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Parties Behind Eolas Patent Reexam Revealed
theodp continues "According to a 4-27 Interview Summary, the USPTO presented Eolas with a 10-14 letter signed by in-house counsel from Microsoft, AOL and Macromedia, a 10-15 letter from Adobe, and a 10-22 letter from the law firm of Sidley Austin (aka Microsoft's lawyers) in connection with its proposed rejection of Eolas' patent claims. All predated the 10-24 letter from the W3C's counsel as well as Berners-Lee's widely-publicized 10-28 letter, which seems unlikely to have prompted the USPTO's detailed 10-30 Reexam Order. The W3C has repeatedly had no comment when asked if the 'newly cited art' provided in its 10-24 filing had already been supplied earlier to the USPTO by others. UPDATE: In response, the W3C's Danny Weitzner points out that the preceding words are mine and should not be confused with those of a distinguished journalist."
If this kind of web-neighbor due diligence was carried out more often, we would not see all these spurious software patents being issued.
Why don't we create an industry funded board whose job is to make sure that silly software patents are no longer awarded? Oh wait... The industry only dislikes SOME software patents, while anyone who cares to look will see that all software patents threaten innovation and are largely anti-competitive because they rig the game in favor of big corporations.
Unfortunately, software patents have become the last hurdle that the proprietary world can throw at the free software movement.
Moglen and Lessig are both very persuasive (If you got a bit of free time, read "Free Culture" by the latter) I hope that upon hearing their arguments European Commission will be wise enough to reconsider its position on software patents.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Humm, The BBC had a article related to this too, Here, and it scared me since the companies that are lobbying for changes to the Patent regieme are all the existing 'effective monopolies', MS, Cisco, Ebay, etc..
I don't think a patent system re-written by Big-Business is going to be good for anyone other than Big-Business.
The more I think about this, the more I fail to see any answer, only problems. How can a patent system protect the genuinely innovative little guys, whilst preventing the abuses the Big Business will practice in order to protect their market share?
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
So I think that I'm well-positioned to state that awful software patents are bad for everyone - including the patentee.
Eolas is only the latest example in this stream of patents that should never have been filed, let alone examined and issued. Microsoft's double-click patent, Amazon's 1-Click patent, Yahoo's patent for an Internet search engine - these are not only completely unenforceable, but serve as albatrosses to the patentees attempting to assert them.
I blame these patents on four factors:
While these patents are a collective debacle for the USPTO, the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community (though, of course, the /. community has its own views.) I present the textbook example of an elegant, useful software invention worthy of patent protection: RSA - the public-key system that permits relatively effortless secured communication via one-way encryption.
There is a silver lining to this story. If you go back 30-40 years, you will see a host of complaints about these new-fangled patents on biotechnology - many claims that allowing inventors to patent novel organisms, gene sequences, proteins, and research techniques posed a horrific threat to biotech research and product development. These claims assumed the same basis as many of today's complaints against software patents: examiners were hopelessly lacking in technical skill in these areas; the subject matter qualitatively differed from conventionally patentable fields of art; a 17-year monopoly (pre-1995) represented a calamity to rapidly-evolving technology and typically-cooperative research. History has shown that those fears were hugely outweighed by the overall benefits of biotech patents - as evidenced by a thousand, wonderfully effective therapies and drugs (many of which, like prozak, are now expired, transferring the technology to the public domain.) Biotechnology and medicine are experiencing a huge upsurge in the pace of technical development - thanks in large measure to the willingness of corporations to invest in (potentially patentable) biotech R&D.
I posit that the software arts will experience a similar upsurge in innovation in short order, directly related to the allowance of software patents. The boondoggles that make for provocative /. headlines are the regrettable consequence of an unplanned transition, which time will remedy. These awful patents will expire - and, indeed, will serve as documented prior art for future corps of examiners to assert against future idiot patentees. It will simply take time to gear up the system.
- David Stein
*
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are extensive problems with allowing companies and individuals to patent biotechnology and there is little evidence to suggest that all the patents were necessary.
The genetic information within natural organisms should be part of the common property shared among everyone. Allowing some individual to claim ownership of the genetic code of a natural organism is obviously absurd.
Corporations have been rapidly patenting genetic information from crops that have been developed over thousands of years by indigenous populations in third-world countries. The thousands of years of cultivation apparently entitles those people to nothing, while using an automated machine to decode the genetic code entitles the corporation to ownership of the genetic code of the plant? How is this reasonable or equitable? These patents are robbing people in third world countries.
The explosion of development in bio-technology has more to do with the available technology and automation than allowing patents on natural organisms. There is plenty of profit to be made in developing medicines from natural genetic codes without granting ownership of those codes to corporations. Rightfully, the ownership of the genetic information should be held in common trust. There is nothing to stop businesses from patenting and profiting from treatments and therapies developed from that knowledge.
It seems that the current trend in the U.S. is to rush to grant ownership of everything, including knowledge, to some single individual or corporation. This headlong rush is being done largely without regard to the consequences of eliminating the public commons and the benefits which it provides. All knowledge and progress builds on what came before. If there is a price tag on every bit of knowledge, it won't be long before progress in the sciences slows dramatically.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of patents for novel inventions. I think it is an appropriate way to reward and spur invention. We need to make sure, though, that it's invention that we are rewarding and not political lobbying skills.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
I blame these patents on four factors
How about factor #5: patent attorneys who help file bad patents to collect their fee, rather than talking their clients out of a bad idea (and thus making less money).
too often, such inventions are claimed as [hardware + software]
It's my understanding that, at least historically, this was a requirement of the USPTO. You could not patent a naked, abstract, algorithm or method. It had to be embodied in some particular device, hearkening back to the days when you had to submit a working model of your invention to the patent examiner. Thus, patents were written to apply to whole system, rather than just the software. And, as you know, the legal system is very conservative. Once you find the textual formula that results in successfully defended patents, no one ever dares change it.
Yes, I wonder about the ethical implications of patent attorneys filing bogus patents like this, as it strongly appears to violate their ethical obligations (both to the client, and to the USPTO.)
It's my understanding that, at least historically, this was a requirement of the USPTO. You could not patent a naked, abstract, algorithm or method.
True, but that requirement was pointedly confronted and dismissed by State Street Bank (the case leading to the 1998 ruling that the USPTO must issue software patents.) Previously, in order to stem a flood of software patent apps that couldn't be handled effecively, the USPTO and federal courts conjured up imaginary reasons for denying them. For instance, the patent had to have a "real-world impact" or rely on "real-world inputs."
All of these requirements - including the embodiment requirement - are anachronisms. They should not appear in any software patent application filed in the past five years.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.