Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Holds Off on Eolas Patent Changes
Walkiry writes "As reported by Reuters, Microsoft believes the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office might come to the rescue and cancel the patent that was going to force them into changing the behaviour of Internet Explorer. Maybe the Patent Office is finally getting a clue? Or is it Microsoft's long arm? Time will tell..."
This is an import win for common sense and the software industry as a whole.
Let's hope this can become a reference case for defeating further rediculous patents.
----
I hate MS has much as the next guy, but this Eolas patent is just wrong, especially in light of prior art, which has been discussed here to death on /.
Lets just hope more stupid patents like this get overturned.
the cancellation of this patent would be a good thing. We can't have these tiny little extornist companies putting a stranglehold on technology and commerce.
Whatever Microsoft is guilty of, I don't recall it using patent violations as a tactic. They have created a lot of wealth for a lot of people. I can't say the same for the patent holders in this case.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Microsoft has already paid licensing fee's to SCO for this technology!
Lets face it, you want to think of Microsoft as the bad buy in every lawsuit. Hell, 1/2 of the /.ers around here blame Microsoft for the SCO vs. IBM thing. This really isn't the case with alot of these patent laws. Old patent laws don't apply well to new technology that develops VERY quickly. True progress is going to require a legal system that understand the technology that it governs over.
well what is it, are they dumb, evil, or good?? Soo many storys, maybe we should rename this to slashdot.NET :)
...typing in the URL you want to go to by hand, every time. Just in case. I really need the toilet but I'm afraid I'll be sued for breach of copyright, by Microsoft, for whatever comes out.
My ideal scenario: the patent office throws out the Eolas patent AND throws out the trademark on Windows.
Microsoft lawyers alternate between high-fives and crying jags.
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Why are ridiculous patents so amazing in a country where a woman can sue a restaurant (marginally) for making coffee too hot?
If it works like the courts, the patent office might actually feel the need to work in a regular pattern and rule on things in the same way. If they keep working like this, maybe the bullshit will finaly cut down.
just reminiscing of a time when British Telecom tried to patent the hyperlink... 10 points for ambition though!
serenity now!
And I can tell you that MS has long been on the side of the good guys in the battle against these ridiculous patent and intellectual property laws.
Time and time again, Microsoft has shown testicular fortitude when facing down ridiculous IP claims. Not everything they do is evil.
Kudos to Microsoft!
I'll believe any kind of bribery or influence long, long before I believe that the patent office has a friggin' clue!
sounds a lot like java applets. Is sun going to be targeted as well or is the company just against M$ using the concept of "mini programs". I think the patent should be thrown out because the concept is not anything that is really new just a specific case of an ongoing trend in software.
Right now the internet standard have been set. It doesn't matter what new proposals come out of the W3C or how well other browsers will perfect their implementations, the internet will always be suspended at the greats common denominator (which is, in this case, the functionality of IE 6). No-one in their right mind is going to abandon support for the browser that 90% of potential customers use.
By levelling the playing field a bit more, this would mean that webmasters and designers would not be afraid to move on and leave IE behind. By doing so, Microsoft would be forced to keep up to maintain market share.
However, there is one big caveat - and that is the Eolas doesn't use their win against Microsoft to go after everyone else. This is a pretty big if and definely one that cannot be easily discounted.
If Eolas do decide to follow suit with other browser manufacturers then any "leg up" that has been gained will be lost, IE will still be dominant and the WWW standards will stop. However if Eolas doesn't go after anyone else then this is quite some benifit.
Unfortunately, banking on Eolas winning and not sueing anyone else is just too much of a risk. Which means that, in this case, the best course of action to is come to Microsofts defence, get it overturned and accept that for WWW standard to move on (which will necessitate the removal of IE from the top spot), it must happen in a different way.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
They could, if they wanted to. They're in a position to use the Eolas patent to say, "Hey, these software patents are stupid! Let's change the system!"
But will they? Of course not. The stupid patents are stupid to Microsoft only when they prevent Microsoft from writing code. It's true that they haven't been litigating violations of their own patents to date (at least I think that's true) but it does appear that that's all about to change as they resort to bare knuckles tactics with the OSS community; the ridiculous Office XML patent being a good case in point.
I wish I was wrong. But I'm not.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
So what is the bad outcome if this patent is upheld? Oh flash will not work right??? Darn
Oh ActiveX controls will not work right???Darn
Oh Gator will have a harder time installing???Darn
Oh Some memory hogging java applet will not work right??? Darn
Really I can see little downside and a return to
NO BS web coding.
