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W3C Requests Eolas Patent Re-Examination
x0n writes "Verbatim from W3: Acting on the advice of the W3C HTML Patent Advisory Group, W3C has presented the United States Patent and Trademark Office with prior art establishing that US Patent No. 5,838,906 (the '906 patent) is invalid. W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee has written an unprecedented request to U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property James E. Rogan to take action to remove the patent to allow operation of the Web. Read the briefing." techsoldaten adds a link to this New York Times story on the move, and
bgalbs points out the W3C's detailed filing describing prior art provided to the USPTO Director's office, "along with a letter from Tim Berners-Lee asking that the so-called Eolas patent be revoked," writing "Here's hoping it does some good; between this and the Lotus Notes prior art, perhaps there's hope this will all go away."
2 stories ago, we wished Microsoft would be punished for firing a blogger, no we wish they'd stop being sued by Eolas...
Thanks Slashdot, but I'm confused, now.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
When you think Microsoft is evil and there is nobody lower, you look at Eols to find that they even sunk below Microsoft. Can't Microsoft just buy Eols and fire all their employees and have this nightmare be over with.
In case you're saying "Eolas? Wasn't he in Lord of the Rings or something?"
Here's a little background reading.
--
There should be no need for prior art. The very idea that you can patent the idea of putting something that used to appear in a new window embedded in the original window instead is just absurd beyond belief. A wonderful example of what nonsense the entire idea of 'intellectual property' is.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Didn't Microsoft already pay Eolas "damages"? What would happen if the patent did get revoked? Would MS get their money back?
It is incredible that MS would forget to use prior art of their own in their own lawsuit!
Some sources tell me that Microsoft will appeal Eolas case by bringing up Perry Pei-Yuan Wei, a Berkeley student that in 1991 created a browser called Viola capable of rendering the built-in plugged-in applications, later to be knows as applets.
Here's an example of the chess app being used in Viola in 1991, which questions Eolas patent.
Nader-2004
>Eolas have no problems with open source and W3C compliant commercial browsers.
For now... What happens when a few years down the road, the guy running Eolas decides he wants a new jet or yacht? Maybe he just wants to see how much he can get his net worth up to. Who knows what he's planning or thinking.
He's already shown his stance on IP patents, I have no doubts that suing other browser companies is not that far off, regardless of what he says.
The linux hacker
For example, the mozilla foundation in its official statement on the issue says nothing to condemn the Eolas patent, but instead has some content free statements like "The Eolas matter highlights the degree to which web browser software is critical to the user experience of the web.". I don't think this is the right thing to do. Getting all up in arms about say the gif patent and pretending you didn't notice when MS is hit is not good. So let us speak with one voice, and show our support for W3C.
While the patent in question is questionable at best, how is Eolas evil? They filed for and were given a patent. They have now successfully defended that patent against an infringer.
The fact that said infringer is huge and has decided to unilaterally shaft the Web in order to avoid paying licensing fees has nothing to do with the inherent goodness or evilness of Eolas.
BTW, Eolas is privately owned with only one employee. MS can't buy it unless Eolas agrees to being bought. Also, if MS were to buy Eolas you think they'd just suddenly go and license that patent to everyone out of the goodness of their heart?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
From the second paragraph of the filing to the USPTO director's office:
"While we understand that the submitted prior art was introduced during the course of the recent trial proceedings, the issue of whether it renders the '906 patent invalid was never considered."
Um, RTFF?
Microsoft bad.
Software patents bad.
Poetic Justice?!?
Remember, it could just as easily have been the Mozilla or Konquerer developers being sued, (legally speaking), in which case the folks in this forum would be all up in arms about it and supporting the W3C.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Without "intellectual property," friend, you'd be reading this article on a soot-darkened cave wall.
Stupid patents are not arguments against IP in general. They are arguments against stupid patents. The USPTO is an institution that has repeatedly proven itself incompatible with the notion of common sense. No one -- except lawyers -- would miss the US patent system if it were abolished overnight. But you're throwing out the baby, bathtub, and plumbing with the bathwater.
This is a great move; and, within the framework for getting these things done, which is even better. The real problem here, though, as all the ./ers know, centers around reforming our institutions that govern this type of patent / copyright / IP fun - it's become a major issue on both sides of the Atlantic and will probably become and increasingly pressing issue with each new development (and each new assertion that the development be protected / exploited / utilized in an economically beneficial - to some? - manner). The solution? You tell me, but I believe that the grass-roots type of education and promotion of the issues that /. and other websites facilitate represent a great start - how do we break through to the masses?
Is that a sign this site is heavy on making political statements, or a sign that YRO are being challenged more often?
Jason Lotito
Don't worry, though, you can escape this state of mind through hard work, education and practicing critical thinking skills. Microsoft, as evil as they [b]can[/b] be, does not deserve the '906 lawsuit. The University of California school system should be ashamed.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I almost never click the "Patent Pending" Slashdot links, because they are almost always depressing. Nice to see a change of pace!
I really hope this wins. I get so sick and tired of people filing abusive patents to strangle the whole world just so they can make a quick buck. My company is currently fighting something similar, so it's a pet peeve of mine.
If W3C wins this, they should keep the momentum going and go after Jeff Bezos. He's a prime example of this kind of abuse.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Call me short-sighted, but I was rather enjoying Eolas going after only Microsoft with patent infringement.
Anything that makes IE harder to use, would make alternative browsers all the more attractive to the inherently stupid lazy average PC user.
Sorry, to be so harsh on them, but it's true. If people sought out the best tool for the job, Microsoft would be out of business.
I'm still rooting for Eolas, and that wont change until they start enforcing their patent on everybody. But for the time being, I am still calling it divine justice.
What about the patents they claimed but they don't actually have the rights on. Can someone revoke the patents and declare those void?
