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PanIP May Be Standing On Shaky Ground
GoatEnigma writes "You may remember the name PanIP, the company trying to hold e-commerce hostage with their patents. Well, according to this update on the PanIP Defendants site, it might not be as easy as they thought. Apparently a little bit of successful legal opposition has slowed down their nefarious scheme. Tim claims to have found evidence to undermine their patents, although the article is very short on details as to what this evidence might be..."
Duh. Obviously, they found it had been copied from SCO source.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Ideas should be Free.
The holding hostage of ideas is completely contrary to the basic natural rights that ideas have. The GPL is one way of fighting for the rights of software, but there really isn't a way to fight for the freedom of ideas.
In this century, the war to free ideas from patents will be waged as long and hard as the war a century ago against slavery. Information slavery is still slavery.
Ideas have rights.
then why not a generic commerce patent? Should the person that first started selling water be able to patent that? Should I be able to patent overclocking graphing calculators as a business?
Whatever happened to the 20% different dealy, whereby eBay isn't affected because its code (the way it works) is 20%(100%?) different from the subject of the patent? This is why software patents are so moronic, any re-implimentation works differently, or falls under the original copyright.
SCO's gone, let's all DoS the patent office next!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Yes, most of us think the economy needs a good kick while its down. Particularly our hardest hit segment of it, which has a greater reliance on intellectual property than any other field.
Neither the bank that holds my mortgage nor the grocery store where I shop give me anything based on how clever I am (or not).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
> I just want the abolishment of all "intellectual property" laws.
Do you have any idea how much money is invested in intellectual property? Either you have been living under a rock since about age five, or you are completely delusional.
Excesses like the DMCA may be corrected with future laws, but there is zero chance of ALL intellectual property laws being abolished.
The unofficial
All ideas supported by the /. community have just become law. Spammers have been sighted exploding in front of their computers. Every channel now runs porn 24/7.
In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
troll troll troll
IP laws allow things like the GPL to preserve freedoms in software. Likewise for other OSS licensing.
What usually happens with reexamination is that the patent office works with the party who received the patent, to narrow the scope of the claims. This unfortunately usually doesn't let one off the hook, as the claims can be narrowed, but still be focused on the infringement in question.
The other problem with reexamination is what happens to all the documentation submitted to the PTO to cause the reexamination to happen. If the patent is allowed to stand but the scope of the claims is narrowed, the new documents are added to the list of 'known prior art' in the patent. These documents can no longer be used to try to invalidate the patent once the reexamination process is complete -- as the PTO has in effect 'blessed' those documents, asserting that the patent is valid in spite of them.
So, reexamination is a double edged sword. You may end up with stronger patent, and all of your best ammunition voided.
IANAL, but I have fought a couple of patents. Won one and lost one.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I'm sure they don't. Seems to me that the people who want all intellectual property laws abolished are the ones who have no intellectual property of their own. Why should authors, programmers, musicians, architects, graphic designers, inventors have to give up their creations into the public domain without any compensation? I agree that sometimes these lawsuits go too far and I'd also like to see copyright terms shortened instead of extended but advocating "the abolishment of all intellectual property laws" is just silly, childish, and nonsensical. That wouldn't even work in a Communist country. What is the incentive for people to create if they can't expect compensation?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Thanks for standing up to the playgound bullies. It's good to hear someone from my hometown puting up a fight. It is also slightly refreshing to hear that the system is actually starting to work the way it should.
If anyone here is looking for an excellent source for fine chocolate, check out Tim Beere's "patent infringing" website, Debrand Fine Chocolate.
When you think about it, calling a company created solely to milk patents "PanIP" is pretty up-front in a sick kind of way. I probably would have gone with "Screw You Patents Inc." but perhaps that's taken. Maybe "Bendover Patents". Hmm.
This subscription to allow preview of the story is really paying off. Want attention? FP.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I for one would rather have no IP laws than the current IP laws. And my career depends on IP. You can always just keep stuff secret. Computer systems would likely be far more secure in an IP-less world, because proprietary software companies would have driven the widespread use of encryption and authentication.
Invention for invention's sake. You have forgotten that the world does not run on money alone, despite what "they" claim. It's like the starving artist; he could persue money like everyone else, but he does not, because he knows what he produces is, in the long run, much more valuable.
Or so I believe. All I know for certain is this: I certainly hope that when it comes time for me to make a career choice, potential benefit to society, and not money, drives me.
I wish we would get a similar result soon with SCO. Eventually the truth wins out (doesn't it?).
If you just had mass chaos following world war/whatever, intellectual property would not be among the first laws hammered out in stone. Killing and taking of (physical) goods would.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Me and my friend are both posting this, so I'll give you both.
...I can't think of anything else.
Me: What has intellectual property law ever done for us?
Friend: Well, there is the GPL. That's from intellectual property law.
Me: Well, obviously that. But BESIDES the GPL, what has it done?
Friend: Given artists a way to survive off of their art. I doubt we'd have as much if they had to work day jobs.
Me, Okay, well, besides GPL, and protection of artists, what has intellectual property ever done for us?
Friend: There's protection of useful inventions. Edison's lab pumped out tons of them that we still use today. That lab wouldn't have lasted if other people could have copied their ideas.
Me: Besides GPL, protection of artists, protection of useful inventions, what has IP law ever done?
Friend: Don't forget about the public access to patents that we use to make new innovations.
Me: So besides GPL, protection of artists, protection of useful inventions and public access to patents, what has IP law ever done for us?
Friend:
Me: IP LAW GO HOME!
IP LAW GO HOME!
IP LAW GO HOME!
(And on, and on, a few hundred times. Hopefully I got the conjugation right)
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
You wouldn't need it, because nobody could lock up anything.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Maybe that's because cleverness is highly overrated. You're not paid for it because it's not worth anything, and only the legal bubble created by centuries of lobbying makes anyone think otherwise.
It's been said over and over that good ideas are a dime a dozen (a fair wage, btw) - it's implementation that's hard. Without IP laws, companies would compete based on their ability to produce and serve. Doing that better naturally incorporates the development of new ideas. Frankly we're the sort of clever monkeys that can't *not* churn out ideas, so I have little fear that less IP law would stifle innovation. It might instead create a renewed interest in quality, which would be welcome.
Even the most breathtaking new idea isn't really new. Everything is based on the environment of ideas built from what came before. If even Isaac Newton (the egotistical snot) could admit that, surely the rest of us can take a step back from our hubris.
Ignore the grandparent, he's just unemployed, so he wants everything free. Unfortunately, he's too stupid to find warez.
'cause I'm just itching to steal all the great GPL'd code I play with in my off-hours, pack it into closed source commercial products and sell, sell, sell!
Which, of course, would be 100% legal if there were no intellectual property laws.
Old Chinese proverb: "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
Complete abolishment of "intellectual property" laws, that is.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I'm guessing that someone out there might know. Were there any BBS's in the late 80's early 90's that were conducting some sort of business through their systems that might invalidate some of these remote electronic commerce claims? I'll admit to not reading the patent claims, but I'd guess someone must have conducted some remote electronic business transactions before these guys came along. Anyone have any more info?
"Seems to me that the people who want all intellectual property laws abolished are the ones who have no intellectual property of their own. "
The talentless see that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and don't want to invest in seed, fertilizer, tools, or the work needed. But will sneak over the fence, during the middle of the night, and "borrow" the lawn.
"What is the incentive for people to create if they can't expect compensation?"
And yet no one sees a problem with "borrowing" movies, music and books.
Would there even be closed source commerical products? There are no copyright laws, so all protection would have to be in technology. And why should you care if the code is in something locked up--it's still available for open source projects.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Sounds more like those documents become "cursed" to me...
