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Profiting From A Vague Patent HOWTO
tunabomber writes "IEEE Spectrum has an in-depth article about the rise of Acacia Research Corporation and its plan for enforcing its patent on 'Digital Media Technology' (which seems to lay claim to any technology that transmits audio or video digitally for entertainment purposes). You may recall that there was a story on Slashdot over a year ago about Acacia's threats and subsequent lawsuits against some small adult entertainment companies regarding their violation of the patent. There was also an Ask Slashdot posted a while back by the owner of one of these companies who had received a letter from Acacia Research demanding that they pay licensing fees. Both Slashdot stories asked how long it would be until Acacia went after the big media companies. Well, they finally did last week. It appears that Acacia just had to get enough companies (Disney and Virgin Radio, among others) to pay licensing fees before they could afford a legal adventure against the big guys. DirectTV, Comcast, Echostar, and Charter Communications are some of the defendents. Let the fireworks begin!"
Some HOWTO this was... I have the 2nd step, but I thought this would answer that elusive 3rd step, but it was no help at all.
1. Obtain vague patent
2. Enforce vague patent
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Hmmm.
Someone should patent the method for profiting from vague patents... then sue everyone profiting from vague patents.
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
Are there really some companies dedicated to entertaining dwarves ???
Trolling using another account since 2005.
In the age of digital cluelessness in the patent office, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. It's hard to even tell if it's a win/win situation, because if they really go all-out on something as general as "patent of a device that broadcast digital entertainment" (paraphrased), the amount of heads that will roll in the process will make the french revolution look like a cakewalk in comparison.
Meanwhile, the sharks are rubbing their collective fins at the prospect, and ironing their armani suits no doubt.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
There are an umber of "ASCII art" utilities out there that "streamed" images to teletypes and terminals way back when. Some pretty racy images at times, too ;)
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Is it just me or do these issues only seem to happen when some no-name corporation "remembers" that they somehow invented a wide-sweeping technology? It seems that when legitmate corporations enforce patent/copyright for things they actually invented from the get-go, nobody questions it. Is it human spirit to "take what you can get when they're not looking" or are these bozos just out to make a cheap buck?
The audio/video feeds of SCO's copyright infringement lawsuits to be highly entertaining. ;)
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I think that the reason they went after the online porn industry was to establish legal precedent.
After all, in court, isn't it simple enough to find bias against people who "harm society" to make judgements not based on the rule of law?
-PM
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Since when are Disney and Virgin not considered big companies?
Say this company files suit against Comcast, et al, and other big media behemouths. Comast et al will argue in court against the validity of the patent being awarded. Assume they're successful, and the patent gets tossed. What recourse does this company's previous licensors have? Are they capable of reclaiming their money?
1. Patent "digitally transferring text for any purpose at all".
2. Have wet dreams about email royalties from Yahoo, Hotmail, *starts slobbering*
3. ????
4. Drive the spammers out of business
5. Profit!
Yeah, breaks with the "Slashdot-profit-haiku" rules, but who cares.
.... for now, because things might change with the software patent project ! (erk)
is an effective deterrent against bogus patents. IE you have to pay the patent office a lofty fine if your patent gets overturned in court. However, I can't think of a system that would:
a) get through the special interest dominated congress and
b: Be effective at making huge companies afraid of the fine while at the same time not intimidating legitimate companies from applying for legitmate patents.
Scylla and Charybdis...
And yes, I do think there are legitimate software patents, for example if this company had developed it's own compression algorithm, and unique, and very specific, distribution method, then they probably deserve a patent for it, but if they just say they invented distributing entertainment digitally, then there is no basis for the patent and they should be punished accordingly.
I own the patents for the following vague ideas:
1) A method for translating program source code into a machine runnable format.
2) A method for displaying a computer's file system (see earlier patent for details) based on the top of a typical desk.
3) A number system based solely on the numbers 1 and 0.
4) A method for having sex with a computer (you know it'll happen one day... and when it does... I'm rolling in the cash)
Anyone have the number for a good (i.e. slimey) lawyer?
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
Can someone remind we - what makes a valid patent?
I mean, is it enough just to have an idea? If that's the case, I have lots of ideas how, for instance, nanotechnology might be used, and I'm sure I could write up some fancy papers about it. And I'm sure one day, some of them might come to fruition. Could I patent those ideas?
If I can then the patent system should be abolished, or at least completely revised. Guessing how people are going to use technology in the future and then patenting those ideas should not be the basis of the patent system.
I did some googling, and they hold the same patent in Japan and Europe. It seems like Europe has a pretty good record of not approving silly patents.
I can't find the actual text of the patent. I tried searching the patent search engine dealy linked to in the original article, but I couldn't find it. Could someone link to it?
And the reason they call it a patent of a HOWTO is because I do not believe Acacia Research Corporation has actually implemented the streaming video stuff that they patented. I don't think it's as broad as it sounds, but it does sound a lot like patenting an idea.
Help! I'm being repressed!
...will the companies that were sued and lost get their money back?
The more mess is created the more people will realize how broken is the software patenting system ...
...
I am almost hoping for a victory of Acacia in this, with the big players have to pay a lot o money and give Acacia even more strenght
what side do you stand for and why ??