Glad to hear Tim Berners-Lee is weighing in on this. Certainly, his views should have some impact. I would be seriously annoyed if I were in his position; it's absurd to allow companies just to wait for thousands of inventors and developers to go through the quasi-Darwinian process of technological innovation (often without compensation), see which techniques evolve as best-practices, and then hijack them.
Supposedly, the underlying justification for patents is to encourage investment in research by protecting inventions from direct competition for a limited time. In that context, there should be a requirement for a strong correlation between the time required to create an "invention", and the time frame of the protection. If something takes 5 years of R&D to create, 7 years of patent protection seems reasonable. If it takes 5 minutes, that time frame certainly is not.
Why not, as part of the patent process, have a peer review of the application, with a best-guess among the reviewers as to how long it would take to create the invention or (more approximately) generate the underlying insight, given a person working in that field? Multiply that time by a generosity factor of X, and limit the patent's applicability to that duration, assuming it passes all other prior art tests. It would seem that this would much more closely represent the intent of patent law, as well as eliminating irrational impediments to technological progress.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The patent in question is on the US Patent Office website.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The piont of the appeal is not to protect M$ but to protect the functionality of the web. The W3C never mentions Microsoft, but mentions that the current compatability of the Web could be affected. Also the article states that the patented capabilities have been included in HTML since the early days of HTML -- before the patent.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I believe there is a general assumption that MS really wanted to win the case.
What should be understood is the advantages MS would gain in losing.
Teh fact that prior art itself that was not presented by MS but of MS products, should be plenty reason to suspect MS didn't want to win the case, but only create the illusion.
Perhpas the question to ask now is how is MS using other companies to do their bidding, like SCO..
OS/2 opened a hole in the video display window that another program could display into. One of the external programs OS/2 could run was windows 3.11
There is zero difference between doing this and a web browser or any other program simply assigning a range of pixels to hold an image created by an external program.
It is totally absurd that the USPTO should assign a patent for perfectly obvious technology that was in wide spread use by the patent officer himself!
So WTF is going on in the USPTO?
Bloody idjots I say.
The patent office cost the companies of this country an enormous amount of money that they had to spend on researching this problem. The patent office was responsible for maintaining the validity of the Patent information. The Patent Office should have to pay the companies that endured an unecessary loss to their business as a result of the poor work done by the Patent Office when it originally issued the Patent.
If the Patent Office had to Pay For Their Mistakes, they might be less likely to make the same mistakes over and over again.
Does anyone know of any (software) patents which have been nullified due to prior art?
so you can show off your awesome 'python' and 'ruby' skills. heh.
Blar.
If they can show that during the patent process the applicants knowingly omitted prior art, they might be subject to triple penalties for defrauding the patent office.
It is an applicant's duty to supply all known Prior art to the examiner. Those poor examiners can't be expected to know everything.
-A
I thought most "work done for hire" belonged to the employer, not the employee. How much of this $521 million went to the University of California?
(Yes, I know that a lot of universities allow researchers & faculty to retain some rights to "inventions" & such, but the university is gonna skim a thick layer of cream off the top, too.)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
AC comments get piped to
Correct. Thanks.
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Someone mentioned this in passing earlier...
Microsoft may not have wanted to win this lawsuit. By redesigning their browser and, in effect, making everybody that wants their site to work with IE redesign their site, they would, at a cost of $500million US gain control over the web.
I know this may be a simplistic view, and there is probably much more that can be read into this thing, but remember what Microsoft has said:
One World, One Web, One Program
Maybe this is the first part of their strategery.
Oh...and there is NO paranoia here.
this could be the end of stupid software patents in the US. Go W3C!
there's no place like ~
IE is in no way free. IE requires you to have Windows. (They're dropping their Mac port.)
MS has already shown its willingness to use one product to drive adoption of another (Windows for IE), what would stop them from refusing to license this patent to any other browser and then "tweaking" IE so it will only talk to IIS?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
And you are here because?
Maybe it's because the personal computing industry is maturing. There just aren't as many significant new non-rehash developments coming out with games, hardware, etc. as there were in the past.
Just like in the old West, once the exploring and prospecting wound down, the focus shifted to building barbed wire fences around the patches of land that people had laid stake to. The YRO articles usually cover similar efforts of various parties to claim and cordon off various sections of the technology industry.
patents everywhere... maybe somebody should take a patent on "patent"...
" Without "intellectual property," friend, you'd be reading this article on a soot-darkened cave wall"
With all due respect, there is no such thing as "intellectual property", there are trademarks, patents, and copyrights.
And for the most part, none of them existed more than a few hundred years ago, with the concept of "IP" existing less than 40 years.
As to the USPTO: Do we need to throw it out? No. Do we need to roll it back by 100 years. Probably.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Is there anybody out there that does research for prior art to invalidate patents specifically related to software? There are a lot of obviously invalid patents because of prior art, and we all know the world would be a better place without them. I just got this idea from this story.. I think there is a great need to have a group like this, or at least a place where people can post info on any prior art they know of. Maybe just having a central place to post would be a springboard..
Anyone?
Hax.
http://www.haxwell.org
You're assuming that technological progress would have stopped at that point, all over the world, just because the handful of countries that introduced relatively mild copyright and patent laws at this time did otherwise? That's a huge an unwarranted assumption, and/or a a circular argument.
If anything, the bulk affect of these laws is to stifle progress, not to help it. Particularly with the current 'modern' implementations of these ideas.
No, you need to back up and figure out where you got lost. The notion that human inventiveness would suddenly cease if people couldn't lay legal claim to ideas is absolutely absurd.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
According to The Globe and Mail the US Copyright Office has just ruled against Lexmark in the printer cartridge chip controversy.
Boo-yah!!!
FTC floats patent changes
Released yesterday from the the FTC
Comments from law.com
Check this quote out:
"There is a little underappreciation by the FTC for the applications that don't get allowed," he said, adding that more than 80 percent of business method patents are rejected.
