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MSNBC Looks At Patent Abusers' Victims
Camel Pilot writes "Patent claims have reached a new low when "inventor" Witold Ziarno sued the American Red Cross for using the web to accept donations. This MSNBC article discusses this case and how it was beat using web archives and prior art!
Also Pangia Intellectual Property has given up hope on extracting fees from small e-commerce websites for its supposedly patent on e-commerce. The only problem with the PanIP case is that they got away without having to pay for the legal fees for the defense in an obvious abuse of the system." (See this previous post for more on PanIP's dropped case.)
"...saying he had patented the electronic process by which the donations were made. Ziarno demanded a licensing fee from the non-profit agency for infringing on his patent, which he applied for in 1993 -- before most people had even heard of the World Wide Web."
This seams strange (in 1993?). For some reason, I do not think I understand US patents.
Webmaster of Infoweb
If the patent holder loses it's case in court, it's forced to pay the legal fees of the defendant.
Oh yes, they get kicked in the nuts afterwords.
Also, the patent office needs to be held accountable as well. Maybe they could fire the examiner that issued the patent.
I'm not saying that this is the difinitive answer, just some ideas to change things for the better.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The main argument behind patents is that without them, nobody would have motivation to come up with new ideas and no research and development would be done.
I say bullshit.
Patents are holding developments back. If you have an idea for a better mousetrap build it and sell it. If someone else copies your idea then you'll just have to improve it, or find a way to make it cheaper than them, or whatever. You'll have to act quicker to make money on your ideas, and innovate faster. I think that's a good thing.
What I don't get is people who are shocked at how low other humans will go for money. Like no one ever tried to take advantage of do gooders before.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
what does it take to chase a charity for alleged patent abuse. How does he sleep at night?
Probally the same malfuction that gets the RIAA to request license fees from the Girlscouts to sing *puff the magic dragon*.
In reality, a charity isn't immune to license fees. It's good PR and good on your taxes to donate the license fees, but you are not required to do so. I wouldn't blame anyone for charging the Red Cross for legit license fees. I would however blame the US patent system for allowing jarheads to patent trivial things like donations on a god damned website, as if this is a new and unique idea.
I know this may sound like a troll, but it isn't. If the US legal system is so good, shouldn't the American Red Cross win in the end?
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
I would think any half decent human would not want to take a charity to court unless it was a major issue that was affecting them negatively. I don't think that the Red Cross accepting donations is really a great loss of income to the patent holders, so despite the legalities and even ignoring basic compassion shouldn't PR dictate that it's not right to sue?
"Something can be simple, but we shouldn't be deceived by this," said Jack Slobodin, another patent attorney. "If no one has done it before or thought of it, it deserves a patent. Like the paper clip, or the Post-it note." And the inventor deserves compensation, Slobodin said."
Protecting the rights of inventors is a necessary part of the research and investment fields, said Slobodin.
Otherwise, he said, there would be little incentive for taking risks: "The inventor should have a key to the courthouse. There's a long, sordid history of big companies stealing the work of private inventors."
The same old hopelessly flawed logic and a very good example of it: To make paperclips available to the World, which is what you are expected to do in return for the exclusive rights to profit from doing so, you need to invest in a paperclip factory, it's workforce, distribution network and all the other expenses associated with manufacturing investment. There lies the risk - a very great financial risk and rightly addressed by the patent system. If you consider an equivalently simple software or business method idea, where is that risk now? Just what exactly is it that needs to be protected? The only investment risk that needs to be protected in this case is the investment in the patent application itself and the litigation expenses required to extort money from legitimate and honest businesses and organisations.
Just who do the legislators think they're protecting when they engineer a system that enables worthless parasites like PanIP to persecute small businesses and others even to gratuitously attack charities?
Why not directly base a patent on the ammount of R&D done and some 'market time' value: eg a stupid web patent such as donations on the net which obviously took someone back in the early days of the net all of 3 minutes to figure out would have a very low 'R&D value' and a very low chance of being granted or upheld aditionally the internet/computing industry moves very fast, so the patent would only be granted for say 1 or 2 years if it was granted at all.
:P ) and because the car industry moves abit slower (lots of people still drive cars from the 90's) it would get a value of say 8 years and the R&D value would be taken into consideration in upholding its patents and charging royalties.
If a company had spent 5 years and billions in R&D of an innovative new type of engine it would get a high R&D value (dont ask me how thats calculated
The patent system is to give incentive and it does that by giving just enough time for someone to use a patent as an advantage before its open to everyone.
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How about an overly complex, ambiguous, highly exploitable system of law? (in other words, big government)
For the record, the patent system is not ambiguous. It is true that patents that are ambiguous or overly broad can slip through the system. But the system itself is well defined.
And it may not have occurred to you but every system is exploitable, just in a different way. If there weren't patent protections, people would be stealing legitimate inventions willy-nilly.
As I said, losing a lawsuit does not mean that the Lawsuit was frivolous.
There is a difference between a Frivolous lawsuit (suing McDonald's because I'm fat), and a Lawsuit with merit, that is lost (suing Ford for negligence relating to SUV Roll-Overs).
What 'loser pays' means, is that you must have an absolutely air-tight, 100% case before attempting a lawsuit as a private citizen or small firm. And if it's 100% air-tight, there really isn't any need for a trial now is there?
The whole point to a trial is to determine the facts when they are in dispute. 'Loser pays' removes that option from the private citizen, and makes corporations nearly untouchable, since a private citizen can't risk failure without facing bankruptcy.
If there weren't patent protections, people would be stealing legitimate inventions willy-nilly.
If there were no patents, nobody would even think of calling it "stealing"...
-- Qu'est-ce que la propriété intellectuelle? It is thought control.
And if there were no concept of the ownership of physical property no one would ever think of calling it "stealing" either.
Did you have some point to make?
I'm glad people are shocked. I was shocked. When people stop being shocked by this sort of thing, we really are in trouble...