The patent outlines a system defined by gibberish that probably wouldn't be possible to build back in what - 1987 - and seems to be a typical attempt at obfuscating what the system actually does. As far as I can tell, it's a patent for the business process of selling something using a computer. In theory a cash register is prior art, but I get your double-edged sword point... ;o)
Personally, I think it should just be made an offence to reap money from patents if it's your only source of revenue - AFAIK, there's no way that any of these companies have in any way inflicted monetary losses on a company that came up with a neat idea and never implemented it. Too bad that others got there before you. Heck, do these guys expect everyone to read the patent office library before we start coding?
Also, there should also be issues regarding how you go after people who 'break' patent laws. They should be forced to start with the companies that chronologically broke the patent laws first. It should be all or nothing, you can't just selectively pick who you're going to go after, that just isn't right.
And why the delay? Surely some kind of explanation is in order. Patents from 16 years ago and a company from 5 years ago look awfully fishy.
Maybe someone should patent making money off patents by sueing people who break patents you never used and who are oblivious to your patent existing.
You ASSUME that there's only one way to "lock up" something. That is of course naive at best.
And would agree are more realistic are; reasonable "intellectual property" laws, less obivous and abusive patents, and a short but reasonable time frame for copy-rights, ip, etc.
Does anyone ever read the parents history, or think that maybe the troll paid to get FPs and karma whore?
As a side note, are there any slashdot suscribers that have negitive karma?
And what makes you think the economy will do better with IP laws than without?
You can always just keep stuff secret.
Right, until one of your employees sells your secret code to your competitors. In a world without IP, it'd probably be pretty hard to even call this a crime.
No, I call it trolling. Lets stop feeding them and if it hasn't happen already, lets give them karma and let them post at -1 like their fellow trolls.
Just wrote $100 check out of the petty cash account.
I'm sure there are other small business owners there who can help out...
you mean that the current communist countries held intellectual property laws at high regard?
and just for kicks: you can have (real)artists and research companies financed other ways than patent ransoming, it's done every day on contract and has much more sense than trying to guess where the industry is moving and patenting that. and they(research companies/artists) don't HAVE to do anything, they don't have to do research without getting paid or have to paint without getting paid(although some do, van gogh never sold one painting but it could be argued that he made a living out of it anyways), they can figure out a way for someone to pay them, they don't need to publish things either if they don't want to(the patent system is _supposed_ to encourage them to publish them for public to use, to license, but alas it doesn't quite work that way now). you think architechts design buildings 'just in case' and then publish them in newspapers instead of being contracted to do spesific design(the way most artists get paid too)? it could maybe be more accurate to say though that most slashdot readers would like to see laws regarding ip(copyright&patents, nothing else, it's just silly that it's my ip to make movies with fast cars) from last 100 years to be abolished.
and hey, it would work in a communist country if you could find one that was a real working communism(massive quarreling about that somebody should get resources to produce something even though his not the most efficient at producing it would have little point)! besides, staying in the not-so-good tries on communism.. you really think kalashnikov got fairly paid for his invention by western standards?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The concept of intellectual property was created so that people and companies who invest in the creation of new "things" could re-coup their development investment. This is true for writers, artists, inventors, R&D departments, etc. Some, such as trademark laws, were created to protect consumers from unscupulous people providing fraudulent imitations of recognized products (i.e., they are *VERY GOOD* for consumers).
Patents and copyrights were intended to provide an incentive for people to create new things. As an example, if I am an author, what is my incentive to continue to write if my works can be freely copied? Likewise, why should a pharmaceutical comapany work to discover, refine and test a new medecine if the moment it comes out anyone else can make their own copy of it without incurring the development costs?
Intellectual property laws are a necessity for modern society. Sadly, some people like SCO and PanIP have subverted those laws to try to gain from works they had nothing to do with. Luckily for the open source community, the ambulance chasers at SCO were stupid enough to go after somebody big instead of being bottom feeders like PanIP and just hitting little guys for licensing fees.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
So next they'll be suing ATM's and cash registers.
Wonder if this covers a toaster.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
I noticed on their page that they...
a.)Had gotten a judgement for 19000 against PanIP.
b.)Wanted donations to cover their expenses.
So these some 15 or 20 companies didn't feel like they benifited sufficiently from their investment? Granted a judgement does not a payment make and I'd be interested in donating (in spite of my poverty) but...... I think they'd see a lot of nickels and dimes (mine included )if there was more detailed info on whats been done (the court action and created jurisprudence if any) and whats going to be done (are they going to pursue the judgement and if so how?) with the PanIP defense fund.
Patents are only supposed to be issued for inventions NOT OBVIOUS to a skilled practitioner in the arts. When this principle is as widely abused as it is today, patents become a disincentive for creating new intellectual property. The obvious building blocks of invention become a minefield of patents.
I think that covers everyone.... oh yeah
- Spelling a word incorrectly, or using language in a manner inconsistent with that taught by linguistic authorities.
Licensing of these technologies will be $17.99 per offense, or however much it costs me to buy a remodeled Delorean with a Viper engine. Please make checks out to oneisnotprime.---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
I, for one, have been in a position where I would prefer not to have intellectual property rights, on the grounds that I've had to give them up to an employer without compensation. If the creations had been in the public domain at the outset, then I would have had as much right in them as anyone else, but when employment contracts dictate that all works created during the term of employment (including those created out of work hours, on your own equipment) belong to the company, then "intellectual property rights" become a rod for an author's back.
See the long version at The Trouble With Having Rights , or the slightly briefer and less formal version of the same theme at The Intellectual Slave .
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
"No. 5,794,207, for Priceline.com's buyer-driven, name-your-price E-commerce system"
Now IANAL but how do you patent the bartering system. Are you saying that the consumer has to pay royalties for neogeoating a better price with a company?
Someone needs to reign in the USPTO very quickly before this all begins to get out of hand. What are we to do when your legal system is overwhelmed with lawsuits that real crimes such as theft and murder begin to take a back seat to big business lawsuits making the lawyers millions of dollars.
Or what if it becomes so lucrative (Probably has already happened) that lawyers wont represent the defendants and instead concentrate on convincing companies with patents that other companies are violating their IP and that sueing is something they should do.
This all falls back to SCO (Just an Example) instead of producing a workable product they've relied on litigation to sustain the company. It's beyond me why any worker at SCO (Other than our current economic situation) would stay with a company that could find itself on the wrong end of a lawsuit. It's like the Enron situation has not driven it home to them yet.
But again I ask people to write their congressmen and women and all their other elected officials and point out the problems inherent with patenting many things the way it goes on.
Business is just that business. I can understand patenting a process to make a 5 dollar diamond processor and a special chemical forumlae that cures cancer it's in their interest to make money after investing millions in developing these products. But patenting things such as door to door salesmanship or basic E Commerce systems is just damaging to the E-Economy.
If anyone deserved any patents it's the designers of the coding systems such as Basic, C, C++, C#, PHP and myraid of other languages. Of which none were expressly written with 2 billion ways to write code that would say yes or no. If we continue this madness then someone might as well patent the 0 and the 1 while they're at it.
A lot of that going around these days, isn't there?
I'm wondering what implications all this top-secret evidence non-sense will have in the long run. Are we soon going to see court cases where all of the evidence is secret? "Releasing that evidence to the court would violate our IP rights. You will just have to take our word for it that things look bad for the defense with this evidence."
Should I be worried or will such a day never dawn? Lawyers care to comment?
Join Tor today!
Funny... you claim that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that it's implementation that's hard.... and then go for the complete revocation of IP.
Clue for you: IP is NOT ideas. It's the implementation of those ideas.