Sounds great but 20% do make it..
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Me enemy's enemy's friend's enemy's friend is .. oh shit, I give up.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Maybe USPTO should consult W3C stall routinelly on internet related patents.
That way some of this non sense could be avoided.
Sigs ?? Karma ??
What's in a sig?
So what happens if the sole employee of Eolas dies: Will he pass on ownership of the patent to other people within his family or give it to business associates? Watch out! Even though Doyle says he won't sue anyone but Microsoft, the inheritors might turn the tables and sue Macromedia for Flash, Sun for applets, and Opera for their web browser, and use SCO's Gestapo tactics against Mozilla.
But this is besides the point. Read the post by Sir Haxa1ot, under the heading "Prior art" on this page, about Pei-Yuan Wei, the UC Berkeley undergraduate who already invented applets in the ViolaWWW browser and demonstrated the concept to Sun Microsystems two to three years before a patent was ever filed. For some reason, the judge in the case NEVER allowed Microsoft to contest the validity of the patent, so Wei was never allowed to testify. That is an injustice, because patents being issued by the Patent Office these days are not actually examined for validity. For example, Patent #6,368,227 (granted in April, 2002), is "A method of swing [sic] on a swing is disclosed, in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other." It was originally submitted by a lawyer as a demonstration to his daughter of how the Patent system worked. Imagine his surprise when it was granted! The Patent Office's excuse it that it is swamped with patent applications, and so there is no way it can give each one the attention it deserves; their assumption is that the validity of the patent will be explored thoroughly in any ensuing lawsuits, when plaintiffs and defendants can have the luxury of time and money to fully investigate claims, track down and interview witnesses, and discover the true history behind it all. That's why the judge in the Eolas suit erred, and I hope that the ruling can be appealed.
"invented here." is a trademark of Eolas.
fine. "trademark of Eolas" is now a trademark of happyfrogcow.
"'trademark of Eolas' is now a trademark of happyfrogcow." is also now a trademark of happyfrogcow.
W3C seems to have an odd inconsistency in its filing:
Raggett I and II specifically teach those of ordinary skill in the art to modify a prior art browser, such as the Mosaic browser, to incorporate the allegedly new features of claims 1-3 and 6-8, rendering those claims obvious.
Then it says this about 'ordinary skill in the art':
The person of ordinary skill in the relevant art to the claimed invention is a software programmer with at least a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and five years of programming experience in Internet, Web and browser technology, including specific experience with programming in HTML.
I can't help but think that if the "new" prior art is dated July 1993 and the first NCSA Mosaic is February 1993 (?), there wasn't anybody around with the requisite "5 years' experience" for the invention to have been obvious to, not even by the time the application gets filed in 1994.
Anyway, I just thought it was strange that they'd make such an effort on this stuff but make that kind of apparent mistake.
The judge presiding over the case denied Microsoft the ability to argue the validity of the patent. They didn't "forget" to bring it up because they wanted to lose, the "Judge" wouldn't allow them to bring it up.
Some would answer that the large amount of YRO stories is because our rights are under assault. However, the reality is that this is essentially a liberal bastion--so yes, in great part it is a political statement.
- This site can be a mouthpiece echoing blogs from Democrat in stories such as this.
- This site is alarmed over some melting glaciers, with the implication it's global warming (even though glaciers melted just a bit more many times before humans arrived).
- This site often consists of sour grapes, people bitter that someone besides themselves are doing well.
- This site often slams the oil industry despite the lack of any viable alternative at the current time.
- This site suggests that abundance is bad, equating spam, overeating, and traffic jams (due to urbal sprawl, of course). Our problem is having too much, apparently.
- Some people here even go so far as to say "Having an abudance of money might be a bad thing". WTF?
Yes, it should come as no surprise that Slashdot is often just a political statement. A very leftist one.He already stated that they would licence the technology to Mozilla for free, and that he didn't want to see a browser monoculture.
The fact that this is being done shows how much clout MS really has - even if you are legally in the right in taking them on, (whether he is morally right is certainly a matter of debate) they can simply get the law changed in their favour. Scary, isn't it?
My rights don't need management.
The equivalent "technology" in a paper document is the use of a sidebar, rather than a footnote.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
I don't know the exact history, but the patent in question was derived from work at Berkeley around the same time - so it may have come from the same development work. Thus it is not prior art - it is *the* art. Remember that Eolas' patent is really an exclusive license of a Berkeley patent (Eolas' founder is an ex-Berkeley professor).
I knew I was not the only one who watched Nova's piece on string theory last night!
is it just me, or did it end rather suddenly. They're talking about the multiple additional dimensions, then the five competing theories fragmenting the community in the late '80s, and then it stops. I thought there might at least be something on the five theories and what might show one or another to be a better model, and whether any progress had been made since 1990.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
If the patent goes bye-bye, can Microsoft get their $521 million back? With interest?
I suggest you read/watch James Burke's excellent series "The Day the Universe Changed," his other industrial history series whose name escapes me at the moment, or old columns in Scientific American.
History shows us exactly what happens when patent law (and presumably trademark and copyright law) serves the "owner" alone, not society as a whole. You clearly don't know that Britain had 100-year patents for a while... and she made no significant contribution to chemistry or industrial processes during that time. Like copyright today a person could not extend on a process developed on the day of their birth - they and their children (and even many of their grandchildren) would be dead long before the patent expired.
Meanwhile other countries, notably Germany, refused to respect the terms of British patents and had short patent durations themselves. If something was developed on the day you became an apprentice, you could probably use it as a journeyman and could certainly extend it as a master.
Germany industry flourished, and a backwards agrarian society became an industrial powerhouse that far exceeded the capabilities of the British industry they 'stole' from within a working lifetime. The US followed a similar path, although it's not quite as striking here since we didn't break a centuries-old pattern.