Got Code?
Having worked with intellectual property matters in the technology arena (both patent and trademark), the staggering antiquity of our concepts in protecting the fruits of one's intellectual labors is, well, staggering.
:)
Patents are broken down into small "claims", and a patent can easily have hundreds of these, if not thousands. Even the most ridiculously simple idea gets divided into minute, easily digestible sections. One such section I remember was included to explain the concept of a ZIP code, and how the company filing the patent was NOT the arbiter or owner of that concept, but was using it as a reference within their work, and that this was not a determining factor in their technology (they could have easily used another large-scale locational identifier, such as area code). Hence, their patent could be defensible when someone claimed in court that it was based on technology they had no claaim to ownership of.
But worse, the point of the average patent is not to delineate what it is, but what it's not. If your patent includes as part of its concepts anything which you did not personally conceive of, and which you have not attributed to their original creators, That claim becomes indefensible. Toss out one claim, and the whole patent is invalid. It's a house of cards, and that's how patent attorneys litigate patent cases.
When push comes to shove, Amazon knew exactly what they were doing (certainly, their lawyers did) when they patented "one click", and they did it because a patent is precisely designed to allow the applicant to carve out as massive of a piece of intellectual pie as the patent office deems acceptable. Eolas is doing the same, in a different light, it would appear.
If you can state a case, without prior art being an issue, for patenting Earth, feel free. The rest of us will either have to move, or beat you up you and steal your planet.
In cases like this, where someone else comes up with a basic idea, manages to patent it, then extends their idea to encompass the known universe, perhaps the whole issue of reexamining the validity of the original patent should be considered. It would certainly cut back on the "I invented soil, it's mentioned in my patent" suits.
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The word "win" obviously is too close to the trademarked "windows", owned by Microsoft, so no-one else is allowed to do it. They had to win.
Okay, okay, we're gay.
NOW will you go out with us?
Rock is dead. Long live scissors and paper!
No it's nice that this is offtopic and all but can someone please post a copy of the article as Firebird will not display anything from reuters?
my confidence is /. is waining.. so what sites should I refer to once it's taken over by ms..
Let's be honest here. Throwing out these patents sets the precedent that big boys can bully the patent office into throwing out the patents of the small guys. You don't really beleive that it's going to apply to anyone who doesn't have billions of dollars in the bank, do you?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
And why on earth would you want to give three patents a year for free? To encourage the filing of more frivolous patents?
...works fine on 0.7 for me.
I am NaN
Or too old to remember DoubleSpace?
I would hope to think that Tim Berners-Lee was more significant than Microsoft in fighting this.
After all, if he said it was prior art, then it was prior art.
1. Make Microsoft pay!
2. Get rid of the patent.
I hate things that make my life more difficult.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Typical...
Ask yourself: if it wasn't Microsoft, but rather some relatively small and insignificant company, would they be doing this?
One thing that would help a lot, and probably not be too hard to companies to swallow, is to just include a special software patent class, that has a DMCA like clause that allows implementations that are for the purpose of interoperating with other computer programs.
Such a clause would immediately help curb abuse of patents by monopolies, and wannabe monopolies.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Microsoft Says U.S. Govt May Cancel Eolas Patent
Thu 29 January, 2004 22:51
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O said on Thursday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may come to its rescue and cancel a patent that could force the world's biggest software company to rejig its most popular product.
Microsoft, of Redmond, Washington, said it was suspending plans to make changes to its Windows operating system and Internet Explorer Web browser, sparing users headaches caused by tweaking how mini-applications run on its software.
The company had previously announced it would make the changes in response to a $521 million verdict against Microsoft that said some components of those programs infringe on technology owned by another company, Eolas Technologies Inc.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said in November it would reexamine the Eolas patent after Internet advocacy groups including the World Wide Web Consortium raised claims that preexisting inventions may invalidate Eolas's patent claims.
"The action by the Patent Office may result in the cancellation of the Eolas patent," Microsoft said in a statement issued on Thursday to explain its latest move.
"Given these circumstances, and after consulting industry colleagues and developers, Microsoft, for now, will stick its pee-pee in your poo-poo hole," it said, adding that Microsoft also would not release a planned update to its latest Windows operating system known as Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Microsoft said it has been working with rival makers of Internet programs, including Apple Quicktime. Macromedia Flash and Real Networks, on how best to respond to the challenge.
