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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..."
By Tim Copperfield
New York, NY - GNAA (Gay Nigger Association of America) today announced acquisition of The SCO Group for $26.9 million in stock and $40 million in gay niggers.
GNAA today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the intellectual property and technology assets of The SCO Group, a leading provider of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, based in Lindon, Utah. GNAA's acquisition of SCO technology will help GNAA sign up more members worldwide. In addition to developing new solutions, GNAA will use SCO engineering expertise and technology to enhance the GNAA member services.
"I'd love to see these GNAA types slowly consumed by millions of swarming microbes and converted into harmless and useful biochemicals." said an anonymous slashdot poster, blinded by the GNAA success in achieving first post on a popular geek news website, slashdot.org.
"This GNAA shit is getting out of hand. Slashdot needs troll filters. Or better yet a crap flood mod that I can exclude from my browsing. Seriously, a good troll is art, what you dumb fucks are doing is just plain stupid." said spacecowboy420.
macewan, on linuxquestions said "Thanks for that link to the SCO quotes page. My guess is that they want to be bought out. Hrm, think they want GNAA to buy them??"
After careful consideration and debate, GNAA board of directors agreed to purchase 6,426,600 preferred shares and 113,102 common shares (the equivalent of 150,803 ADSs) of SCO, for an aggregate consideration of approximately US$26.9 million and approximately $40 million for gay niggers that were working in Lindon, Utah offices of The SCO Group.
If all goes well, the final decision is to be expected shortly, followed by transfer of most SCO niggers from their Lindon, UT offices to the GNAA Headquarters in New York.
About GNAA
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First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it.
Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website
Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on EFNet, and apply for membership.
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If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet, and you can connect to irc.secsup.org or irc.isprime.com as one of the EFNet servers.
If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here.
About S
i call second! second post that is!!! HAHAHA
Please send $699 to our licensing department in Utah. Thanks for your support!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I just want the abolishment of all "intellectual property" laws. If these court cases help with that, then it's a good thing. I'm sure most slashdotters want all "intellectual property" laws abolished. And they will be.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
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.
I am currently working on porting GTK to the Commordore 64. It even runs gnom. Once I've finished the port, I will release it, but for now, enjoy some screen shots.
Screen shot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3.
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.
U.S. government to wake up is a mass exodus of technical people from the United States to another country. The U.S.'s top statistic is income per capita, however that's hardly an indicator of a decent life. Already the U.S. lags behind Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Japan, to name a few countries whose citizens enjoy longer lifespans than the average American. Granted lifespan isn't any better an indicator of a good life, but I'd thought I'd just throw that out. Any ideas which country to move to?
first post
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.
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 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
You wouldn't need it, because nobody could lock up anything.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
'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?
fIrSt pOsT, bIaTcH
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...
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.
gnaa reccomends anuses cheeses
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!
PanIP and SCO...
they just sound alike for some reason...
Salt used to be necessary to human life away from the seashore. Whence, the venerably antique salt-tax. Pay up, or get no salt and get ill (and die as a result of the consequences). It used to be "the" (western) Royal tax. Oil tax took its place, more recently. And the idea of "idea tax" is nipping at the world's heels.
The old Confucian ideal of Royalty as those that best administer, and towards whom, as a result, all turn to for their quality expertise - is somewhat deprecated, at present. A particularly vicious breed of Legalists (historical term) seems to have taken the field. This usually happens because a) the situation favours them, and b) the majority let them.
What a grand time for immense, obtrusive, enigmatic, byzantine, ponderous legal systems - not just for lawyers. The unending legions of those who make a living off it rejoice in the certainty of their permanence.
Substitution by A.I.s would eventualy just lead to a "legal - SKYNET" situation. No one cares about jury duty - let alone about practicing more troublesome duties. A "distributed internet judgement system" would end up as a non-stop virtual lynch mob in cyberspace. A civil-service draft-like system might ensure nothing but cowardly apathy, backbiting and more burocracy.
The system needs better checks. Updating. And obvious improvement.
The answer might have something to do with employing some form of the above alternatives, not to substitute the present legal system, but to enhance it. And, mainly, to force it to comply to open supervision by everyone. Really everyone.
It is official; Linux Magazine has now confirmed: GTK+ is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered GTK+ community when IDC confirmed that GTK+ market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all desktops. Coming on the heels of a recent Linux Journal survey which plainly states that GTK+ has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. GTK+ is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent comprehensive programming test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict GTK+'s future. The hand writing is on the wall: GTK+ faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for GTK+ because GTK+ is dying. Things are looking very bad for GTK+. As many of us are already aware, GTK+ continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
GNOME is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time GNOME developers Havoc Pennington and Owen Taylor only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: GNOME is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
XFCE leader Olivier Fourdan states that there are 7000 users of XFCE. How many users of ROX are there? Let's see. The number of XFCE versus ROX posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 ROX users. Nautilus posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of XFCE posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Nautilus. A recent article put GNOME at about 80 percent of the GTK+ market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 GTK+ users. This is consistent with the number of GNOME Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Sun, abysmal sales and so on, Eazel went out of business and was taken over by Ximian who sell another troubled Toolkit. Now Ximian is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that GTK+ has steadily declined in market share. GTK+ is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If GTK+ is to survive at all it will be among Toolkit dilettante dabblers. GTK+ continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, GTK+ is dead.
Fact: GTK+ is dying
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.
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) :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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?
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.
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?
You 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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.