History is unambiguous on this question. Terms short enough to fit several consecutive patents into a working lifetime promote progress and innovation. Terms longer than a working lifetime stop innovation in its tracks and serve no useful purpose to society. They do, however, allow lazy CEOs to freeze the marketplace with them on top, and since the marketplace is frozen you see prices jacked up with none of the money "wasted" on research or innovation.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The equivalent "technology" in a paper document is using a sidebar, instead of a footnote
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Oh, and the internet was developed using US tax payers money, just the way that most early work on computers was done by researchers using public money or working on their own WITHOUT APPLYING FOR PATENTS or otherwise retaining restrictive IP rights. It's quite interesting that you bring up the internet, considering that a large part in the success of the internet is that all specifications for the basic infrastructure are available in the open, and NOT covered by any IP rights that restricts reuse.
Try to guarantee all you want that Intel and Apple wouldn't do years of R&D if their competitors could steal it once they go to market, but the idea is ludicrous. Companies DO steal their ideas as soon as they go to market - patents doesn't stop that. It stops the blanket copying. However who would copy Intels chip designs when they lack the technical capability to manufacture the chips, and when reverse engineering the designs would take them so long the next generation chips would already be out?
And further back in the field what you will see is that sharing of information unecumbered by patents and copyright was what advanced the computing field.
Some IP rights might be warranted - authors of non-bestseller books don't usually make lots of money (unless they're one hell of a negotiator when dealing with their publisher), and many of them might never have gotten written or published if they could have been copied by another publisher right away. In that case not having any IP rights would have been a loss to the public.
But most major scientific advances have not been protected by patents or copyright.
You point to the Polio vaccine, but the "invention" of the vaccine by Salk was often heavily criticized by other researchers as containing nothing new of substance, but being just a result of combining research already in the public domain. And in fact Albert Sabin soon developed a new vaccine that more or less superceded the Salk vaccine. Add to that that the research wasn't done by a private company, but a university and the idea that lack of IP rights would have prevented it gets ridiculous.
TV is perhaps the only area you mentioned where patents had much of an impact, but even there there is little doubt from looking at the history of it that the research would have happened regardless of patent rights - perhaps slower, perhaps faster.
Yeah, maybe you're right. Those YRO stories are getting tired. Then again...
michael: Omigod, the feds are using voice-activated PDA handheld bluetooth microspasm processor masheens to brainwash the general population into walking, corporate zombie consumers! Fire up Frontpage, boys, it's time for a (cue outrageous action music) YRO story!
Taco: (Cue soft and cuddly Celine Dion song, bubblebath, candles, Richard Simmons) Settle down, Lois, we already did a few YRO stories today. Here, post this family piece from freshmeat on how Linus has explosive gas. We'll call it "Kookin' Kernels". Make that government thing a poll or something. Good. Here, copy & paste Cowboyneal some more. Don't forget to spellcheck... just kidding. Comedy! Submit! Now hit me with this hammer. Again! Now mod yourself into oblivion.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Patent lawyers can be extremely pushy. Eventually they piss off the patent examiner reviewing the patent, and the examiner takes the attitude of, "I'll show him." They approve the patent and decide that when the company loses the patent in court, they'll go after the lawyer for all he/she's worth.
Kinda funny since a bunch of patent examiners go on to be patent lawyers...
http://www.askthevoid.com
Patent Carbon Dioxide and then sue everyone who breathes! They're illegally distributing CO2 to everyone!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Read Berners-Lee's letter -- I think he has a good handle on what would *actually* happen, because IE is, in fact, the most widely-used browser by far.
Your "inherently stupid lazy average PC user" doesn't know anything about switching to an alternative browser. They probably don't even think they're affected, IF they hear anything about the problem, because "I use AOL, not Internet Explorer". They will expect the websites to change to stay compatible with IE... and guess what?
The websites will change, in spite of the expense and frustration. Unmaintained websites, academic sites, personal project sites, etc. with no budget for the changes will just have their audience cut to a fraction of what it was.
That's why it's bad, even if Eolas never goes after anyone other than MS.
There's also that whole concept that two wrongs don't make a right, etc., etc., but you can answer this one without leaning on morality at all.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Rule 101, basically says that the prior art show is exactly what is in the patent in question.
Rule 102b, basically says that given A and given B it is obvious to combine A and B for reason C. In this case I think they are saying that given the fact that people were talking about the EMBED tag and given the fact that the Mosaic browser was around 'it would be obvious to one skilling the art' to use the EMBED tag in a web browser.
Rule 103, basically says that given A the new feature C is obvious. In this case they are saying that EMBEDding is 'an obvious enhancement to once skillind in the art'.
I think this is a good argumment and as a former patent examiner, I'd reject it, but alas, I think this is up to a judge.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Great answer. With sources, none the less.. (slashdot first?)
Shouldn't we wait until Microsoft has to pay Eolas billions before questioning the authenticity of this patent???
Who is proofreading the filings over at W3C these days?
Did they pay the re-exmination fee (item 1813)?
Did they fill in the form?
Did they get someone who knew what they were doing to make the request?
Looks like no, no, no to me.From the patent abstract...
The invention allows a program to execute on a remote server or other computers to calculate the viewing transformations and send frame data to the client computer thus providing the user of the client computer with interactive features and allowing the user to have access to greater computing power than may be available at the user's client computer.
Sounds like X-Windows to me.
And did anyone notice that the original inventor (not the current patent holder) is the University of California!? Please tell, me that none of my tax dollars went towards this...
