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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."
let's face it; software patenting is a rich boys club; or another manifestation of the motto "the one with the most money wins". There are thousands of patents like this; scads of unoriginal montages of half-baked and recycled ideas, cleverly disguised and slopped up to the USPO, and approved, cha ching.
It takes this kind of outrage and political pressure to get one patent reviewed. What chance does the small software company have protecting itself against patents with a lineage of prior art? It's also a positive feedback system; patents breed patents, just look at the crazy exponential explosion of USPO patents over the last five years. And sitting in the middle of the web is the black widow, the USPO, raking in the fees while spending precious little fix the spiraling problem. Once practical answer: maybe register your software company in the Cayman Islands or Vanuatu, or some other such place and take your international profits offshore. Better defensive legal system; and better protection against the system fueled by common-revenue-oriented legislation and wayward lawyers.
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
I vaiguely remember that the Amiga OS 3 had an application called Multiview which allowed extensible embedded viewing of almost everything with the correct plugins (Called datatypes if I remember correctly). I dunno if this is the same thing though, but i think it predates the Web completely (Although only by a year or two). Hmm, have to dig out my old Amiga and check.
After grant of a patent, any person (in Europe, this does not include the patent proprietor) can challenge the granted patent with all prior art available. And this person is party to the proceedings; the European Patent Office coordinates the procedure and judges it.
Remark to be made here is that in first instance, the EPO is not very willing to revoke a patent (the examiner of the grant procedure is in the opposition division as well), but appeal may be a good remedy.
I heard that the US patent law may be amended to allow inter partes proceedings for invalidation/re-examination. Any news on that?
No amount of eloquence or quality of argument is as persuasive as a sufficiently large wad of cash (even if said wad of cash is used indirectly). This is why the EU Commission will, in the end, not listen to Moglen and Lessig, and will instead listen to Microsoft and the other multinational corporations.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
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?
If we are discussing software patents, don't give the big guys patents in the first place--or the little guys.
Extending patent protection to ideas was a braindead idea.
KFG
Someone once said something along the lines that it was only because they had stood on the shoulders of giants that they had achieved so much.
Perhaps the only fair solution is to limit patients to a maximum life of 2 years, and why not do the same for copyright too?
Ok I see the point if you invent create something unique that people are prepared to pay for then you should be entitled to some reward and a patient/ copyright gives you exclusive rights for a time and the opportunity to make some money by granting you a monopoly on this but for how long should independent development be halted?
very rarely if at all does something come without development using somebody elses work and idea's.
This Post is unique and the words I choose and the order I place them is mine alone. However they start with the basis of an article on slashdot, using technology that was developed by somebody else. If I had to pay for everything i did that used somebody elses work in someway or had to check to see who's copyrights i might be infringing I wouldn't be able to do anything and niether could you!
If we want the computer industry to stagnate then lets continue the madness and copyright and patent everything and why stop there.
Short limited life patents and copyrights seem to be the only sensible solution.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
"Fairly inexpensive" still being more than my present net worth. :-( :-((
Yet, I could write new software today that violates 100s of US patents. The patent system creates exclusion of the poorest, creating a "members club", and the developing world would do well to reject intellectual "property" outright, but are probably too greedy and corrupt to do so
the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community
Nonsense. For starters that is false outside the US. Secondly, the only thing that is "well-settled" is that the US has recently REVERSED it's position and has been issuing and upholding such patents.
In particular the EU Parliment is well-settled that software is not patentable subject matter, and that the European Patent Convention explicitly declares that software is not patentable subject matter. This would imply that any software patents granted thus far in Europe have been improperly issued and are worthless.
Yes, the European Council is pushing to legitimize existing and future software software patents, but as I understand it the Parliment gets the final vote. (Anyone more knowledgable in EU politics is welcome to correct me or elaborate on the process.) Very few software patent cases have been brought to court, but from what I hear they have generally been tossed out as invalid, particularly in Germany.
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.
Yes. A perfect textbook example of a patent on pure math. Utterly absurd. What next? A patent on doing a basic integral? Oh wait, that was the initial Software patent upheld by the US Supreme Court in Diamond v. Diehr. It was a patent on preforming a basic integral of heat over time. An absolutely trivial math equation if you are the least bit familiar with calculus, integrating heat over time.
Prior to that ruling it was well-settled that the US Patent Office rejected all efforts to patent computer programs on the grounds that programs are mathematical techniques and not patentable. The patent office's own commision said "A series of instructions which control or condition the operation of a data processing machine, generally referred to as a program, shall not be considered patentable regardless of whether the program is claimed as (a) an article, (b) a process described in terms of the operations penformed by a machine pursuant to a program, or (c) one or more machine configurations established by a program."
The US assistant Attorney General said "The practical results of extending patent monopolies into this area would be to inhibit interchange of information and techniques, to restrain innovation, efficiency and competitive vigor in the growing computer industry, and to raise barriers to new entry. These anti-competitive consequences would result without giving the public, as consideration for the patent grant, any `inventive' contribution to the progress of the arts and sciences."
The initial Diamond v. Diehr ruling REVERSED settled US policy against software patents. The Patent Office threw the doors wide open to software patents based on that ruling. The US Supreme Court simply goofed in that case. They thought they were upholding a patent on a physical manufacturing process. There was absolutely nothing new or inventive in the physical manufacturing process, the supposed "invention" was purely in math.
Further note that the RSA patent - and ANY software patent for that matter - can be implemented through PURE THOUGHT. It is possible to preform the RSA exponention just by thinking the calculations in your head. Using a computer merely makes it easier, faster, and more reliable to preform those basic math calculations. There is absolutely nothing new, "inventive", or non-obvious in using an ordinary computer to preform basic math calculations faster and more reliably.
It is just absurd to suggest that a person stitting motionless and just *thinking* could violate the RSA patent (or any other software patent). And it is also absurd to suggest that the obvious step of using an abacus, a slide-rule, a calcula
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.