A book is not an "idea". It's the implementation of the idea.
Software is not an "idea" -- "some way of typing in text and having it editable" is much different to the implementation that is a wordprocessor.
Music is not an "idea" -- there's a big difference between having all of the notes, or having this great idea for a cool ballad, and actually putting one together.
A film is not an "idea" -- compare with a book. You might have an idea for a plot, but it's much different to the work involved in creating a finished product.
In other words, good ideas may be a dime a dozen. However, the difference between an idea and IP is the whole process of putting that idea to work. And that can be very long -- anything from weeks to months to years -- very tedious, and take a hell of a lot of work, creativity and energy to deliver on that.
But hey, I've got this great idea for a piece of mail software that ties everything in your addressbook to the time it arrives, and works out when you really should get around to emailing that person who you forgot to reply to.
Now... if this is an 'idea' 'based on the environment of ideas built from what came before', then please tell me where I can download my "idea" from, so I can make use of it?
I can't, you say? I'll have to write all the software behind it?
Then it's more than just an idea. It's a shitload of work.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
PanIP and SCO...
they just sound alike for some reason...
y'know what, you're so right, i mean ownership is theft, man, tear down that system! ~ahem, excuse my sarcasm, i despise stupid people, ~ ~this country needs two things; a law against being bloody stupid, and a law agains frivolous lawsuits~
Personally I would just prefer that a modicum of common sense is applied to the process (especially in the tech market).
The current PanIP style patents are a complete farce. It is the tech version of patenting slicing bread with a knife (sorry "a new method for parallel segmentation of baked goods using small angle steel alloy implements").
Q.
If there is an easy answer, you asked the wrong question...
Insert Signature Here
And didnt realy care or yet know about these things.
School tends to focus on the past and not our present so children are not prepared for the current world they're still thinking of cowboys and indians, Russian Czars and French Revolutions.
Com-pen-... Oh ! You mean *money* !
Oh, sure.
Why *would* they ?
Can you think of any reason ?
once they sue all the little guys into non-existance, they will start with the big dogs..i hope this PanIP place gets counter-sued out of existance shortly.
The first few times I saw this form filled posting it was funny. The second and third time it was amusing, the 10000th time it's not funny anymore, just f*cking annoying.
Please take this offtopic stuff somewhere else.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
They are just over applied. They are good because they enable the inventor of a revolutonary idea to make money, even if he doens't have the means himself to exploit it.
Like say you invent a process for making a room temperature superconductor. This is an idea worth a lot to a lot of people. You deserve to make money off of it, given that you did something truly innovative to come up with it (it isn't like people haven't been trying). But suppose to mass produce these thigns it will take a $4 billion fabrication plant. You can't afford this, you need backing. Well, if oyu don't have a patent, what is to stop a company from simply ripping you off?
Or how about if something is really cheap and easy to do? Say you doa whole bunch of research and figure out how to make a revolutionary new RF system that can broadcast 100s of miles off of just milliwatts of power. Better yet it uses cheap, normal components. Again, you deserve compensation, I mean this is a truly unique and revolutionary idea. So you make a little startup company selling these things. Motorola is of course intrested and threatened. So they buy a couple and take them apart. They see how easy it is and start selling their own. Given that they have a mroe efficient and larger system than you, and better distribution chains, they'll drive you out of bussiness.
See inventors do need an incentive to invent. We thrive off of these novel inventions and if they are just going to be taken away, there is no incentinve (we are a capatilism remember). Even big companies need it to a degree, like drug companies. It is NOT easy to find new drugs. It takes year of research, years more of testing and billions of dollars. There needs to be a way to make those billions back, and make a profit, or they just won't do it. If they made a druge and suddenly everyone else could make it for cheap, they wouldn't do it because they'd never make back that huge research cost. Everyone else could sell it for little profit since they had no up front cost, they couldn't.
Now granted, many companies abuse the patent system, however that shows flaws with the implementation, not the idea behind it.
If something has no development cost or cost to test etc., then the patent length is 1 year. You'd have to create a sliding scale up to a max of 20 years. (Should be 5 for software)
The patent office whould be the judge, I suppose, so they'd have to hire a pile of accountants to be able to investigate and dismiss inflated costs.
If software patents keep going like they are, the industry will grind to a halt where nobody will be able to build on the work of others. Copyright is a whole other ball game and is less broken than the patent system. - as long as copyrights don't become indefinite.
Re: SCO and PanIp... The second Bob Newhart show had an episode where Josee Ferrer's (rich old guy) character was describing the work of of a relative who made a living by suing people. He described the fellow's profession as being a "suer". (pronounced like sewer as in sewer pipe) :)
The salt tax was not a way of selling salt - it was a tax on people who sold it themselves. It's been the cause of many revolutions, such as in ancient China and modern France and India.
Perhaps you're thinking of salary, where Roman soldiers were paid in salt (which was essentially legal tender). That's also the origin of the phrase "worth one's salt".
I'm not aware of any historical salt tax that worked the way you describe (pay up or get no salt). Sounds like simple commerce, really. The poor have never had a good time of it.
right!
So here I go, I'm doing a shitload of work building my ecommerce site, and these clowns come along.. all they have is an idea! And they sue me, all my hard work down the toilet.
I don't support abolishing all so-called intellectual property laws, but if someone came along and offered to severely limit copyright laws, and completely ban software and business method patents, I would vote for it in an instant.
I don't want my hard work undermined by someone who has nothing but an idea (and lawyers).
Funny, isn't it, that the biggest opposition to software patents is from the IT industry?
PS: You can take someone else's hard work and add your own hard work to it, and solve your own problem for less cost than starting from scratch. The first guy solved his problem, now you solved your problem, and nobody had to work more than necessary. That sounds like a free market to me!
After all, they're shaking down the small fry who can't afford a lawsuit. If they had an iron clad claim they'd go after Amazon and other big fish; or at least mid sized companies instead of mom and pops. It's the lawyer equivalent of muggers preying on the elderly: not much money, but not much risk either.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It used to be that you had to submit a working model in order to get a patent for something. Now you have companies that don't produce anything trying to "think up the next big idea" simply so they can patent it. Not develop it. Just patent it and then start suing^Wlicensing.
The patent system has been broken for a long time. Patents stagnated the development of US airplanes until the government stepped in to break the log jam.
Most of your examples were copyrights and not patents. This is important as you can copyright your implementation of a software idea. The problem is when you patent the very concept of the implementation so it doesn't matter if someone else comes to the same solution independently.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I wonder what kind of punitive litigation, if any, would be possible against PanIP. Assuming their patent claims get discredited, could the plaintiffs convince a court to treat PanIP like modern-day pirates? The phrase "hoist them by their nards" sounds good to me.
But hey, I've got this great idea for a piece of mail software that ties everything in your addressbook to the time it arrives, and works out when you really should get around to emailing that person who you forgot to reply to.
Now... if this is an 'idea' 'based on the environment of ideas built from what came before', then please tell me where I can download my "idea" from, so I can make use of it?
Don't even bother. I've patented the ideas of "downloading mail". "storing addresses in an address book", and "recording times of arrivals". Even if you put these three things together to make some really cool software nobody thought of, it would still infringe on my patents.
