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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!"
I hereby patent first posts!
The scariest thing about that list of patents is that I'd only heard of the one-click one.
Uses a 'shopping cart' too. I wonder if they've been sued.
i'm missing the patent on a "progress bar" which is pending in europe.
In information technology the time you can have a patent should be extremly short.
I wonder if I can patent speculative patenting...
...tho I have a feeling there may be a piece or two of prior art on that one
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
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?
I mean, we (as geeks) must be a large % of sales.
If we all stopped buying O'Reilly books until he did the decent thing and knocks the '1-Click' patent off the face of the earth, it might help speed things along.
Would this work? Anyone?
Join the Free Software Foundation
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.... =)
Pretty much everything that can be invented has been either invented or patented already
I was going to post that the commissioner of the USA Patent Office said that too. In 1899.
However, a quick Googling later, I have found that this quote is a myth.
"... pop-up windows, targeted banner ads, ... "
You mean the fuckheads who design websites full of this sort of garbage could be forced to cough up swingeing royalties for the privilege of polluting the internet? Almost makes me want to support software patents....
http://www.pubpat.org/ Public Patent Foundation and their work against the same sort of thing.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
That reminds me:
- There is a prediction that was supposedly made by Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office Charles H. Duell. The words attributed to him were: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." The date given was 1899.
Now, in 2004 we have the ghost of Duell appearing as an anonymous coward to make the same prediction.Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
... 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.
"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!"
After reading the page this links to, I'm really wondering if there is any such prior art. Maybe my tin foil hat is on a bit too tight, but perhaps it's really a killer piece of 1-click bluff he's holding onto? He could be waiting for Bezos to make the next move in the patent poker game.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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
One of the biggest problems I see with these patents is that they are not innovations, they just happen to be used on a computer. You shouldn't be able to simply take a random, common concept and slap a "...by computer." on it and get away with a new patent.
/. also mentioned the "progress bar" patent attempt in Europe. I'm not familiar with this one, so it may be a bunch of hot-air, but I'm too lazy to check on it. So I offer you the same thing in the real world: Sand clocks, air compressor pressure guages, the pop-up thermometer stuck in the turkey, what not.
One-click online shopping: How about picking up the phone, calling the grocer, and having them deliver. If they already know you, you probably only need to give them your name. Not "one-click" but pretty damn close. Just slap the "online" part to it, and you have a new patent?
Online Shopping Carts: Oh for Christ's sake... shopping carts have been around forever. Again, they slapped the "online" part, and now it's a patent.
Hyperlinking: Hyperlinking may be a computer-specific item, but how about touch-tone phone systems, for example? "If you would like to make a claim, press 4..." You have a selection of items, and just press a button to get to it.
Video Streaming: TV. 'Nuff said.
Internationalizing Domain Names: Zip codes and country names, anyone?
Pop-up Windows: How about those annoying "Subscribe now! 80% off news stand prices!" cards in magazines? They seem to be the same thing.
Targetted Banner Ads: Targetted advertising of any sort. The crap you get in your physical mail box.
Paying with a Credit Card online: And you couldn't do this over the phone, prior to this patent?
Someone on
I think we could all come up with a bunch of ridiculous patents based on their real-world counterparts... such as "method to transfer electricity over computer networks". Ethernet (minus the fiber optic variety) does just this (however small the current) and the real world counterpart is the freakin' power grid. And so on so forth. What's scary is that half of them probably already to, or will soon, exist.
To be fair most of those things really shouldn't be patented on the obvious claim for patents. I was working on a shopping system for a php script I was writing. I didn't really think about it until it was about finished but the final code was pretty much a cart.
Problem:
1) People need to buy things.
2) Buying one thing at a time is slow/silly.
Solution.
Allow people to make a list of things to buy and buy them.
I can't think of another solution to that. And that solution is pretty much a shopping cart. 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. But, if there's only about one solution which isn't hard to find. The idea of even spending any time thinking about issuing a patent is a waste.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
YES. Agreed. If patents on IT are allowed, they should be 3-5 years at the very longest.
