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EFF To Fight Dubious Patents
theodp writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation launched a campaign on Monday to overturn patents that it says are having a chilling effect on public and consumer interests. The ten patents initially cited as problematic by the EFF Patent Busting Project are: one-click online shopping, online shopping carts, hyperlinking, video streaming, internationalizing domain names, pop-up windows, targeted banner ads, paying with a credit card online, framed browsing, and affiliate linking. Maybe this will prompt former EFF Board Member Tim O'Reilly to share that killer piece of 1-click prior art that's sitting on his bookshelf!"
The scariest thing about that list of patents is that I'd only heard of the one-click one.
In information technology the time you can have a patent should be extremly short.
Why would anyone want to get rid of the "Pop-up windows" and "Targeted banner ads" patents?
Pop-up windows suck, and so do banner ads.
Good, very good!
FFII did similar action against a Amazon patent earlier this year in Europe. Unfortunately I believe that the patent system must be fixed on a policy basis. Let's fix the patent system rather than playing theior games. I think it should not be our job to help to hunt down patents that shouldn't be granted and pay the fees of the patent industry. Software patents shall rather be stopped before they are issued by proper laws.
http://swpat.ffii.org
on patents but there's already too much prior art. Yeah, I know this is a troll and too much prior art on that too. But did it ever occur to you that Slashdot's 400 posts in the first 2 minutes pretty much precludes any thoughtful replies that take more than 2 minutes to think out and compose. How about a 2 hour delay before posting is allowed?
But what is needed is a way of preventing them from occurring in the first place...
While it is relatively easy to understand the need for patents to encourage commercial development and investment, it is rude and obnoxious for companies to attempt to patent some of the most basic of computing principles.
I'm all for coroporate cash funding new hardware and software, but think where we might be today had IBM really clamped down on their PC systems.
No Slashdot for starters.... =)
why not stop buying books from amazon instead...
I don't buy books from Amazon.
The 1-Click patent doesn't just affect Amazon, it also affects people who've paid Amazon to use it (Apple, for example) but also hinders other online stores who might want to add it to their store.
Join the Free Software Foundation
... if the patent office would be liable for missing obvious prior art for granted patents.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is a worthy cause!
Donate now, because its CHEAPER than joining a defense fund later.
https://secure.eff.org/
I just joined! Thankyou EFF for taking up this cause!
Sam
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Agreed - but I'd make IT patents 2-3 years only. The rate of change and innovation in IT is such that locking up obvious or near-obvious patents for extended periods is a big drain on society.
When was the last time a *software* patent was granted for something that is truly innovative? More than just about any industry, we take what already exists, extend it, then extend it again - each step has relatively little change, but cumulatively the rate of enhancement is huge. On that basis alone, I'd say software patents are a stupid idea - very little software development is truly innovative, and patenting it simply breaks the cycle of constant improvement.
I'll probably got modded down for this (actually, I'll probably get modded troll for stating that disclaimer [actually, my second disclaimer will give me a crack at a +1 funny mod (actually...I'll stop now)])
I think that the patent on mp3 player scroll wheels belonging to apple should be on that list.
A scroll wheel is the most sensible way to navigate a collection of mp3s and it really sucks that other players can't use it.
Prior art on a scroll wheel music player already exists... ie. almost every radio tuner ever created.
Does anyone else think all of this patent-busting might be counter productive? The real goal is surely that no one can own patents on this rubbish (software, websites etc.)- prior art or no prior art. If these rather ridiculous patents are thrown out, doesn't that strengthen the argument of those who say- "Software patents do work! Here are some bad patents and, look, they were thrown out! The system heals itself. Lets have lots more patents"
you could even win easy with this prior arts, but there is a MAJOR problem...
the lawyers and court cost it's HUGE and so only a number of companies could do it
that is why the software patents are wrong, they give power to those that have alot of money, the others might go broke before the end of the trial
Higuita
I believe they solicited donations of software patents to use as leverage. Good luck at the $20k cost of doing a patent application. The problem with this is nobody, except SCO, has been seriously going after open source for IP violation. As soon as you withhold licensing of a key technology patent to somebody big like Microsoft, they are going to take their patent porfolio and come down on you hard. How may open source projects do you know can afford several hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves even if the patents are not valid.
"If somebody was giving a question and came up with a truely original idea that no one else had thought of having had the same question given to them. That idea should be patentable."
Well that would be just marvellous wouldn't it?
1) Lawyer/amateur coder A has good idea for e-commerce software: Widget X, patents it, Returns to lawyering, hoping to cash in if anyone actually writes the Widget X software.
2) Student/amateur coder B thinks of clever way around Lawyer A's patent. Patents it.
3) Porn baron/amateur coder C discovers method of avoiding both A and B patents. Patents it.
4) Web designer/amateur coder D....
5) Large software company E hires one software patent expert per programmer to ensure nothing is missed and nothing is not patented.
6) Database designer F informs government that patent database is too large to be contained in any Earth based installation.
7) Professional coder G, with the assistance of his company's lawyer horde, searches the Lunar patent database in vain - looking for something, anything that isn't already patented. Gives up. Joins the Army. Company folds.
8) Free software coder H releases version 2.2 of his widely used package X-Tribble which contains an implementation of Widget X - and has done since before Lawyer A was born.
9) PanIP buys up all Widget X related patents, threatens X-Tribble, X-Tribble project is shut down.
Patents are for protecting innovators be they individuals or companies who put a great deal of time, money and effort into designing, testing and building material objects that they hope the consumer will want to buy. They're for protecting those who've already spent a lot of money on getting a prototype working and because they or someone else will need to spend yet more on the manufacturing of it. Patents are designed to ensure that the patentee can expect reasonable recompense for his efforts and contributions to society.
Patents were not designed so that people could cash in on abstract ideas that others can and will have independently and need never actually do anything with anyway.
Patents are not supposed to be granted in order that idle patentees can exact a tax from those that actually do put in the work of building a complete, working product.
They are not supposed to work so that transient monopolies can be transformed into permanent monopolies by deploying yet more patents designed to block interoperability.
Historically at least, the patent system did not exist in order that the patent-wealthy could bully the patent-poor into handing over what little they may already have had.
It did not exist to ensure that only the largest companies could afford the licensing of the myriad patents necessary to produce products of any size or sophistication and at the same time destroy the rights of everyone else to engage in the arts,sciences and free communication of ideas.
The fully fledged software application that actually does require all the time, expense and effort to create is and always has been, protected by copyright. Software patents are insane, in concept aswell as in practice.
Perhaps based upon superficial thinking, drug patents are good, but I think a very strong case can be made against them. They clearly warp the research, into looking for cures that can be monopolized instead of cures that work. Just because the research and development budget increases and the company spent lots of money does not mean that the market is better off with this sort of government-granted monopoly.
Certainly the people who cannot afford drugs because all the money has been splurged in trying to maintain competing monopolies instead of trying for the best service are disadvantaged by the patent systems.
It certainly is not always the most efficient research or the most effective cure that wins, because given the chance for patents, companies frequently will not develop or advocate something they cannot monopolize, whatever the merits.