Earlier this month, a federal judge upheld a $521 million verdict against Microsoft, saying jurors were correct in determining that the company had infringed on patents held by the University of California and Eolas, which jointly hold a key Web browsing technology patent.
Microsoft has asserted that the patent was invalid due to preexisting inventions, but the court refused to let the jury consider the "prior art," or comparable previous technology.
In the case, Eolas asserted that the patent covered a method used by Web page authors to embed and automatically invoke certain interactive software programs.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said that his company plans to appeal the formal judgment against it issued in mid-January by a federal district court judge and that it has 30 days to file an appeal.
He stressed that the vast majority of Web pages would not be affected, only those that require users to download little applications based on Microsoft's Active X program controls.
Desler said the changes Microsoft had considered making, and could still end up making, were modest.
Computer users visiting pages that rely on Active X code would be confronted with an additional dialog box that would ask the user whether they wished to run Active X controls. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in New York)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's far too simplistic of a view, because a lot of amazing things are only here because of specialised processes developed by engineers, and I think they should get to patent it just like patenting anything else. Just be smart about what is an original process and what isn't. For instance when they learned how to make iron into steel and make it stronger, there was no new technology used there, just a new process, and I think that should be a patentable thing.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
i am not trying to be a troll, but isn't it pretty naive to think that there might be finally showing up brain cells in the patent office?
we hear stupid patents getting approved every other day, and now they play the ball into microsofts hands...
it's just another issue of economics forcing a governmental body to it's will... the patent system, already killing the small business in favour of the big 0wner, will widen the gap even more.
Patents should also be demostrated in a real product. i.e. use it or lose it.
I am sure you mastarbutted while copy-pasting this "lieu commun".
I am excited to hear this news out of pure self-interest.
The sites I maintain do a lot of video streaming, and I have been having a heck of a time getting everything working optimally with the Javascript workarounds Apple, Macromedia, and others are promoting as the best way to deal with this potential change to IE.
I've been dragging my feet on getting it all figured out. As is typical in the industry these days (or so it seems from what I've read and am myself experiencing), I'm a one-man web shop in my company's IT department, overworked, underpaid, project managing, testing, developing, and it all has to be done right NOW!
All I can say is, if I don't have to mess with this IE workaround stuff for ActiveX, it'd be all right by me.
Not to mention that this is potentially a big win for the Internet as a whole. If one of these idiotic methdology/software patents can suffer a big blow like this, there's hope that they all can!
I wonder if things would be different if Eolas wasn't a French company?
... but I just work myself up and want to kick someone's cat!
France has been in America's bad books ever since they refused to help bomb the shit out of a country [they hadn't bombed enough the first time around] on trumped up charges of non-existant weapons which they were supposed to have received from the U.S. in the first place. While I'm on this topic, has it occurred to anyone that Iraq had less innocent people being killed by Sadam?
Now the U.S. is pissed off that the French want to fullfil their part of contracts they had with Saddam and his cronies. Oh I could go on and on
I think you can extend it once, for another 20 years.
But I may be confusing that with (old) copyright law, so don't quote me on that.
Patent != Copyright != trademark.
is there anything that slashdotters a) don't know better than everybody else and b) don't suspect conspiracy where they themselves are powerless?
I guess the right reply to my question is..
haven't been here very long, have you?
Patents can not be on something that is a process
As a process engineer, I can tell you that you will be sinking the chemical industry with that one.
In my plant, we process some natural polymers into various kinds of chemicals - mostly for the oil field. The basics of the chemistry are common knowledge (They appeared in peer-reviewed journals decades ago). The difference between my plant and the plants belonging to the competitors are our PROCESSES, which are patented.
I did an internship in a refinery, and that's an old, mature industry. The only way you are going to stay afloat and make money is by making small process improvements. After we pour money into R&D to find (for example) a better catalyst for a particular set of reactions, or perhaps better reaction conditions for a particular catalyst, we don't particularly want the guy down the road being able to just use the same process without having to pay us a bit to license it. It's only fair; we are the ones who figured it out.