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Lowell, Massachusetts is famous (well, was famous) as being a very important and large milling city in America. But before it could become a large milling city, the industrial era mills needed to be invented. They were orginally invented in England, where they were patented. From the Lowell National Historical Park Handbook, specifically, Early American Manufactoring:
The United States as an industrial power was basically established through patent infringement. The patent system was designed based on the idea of convincing people to share their ideas. Protecting them is a means to an end. However, when you have patents protecting frivolous inventions (once you have dynamically linked libraries, plugins are a fairly obvious next step), the system becomes abused. It no longer promotes the sharing of ideas and the development of new ones, it instead restricts innovation.
Who knows if patents as they currently exist really do spur on invention? But patents as they existed during the Industrial Revolution almost kept America out of the game until someone "stole" the designs for mills, at which point the flood gates opened and America became industrialized.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Using the term "IP" or "intellectual property" in that context prejudices one of the most important discussions society needs to have about how to handle policy in copyright, patent, trademark, mask rights, and all the other diverse laws that phrase lumps together. That term makes it seem like there's one overarching principal which is being reapplied for different kinds of works, but that's not so. Some of the areas covered even conflict (patents and copyrights, for instance, conflict for any developer or would-be user of a free software MP3 player in countries that observe software patents. Thomson's extant patent claim on MP3 conflicts with the power a copyright holder has to distribute their work).
Getting back to the topic at hand--software patents--these are completely unnecessary and one need not look back very far in computing history to see why: these patents did not exist when computing was starting up. Many corporations invested in personal computing without leveraging these patents. Therefore, we don't need them. We have them because corporations want to guarantee profit for working less.
Digital Citizen
MS, IBM, and HP all wanted w3c to establish the use of patents. Now MS is opposed to paying a little bit of money and count on the OSS world to at least stick to its guns.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If it is found that the patent is invalid after the reexamination, is the associated fee refunded (since, afterall, they got paid for NOT doing their work properly when the thing first got submitted).
Or do we, as the population, need to sue the patent office for their incompetence which is costing us not only the original fee, but the cost of all the extra bureaucracy of the court system needed to rectify their fuck-up?
AC comments get piped to
That's because part II is next week... or did you miss that blurb?
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Arkwright's invention was independent, but there was very prior prior art.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
I clearly don't recall having supported the idea of infinite patents. I didn't and don't. Don't play strawman - just because I don't support NO patents doesn't mean I support neverending patents.
History is unambiguous on this question. Terms short enough to fit several consecutive patents into a working lifetime promote progress and innovation. Terms longer than a working lifetime stop innovation in its tracks and serve no useful purpose to society.
I completely agree. I think current patents are maybe a bit too long in certain fields. Note, however, that g'parent is supporting the notion of abolishing patents, and I stand by my original post that this would completely stifle any sort of capital intensive R&D in which barrier to entry in a market is low. This includes, specifically, pharmaceuticals.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
If the Patent Office had to Pay For Their Mistakes, they might be less likely to make the same mistakes over and over again.
That presumes the Patent Office would feel a greater sense of accountability for your money than they do for their work. Since they obviously don't give half a damn about their work, why would they care about how they spend your money?
What is the benefit of keeping the patent system versus the benefit of getting rid of it? Maybe we need to wipe our hands clean of the whole concept of patenting.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Regardless of when the patent was issued, the court decision happened on Rogan's watch. We'll soon know how much guts he really has & whether he really deserved those awards for "integrity" that he got in California.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
How much would you be willing to pay for the more extensive prior art search that the patent office would be required to do? That is money that would come from taxes. Making the person/company filing for the patent pay for the prior art search would put patents out of the reach of the little people. I, too, believe that the patent office has some flaws. I'm just not sure of the best way to go about fixing it. The peer review process I read in about in another post has some merit, and perhaps should be examine more closely.
Guess I was off in another dimension. (Not sure if it was tiny one or a big one.)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I was being facetious with the plumbing bit.
Oh, and the internet was developed using US tax payers money, just the way that most early work on computers was done by researchers using public money or working on their own WITHOUT APPLYING FOR PATENTS or otherwise retaining restrictive IP rights.
Yes, and at this time it was completely unavailable to 99.999% of the population because there were no personal computers on which to access it.
Try to guarantee all you want that Intel and Apple wouldn't do years of R&D if their competitors could steal it once they go to market, but the idea is ludicrous.
So ludicrous that I suppose they won't bother patenting their designs next time? Like hell. If they weren't protecting something of value they wouldn't bother
But most major scientific advances have not been protected by patents or copyright.
No, because they're done at Universities, not in the private sector. Science can't be patented anyway. Engineering can, and most major engineering advances ARE patented.
You point to the Polio vaccine, but the "invention" of the vaccine by Salk was often heavily criticized by other researchers as containing nothing new of substance, but being just a result of combining research already in the public domain. And in fact Albert Sabin soon developed a new vaccine that more or less superceded the Salk vaccine.Add to that that the research wasn't done by a private company, but a university and the idea that lack of IP rights would have prevented it gets ridiculous.
Go after the analysis, not just polio - I listed other ailments as well. I imagine you aren't familiar with the pharm industry, but it wouldn't exist without patents. When you invest $1B in a drug, and a generic competitor can then start making it for under a $1M, NO R&D would take place. You MIGHT get cures for the most mass-life-threatening diseases, but the idea that universities could carry on the R&D that is currently done in the private sector is absolutely laughable. I'm a chemist at a top-5 research school, so you're not trumping on this one. Lack of patent protection would KILL the pharm industry.
Bottom line is your arguments don't hold in the abstract, you're trying to fight the forest by cutting each individual tree. To win this argument, all I need is one industry in which R&D is expensive but manufacturing cheap. That's it. Your suggestion that the public sector could shoulder all necessary innovation shows your naivete in the matter - it sure as shit didn't work for the Soviets, and it wouldn't for us either.
Why do I suspect you're more motivated by ideology than actual analysis here?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
...trumps MS bashing anytime, and that is a sport I enjoy myself.