And thats the parent's point. If I patent the basic idea of an email client, all developement in the email client world grinds to a halt, except for my say-so. And this is whats happening. A friend of mine made a start-up company about a year ago. He and some of his friends got together and thought "gee, lets do something cool" so they got together a list of 4 or 5 ideas for "cool new programs" that he had never seen and would have loved to have, and decided to get them checked out with a patent attourney. Over $10,000 in fees later, only one of those things on the list didn't have a patent covering it. Not that any of the other things exist, a year later, but hey, I'm sure someone's doing "a shitload of work" waiting for someone else to invent it so they can sue for their income. So these other 4 ideas? They'll sit there waiting as bait for the next stupid programmer to come along.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Intellectual property laws are a necessity for modern society. Take corn farmers for example. What incentive would farmers have to plant corn and sell it without IP laws? How would they recoup their initial R&D? Surely, there would be only one customer ever and that customer would buy just one solitary kernel. The buyer could merely throw the seed into the ground and with no work of his own (effortless copying), he would have access to a 100 copies of unlicensed derivative corn kernel IP in the matter of a few short months. In fact, the buyer now has complete access to the very same self-replicating nanotechnlogy that the farmer had. The buyer could then give away the corn IP to a friend or neighbor or (gasp!) even try to sell it for a profit. The ease of copying is the major problem with corn and encryption methods haven't been sucessful so far. Agriculture is one of the major industry in this country and we'd all hate to see it destroyed because of a handful of out-of-control corn pirates. So surely you can see there is no way farmers would even consider growing corn until we have strong government enforced monolopolies in corn.
I think you can leave the GPL out of the discussion, since it ceases to be necessary if IP laws are gone.
Artists don't have any God-given right to support themselves from art. But that's not important because they can just say "I won't paint for free". They still have freedom to sell their labor for money. So you can remove "protection of artists" from the list (copyright law doesn't protect the artists anyway, just their WORKS).
Protection of useful inventions: well, you've got something there. I wouldn't want to see all patents taken out of the system. Just the ones that seem to cause a lot of problems and stifle innovation. Like software and business method patents.
Sometimes I think slashdot is like cable TV talk shows: nobody seems to understand a nuanced argument.. just back and forth from extreme to extreme.
Before IP was recognized as, well, intellectual property, how did you sell it? We make things property to make them easier to alienate - to sell, or trade away.
Compare a trade secret with a patent - you can sell a license to use a patent to anyone and only have to worry about getting a fair price. Sell access to one of your trade secrets and you need to do everything short of DNA testing on the purchaser, because if they deliberately or negligently let those secrets out into the wild, you're screwed. As we all know, security through obscurity is a really bad idea. By creating legal protections for clever ideas, those ideas can be more widely and more freely traded.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
"You can always just keep stuff secret."
How can I publish my book and keep it secret? How could I sell even one copy for $15 when you could print off copies in your garage and sell them for $2?
First of all I think you need to get away from the "intellectual property" idea. The phrase is nothing more than an invention. The three concepts that the phrase encompasses are Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents.
The first - Trademarks - is typically the least attacked of the three. The theory of trademarks makes sense. I make my own ice cream and if I wanted to sell it I couldn't call it Breyers because it would deceive the customer. The only time trademarks get troublesome is when a company tries to expand their reach of their patents. The courts have done a pretty good job of keeping this under control, though.
Copyrights are only controversial because they have been stretched and manipulated so many times to almost make them perpetual. I think a lot of people would agree that compensating an author, musician, etc. for years worth of work is a bad thing. The real problem comes when money grubbing corporations take over and the real artists end up with only a small percentage.
Finally, patents are the new whipping boy. Business process patents that cover apparently common sense ideas and the companies who use them as their primary source of income are ridiculous but somewhere in the idea of patents is some value. I am not a big fan of the segway but something like that is definitely patentable. The only other defense of patents is that they are at least finite.
Having said all that. If you eliminate IP you would throw this country into a depression like none it has ever seen. I know the company I work for (~100,000 employees) would not exist without it and that goes for most companies. Those movies you enjoy? Gone. That book you are reading? Maybe not gone but not widely distributed. That TV show you are watching? Well imagine it more like the shows you see on public access.
Money is makes this world go round. No one has been able to create a perfect Communist society. You know why? Because that's what most people want.
Why should authors, programmers, musicians, architects, graphic designers, inventors have to give up their creations into the public domain without any compensation?
For the same reason they shouldn't be able to scoop your brains out of your head because it contains their tune you're humming.
What is the incentive for people to create if they can't expect compensation?
Ok, if you argument is that without intellectual property laws there would be no creation, explain the following:
Well...
Clue for you: IP is NOT ideas. It's the implementation of those ideas.
:-)
Well, that's the way it's SUPPOSED to work, yeah. Unfortunately, the USPTO has this real bad habit of granting patents for what amount to "ideas."
When the USPTO stops granting bullshit software patents for trivial ideas, and stupid ass "business process" patents, a BIG chunk of the debate over IP will go away.
Music downloading will still be controversial, but I'm not touching that...
GPL!=public domain, which would pretty much be the result if there wasn't any IP law. If people didn't care if others used their works in closed-source venues, then they would use less restrictive licenses like BSD-style. A copyleft is a form of copyright, not the absence of it.
Practically, companies could keep their code secret using NDAs and keeping close track of where they keep it in order to circumvent open sourcing their code if it didn't exist.
Artists don't have any God-given right to support themselves, it's true, but I wouldn't want to wait another 30 years because the lady who wrote Harry Potter gets no royalties or merchandising rights and has to live mostly off of her job at McDonalds and the meager fee she gets paid so that one printing company gets the stuff out there before the second one has time to copy it. We need a system in place that gives successful (as in, lots of people want to read/see their work) artists the ability to control the distribution of their works.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Patenting the idea of selling stuff over the internet seems like the modern version of patenting the idea of a mail order catalog. I wonder if anyone ever patented this idea, and if so, was able to make money off of the patent. It seems like an absurd thing to be able to patent, but who knows..
Vote for Pedro
Please, be careful as you're blending a number of ideas/legal constructs together under one banner when they shouldn't be.
"Protecting artists" falls under copyright. (Though there's that "work for hire" editing theft that happened late one night in DC.)
GPL also falls under copyright.
"Encouraging inventions" falls under patent. Looking at the history of patents hasn't shown a good track record for encouraging inventions. Rather we've seen stagnation in most areas until the government or a company broke the log jam.
Public access/disclosure of patented information is of little (and now even less benefit) as most people cannot levarage this information. Now that you have process patents there isn't really anything to disclose.
So, I think I'll join in a slightly different chant:
Patents go home! Copyrights go back to the creators!
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Patents are a tough subject, but I think abolishment of all of them would be better for the world than what's currently going on.
I think abolishing software patents is a necessity. It's just math.
Just because you want to do something that's not been done before you think you deserve an artificial monopoly on that particular widget? That's what copyright's for!
GPL!=public domain, which would pretty much be the result if there wasn't any IP law. If people didn't care if others used their works in closed-source venues, then they would use less restrictive licenses like BSD-style. A copyleft is a form of copyright, not the absence of it.
Jesus, some people should really know more about what they're talking about before they go putting their foot in their mouth... The parent post spelled it out for you and you still don't get it.
Here it is plain as day, and if you still don't get it, just keep quiet in the future: If there were no copyright laws, there would be no need for the GPL. The GPL exists as a slap-in-the-face to copyright. Nothing would make the creator of the GPL (Stallman) happier than the abolishment of copyright.
Understand it now, genius? Try reading the GPL and history behind it sometime. To those who do understand why the GPL exists, you just look like a damn fool.
Why do you think the GPL has to do with YOUR rights? It is completely and totally a document that protects the rights of the SOFTWARE.
If you want a license that protects YOUR RIGHTS, stick with BSD and copycats.
The freedom of software can be protected through laws just as freedom of speech and protection of equal rights are protected under the law.
