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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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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 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.
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, 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?
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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
your patenting method is very inefficient in that it requires you to write new things.
I suggest simply writing a perl script to print off every previous patent with the footer "utilizing the internet" added.
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) :)
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.
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...
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
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
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.
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?
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.