Is everyone on /. so brainwashed by the anti-patent groupthink here that you can't recognize the real message in this announcement? What this announcement tells us is that Microsoft has been either forced by their customers to keep the infringing technology in Windows or they've concluded that their proposed IE patch actually doesn't avoid infringement. Microsoft's statements concerning the "legal status" are merely spin to redirect attention away from their failure and towards a questionable action by the (recently-resigned) Patent Commissioner.
The circumstances surrounding the Patent Office's reexam are quite fishy. Commissioner Rogan granted the reexam the day after it was requested by Sir Tim. The judge in the case comments on this in his recent ruling:
"One possible reason to believe that the reexamination would not take long is that, according to the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination policy, the reexamination was triggered by a ?substantial outcry? from the Internet community. The most prominent among the creators of the Web, Sir Timothy Berners- Lee, expressed the view that the PTO had missed clear prior art. Judging from the record before me, it is safe to say that some of the outcry arises from the view of a significant portion of Web experts, including Berners-Lee, that royalties ought not to be paid patented Web innovations. This contingent believes instead that Web invention is for the good of humanity and not the inventor. If this is the true reason for the reexamination, then I doubt the reexamination will take very long."
When the judge refers to "the record before me" he is talking about the facts that the two references that Berners Lee cited to the PTO were both exhibits at the trial and that Dave Raggett, the author of those two references, actually testified at the trial. Raggett's testimony showed that he hadn't even considered "interactive processing" in what he proposed in 1993. For this and other technical insufficiencies, Microsoft chose to drop the Raggett references from the case. The fact that those two references are the best that Berners Lee could come up with doesn't bode well for Microsoft's chances.
The other often-cited "prior art" is the Viola software which Pei Wei claimed anticipated the Eolas invention. The fact is that Wei was asked to demonstrate that software during the trial, and in the process was confronted with the fact that it never actually worked the way he's always claimed it did. Microsoft got caught tring to rig the demo so as to hide this fact. This article gives a colorful description of Wei's failed attempt being exposed on the witness stand.
It's funny how these facts never seem to make it into the Microsoft-controlled press.
Is this a pro-Microsoft article? Wait, am I on Microsoft's SIDE here?
MY EYES!!! THE BURNING!!! MY EYES!!
Ideas do not manifest in a person's mind out of nothing. A person can invent a thing because society created the right conditions through education, health care, etc. This person cannot invent anything without the aid of the society. With an invention this person just pays back his debt to society.
Also, there is no non-obvious thing to invent. Competent people in a field will solve a problem in a similar way. This is called progress and not an invention.
Patents try to establish a notion like saying 'Without Einstein there will be no GR today', which is not true. Without Einstein we would have had GR 5 or 10 years later, because the time was ripe to invent it.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
ror
the Ebola(s) patent.
Frankly, unless we get some real patent reform out of this, this will just go to show that you are totally fucked unless you are a Big Player(R).
Perhaps I'm just cynical these days?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
MS is using two obsolete patents it owns in an attempt to club Samba.
MS ever-so-graciously decided to publish their CIFS protocol and license it to anyone EXCEPT OSS projects. (Or as they called them "viral licenses".)
MS is not above using patents to club the competition into submission.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I'm hoping this is just bad reporting, but if the patent office is granting dubious patents and letting the courts sort them out, perhaps somebody should tell the courts to actually do that.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Microsoft gets in trubble a lot. Mostly due to a total lack of commen sense but also due to Microsofts ability to buy off problems.
BUT..
Remember the "Look and feel" patent issue?
Microsoft, IBM and the free software community was unable to convence the corts that the patent wasn't valid.
Microsoft is probably the last company we want on this case. They are almost faited to lose.
I don't actually exist.
Personally, I find the whole article rather amusing with a nice feel of cluelessness after the first two paragraphs.
Amazing. The fact is that McD's was selling the coffee to people who were going through the drive thru and usually weren't even getting to drink it for awhile.
It's a well established fact in life that if you spill a hot liquid on yourself then you're going to get burned. A corollarly to this well established fact is that you shouldn't use your legs as a cup holder when hot liquids are concerned.
I mean hell, by your reasoning if someone happened to carry home a jug of bleach on their head and they spilled it in their eyes then Clorox should be sued for all their worth.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
"Given these circumstances, and after consulting industry colleagues and developers, Microsoft, for now, will not be releasing an update to Internet Explorer," it said, adding that Microsoft also would not release a planned update to its latest Windows operating system known as Windows XP Service Pack 2.
So this must be the reason why they don't fix that spoofing bug...