Bullshit. That is the flawed logic behind intellectual property. People will make things, they don't need the promise of a monopoly on their creations. People with musical talent will write songs. it's in their blood. Thor the caveman didn't need the promise of a monopoly to encourage him to invent the wheel. it's bullshit, plain and simple. intellectual property is a crime against humanity and the sole foundation of it - that people won't create things without it - is complete bs.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Do you honestly believe that a memory of a song is the same as the actual song?
This is my
I'm perfectly happy to plunk down $20 for a leatherbound Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, especailly when I know that some of that money is going to the author.
But really, don't sell just one copy. Secure an order for a lot of them then release it.
For most intents and purposes, yes, though people's memories aren't 100% error free.
For someone who supposedly hates copyrights, he certainly goes out of the way to point out his own. The first lines of the GPL are:
The
Artists don't have any God-given right to support themselves, it's true, but I wouldn't want to wait another 30 years because the lady who wrote Harry Potter gets no royalties or merchandising rights and has to live mostly off of her job at McDonalds and the meager fee she gets paid so that one printing company gets the stuff out there before the second one has time to copy it. We need a system in place that gives successful (as in, lots of people want to read/see their work) artists the ability to control the distribution of their works.
You dumb fuck. We do not need a system where the artists control distribution. If they don't want people distributing their works, then don't fucking release them.
You want a fair system? How about this: Release the first few chapters of Harry Potter, estimate the time spent on the entire book (1000 hours), figure a fair $25/hour for sitting around doing something you enjoy, and tell the public that for $25,000 you'll release the entire book. It doesn't matter how you get the $25,000, it just matters that you get fairly compensated for your time.
Quit trying to count eyeballs and put shackles on your content. Just accept a fair compenstation for you time. Why the fuck should someone make $10 million dollars off a fucking book that took 1000 hours to write and has no other cost. For chrissake, at least you got to do something fun that you enjoy, instead of slaving away at McDonalds.
It wouldn't be hard at all for artists of all types to move to a model where they got paid a fair amount for their work: The problem is the lottery mentality of these people, where they work for nothing for 30 years in the hopes that eventually they'll be the ones to hit the jackpot. And of course the shithead IP-fanatic socially-crippling morons like yourself who support this mentality...
There are probably hundreds of popular songs that I could sing or perform perfectly. If I did that in front of an audience, the copyright holders could sue me. So yes, it actually is.
For someone who supposedly hates copyrights, he certainly goes out of the way to point out his own. The first lines of the GPL are:...
Like I said, if you don't know what you're talking about, then shut the fuck up. It's not my job to do your research for you and post the answers here. It's just my job to let you know you're making a fool of yourself.
Go do your homework and come back when you get a clue.
So tell me? What did Stallman do to pay the rent and eat before he became a MacArthur fellow?
Dame Rumor says he implemented. I recall hearing back in '94-'96 or so that he commanded a very hefty hourly rate for consulting, mostly extending emacs and the like for companies that wanted useful tools.
He also sold hardcopy manuals for emacs - first printer output, then paperback.
They were actually a hardcopy of the softcopy manual that was packaged in the distribution. But having a hardcopy was convenient, and a lot of emacs users didn't have a printer and/or had to pay big per-page fees for output in those days - and/or wanted to support Stallman and were willing to contrubte a few bucks.
I think I actually bought one from him in those days. But I didn't end up using emacs, due to RAM limitations on my machines up through the time that I had vi hardwired in my nervous system's firmware. So if I did get one "It's Filed" - in the Ted Nelson sense of buried in the midden. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Now... I've done my homework... lemme see yours. So far, all I've heard is some ignornant swearing and blustering from an AC.
The
first post, biatches
If they are so negligent in their duties (are they?) can't we start some kind of class action lawsuit against them?
Man, some people just can't be bothered to do any real research on their own...
Here you go Einstein, straight for the horses mouth: Reevaluating copyright, by Richard Stallman (1996).
Since your total lack of understanding of the motivation behind the GPL indicates that you're part of the attention-challenged MTV generation, I'll spare you the difficulty of reading such a lengthy article and just highlight the relevant bits below. In the future, try to do two things: (1) don't rely on others to do your research for you, and (2) don't argue with those better educated than yourself.
From the article:The copyright system developed along with the printing press. In the age of the printing press, it was unfeasible for an ordinary reader to copy a book. Copying a book required a printing press, and ordinary readers did not have one. What's more, copying in this way was absurdly expensive unless many copies were made--which means, in effect, that only a publisher could copy a book economically.
So when the public traded to publishers the freedom to copy books, they were selling something which they *could not use*. Trading something you cannot use for something useful and helpful is always good deal. Therefore, copyright was uncontroversial in the age of the printing press, precisely because it did not restrict anything the reading public might commonly do.
But the age of the printing press is gradually ending. The xerox machine and the audio and video tape began the change; digital information technology brings it to fruition. These advances make it possible for ordinary people, not just publishers with specialized equipment, to copy. And they do!
Once copying is a useful and practical activity for ordinary people, they are no longer so willing to give up the freedom to do it. They want to keep this freedom and exercise it instead of trading it away. The copyright bargain that we have is no longer a good deal for the public, and it is time to revise it--time for the law to recognize the public benefit that comes from making and sharing copies.
Thor the caveman didn't need the promise of a monopoly to encourage him to invent the wheel.
In a way monopoly was exactly the reason the wheel got invented. All of a sudden Thor has a massive edge over his fellow cave people, leading him to become dominant until someone else copies the idea. When you think about it, the main driving force for technological change is competition, whether its for resources or for more esoteric things such as noteriety or fame.
Apparently you've never produced a creative work. Either that or you're one of those few people whose creative process can stand such organization.
Books aren't well produced when done by the hour, or under the pressures of time or wages. They're done well when the artists want to do them. You may want to live in a world where fiction is paid for and controlled hour-by-hour by the companies that buy the books, but I don't. I get enough of that out of movies.
Want to start a company that uses that mentality and see what kind of quality you can produce and if it can make money? You can change my mind and the world if you can get it to work! Otherwise, you're just going to go along with all of us who have produced creative works of our own or who follow those who do.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Patents were the idea of protecting a persons inventon so they could shop it around and sell it to a company for mass production.
Here is the problem. Software is already protected by copyrights the "inventions" of software are mearly an elegent solution to a problem and not the byproduct of research or hard work as much as the byproduct of a good nights sleep and waking up with a "Hay I got an idea"
Most inventions start with an idea but they end with labor and resorces. Software starts with an idea and ends with an idea only temporarly taking the form of 4 lines of code.
Then you have business method patents. The only thing more pathetic than a business protecting it's method of business as it's own intelectual property is a kid who identifys himself by a catch phrase and gets pissed when someone else uses the same combonation of words.
Back to classic inventions. The hard, fast and real devices. The lightbulb is an invention. It took research to figure out how to do it. The DC power plant is an invention. The AC power plant is annother invention. The AC power grid. Etc.
The reason for submitting a working device to the patent office is becouse the inventer had done real science. A practical aplication form of science but science never the less.
Todays true inventions are protected by trade secrets and non-discolsure agreements. Thies are far more powerful than patents.
Todays patents are much thess than great inventions but random trinketts. The patent system needs more than just an overhall. It needs a vacation.
I don't actually exist.
Seems rather silly that a now-abandoned patent claim from more than a decade earlier can be an acceptable foundation for a whole chain of dubious patent claims, culminating in an actual (though sketchy, of course) grant of patent in 1996. Looks like the continuation of pending patents a strong business method, and might thus itself be patentable.
Any thoughts? Maybe IBM holds a patent that covers the application of this flavour of manipulation of the US Patent Office as a business method? Maybe they will countersue when PanIP knocks on their door?
Did you read my post? I gave you an example of why the GPL is needed. I'll be more explicit so that you won't skip over the example like you did the last time I wrote it.
