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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
If somebody wants to give me $50k/yr for the next 10 years, I'll be happy to expound upon how wonderful it would be to not have to earn a living
until year 11 that is...
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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
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!
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.
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WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
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.
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.