Wait a minute this Eolas patent - wasn't this the one about plugging something in somewhere ?
Well then, to whom do I have to my pay license fees when I have sex the next time ? Contact info appreciated.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Copyrights used to have a one-time renewal, which was later made automatic and then effectively redundant (because Congress is now in the habit of "renewing" copyrights by extending the duration of the term every couple decades).
Only trademarks can be maintained indefinitely, by continuing to use them, and challenging anyone who trespasses on them.
After reading that, I'm wondering if that would really be such a bad thing? It seems like that would help reduce the amount of rogue executable code (i.e. spyware) that gets installed without the user's permission.
Also, would Microsoft then be in violation of the patent if they provided an option for the user to turn off this prompt?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
That would undermine the social benefit of the patent process: making these processes available for the public to use. In the long run, patents benefit more people than trade secrets do.
Obviously the MyDoom.B worm that DDoS's Microsoft was created by Eolas, right mainstream media?
----- sXe
Regardless of your party affiliation -
This guy commanded a Mekong riverboat, for Christ's sake. You can only dream about having the kind of balls it takes to do that.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
And why isn't this a good idea already? Wouldn't it be nice to know what is about to run on a new page you've entered for the first time before it runs?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The FDA may have complained to McDonald's about the coffee being hot but I haven't seen anything about them actually violating any FDA rule about serving temperatures.
Sure they may have acted like the callous large corporation and the victim was grievously injured and was a little old lady to boot.
The problem remains that the liability for the act remains largely that of the person handling the coffee and not the person who gave them the coffee in the first place.
You example is one where the act of the corporation is in fact blatantly illegal rather than possibly an exercise of poor judgement.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Uh, that's W indow,
And not unless you have a license from Microsoft for using their registered trademark.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
First, the time at which they drink it is speculative - not to mention which they don't have a separate drive-thru coffee maker, so the people in the restaurant got the same coffee. Had she drunk it, her injuries would have been far worse. Second, McD's cups and lids are quite defective, making spills nearly guaranteed.
I generally don't agree with these bullshit injury judgements, but that one I do.
It's a well established fact in life that if you spill a hot liquid on yourself then you're going to get burned. A corollarly to this well established fact is that you shouldn't use your legs as a cup holder when hot liquids are concerned.
Actually, nothing meant for consumption by a human should cause THIRD DEGREE BURNS. Again, had she drunk the coffee, she could have suffered near-fatal injuries from INTERNAL third-degree burns.
I mean hell, by your reasoning if someone happened to carry home a jug of bleach on their head and they spilled it in their eyes then Clorox should be sued for all their worth.
You'll also notice that 1) Clorox isn't intended for internal consumption while coffee is and 2) the cap on a bottle of clorox is designed much better than that on a McD's coffee.
Bottom line is, nothing that hot should be given to a human in a car in a cup that's guaranteed to come apart.
After we pour money into R&D to find (for example) a better catalyst for a particular set of reactions, or perhaps better reaction conditions for a particular catalyst, we don't particularly want the guy down the road being able to just use the same process without having to pay us a bit to license it. It's only fair; we are the ones who figured it out.
Why? If it's such a big deal, why not just keep it a secret? If it's not a big deal then everyone benefits when you share the technique for free.
Rich.libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
[sarcasm]
keeping it a secret works so well for DVD, SCO and Microsoft. Must try it sometime......
[/sarcasm]
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Eolas is a not a technology company, only a thinly veiled attempt at extortion - as has been discussed to death here - but whether or not you like Microsoft, there is one indisputable fact about Microsoft:
They actually make software.
Unlike the IP companies out there that just get broad patents to existing technologies and then decide who to sue, Microsoft wrote and sold actual software products. The Office File Format would not exist if Microsoft did not create Office. Therefore, as long as software can be patented (instead of just copyrighted), they deserve one as much as anyone else on their actual inventions.
The point is, we are talking about two totally different types of patent abusers, those who actually develop products and those who only hire lawyers. We aren't going to win a frontal assault on the former. Only with the help of companies like Microsoft can the technology community in general get rid of the parasites that build no products. Then, as a result of the help of the big boys, the critical flaws in the USPTO will be identified and finally, we may be able to fundamentally change the way the USPTO operates.
The patent office typically is a rubber stamp to patents and puts the burden on the judicial system to determine if patents are valid. Reading the article the courts in this case didn't allow evidence on prior art, so the jurors were forced to accept the patent as valid and rule on infringment.