Sure, MS is generally evil, and generally worthy of being ragged on, but only for the things they do that are wrong. What is at issue here is something important to the community as a whole --- it's about having one of the basic ideas that makes the modern Web work being hijacked by yet another bogus patent. It's not about MS.
MS should be burned for what wrong they do, but we shouldn't allow our dislike of them to cause us to ignore a threat to us all.
So instead of the nattering about "who should I hate today," get behind the challenge to this --- and all the other --- idiotic, baseless IP patents.
Have a nice war,
Mal te Elder
Except that Nova program was MADE in 1991... ;-)
Nothing to report sir!!
Particularly the demise of the pharm indistry? You seem to have forgotten that bit.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Tim Berners-Lee seems to think that his name, the mighty weight of the name of his organization (W3C), and his oh-so-rational argument will cause the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, James E. Rogan, to simply agree and toss the patent. That isn't this man's job. The process for challenging a patent isn't some sort of "who you know or who you are" sort of thing, it is a very well defined process. If Tim was smart enough to research all of this prior art and present an argument for why this patent is invalid (seems to hinge more on the economic impact of Microsoft changing their browser and not choosing to license the technology from Eolas rather than a procedural error on the part of the USPTO), why couldn't Tim figure out the proper way to file this challenge? Amazing.
Dude, I'm sure he meant bloke! You know, blokes! :)
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
What intrigued me about the New York Times article is that Microsoft didn't even know about the patent. There a significant number of companies that stand to benefit from this patent being invalidated. If all these companies which include Microsoft's rivals work to invalidate this patent, then we're all sitting better. Maybe W3C is playing politics in the fact that if it protects it members interests, including Microsoft, it has now more power to sway MS when Gates doesn't wanna play ball with the W3C.
Thank you, I was sure I'd ruffle some feathers and was surprised how much time went by without a reply and, even more suprising, being modded into oblivion.
What kind of sad, dreary life would brand a geek website a partisan politics? Your words make you sound terribly paranoid, nothing more.
That first sentence was a little hard to understand. But I've been here for years and consistently the articles themselves are written in a way that show a liberal bias. And the comments? Just read them. If you forward an idea that suggests that oil isn't so bad, you're toast. If you suggest that Bush isn't so bad, you're toast. If you suggest we shouldn't force a switch to alternative energy until a viable one exists, you're toast. If you suggest that maybe global warming isn't a result of human actions, you're toast. The list goes on.
I hate to break this to you, but Slashdot is about as capable of projecting a political statement as our political system is at regulating technology.
I'm not saying this site is run by a political organization. But its members and, thus, the stories that are posted are usually liberal. Examples provided above and in my previous post. And, thus, to answer the original question--it should not be surprising that so many stories are YRO. YRO stories here are usually a technical spin on what is otherwise a political or legal debate.
Yes, the liberals here usually don't make their case any better than liberals in general--but the predisposition of people here to mod posts down just because the post doesn't agree with the liberal party line is very predictable.
Try posting a message supporting Bush in some way. Provide facts. Generally what happens is that your post will be modded insightful and go up to about +2 or +3. Then, by the next day, it usually has a dozen liberal replies calling you a Nazi, a slave of the oil industry, and you've been modded down to 0 or -1. Try it some time and you'll see where I'm coming from.
That said, I don't really care. I come here to relax and occasionally tweak a few liberals. But it would be nice if there was a technology-site like Slashdot that was more about technology and less about politics.
im shocked you didnt hit -1 in a hurry...
nice post (grandparent), i agree with everything...
especially about how it would be nice to have a tech site that isnt so political...
This post cannot be re-broadcast without the express written consent of Major League Baseball.
Basically, there is a corelation between the invention of patents and the industrial revolution. Whether that corelation is causitive or not I don't know. The original poster seems to believe that it is. And you seem to be arguing that it isn't. But your argument against the causitive nature is pretty weak:
In order to say that it's causitive, yes he has to make the assumption that you stated. But that's alone isn't sufficient to say that it *isn't* causitive. Just strong enough to say that he's assuming it is without proving it.In order for you to make the claim that it's the corelation is definately not causitive, you are assuming that technological progress would have continued w/out patents. This is something that's simply not testable. All we know at this point is that the industrial revolution corelated in time to the use of patents. If you want people to agree with you that there's definately no cause/effect relationship between the two, you're going to have to rely on something stronger than imagining something that can't be tested.
Ok. I understand that you believe this, but you haven't provided any evidence that either of these statements are true. Personally, I agree with you on the 2nd point. But I'm unconvinced on the first point. And here's my logic:Imagine I wrote a book. I spent lots of time and energy thinking about the book, developing the ideas, writing it down, editing it, getting it printed, and then bound into a book. If after doing all of that, anyone could simply take a copy of that work and duplicate it without consequence, I would be less inclined, next time, to write another book. Because someone would figure out how to streamline the process of copying books and selling them. At that point, writers would not be able to compete. They'd simply produce works from which someone else made money. The enormous amount of effort and cost it takes to produce the first copy of a book and publish it would disincent the vast majority of writers from writing, because they'd not even be able to recover their costs before someone else plugged it into their streamlined book copying process.
By having copyright, writers are given an incentive to produce, in that, at the very least, they can recover their costs. The current day implementations of copyright are insane, but the original implementation seems to have produced incentive to write.
Patents are almost exactly the same, except instead of covering books, they cover inventions. And the original implementation required that a sample of the invention be supplied with the patent application. As a consequence, someone who came up with a good idea and went to all of the effort to make it and prove that it worked, would have no incentive to publish that idea if the next guy down the line could simply copy it and sell it before you. Under the original implementation, it at least *seems* like patents rewarded real inventors. Now, I agree with you that the current day implementations have gone overboard and that they can reward people who haven't done a lick of work. But I'm going to need some convincing if I'm to believe what you're suggesting:
- that patents were not causitive of the industrial revolution
- that patents hindered it's progress
I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't understand how you've come to that conclusion.Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
They will have to pay a lot of money (more then 500 million, at least), and then they will own the patent
Anyway, there are a lot of people and organizations in the world that are far more selfish and harmful them Microsoft.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Well, has microsoft ever used a patent offensively? I don't think they have, but then again they've never had to pay more then $500 million for one either (since the company is at least worth as much as the fine MS needs to pay).