Consider that someone may see some GPL'ed code they like and wants to use it, so they do. They hire engineers and make them all sign non-disclosure agreements for all code they write, and these engineers modify it into a product they want to sell.
They sell the finished product, and keep the source under a tight lid, both legally (through NDA's) and physically, by making sure that no one can take any code home or get it out of the office. Of course, if it was leaked, then it would be available, but no one would do that because they are bound not to and are unable to.
What have they done? They've made free code into non-free code. The GPL failed because there was no GPL.
Which is more foolish, anonymous coward, one who does not hold your views and has a reason for it, or one who doesn't read very well before posting?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Apparently you've never produced a creative work. Either that or you're one of those few people whose creative process can stand such organization.
Which is why you estimate. Suppose you spent two years writing the book. What is a fair salary for sitting on your ass for two years doing nothing but writing fantasy novels on a typewriter? How about $50,000? Sounds pretty fair to me. Both the pay and the work beats the hell out of flipping burgers. There's no need to track hours, just accept a fair compensation for your time.
Seriously, artists need to just stop with this lottery mentality. Accept that your line of work is really, really sweet compared to most peoples, ask the public to give you a fair compensation, and stop trying to count fucking eyeballs.
And for the record, virtually all of my income is the result of a creative process. I write custom (GPL'd) software for a web design company, and I love my job. I work 12+ hours a day from home, and no-one tells me what to do. I have complete freedom, totally unstructured, and write code that I enjoy writing (I was writing it before it was being used in a commercial environment). It just happens to be very useful code in the hands of the right people, so they basically just pay me a salary and leave me alone. So, yes Virginia, you can get paid to sit around doing something creative that you enjoy without relying on draconian copyright laws.
Did you read my post? I gave you an example of why the GPL is needed. I'll be more explicit so that you won't skip over the example like you did the last time I wrote it...
Which is more foolish, anonymous coward, one who does not hold your views and has a reason for it, or one who doesn't read very well before posting?
You are the fool. You are creating silly hypothetical situations that would rarely even exist were it not for copyright laws, and presenting them as though they are the raison d'etre for the GPL. Read the reply to the other dumbass below to see what Stallman thinks of copyright law (note: he wrote the GPL), and do a little online research into the motivation behind the GPL before trying to twist it to support IP laws. You are just being an ass.
With all the doomsday projectors and scaremongerers claiming Armageddong, if IP laws are loosened or even just gotten rid of, I just think of chicken little and sky falling story. I really, really, have hard time believing individuals and companies would somehow just stop innovating, inventing and creating. There would no doubt be increase in things that are now labelled as copyright (and patent) violations, but that does not automatically equate to huge harm. It would be bad for some; even cases where things would be unfair. But as likely there would be more progress, as biggest of corporations would have less weaponry against their smaller nimbler competitors.
I wonder how come Taiwan's economy has been doing fairly well, what with that country's apparent disregard of many international IP laws? And before answering that question, keep in mind that nowadays taiwan-based companies are major innovatros in all kinds of electronics, not just copycats some people still label them.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
It's hardly a coincidence that of major "intellectual property" related tools (patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets), patents are the ones most commonly considered problematic. The second one in the list, copyrights, are mostly frowned upon because of extensive coverage period (due to Mickey Mouse law). The unpopularity of patents generally really boils down to the fact that most talented people can easily come up with ideas, but also understand difficulties in implementation. And these garbage patents -- which are the tip of the iceberg -- outline the fundamental incompatibility between TEMPORARY monopoly for PRODUCTION of CONCRETE artifacts (implementation) and current reality.
And finally, regarding your "IP is NOT ideas"; the vague concept of "intellectual property" is, little more than artificial concept with which some entities try to create and enforce unnatural "scarcity" of abstract things like ideas. So one could as well say "IP is NOT ideas, IP is nothing".
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Okay, I'm not really trying to say that this is a hoax or anything. It's just... the name Pangea Intellectual Properties is difficult to believe. I mean that's the kind of name the antagonist would have in a movie about IP litigation. Basically, they're saying, right there in their name,
"ALL YOUR IP ARE BELONG TO US!"
Furry cows moo and decompress.
You're wrong.
Patents are only supposed to be issued for inventions that are not obvious to one of
--ORDINARY SKILL--
--IN THE ART TO WHICH THE INVENTION PERTAINS--
--AT THE TIME THE INVENTION WAS MADE--.
The phrases highlighted above show how the law is different from the assertion you made. Although the statement is similar to yours, the differences CANNOT be overlooked.
One of the consequences of these differences is that some sort of proof of obviousness is required, not just someone's assertion today that the invention is obvious. In other words, you can't just look at an invention and conclude that it is obvious just because you understand the principles behind the invention well enough to have come up with it if only someone had given you the right problem to solve.
By the way, have you noticed that Slashdot "inventors" are notorious for being completely unable to invent ANYTHING that ISN'T obvious? Just look through all the messages claiming such inventive gems as breathing oxygen and using the alphabet.
You are creating silly hypothetical situations that would rarely even exist were it not for copyright laws,
Don't you mean silly hypothetical situations that would only exist if there weren't copywrite laws, which is the matter we're addressing?
Anyway, it's not really hypothetical. There are areas of IP that aren't protected by laws, such as, for example, processes for creating everything that has a particular smell or a particular taste. While this can be protected, it can't be protected well enough to keep someone from making a big change to the process which allows them to produce exactly the same smell or taste but with a new process. In other words, patents that cover things that are used to create smells or tastes are almost worthless (and by the way, smells and tastes themselves cannot be patented).
Pretty much all of these processes, therefore, are controlled using the situation I mentioned - NDAs and the inability to take your work home.
Of course such a situation doesn't exist as much in the software industry because software can be protected by copyright law right now, and the best we can do is speculate that since it almost exclusively the M.O. in other industries that there is a very good chance that it will happen if we lose all intellectual property rights in the software industry.
And, by the way, I have read Stallman's writings about the founding of the free software foundation. He's against non-free software; he wants all software to be freely available with source and executables, for which I believe I just demonstrated a case that this won't happen without copyrights. I have never seen anything by him that said, "I wish that there weren't any copyrights" though I have seen "all software should be free, and no one should be allowed to make it non-free" But that's immaterial, isn't it? Authors who put their work under GPL are looking for a guarantee that whenever their work is embellished and given away, the source code will go with it. With no IP, this doesn't have to happen.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Actually, I like the academic system quite well. Academics are not paid for creating Intellectual Property for their institutions. Rather, they are funded to produce intellectual advancement for all of society. Sure, there's still a monetary reward, but there is not really any intellectual property created unless property refers to property of humanity.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Is it this clear cut? Can't you still attempt to have a court overturn a patent, by (in effect) challenging the Patent Office's ruling about the novelness and non-obvious of the invention? Surely any prior art may be relevant to this, whether "known" to the PTO or not?
Why can't tastes and smells be trademarked? Colors and sounds can.
Without copyright and patent law, reverse engineering and redistribution can make any software Free. Keeping software proprietary would no longer be worth much effort.
Ya..
Ok... Your delusional that is clear. Look IP law is fine for commercial. But all Patents, Copyrights and so forth should not apply to personal non-profit. Simple as that. Soon as money or taking credit for something not yours comes into play then IP should mean something but all the laws should be lifted for when money is not involved. Period. Making it illegal to share ideas is the thing that stifles innovation. This is why the current lawmakers and judges consider these factors closely when looking at cases in this regard. If no one profits or no one suffers a loss of profit, then it should not be a problem.
A patent on Internet shopping was clearly patented because no one else bothered to do it. It does not follow regulations on patents. Can't believe that a patent board thought this idea was new. The idea itself is not new at all. I know of several online shopping systems which have were created prior to the web.
