Slashdot Mirror
Browser Cookie Patent
resistant writes "Here's more patent madness, this time on cookies used in browsers. (By now, even Forbes has a commendable attitude about this rampant greed)." This is actually a pretty interesting article for folks not so familiar with why patents are such a big deal in this day and age.
I read an interesting article in the New York times last week that sheds a little light on the practice of filing for these obviously ridiculous patents. Evidently companies are using these useless patents by donating them to universities or organizations and taking a huge tax write off for it. It is starting to make more sense now. $4000 (US) to "research" and file the patent, and then if they happen to get it, donate it to a college and write off the "Value" at $800,000.00! A very large profit without ever having to enforce an obviously unenforceable patent.
(sig on loan to Smithsonian)
Anyone remember IEMSI? I think that was it. Anyway, it was a mechasnism that allowed BBS's and dial-up clients to exchange login information to create a session that was persistent. It was actually pretty neat. I remember I lobbied for it be included in Renegade (COTT LANG in da hizouse!). That was close to a decade ago.
It seems like the patent pursuit is stemming from failed or failing companies or tiny companies looking to blow up overnight but this article points out that HP is getting into the business. Hmm, has HP's stock tanked?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Interestingly, as the technology is being used in some kind of load balancing router (if I understand the article properly, it's fairly vague) it actually looks like a hardware patent more than a software one (routers run software, but then so do milling machines...)
It still looks "obvious" to me, but it's not the patent the submitter claims it to be. Bad submitter! No cookie for you!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Everyone is just trying to get a dollar and a cent out of a tech industry they still think is hemmoraging cash. But here the implications are even worse. The worst thing about a domain name grab is that it points to a hack portal like xupiter.com and that in two years (with the anti-tech economic downturn) they'd probably drop the domain name.
By having a patent though... well, it can be bad news all around. I wonder, why didn't W3 try and pick up all these patents? Or are they out of their element here?
What is music when you despise all sound?
When this said something about someone patenting cookies I had wistfully hoped that the long drawn out legal battle that ensued would lead to an era of peace and harmony where no cookies were stored, malicious or otherwise!
The company I work for was recently sued for patent infringement by some yahoo that claims that he invented hierarchal relationships in DBs. Every programmer there laughed. It was absurd since they were already in use at the time he claims to have invented it. But he WON! And the cost of an appeal could make it not worth while financially (appeals are heard in front of "experts", though).
Crazy. Things like this should never get to court!
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
[why cookies]
Any web app developer can tell you that there's half a dozen more reliable and secure ways to persist data.
Care to list them? Aside from making every simgle page a form, or re-writing pages to append an ID to every single URL link? Cookies are still the most convenient way to maintain a session with lower server-side overhead. Using session cookies is certainly no less secure than the above methods (possibly more so, if the browser history allows another user to continue the session due to bad coding on the server).
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Actually this is covered by a series of patents by a Mr. Christie. The patents included things from the basic cookie to doubling the chip amount to improve goodness. He also has a patent pending in the same series on the gooey-ness of cookies.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
"Why would anyone want to innovate if not to profit from his innovations?"
You're kidding, right?
I got news for you. People innovate, engineer, program, research, etc., in large part because they have an itch to do so. Money is important as a motivater since it can allow people to feed themselves as they continue on with work, and it can allow people to buy better tools, work harder, or encourage people to keep plugging along during the drudge work that is inevitably involved in such enterprises. However, money is only a partial motivator.
"Patents are a critical part of the foundation of successful free markets. Why would anyone want to innovate if not to profit from his innovations?"
No, patents are a restriction on the freedom of markets - others are prevented from creating something which they could have done if the patent didn't exist. Patents are artificial monopolies. The idea behind patents was that the benefits to society by providing the incentive to create would outweigh the disadvantages of the freedom that they take away. Unfortunately, the way patents are now given out willy-nilly makes us better off without them.
Patents are not necessary for being profitable in software. Most software until about 5-6 years ago was created without the creators bothering to seek a patent. For protecting software, copyright is available. But there just isn't any software that would have not been created by the original creator or someone else if software patents didn't exist.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
IIRC, Turing's Machine is describable in [relatively, for a mathematician] simple mathematical formulae. Given that all of today's computing machinery modus operandi, and therefore all software algorithms, can be described in terms of a turing machine, which in turn can be described in formulaic terms, it follows that all software is just insanely complex algebra simplified by a well-designed (for the task) notational convention.
Given that mathematical formulae cannot be patented, and that one also cannot patent simplifications by simple notation changes, all that needs to be done is hire a couple of renowned mathematicians, a bunch of lawyers with dark blue suits, and throw them at a judge.
Right? I can't possibly beleive I'm the first one to have tought of that.
-- MG
...started being able to take already existing technologies (cookies here, mouse clicking there, etc) put them together and patent the whole mess? From what I can gather the company didn't invent cookies, but a way of using cookies. It'd be like patenting driving nails in with a hammer in two hits instead of three (I can see it now, two-hit-hammering). A distinction needs to be drawn between the tool that's invented and the use of the tool.
Why patent office clerks (whose job, let's not forget, is to know enough about the technologies involved to make informed decisions) can't make this distinction is beyond me. My guess is it's not just a matter of throwing money at the problem. Remember, patents are a profitable business for the government, and somebody gets to spend that money.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Set up a 501c3 non-profit corp which will act as a pool of patents to be used as a counter-threat against patent racketeering. These large companies can then donate their patents to it, get a tax write-off, and they can simultaenously continue to benefit from the defensive protection of those patents.
Is there any page that lists patents that are now in the public domain, or have a less than a year left? That is one page I would love to visit.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Cookies are handled different by different browsers... even in the "big ones", it is often handled wrong.
It is better to go with pure standards, like putting a session id in the URL, rather than deal with 100 support calls from people who don't trust cookies, or have a browser that doesn't handle them properly (eg. IE)
The USPTO is hiring patent reviewers.
In the short amount of time you spend reading slashdot and shaking your fist at "The Man" you could have reviewed (and rejected) an obvious patent.
Seriously, It is a nice government job, with benefits, and you'd be doing a lot of good.
Actually, now the large companies are using patents defensively. Instead of saying "OK, we'll pay the $20 million" they say "OK, but we have 10 patents that you infringed on. Let's just call it even".