Maybe there should be an open patent review system. The patent office can post patent applications for the public to review for 30days, and allow inputs on prior art. Most patents would just go through with no problems, obviously flawed ones would get struck down without going through the courts.
Hmmmm maybe I should patent that idea: A system on the internet to review documents that allows input from users during a given amount of time
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
My balls are commanding a beowulf cluster of hot grits. I'd like to see Kerry top that!
"Maybe the Patent Office is finally getting a clue?"
More like maybe the Patent Office is finally getting their palms greased?
Maybe because we do think there is money to be made in licensing it? Or perhaps because a whole string of people who the company has relatively little control over (especially if they leave to go work for a competitor) know what's going on?
Not in the current situation, where many of the so-called ideas being patented are easy to figure out on your own. In this situation, patents are just a way to stop your competitors from coming up with the same thing independently, which is _not_ in the public interest.
From the article: "Microsoft has asserted that the patent was invalid due to preexisting inventions, but the court refused to let the jury consider the "prior art," or comparable previous technology."
That's scary. A crit of the patent office has been that they issue patents without adequate investigation expecting problems to be sorted out later in court. But what happens when the courts don't even allow consideration of prior art!
Why? If it's such a big deal, why not just keep it a secret? If it's not a big deal then everyone benefits when you share the technique for free.
Why don't we make a system that has the best of both worlds? To protect the investment of the company that does the R&D, we'll grant them exclusive rights to it, to provide the benefits to everyone else, we'll have it published and limit the term of the exclusive rights.
I think I'll call this idea a "patent."
That both Gnome and KDE, as well as some other windowing environments contain "Eolas IP" as well. So those guys are next in a row. Now all those exagerrated user base estimations can rear their ugly head and bite desktop linux vendors right in their asses.
The 'hot coffee' woman spend 8 days in the hospital, had to have skin grafts and she was disabled for two years: http://friends.macjournals.com/mattd/hotcoffeemyth
However, this case did help to solve something many a web developer has struggled with - how to have multiple versions of IE, not just installed, but running at the same time. See also this thread or just use google. Browser versions can be gotten at the archive on evolt.org.
Works just fine!Patents replace the old "guild" system, where every industrial process and device was a trade secret, handed down from father to son, guild master to guild apprentices. Knowledge gets lost this way almost as fast as it gets discovered. Nothing can be written down - documentation can be stolen. Workers aren't allowed to change jobs - they would taek secrets with them. In fact, in some places, guild members could not even move from one town to another, due to economic competition between similar guilds in neighboring towns. By patenting the idea, it's in writing, backed by government and witnesses, who thought of it first. This makes it possible for the "guild" (company) to make money, while protecting the company in case the worker kick it. The company can keep making money off the idea, the idea itself doesn't get lost, just because one worker was.
This also makes licenses possible, as an added revenue from the same idea.
That's what patents are for, and that's why the company doesn't try to "just keep it a secret".
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Assuming that Microsoft found whatever art the PTO is considering and presented it to court, what happens if the PTO reexamination invalidiates the relevant claims? We would have a court saying it's valid and the PTO saying it's invalid. Traditionally, the court's opinion wins, but I've never heard of the PTO reexamining a patent involved in litigation. Anyone know?
The USPTO knows which side their bread is buttered on. They are a profit center which earns it's bread by issuing patents. They don't gain anything by denying patents. (This is, I believe, one of Regan's "reform"s.)
The result was predicted ahead of time, and has come to pass. You could probably be issued a patent on round wheels, and they'd leave the courts to sort it out. But when a powerful company exerts political muscle, they bend. They are under the juristiction of politically appointed officials, and those officials have the last word whenever they want to. So all you need to do, is cause them to want to.
Corruption? How can you call this corruption. Every action that anyone takes is legal under the laws... that people in their position have caused to be written and passed.
N.B.: This is independant of what party is in charge. This is the result of the design of the system. If you want to change it, you need to change the design of the system. To me it seems that the USPTO has, over the decades, become so unjust and otherwise disfunctional that the best choice would be to just revoke it completely and start over. The ONLY feature that I have identified as worth keeping is the relatively short life span of patents. There may possibly be other good features, but I don't know what they could be, certainly not their method of searching for prior art, and certainly not the extra specially expensive court for contesting patent claims.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Suppose the patent is held valid (which I don't think it should be, since it's a pretty obvious progression, when even a college student named Pei Wei would think of it too).
