc. v. Amoco Corp., Inc., 926 F.Supp. 948 S.D.Cal., 1996 for a good description on this vis a vis patent infringement suits. California federal court, no less.
Keep in mind that the patent office is the second most profitable government organization, right behind the IRS. They are in the business of selling patents. For them to say "no, we're not gonna grant you a patent for that because that's a load of bullshit" is like Walmart kicking out customers because they aren't well-dressed enough to shop there.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Since more or less everybody agrees that obvious things shouldn't be patentable, I'we come up with a new model for the patent office.
First of all, "Obvious" means a solution that a group or individual with education in the field can come up with in a reasonable amount of time.
Here is the new method:
Have patent appliers describe in detail What problem their new idea solves
Post the problem description on a web page
Let the world brainstorm for a year or so (How long is the standard process anyway ?) and post all the solutions they can come up with on the website.
The patent applier gets a patent for those parts of his solution that haven't been decribed on the webpage and to which there is no prior art.
Fair ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
POS systems, read "Point of Sales" for the layman. These devices involve a simple computer and display for the purposes of sales, and in many cases (going back as far as the mid 1980s) included a 300 baud modem for the purpose of sending credit card information for purchases. Similarly, there were credit card terminals for years, AND of course, ATM POS terminals (and the machines themselves) around for well over a decade.
Doesn't that therefore disqualify these false patents as prior art?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Actually, it was a Norwegian company called Bellboy that patented e-commerce. They started to file lawsuits too, but got spanked so badly by Norwegian courts that they will probably not stand on their feet again.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I can see in the future some little country is going to get really connected, 'net wise, then guarantee no software patent laws, and every big firm in the world is going to source their web datacentre there. Kinda like in Cryptonomicon. But this will be used just for serving web sites, ecommerce sites, gambling sites, even porno sites.
Some clever lawyer will work out a way that Amazon US has no link with Amazon Tonga (or Bermuda, or wherever it is), and so there "patent infringements" can't bite. There will be a US company amazon that simply delivers stuff on behalf of amazon.to (as Tonga domains are known).
And every other company will follow suit. At least the big ones will. And the lawyers will not find a way round, and no lawsuits will be raised, for will not be worth it.
And if that little island is in the carribean, or somewhere else nice and warm, then I want to be there, changing backup tapes at night and lying on the beach all day!
Seriously, something like this has got to happen, because patents, software patents, prime number patents, mobile phone ringtone patents, etc, have all got out of order!
Of course, the juristictions should all agree to avoid trademark infringement, etc, otherwise people will get p*ssed off. So companies will choose the countries that are big on "fair" laws but not on "stupid" ones.
Will they ever stop web traffic from coming in to the US from these places? Who knows, but if enough companies source their sites off-shore, then they can't stop it all, it'd be disasterous for the economy.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
Every time there's a silly patent story here on slashdot, this comment (or close variations of it) get made. Over, and over, and over.
Please, please start marking this stuff redundant. It was possibly funny once. Maybe. It's over now.
I noticed the list of businesses being sued are those with just enough assets to have something to lose (thus can be put in fear of being taken for their entire investment), yet not rich enough to have an attorney on retainer who has enough experience in this area to promptly inform them that the lawsuit is complete horseshit.
Too bad PanIP hasn't hit someone with a lawyer in the family and the inclination to countersue 'em.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Also, they're tending to focus on parts of the country (such as the midwest) where kneejerk lawsuits are NOT the norm, so seem even more scary to the victim.
I did notice (having checked a few of the supplied links) that some of these small business websites have already been shut down. I was actually looking at docsource to see if they happened to all be using some prepackaged commercial site, since it occurred to me that if they had, and if it was template-built by a product from a major player like Macromedia, that might be a hook to get one of these suits passed on to the wrong gorilla, and get this con artist's ass burned.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I think you will find that whilst effective against combatting ASCII art, the lameness filter is one of the most annoying things slashdot ever implemented... try posting code some time. yeeesh. talk about a nightmare to try and get through.
BTW, I notice I'm on your friend list. Do I know you from somewhere?
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
I don't think so. I use my friend list as a way to keep track of people who make intelligent comments. I must have read something you wrote, and hit the grey pill. :)
The original story appeared almost two weeks ago, so this actually isn't too bad by timothy's standards.
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.