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..."

Comments

Patents are wrong

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Re:Patents are wrong

[bourne]

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.

Of course, I understand a lot of that went straight back into FSF. I did confuse him for a bum (sorry, but that's truth) when I first saw him, so he clearly wasn't spending much on himself.

That's the rumor. How true it is, I have no idea...

Re:Donated even though I don't do ecommerce.

[bersl2]

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.

He also sold hardcopy manuals.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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-)