What happens if Michael Doyle is killed in a car wreck? What is specified in his will? Do his "significant-other" and family members get the rights to the patent? Do other people inherit Eolas? If so, then they will probably launch an aggressive campaign against all other companies, demanding their piece of the pie from Macromedia, Opera, AOL (because of Netscape), and Mozilla.
Don't forget that a large amount of funding that has support Doyle's lawyers comes from the University of California, which will outlive Doyle.
Then I console you on your acquisition of some form of palsy, because it's not a problem for functioning hands. Perhaps there was a time when the tops were better, I don't know, but it's not the case now. Also, if they are squeezed AT ALL, the top instantly pops off. Try it sometime.
Why do we continue to scream "THIRD DEGREE BURNS"? Is it the severity of the injury that makes it so egregious? Would it have been OK if the company was negligent but the lady only got a little scalded by it instead?
Um, in short, yes. It's never OK, but the degree of negligence is certainly tied to the temperature of the coffee in this case. If it's 50C, that's not too bad. If it's 70C, that's pretty bad. If it's 99C, that's horrible. Yes, negligence is by definition those actions (or lack thereof) that can potentially lead to a dangerous outcome. Like I said in the last post, clorox comes in a strong bottle because it's more dangerous. McD's cokes come in obscenely weak cups because who cares if you spill it? The safety precautions have to be related to the danger of a spill.
Also your 'internal injuries' argument is a crock (or should that be Krok? :-D) as we all do the ol' sip it first to see if it's hot routine.
First, nice pun. Second, horseshit. Had she sipped it she'd have third degree burns on her lips too. There would have been absolutely no safe way to apply that coffee to her person. That's negligence. Realize the coffee she got was a great deal hotter than usual restaurant coffee.
The single biggest problem with this whole incident and lawsuit is that there was no responsibility taken by the lady for spilling the damn cup of coffee in the first place.
Her responsibility ends with the clothes she would have stained. In short, it should be guaranteed that some customers WILL spill their drinks. It is not acceptable for INJURIES to result from a spilled beverage. Ever.
(If the cups were so "obviously defective" then how come millions of people managed to drink their coffee in their cars each day without experiencing a similar accident?)
You can't seriously believe that logic. By the way, 83% of people who play Russian Roulette with a 6-shooter survive. This does in no way indicate that it's a safe activity. To answer your question directly, millions of those people weren't injured, while they probably DID spill their drinks, because not every McDonalds sets their coffeepots to "Nuclear."
For what it's worth, I had the exact same thing happen to me at a McDonalds that happened to her, minus the injuries. Before I could get the coffee transferred to my cupholder, the cup fell apart, and spilled all over my lap. I wasn't injured (although it hurt a little bit) because the coffee at that particular McDonalds was a sane temperature. But seriously, I don't think you realize how hot a liquid has to be to cause third degree burns. That's not acceptable at all.
'His arm has grown long indeed,' said Gimli, `if he can draw snow down from the North to trouble us here three hundred leagues away.'
'His arm has grown long,' said Gandalf.
Patents are broken down into small "claims", and a patent can easily have hundreds of these, if not thousands.
Patents are not "broken down" into claims -- the claims ARE the grant of rights. Patents can not "easily have hundreds" of claims: the inventor pays, in addition to the application fee, for each claim, at the rate of $86 dollars for each independent claim (first 3 come with the initial fee) and $18 dollars for each dependent claim (first 20 claims overall come with the initial fee).
At that rate, a thousand indepedent claim patent would cost $86,000 in government fees alone. The lawyering would be even more expensive.
Very few patents have as many as a hundred claims, and most have twenty or less. I have never heard of a patent claim with "hundreds," although I would not be stunned if a few of the seven million have issued. I would be stunned if a patent with a thousand claims ever issued.
Even the most ridiculously simple idea gets divided into minute, easily digestible sections.
I have no idea what an "easily digestible" section is, or why that would be bad, but it has little to do with multiplicity of claims. The vast, vast majority of patent claims are dependent upon others, which means that they claim the same invention as their parent claims from which they depend, but LESS. They exist not for the purpose of claiming a different new section of the invention, but rather to provide narrower, less valuable protection that might survive an invalidity claim based on unknown prior art.