If I were this guy, I'd collect my half billion dollars, put the patent in the public domain, and move on. Being greedy about it is only going to make things worse for him.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I could come up with these all night!
Yes, but It's a good excuse to break compatibility for lots of other stuff too while they are changing specs. And they get to use the "court made me do it" as an excuse! Then they can release a new "tool" that updates all the infringing stuff [and other stuff marketing determines!] to the newest version by MS. Once all the vendors get compliant tools, it will all have to be reverse-engineered again by other programs that want to share the data...MS will definately be having Lemonade from this ordeal....the fine was probaly worth it.
Sorry pal, but I didn't. There may be something similar in another thread, but I didn't see it. Not surprising, though, as I merely pointed out the obvious, only in a mildly humorous fashion.
The fact that Dun Malg hasn't been leashed out of Slashdot by his tiny balls is a travesty.
Huh? That sentence sense not makes!
Crap, I'm replying to an AC. Damn. Whatsa matta? Too chickenshit to insult me even through a PSEUDONYM? Morons like you are Block 8.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
First, as to the patents, that's really a very long complicated argument you want to get into that I quite simply don't have time to cover fully today, or any day soon. I'll try, but it will inevitably be merely a teaser, because I just don't have time to write a full thesis on the subject now. This is not my page and I may disagree on some details, but it's a start. If you read other posts in this thread there is one that discusses the importance of not enforcing patents to the progress of the industrial revolution in the US and Germany, and if you do a little research you will find that Holland and Switzerland in their economic heyday are similar stories.
At any rate, let's keep in mind that 'IP' is more than just patents, copyrights, and trade secrets - it's the combination of those conflated with property.
This last is a very recent phenomenon, and has lead to the excessive measures even reasonable proponents of patent and copyrights decry. That's the most important point I suppose - that these things are not property, they are privelege in the original sense.
Now beyond that, I have no problem with trade secrets at all, and I think that most everything good that could come from patents could be achieved in that way, without the violation of real property implied in a patent regime of any kind. Given that patents prohibit independent invention and prevent people from peacefully and honestly using their own property in any implementation I find them very hard to defend. And I think the notion that people would quit inventing without them is ludicrous. People invent for a great number of reasons, getting rich off patents is only one of them. Without a patent regime, an inventor who invents only for money (likely, in my opinion, to be not the most important subset, but be that as it may) will still have a profit motive, the difference will be simply in the details of how to get from A to B - rather than rushing to file a patent before anyone else, he would instead work to produce and sell actual product before anyone else, to take and maintain an early lead in the field through trade secrets and continual research and refinement. I think it is plausible that this would result in more, not less, invention. And even if that were not true, the bulk affect could easily still be positive simply from removing all the bad affects even reasonable patent proponents admit is implied in such a system, for reasons I've mentioned at least in part.
Copyrights, in essence, are more defensible, but again it must be emphasised that they are not property, that they are in fact monopoly grants which violate property by prohibiting peaceful and honest use of ones property in certain ways, and that there is a world of difference between the original Constitutional copyright system and the current 'IP' system. Authors, under the current system, are not getting rich from their writings. Authors in fact very rarely keep their copyrights, they usually have to give them up in order to get published. People write for many reasons, getting rich is rarely one of them and when it is it almost always leads only to disappointment. Without copyright people would still write, there would still be a market for books, and authors could still make some money, very likely as much or more than they make now in many cases, without them. Is it worth money to a publishing house to have a novel written that they can hold exclusive using simple secrecy long enough to make a full run of a book and have it on storeshelves around the world before the competitor can begin typesetting it? Of course it is. So, without copyrights, there would still be money in writing, and even if there were no money in writing, there would still be writers. We write for any number of reasons, and very few make any serious amount of money anyway. So I really think the chicken little arguments are nonsense. Creativity wouldn't be abolished because copyright a
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Now contrast that with inventing. It's very difficult to be an invention company: A company with the sole purpose of producing inventions. The process of inventing is just not static enough. It's a dynamic thing that explicitly relies on seeing things differently than you saw them before. Invention absolutely depends on one person who has an inspiration about a way to do something better.
Now here's where the problem lies. Without patent protection the small guy has no chance of profiting from his inspiration. He can go and do all of this work, spend all of his time, spend a ton of money, and the day he puts up a sign post to try and sell it, is the day that the marketing firm, with a well established and stable process, swoops in, buys one version of the invention, and sells it to everyone. The inventor would be unlikely to even recover his costs.
Yes, there are problems with patents. Inventors who come up with the same idea at roughly the same time have problems. And the entire computer software industry is built on shared ideas, and absolutely relies on interoperability, so the concept of software patents seems absurd. But these problems merit, IMHO, fixing. They do not justify scrapping all patents everywhere.
An example of a nightmare scenario is Microsoft. Right now copyright protects GPL'd software from becoming embraced & extended into Microsoft. And anyone who thinks that Microsoft's business plan is a software creation company is misguided. They are a software marketing company. And, as an example, I ask you to cite one single thing that Microsoft has invented. I repeatedly can't think of anything. They buy up small companies, take all of their trade secrets (conveniently protected in binary executables) and then market them. Almost always the original members of the bought company suffers and Microsoft prospers. And this is in an environment where copyright protection exists. Without copyright, no software would be safe from becoming extinct due to Microsoft's practices.
