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NCR Patents the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "We all know about NCR's lawsuit against Palm & Handspring, but I haven't seen much press about patent infringements they are claiming against some of the biggest sites on the planet. According to documentation that a friend's company has recently received, their patents protect everything from keyword searching to product categorization. Patents to look for (and filed in 1998) include 6,253,203, 6,169,997, 6,151,601, 6,085,223 and 5,991,791 . IMHO, this is absolutely outrageous and is likely to cause billions in both legal fees and eventual licensing fees (eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR). How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business."
Seriously, it needs to be redone. We need some sort of bill/legislation/executive order on these stupid patents.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Sure, REALLY, I (or anybody else) is REALLY going to pay NCR for inventing the internet. That's like claiming the invention of the road. It's part of international infrastructure, national security, and every business in the world. If they had a snowball's chance in hell we could worry.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
The problem is that companies who pantent things which are obveousley common sence or knowledge cannot be stopped without going through the courts. I know of many companies who have patents across things they should not but I cannot do anything unless do they take me to court. And by then its too late and I can't defend my self.
The only thing you can do is publish every idea you have no matter how stupidly obveous. (Cat overclocking hats for example).
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Patent 6085223 describes the method to look up the very same patent using the USPTO database by clicking on this url! The patent office is violating the patent!
At least, by making patents available on the internet like this they make them sort of "open source" so that stupid patents like this one will be challenged as soon as someone finds out.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
Another shining example of the US patent office's brilliance. What child has never done that on a swing before? The children at the US patent office, obviously...
Because they are just loose concepts. That's like trying to patent the form of communication known as a "debate". It is logical and reasonable that other people would come to point in their life where they might want to "debate" things with other people.
Just like searching something by keyword. I wonder if libraries are going to get sued because of the Dynix based searches using keywords.
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
I really couldn't care less - its not like anyone will pay. But this story hit me kind of personally - from the time I was 3 untll I finished high school, my dad sold ATMs and PCs for NCR. I grew up with their gear (it sucked) and every time I went to K-Mart I looked at their bar code scanner with pride (it was the first and only). I used their prototype tablet PCs years before Palm got it right (NCR's were pathetic - hand held DOS, I shit you not).
It just makes me sad. NCR was founded on pure innovation. They built the very first cash register. Ever. They built some of the very first computers. IBM beat them out on the early gov't contracts, but they weren't slouching. The company was also (at least back in the day) a very good place to work. Corporate day care in the 1920s?!?!?
And now, through failure to adapt, they are reduced to this.
Prior art does not invalidate a patent or make an invention unpatentable unless the prior art covers every single part of the new patent down to the tiniest details. You can patent something that's already patented with only a slight addition. You'll have to have a licence to use the other patent to implement the invention, but you can still get a patent that grants you a limited monopoly to just the new parts. Since the time this article was posted until now (when I've seen dozens of people claiming that these patents are invalid due to prior art) there is NO FUCKING WAY that people who were unaware of these patents before could have figured out wether these should be valid patents or not.
In summary: prior art doesn't mean you can't have a patent. It just means you have to list it in the "prior art" section of the patent and licence the old patent to implement your "improvement" to the old invention (assuming the original patent is still valid).
Simple: make software-patents illegal. They're really plain stupid stupid stupid. Software is NOT a device but merely a list of commands which controls a device. Such a list of commands is sometimes called a recipe - a list of actions which you should perform to reach a certain goal. Recipes should not be patentable, otherwise the way I move my hand when jerking of can also be patented (good luck trying to proof prior art:P). Or the way you move your mouth when saying "Anarchy". All actions:) What kind of agent (me, you or a computer) performs those actions should not matter of course. Patents are meant for fysical things. It's just the retardedness of the patent office that causes them to consider computers and software some sort of magical thing. Their way of thinking has become a bit like that the inquisition - driven by utter ignorance and FUD. Someone should either educate them or just kill them for stupidity.
0x or or snor perron?!
Nothing is going to change until we start suing the patent office to recoup costs on claims related to gross negligence on the part of the patent office. A method by which a remote client can query a database and recieve a result? We're not talking about a child on a swing here, we're talking about patenting things for which entire industries have existed since the 70's. This is gross negligence of the highest order, with prior art just a quick altavista search away. Come to think of it, Altavista is prior art.
This gross negligence on the part of the patent office is costing companies and consumers millions of dollars, while adding absolutely nothing to the general pool of knowledge. If the underfunded patent office found it was more resource-efficient to hire competent personel than it would be to simply fail at their appointed task, then we wouldn't have these sorts of problems.
I say we get a class-action suit against the patent office. Any lawyers with me?
The ______ Agenda
adjusts tin-foil hat
Personally I think there's a major backlash campaign being given unspoken support from all the old-money dow-like companies. The internet is something they have never understood, and view it only as a threat to thier way of doing business.
The legal system in no way supports the proliferation of free technocratic society, but serves only to perpetuate old-money institutions.
You will never find a retired programmer on the bench. You will find a trial lawyer of some 30 years experience whos outlook is based entirely on precedent(think 1970s and 1980s). This was a time of farms, banks, automobile production, petroleum embargoes, and cold war.
90% of the serving officials in the 3 branches of government were lawyers before being elected senators, or supreme court judges, or in many cases presidents. Very very rarely will you ever see an engineer or scientist turned politician.