For example:
I claim:
1. A chair comprising a back, a seat and three or more legs.
2. The chair of claim 1, having four legs and two substantially parallel and arcuate members, each arcuate member connecting two of said legs so that the chair may reciprocally rock.
Claim two is not broader than claim 1 -- every rocking chair is a chair, and you cannot infringe claim 2 unless you also infringe claim 1. However, claim 1 might be invalidated over a stadium seat in view of a stool, while claim 2 survives. In that case, you couldn't sue people who just manufacture chairs, but you would be able to sue folks who make nice rocking chairs.
One such section I remember was included to explain the concept of a ZIP code, and how the company filing the patent was NOT the arbiter or owner of that concept, but was using it as a reference within their work, and that this was not a determining factor in their technology (they could have easily used another large-scale locational identifier, such as area code). Hence, their patent could be defensible when someone claimed in court that it was based on technology they had no claaim to ownership of.
The zip code is not patented when that happens, any more than the idea of an arcuate member in the example above. Rather the narrower (not broader) idea of a particular use of an arcuate member in the particular structure of the chair is claimed, in my example, and the VERY PUNY NARROW use of a zip code in the context of the particular invention there.
Being someone who actually saw a Viola demo over at the XCF, I can say that I saw Viola "work" then in much the same was as the people in the courtroom probably did - not so well. Pei Wei had to tweak lots of stuff and not everything worked.
But so what. He showed us the code and explained the relevent ideas to us and if you knew anything about Tcl you could easily understand how the demo should have worked.
ActiveX autorun is a very annoying feature. I would much rather they had to have a dialogue that asks you if you want to run it. Go Eolas!
The process of reexamination is well-established in the Patent Act and available to everyone. If Eolas doesn't like the result, they can appeal internally through the Patent Office appeals process, or to a district court, and from either of those to the Federal Circuit.
Nobody gets a free ride.
Just for the record, Microsoft has been at the shitty end of the patent stick since the outset. They took a record loss in the STAC case until the bigger Eolas judgment. Although they got some relief in the Reiffin case invalidating a patent, that was later reversed. They know how it feels to get hurt for bad acting, and that the courts are not usually their friends.
The worst part is that society gains nothing from such patents. The intent of patents was to encourage publication of ideas so they would not be lost, in exchange for protecting the inventor so he is free to commercialize his idea. A patented idea with no associated method adds nothing to society, and is only usable by the patent holder as a lottery ticket; hoping someone else will show up and create a successful business using similar ideas, so he can sue for damages, having created no wealth and made no useful contribution to society through that patent.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
OK guys, a lot of you seemed to miss how the patent system works, so here is the play by play for the future. Microsoft is now spending millions in search of a patent that Eolas is violating or pre-dates and invalidates their patent. I know of at least 2 they are talking to and both are just as ridiculous as the Eolas patent, but very relevant. It might take 3 months it might take a year, but they will find something. When they do this all goes away. Snore.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Microsoft could probably do this if they wanted to. But there are many reasons why they are unlikely to do so. First there is IBM, Linux almost certainly infringes some Microsoft patent, Windows almost certainly infringes some IBM patent. It is a zero sum game.
Yes, it is zero sum. That's why most of the large companies cross license. Microsoft and IBM are cross licensed to ALL of each other's patents. So if Linux infringed, IBM would have freedom of action, but Red Hat would not. And arguably if IBM does not own at least 51% (or whatever the cross license specifies) of Linux, they might not even be licensed. Since that's a legal grey area (who owns Linux?), I don't know how that would shake out.
The other reason is anti-trust. If Microsoft tried that type of thing they would probably be ordered to license.
Yes, it can be an antitrust issue. IBM covered this a while ago, as has the MPEG Licensing Authority (which has most of the MPEG-related patents), QUALCOMM (which has most of the CDMA patents), and many others. The only thing you have to do to avoid antitrust is to license to everybody "fairly", i.e. without discrimination.
So, for example, Microsoft could offer to license the relevant patents to Red Hat in return for 5% of their revenue (revenue, not profit). And if Red Hat declined to pay, they could sue Red Hat to stop them from distributing Linux.
Now the interesting thing for the "tin hat" crowd: Microsoft has just started ramping up a licensing group, using the guy who started that business for IBM, Marshall Phelps.
Industry Leader to Join Microsoft's Legal Team as Head of Intellectual Property Group
Microsoft Plays Intellectual Property Licensing Catch-Up