And in the patent arena it's no different. People can argue all they want about drug companies, but patents are absolutely critical to those companies. The expense of developing a drug is so astronomically high, that without protections on those investments, no one would invent drugs. And if you think I'm kidding, ask yourself how long it takes after a drug patent expires for a low cost generic to be available. The answer is it's available the very day that the patent expires. Producing generics is a marketing process. Producing the initial drug is an invention process and it's very very expensive, with massive amounts of failures. Say what you want about drug companies, but IMHO, it is absolutely clear that we would not have the breadth and depth of health care if we didn't have patents protecting drug companies.
Still I agree that there are serious problems with patents (and other IP) that need to be fixed. I'm still not convinced that they should be scrapped altogether.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Can you explain your line of reasoning in more detail?
By the way, I posted basically the same question in another comment in response to someone else's comment making a similar claim.
Feel free to respond either here or there. :-)
I can't wait to see someone make a movie out of this fiasco, just like "Pirates of Silicon Valley" . Only it should be called "The Lone Cockblocker Who Almost Destroyed The Web" . No one else could make such outrageous claims like they invented the letter "e" and sold it to IBM.
All I can say is Tim Berners-F'n-Lee is on this now? ... hell yeah baby, lead the charge and while you're at it get that other guy that invented the information super thingy , Al what's-his-beard!
Booyah, Grandma, Booyah!
MoRe... LaTeR... -=PJK=-
The reason is that our health care industry needs drugs to be patented is because the cost of developing drugs is so high. One study
Contrast this with the cost to develop a post-patent generic:
By far the biggest cost of developing the drug is the R&D. And of that expense, the biggest cost is the clincal human trials. These are costs that post-patent generic companies simply don't have to pay. Without patent protection, we'd end up with a world where the developer of a drug would incur *all* of the costs to develop that drug and the generic manufacturer would gain all of the profits. The drug developer would simply not be able to recover their costs without patents. Patents enable the drug developer to earn the profits from the sale of that drug to cover:
Patents enable the pharmaceuticals to stay in business. I once read (although I can't find it now), that pharmaceuticals develop 200 failed drugs for every 1 drug that makes it to market. Inventing is a hard business, and without some sort of legal protection, we simply wouldn't have it.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Let me snip your argument down a bit, (mainly removing supporting data that isn't really in dispute):
I think you might be confusing the likely failure of a particular unchanged business model under a changed regulatory environment with a claim of failure of *any* business model under a changed regulatory environment.
Let me know if I'm misrepresenting your argument, but it basically seems to boil down to something like the following:
Okay, maybe the wording for the first part of #9 above was a bit strong. :-)
However, you still concluded that there can be no viable business model for drug development in a no-patent world.
Below I give the same line of reasoning for a different field. After examining that argument, I wonder if you would also conclude that there is no viable model for development in that field under less monopolistic conditions.
The arguments are the same--or do you consider one argument valid and the other invalid?
(NOTE: I do not claim here that a business model that may fit the case above will necessarily have an analagous business model that will fit the case below, or vice versa; I merely claim that both lines of reasoning that conclude with an impossibility of the existence of a viable business model are flawed.)
So here is the second, similar, and IMHO similarly flawed line of reasoning:
This seems to be the crux of your argument. And it's true that I am unable to think of any other viable business model. Of course, I'm in very good company. Today, right this very minute, anyone is free to develop and use a business model for drug development that does not rely on patents. You can do it if you want. All you have to do is develop drugs and then not patent them. Then sell those non-patented drugs. Thus the exact legal structure that you are championing exists today.
But, of course, no company exists to try and exploit it. And it's not because I am personally not smart enough to think of a way to make money doing it. No one, of the 6 billion people in the world, has yet thought of a way to do it. Now, of course, it's completely true that just because no one's thought of a way, that it doesn't make it impossible. All it proves is that our species hasn't produced someone smart enough to figure out that business model. I'll be happy to say that I'm wrong when I see someone who's come up with a viable business model for drug development that does not rely on patents. Until then I feel pretty comfortable in my assertion even if it's not "proven" in the logical sense.
On the other hand, you might just be the person to do it. I don't want to discourage you from trying. If you have a business model that will work w/out patents, go for it. I wish you the best of luck.
The reason that your analogy fails is that software development does NOT cost big money. In fact, it's exceedingly cheap, by comparison. I do software development in my spare time, and all that took was some time spent at school. But that's because I'm relatively dense and I needed someone to show me how to do it. I know plenty of really smart people who figured out software development on their own and they do it. All it takes is their own individual time. Contrast this with drug development. No one does drug development on their own time. And the reason is that it's so expensive. The costs of just one of the many basic pieces of equipment to do the research is more than I make in a year. And that's just one piece of equipment. There's tons of stuff that you'd have to have in order to do drug development. The cost to get started doing software development is a computer.
Moreoever, testing is almost entirely free in the software development world. If I want to figure out how well software is going to work, especially in the Free/OSS world, I simply let people download it and submit bug reports. I don't have to pay for testing and certification. And in the proprietary world (e.g. Microsoft) we pay the developer to test their software. I give you Windows 95 and Millenium as examples. Testing costs next to nothing in the software development world.
Software developers don't even have to get certification. We don't have wait 10 years after we've come up with an idea just to get it through a federal organization before we can market our software. Drug companies do. And it's wholely appropriate that the FDA does it's job. There's lots to be frustrated about the FDA, but it's hard to complain about their basic purpose. They exist in order to ensure that the claims that a drug company makes actually hold true, and to identify the long term impacts of the usage of a particular drug. They do this because the only possible test subjects are people. If something catastrophic happens to software, and a computer "dies" that's something that can be recovered by lots of techniques, including rebooting, restoring from backup, component replacement, etc. But if something catastrophic happens with a drug, people don't have backups. When they die, there's no getting them back. So testing has to be d
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.