People seem to forget the BBS order doors from the early 90's predate this patent. The US patent office is clearly brain dead.
A link to some of the old BBS order doors.
http://archives.thebbs.org/ra77c.htm
The copyright bargain that we have is no longer a good deal for the public, and it is time to revise it
I'm still humored that you can make grandiose personal attacks and come off so high and mighty, but you can't be bothered to read what you post.
I submit to you that "revise" does not mean the same as "repeal". Someone who claims to be so smart (yet is too insecure to post non-AC) should know the difference between those words.
You have exaggerated his stance quite a bit, when his own words can't even back you up. I agree that current copyright law needs a serious overhaul. However, that's a far cry from your presumption that he'd be pleased as punch if it just went away altogether. His own actions and words just don't agree with you.
It was a nice try though. You are so CUTE when you are arrogant!
The
Circular logic. You don't actually know Thor used the wheel to compete - s/he may have immediately shared it. Given that stone age society would have had to be a lot more communitarian for the people to even survive, that's far more likely.
Competition as a social good is a very recent invention. If you're going to imagine how things may have been in the past, start by temporarily throwing out that assumption.
> Do you have any idea how much money is invested in intellectual property?
No, and I don't care. Why should people have to suffer because there are so many companies built on such a flawless business model. Copyright, I can see. Software patents, no. Software patents stop someone from coming up with the idea independently.
I coded a Commodore 64 demo. That's 'intellectual property'.
Money is makes this world go round. No one has been able to create a perfect Communist society. You know why? Because that's what most people want.
_ __ _
...well... very screwed up. Because sooner or later people will refuse to pay about mystic 'intelectual property' (and they already do so). It's just a way doing things - "we got a laws to get money for nothing and we are doing this. Aren't we good?"
;))
_______________________________________________
I won't agree with you on this. It could be offtopic, but money is NOT what I work for (personally). I work to earn something I can exchange with food, music, tickets to cinema, etc. If I have it enough, I'm happy (and believe me, you don't need SO much). AND I believe that is target for us all in our lifes - be happy and make others happy.
So, when we return to this, if you got such problems that without IP there won't be many companies then I can say US economical politics are
So what you gonna do? Because someone wants to eat, drive with a Ferrari, and getting money for 'nothing' (aka stupid patent claims) I will have to pay to him? No way. Of coarse, I will pay
I agree on this that 'IP' is just copyrights/trademarks (some special kind of copyright, in my mind) and that's all. And we already have a very poolished copyright laws all over the world for artists, companies, etc. to extract revenue from their creations. Patents puts too much trust on human factor - and this factor usually screw everything up, because 'greed is rulling today's world'. I personally don't see much use of them in the software world. In real life creations - yes, but Patent Office must be something where you can't go simply with your broad claims about 'something'. You have to have very concrete details what do you really want to protect.
Oh, and of coarse - you have to PROVE that is your creation. I think this step is overall missed in Patent issues.
(sorry about my bad English sometimes - but it's improving with every atempt (even with stupid one
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I have never seen anything by [Stallman] that said, "I wish that there weren't any copyrights"
God bless, are you trolling or what? I posted the friggin' link AND pasted the relevant text into a comment:
READ THISYou idiots again spoofing off about how bad patents are.
if it weren't for patents, you wouldn't be able to wank off with that KY jelly that is patented.
grow up children!
from your friendly patent attorney
"Why should authors, programmers, musicians, architects, graphic designers, inventors have to give up their creations into the public domain without any compensation?"
They shouldn't. But likewise agencies that may or may not have the best interests in the producers at heart shouldn't be allowed to apply chilling effects to stifle competition, which is what is currently happening.
Patenting software is ludicrous simply because although there are multiple ways of doing things, it all boils down to one simple process. Have you read a patent? They're getting more general and fuzzier by the day, meaning we're heading for a time where everything will be locked down in ownership by someone else.
This _destroys_ competition.
BTW, The abolition of IP was flamebait. Personally I'd want it overhauled into demonstrable invention with a caveat that software can't be patented.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I agree with you entirely, but that's very different to the abolition of IP.
IP laws are rapidly getting way out of control, but I think limitted IP - with shorter copyright terms before material passes to the public domain, and patents for genuine invention are a Good Thing[tm].
Much easier to go after Amazon when you have set precedent in 50 other lawsuits against small companies that couldn't afford to defend themselves...
"Heck, do these guys expect everyone to read the patent office library before we start coding?"
Reading patents is dangerous buisness. For pretty much any computer program a programmer is ever likely to write he is very likely to violate one or more patents in the process. The way the system is set up today it's close to impossible to avoid it, with all the overbroad and/or trivial patents granted.
If you read and know about the patents you are engaging in willful violation and you can be liable for larger damages than if you violated a patent inadvertantly. You're better off not knowing.
There's no such thing as "intellectual property".
There's copyrights and patents.
Copyrights are fine; they're just too long. After all, what benefit is there to society when there's still a copyright on Elvis's work? What benefit is there to Elvis?
Patents are fine, but not on software, and not on business processes. And certainly not on ideas.
"But", you whine, "How will people make money"?
Like they always did, through better implementations. But saying "I thought of the idea of selling things using electricity" is hardly new, or novel, or even patentable. Yet there is a patent on it.
This kind of nonsense is destroying the software business in the US.
Claimed Evidence without any kind of support of "proof"... this "article" means nothing. At this moment in time this is almost exactly like the nefarious SCO case ... pointless.
I am trying to understand what you are saying. You are saying that IP is fine for commercial use but individuals who don't intend to sell the book shouldn't be protected? So you are saying that if I write a book and distribute it freely over the internet you can take that book and put it under your name and sell it commercially? That doesn't seem very fair.
No one is saying that sharing should be illegal. I am just saying that I should be rewarded for creating a truly original unique work that takes me years to create. Some authors spend years researching and writing a book. They travel around the world, they spend hours in libraries, the interview dozens of people all to bring you something to read on the train or bus home. Do they not deserve to sell their work?
I agree that the patent system needs work but I also recognize that they are severely understaffed and I don't see anybody increasing their budget in the years to come. That means it is up to the court system to invalidate these patents.
I would also like to know what of my original post was "delusional" since it was merely a statement of mostly facts.
Besides your nitpicking (money is the thing that you exchange for that food and tickets) you are clearly not aware of what goes into creating a creative work. Do you think that books just write themselves or movies just appear on the screen? Copyrights are not money for nothing. They are money rewarding somebody for spending a large amount of time creating something for somebody else to enjoy. As someone who is both a musician and an author on the site I can tell you that creative pursuits can be just as much work as anything else. Some of my favorite novels are historical fiction. Do you know how much work goes into something like that?
If you take away IP protection you actually destroy innovation and sharing. Let's say I develop a personal transporter ala Star Trek. Now if I have IP protection I can sell that technology to the world and eventually the patents will run out and everybody can have an affordable transporter. If I don't have protection then maybe I will make a few for my close friends but I am going to keep it very close because once it gets out anybody can build one and all my work is for nothing.
Does that make sense? It is hard to express everything in these damn little boxes. I should just write an article and be done with it.
if Issac Newton had been able to patent his Gravity Law?
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
These documents can no longer be used to try to invalidate the patent once the reexamination process is complete
Not so with the new changes to the reexamination statutes
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the appeals court that holds exclusive jurisdiction over appeals involving patents, has held that "reexamination as enacted was carefully limited to new prior art, that is, 'new information about preexisting technology which may have escaped review at the time of the initial reexamination of the patent application.'"A reexamination thus could not be initiated on the grounds that the PTO ignored or mistakenly examined a previously cited reference.