We are a fundamentally misrepresented class of people. Our priorities are largely askew from the priorities of the "majority voting public". All we want is unlimited bandwidth, unlimited computing power, and to be left alone. These 3 things are very much within our technological/finacial means as a nation. If the $200billion spent on the defense budget was poured into building a broadband infrastructure we would have it. And we all know how quickly processors and storage mediums improve. Simply said there are no real technological bariers towards the implementation of what the majority of us here want.
But none of this will happen because old-money has become aware of the threat of giving abundant resources to "everyone". They will use the legal system as a means of slowing/crippling/dismantling the "internet" until it is no longer functional.
Said again, the "internet" is under siege from old money...and it is nothing if not a war. Throwing file-sharers in jail, patenting hyper-links, all of this is insanity...but in war you use whatever means necessary to destroy your enemy. We, and what we represent, are the enemy of old-money institutions....and they will leverage every resource in thier means to destroy us.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Yahoo is suing NCR, saying that Yahoo! is not violating NCR patents.
Looking at the big picure i cant help but laugh! NCR once again trailing at the coat tails of modern concepts AGAIN! (some guy at NCR quits, starts IBM) NCR "tries to compete" fails misserably in the face of a new concept called a programmable computer (1930's to 2003)... IT industry outstrips the effectivness of patents after the first line of OS code was shared between geeks half a century ago... ... and continued with the infrastructure sytle standards based work of ARPANET from DARPA - this technology was built for everybody. Hmmm, I'd like to see NCR sue the US military establishment, cant wait!
If it's a joke, why was it approved? Why is it in the US PTO database? I would think a joke would get a good laugh, and then cause a reject letter to be mailed out.
If jokes get into the US PTO database, that makes the system a joke. After all, if it is a joke and not marked as such, how do I tell a joke? Perhaps the patents referenced from the main story are all jokes?
At this point, I hope you see the folly of your comment.
How does one submit prior-art to the patent office? I doubt there is a single person here who wouldn't mind firing off a few dozen examples to help keep patents in line with reality...
The ______ Agenda
This is what happens when you try to embrace and extend the concept of rights.
:( symbol.
Patents were created to assign exclusive rights on the usage of unique processes and creations to allow their creators to benefit from them for a reasonable length of time. They were never intended to stifle innovation or to freeze out people from using ideas that should be obvious to a 4-year old kid.
But then someone decided you could patent software...Now you can patent anything apparently. And as with most embrace and extend wars, the concept of patents, and soon, intellectual property rights as a whole, will be meaningless.
Have a look at despair.com They've patented the
Business, like most people in this philosophically deprived culture, lives for the moment. Their short-range, narrow-minded concentration on next quarter's earnings would allow them to yank the copyrights for "a system of national defense" if it would bring profits up for the quarter. Of course, next quarter, when the country gets invaded, they'd all be screaming that "nobody told us, how would we know?".
Only deal is, even if there were a method in place for people to contest said lawsuits and not suffer mounting legal fees (ie: legal fees for the defendant paid for by the claimant on a lost case), taking a case to trial is too much like gambling. Too many things can go wrong for you in a court of law. The judge could be insane that day and rule against you. Your laywer could misstep a rule and fail to make an appropriate point at the proper moment. The prosecution could bring out evidence or a witness that skews your ability to defend against it. Heck, you might find something out 30 seconds after you lose your defense that would've changed the case, but it's too late because the judge has ruled.
Too many problems, too many ways to lose even if you are 'in the right' for people to want to consider. Only someone who will stand up for themselves and the principle will go to court for something so stupid as this. Everyone else will simply try to minimize their headache from an already stupid situation.
Rather than worrying about whether or not software patents should or should not exist, instead, the US Congress could fix the a larger body of problems with one simple, quick, easy fix:
OVERTURNED PATENT OWNER PAYS
That's right. If the patent owner LOSES a patent challenge on the grounds that the patent is obvious or prior art exists, the overturned patent owner has to pay all court costs (attorney's fees, etc.) of each and every defender that the patent owner was suing. Included in those costs should be reasonable compensation to the defenders for their time and energy in having to defend themselves, and reasonable compensation for provable lost sales (due to the suit) in the case of a business.
This would QUICKLY discourage owners of dubious patents from bothering to enforce them, since they run the risk of considerable monetary loss.
When someone with a dubious patent threatens someone with little money, the likelihood is that the defender could find a competent patent attorney willing to challenge the suit without any up front charges, getting paid only if they win the defense.
My question is this:
These patents were filed in 1998...
Why would ebay have caved? Their site (at least functionality) is mostly unchanged from when I remember them well before 1998. Aren't THEY prior art?
A client of ours just had a very similar thing happen to them, with Divine's supposed patent on shopping cart technology, which is also insane.
unfortunately, they had to settle eventually to get back to business. We did put together a website to try to help fight Divine, and intend to continue the effort ourselves. And expect to get targeted by divine as well.
scum sucking lawyers are making most of the money off of these things, not the companies who hold the patents.
check out the history of the divine issue here:
http://www.divineintervention.biz/
It is ILLEGAL to steal money and to cause monetary damage to other companies (*ahem*hacking,sharing mp3s,violating DMCA*ahem*) and this is no different. They should be held responsible for their actions.
The more patents I read the more I realize how vague they are getting. The wording is right out of the Web Economy Bullshit Generator. I am sure you can take the same patent and reword it 50 times and get 50 patents. It is sicking. I thought patents were for lightbulbs and hammers. Oh well. Live sucks then you die.