They should also have a "use it or lose it" clause - if patents aren't defended against infringement they become invalid. This already happens with trademarks, and would effectively prevent companies building up patents then sitting on them until infringing technology becomes so prevalent that it cannot be easily replaced.
pop-up windows, targeted banner ads
Maybe it would be better if these were locked up by patents.
For great justice.
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"
and help coordinate fund raising with it so it can stand a chance against the Republicrats. The easiest way for the EFF to effect longterm change would be to work with the Libertarian or Constitution Parties to help them get elected at the local and state levels where a lot of really stupid IT decisions are made. Think about it.
Libertarian candidates tend to be highly educated compared to their Republicrat counterparts. If you have a LP majority on your schoolboard, you have a much better chance that Little Johnny won't get kicked out for being a "hacker" for using the Windows Messenger Service to send a "hello" message around the network. Why? Because you'll have a well-educated, more rational schoolboard who is passionate about civil liberties. Members of the LP tend to embody the old saying "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."
Another thing to consider: a libertarian wouldn't pull either a Bush or Gore on IT and science. Bush wants people to back up his preconceived moral notions on biotech research and Gore wanted yes-men who would just confirm what was in his little world, his great and powerful intellect (in reality most of the last occupants of the whitehouse as P or VP had similar IQs). Harry Browne as I recall said that he'd have worked to repeal the DMCA if he were elected. Try hearing that from a Republicrat. They always want to just "fix something" rather than get rid of it.
Lastly consider this. In Eldred versus Ashcroft the geeks got a taste for what social conservatives decry as an out of control activist judiciary. That judiciary is reinforced by the Republicrats. If we were to work together to remove people like Tom Daschle and Trent Lott and replace them with members of the LP or CP we'd have a judiciary more on our side.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Granted, patents are needed to insure inventors are compensated for their work, but why are they the same length of time for a trivial invention as for an invention developed over several years at great expense? Shouldn't there be a way to adjust the length of a patent based on how much it would take to adequately reward the present inventor and encourage future inventors?
To paraphrase Malibu Stacy, "Law is hard!" but to look at a single invention that is also a single product -- a drug for example -- we could:
a) Look at how long it took the person or company to develop the drug
and
b) Look at how expensive it was to test the drug for its patented use.
A drug company that spends a billion dollars to created and test a drug deserves a reasonable length of time to earn that money back, plus interest and enough profit to encourage future research. Amazon.com might spend a few thousand dollars and a couple of weeks thinking up the text for the "one click patent" and while I don't mind them making their money back plus interest and a tidy profit, they shouldn't be awarded the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars (if competitive advantage is taken into account) just because they filed a trivial patent first.
Which brings me to my question: What do other Slashdotters think would be the best way to ensure inventors benefit from their work, while preventing opportunists, lawyers, and the unscrupulous from screwing up the system?
On the other hand many types of patents and individual patent applications are clearly not even worth the paper they are printed on and the USPTO has some major issues. But don't blast the entire system for the faults of only a niche part of the overall system.
Now we get to see if you have to be an organization like Microsoft in order to succeed in having the patent office revoke a patent. It would be nice if these obnoxious patents could be revoked purely on principle.
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.
another good idea would be to 'open source' the prior art aspect of patent review, for a 'million eyeballs' Groklaw-type community...
for the common good, i will attempt to patent neither of these ideas, or the new word 'groklawing' ;>
Anytime someone is able to patent a concept/idea we all lose out.
UPS Sucks
Any opinions on which organization is most worthy of support with my limited donations: EFF or PubPat or someone else?
Dave
Patent 6678697, storing data in the lower bits of a pointer. It was filed in 2002, BDDs (Binary Decision Diagrams) having been doing this since the 1970s.
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.
So glad to read that EFF is now looking into patent abuse cases.... including one (Acacia) of three that I am tracking at my website
There does need to be an (grassroots) effort to get that dusty prior art sitting on the shelf and presented to the USPTO for so many technology related patents that shouldn't have been granted. -brandon http://www.FightThePatent.com
------ Fight The Patent! website