H.R. 2215 now broadens the scope of prior art considered in a reexamination, including already cited and considered references and essentially lifting the limitations imposed by the Federal Circuit.
H.R. 2215 states, in relevant part, "The existence of a substantial new question of patentability is notprecluded by the fact that a patent or printed publication was previously cited by or to the Office or considered by the Office". Therefore, according to H.R. 2215, the PTO may consider any patent or printed publication that the PTO already considered during the patent application process. Even if
already examined, the prior art reference may raise a substantial new question of patentability and thus serve as an independent basis for initiating a reexamination.
Patent reexamination can be used as an alternative to litigation when challenging the validity of a patent.
H.R. 2215 affords the PTO greater flexibility to review prior art references in reassessing patent validity. The capability to use already cited references gives a reexamination requester a prime opportunity to successfully attack a patent by using PTO procedures rather than resorting to litigation, thereby reducing the expenses of both the reexamination requester and the patent owner.
This change in the reexamination standard carries important implications for patentees that have filed a blizzard of prior art references, counting on the inability of the patent examiner to identify anticipatory prior art lurking in the midst of large numbers of irrelevant citations, given the limited time available to examine the patent application.
Another change in reexamination procedures enables the direct appeal to the Federal Circuit of a reexamination proceeding decision by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. The current Patent Act states that a third-party requester in an inter partes reexamination proceeding may appeal the final decision of the administrative patent judge to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. Third-party requesters thus have had no opportunity
to seek judicial review of that administrative decision. H.R. 2215 grants the right to appeal to the Federal Circuit not only the patent owner, but also to a thirdparty requester in an inter partes reexamination proceeding. According to H.R. 2215, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences will no longer stand as the final recourse for third-party requesters because the Federal Circuit will serve as a venue where a third-party requester may appeal, or be a party to an appeal of, a final decision of patentability.
Consequently, the procedure for reviewing PTO actions now affords all participants the option of judicial review before a federal appeals court.
In the past, the inability of third-party requesters to secure Federal Circuit review has discouraged the filing of inter partes reexamination requests. A company that previously confronted two options--
taking an expensive license on a patent of dubious validity or filing a declaratory judgment action to challenge the validity of a patent--now can choose the less expensive alternative of seeking review by the Federal Circuit of a PTO reexamination.
SO the system has been improved. PanIP has been stopped in their tracks with no huge discovery/litigation costs incurred. This is a significant victory in the battle against dubious IP campaigns.
Gee whiz, it might just be possible to work within the system.
Use it all you like. I hereby declare it to be in the public domain.
I stand by my comment. If you read that article, you'll notice he's not against copyright law in general. He's against the CERTAIN copyright laws that prohibit the copying of works. He'd like to ensure that people always have the right to copy works, and that this can't be taken away.
To make that true requires copyright law.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
How is this communism? It's libertarianism if anything. Why not call it atheistic while you're at it?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Good example. Didn't abit put out press material on a board that basically said "fuck you RIAA" (something about encrypting hard drives)?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
"Intellectual property"!=property. I won't go over this again--if you don't get it you're hopeless. Oh, and libertarianism #2 is just what the abolishment of IP is about. Unrestricted liberty of thought.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Thank you.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
"intellectual property"!=property.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I just started a "Video game programming" class at the local community college (Palomar College in San Marcos, CA). One of the annecdotes Ed Magnin (the proff) mentioned to us went something like this:
Way back in the Apple][ days (not ||) Ed was quite the Apple expert. Apparently the local San Diego apple user's group got quite a few visits from Steve & Steve (Jobs & Woz). Anyway, Ed decided to go into making software, and created a fairly significant BBS to sell his stuff. People gave their credit card number on line, and downloaded their software. Ed would then print out the credit card numbers from his dB and take them down to his bank.
He's been called into a number of patent cases to demonstrate prior art. The hostile company would then drop their case and move on to their next victim. It's quite possible that he was talking about these PanIP guys. Sounds sleazy enough.
Fooz Meister
You cannot own an idea. You can own a banana. If you write a song, someone could write the same song independently of you. If you have a banana, nobody can have that banana independently of you.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
So you are saying Thor sued everyone else who copied his wheel idea? Dooming all his friends and neighbors into carrying their goods in baskets on their heads? No way. Anyone who saw Thor's neato spinning travel-moving invention made one for themselves, without worrying about Thor suing them for patent infringement. Humanity propsered... until the USA's patent and copyright laws came into the picture a few hundred thousand years later. Now we have patented chia pets and justin timberlake albums. Thor is rolling around in his grave.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Since there were no infringement laws, thor had no choice but to share. Humanity benefitted, as it should from all inventions. The inventor deserves nothing more than credit and a nice pat on the back. Not money. Not a monopoly.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Copyright was created as an entitlement by the King for friends and allies. Later, when the United States formed, it was changed into an incentive for people to create new works which could, after a limited period of time, be freely and openly copied and distributed.
The idea was that more works would be created with this incentive than without. And the fact copyrights were only for a short period of time meant that the public didn't lose very much in the bargain.
Having it in your own head is the purpose of the music. If they didn't want that, albums wouldn't be sold at all. And there would be no music but from those artists who don't care about compensation.
This is my
You could sing the song in the exact voice of the singer? And you can make the exact sounds of the instruments also? I highly doubt that. Truly, what you are thinking is not a "copy" of the song at all, but a crappy representation, at best.
This is my
No, the purpose of music is for you to feel a certain way. You want to feel that way again so you play it again.
Well, I can't mod the parent up because I commented on the story, but this is great news! So, patent reexaminations are not nearly as scary as they used to be -- they don't taint the presented prior art the way that they used to. Thanks for pointing this out, AC!
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
No I'n not saying Thor sued everyone, but he might have only shared his idea with his own tribe, while at the same time beating the heads in of anyone else who tried to copy his idea.
My point was not that Patents are good things or bad things, my point was that competition has been the driving force for change, always has been. There have been plenty of instances when a technology has been kept to a select few so that the few would benefit while the many wouldn't be able to compete.
Well using your argument, do you think that you can accurately reproduce the music enough so that the people listening will get the same feeling? Personally I believe thats ridiculous if you do.
This is my
You know the one thing that sucks more than having to give up your intellectual property to the public domain? Having your intellectual property assigned to a company, and having to pay them for it.
Down with IP [except trade names. Whoever called that intellectual property? That's your name, not property.]
In addition to Compuserve and the like, PlayNet (the software for which later became AOL after it was ported to the PC by Quantum (now AOL)) had a very developed merchandise purchase system. Note that this was not per se over the internet; users dialed into Telenet or Tymnet X25 pads, and then connected to our servers via Telenet/Tymnet's network. You could view images, select colors, etc, and payment was via your CC account. This was all developed in the circa '85 timeframe.
Note: I was the person who coded the C64 side of this for PlayNet.
"IP laws are rapidly getting way out of control, but I think limitted IP - with shorter copyright terms before material passes to the public domain, and patents for genuine invention are a Good Thing[tm]."
Totally. Except with regard to software.
For example, the Amazon single click patent. Although they're unlikely to make an issue of it with the vast majority of people, it described a system whereas a single button click can fulfill the entire ordering process. They won't have been the first to implement this, but who is going to go through the rigmarole of having the searches done on speculative patenting?
The answer to this is IP 'farms' and companies with a cash pot intended for this purpose only.
This brings a dangerous precedent in terms that it makes the system 'top-heavy'. No longer does the patent protect the little guy against the people who would copy a given manufactured design, but instead rewards companies with the ability to puntively stifle competition through licensing. A bad thing[tm].
I have this minor problem with corporations as an entity.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.