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Personally, I feel that software patents should only be awarded if the source code is open. Not necessarily GPL'd, but open in that your competition may have a legitimate opportunity to view the design.
Seventy five years ago, if you devised a new engine for a car, your competition could buy one, rip it apart and copy your ideas. So patents made sense. But in closed source software design, the products are black boxes that frequently can be describe only on more general terms. So we get these patent applications for abstract functions.
IMHO, patents should only be awarded if a company is willing to open its source code to an extent. It can still be proprietary, but there must be the legitimate opportunity for someone else to be able to "look inside" to see how it works. If a company want to keep it's code closed, fine. But no patent.
Just my two cents.
Next thing you know, Al Gore's gonna be suing over his invention of the Internet
theres no place like 127.0.0.1
What sucks, is that "Big Name" companies, like Playboy have already got suckered into licensing the "technology." The Defense Lawyers really need to start attacking these patent claims. It's really getting tiresome that everyone and their grandma is trying to patent THINGS THAT ALREADY EXIST and then sue other people. Sigh...
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
So, does this mean if I want to watch a movie on my computer I have to use the VGA output on my video card? Damn, I shouldn't have wasted all that money on my monitor with a DVI in.
I'm not defending Acacia or the patent process by any stretch of the imagination. I worked for an online calendaring company, and somehow got my name on the patent for the ability to search metadata online. Which of course was silly. I and the developers pointed out that it was silly and revolted against the filing of the patent.
The lawyers convinced us that filing the patent is the only way to prevent someone else from filing a patent, covering your technology, and then suing you, forcing you to PROVE to a court (always a chancy thing) that you had created prior art. And quite frankly every innovation we made to our online calendar showed up 3 months later in someone elses calendar. In fact we even found instances where people had literally cut and pasted our code, comments and all!
So we knew that there were unscrupulous bastards out there, willing to completely rip us off. So bearing that in mind, we agreed to file for patents, not so much to enforce them, but to protect ourselves from future suits. I agree, if the system was healthy and working, we wouldn't need to have done that, but the system is already full of sharks -- I don't blame people for getting shark repellant. Applying for the patent HAS to be done nowadays. Enforcing the patents is when I start to get mad. I know it's a fine line, but scruples and business operate in different realities.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
Take for example IBM. They have patented everything related to object oriented operating systems under their Taligent/San Francisco project.
They could sue Sun (J2EE) or Microsoft (.NET), and just anybody using things like Object-oriented window area display system, pat. no. 6,750,858, Object-oriented event notification system with listener registration of both interests and methods, pat. no. 6,424,354 or Distributed object networking service, pat. no. 6,223,217, just to name a few.
Crazy. We have to figure out a better patent system which stills protect intelectual property but also protects us from this nonsense.
mickey mouse patents. Here, someone had to say it. Who does feel the same?
M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E - MICKEYMOUSE! MICKEYMOUSE!
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
If there are any lawyers out there, feel free to correct me, but I think the way you generally want to go in patent enforcement is to start by enforcing against small companies. Not so much to get money to sue the big boys, but because it's usually easier to win against the small ones. By winning, you establish a precedent for your patent's enforceability which makes a victory in a suit against the big boys more likely.
I'm sure the money you make doesn't hurt, of course. I mean, the big boys are going to make you pay a lot more in legal fees (more paperwork for your lawyers, more back and forth motions prior to the case, etc).
I agree with the other posters, though. We really need a better patent system because the current one is just getting abused.
Are these big companies going to go after just this one small company?
Or are they going to go after vague patents like this generally?
Heres hoping that they go after the PTO as well and get these stupid vague patents gone for good (although there is about as much chance of that happening as there is of Osama Bin Laden walking into a US military base and turning himself in)
I never understand this about Slashdot. Patents: Patent law is stupid and should be broken e.g. SCO, MS Copyright: Evil pirates stealing music/games/software are bad. One man's revolutionary is another's subversive
I'm patenting the act of patenting: "The act of registering privileges for an invention", then I'm going to sue the patent office itself. The ensuing logical paradoxes will crush the universe like a wet paper cup.
This is oddly similar to the Freeny patent for on-demand digital media reproduction. This is such a broad topic that couldn't have been imagined when the patent was conceived, yet E-Data is trying to push around pretty much anyone that has ever streamed a file or downloaded a song or video.
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
Classic story of evil turning on itself. For reference, read just about any fantasy book ever. The evil will be weak for a while and then come back again, just worry about the ricochets and stray bullets.
I'm suprised they were able to get a patent for something so vague. A friend of mine tried to patent an idea for a new product a couple of years ago and the paperwork and the whole process was a royal pain in the ass. To me this seems like another get rich quick, but let's make it look legal for the time being scheme. Why do I see this turning out so horribly for everyone who paid lecenses?
Hmmmmm, Wouldnt a CD be prior art? I mean its compressed, audio, can be transmitted (wireless speakers? those cd->fm thingys?)
Just my woreless 0.02 CAD
I knew I should have patented shitty ass how to's
defiance
Really, this is GOOD. Let the big companies keep getting hosed by the patent system. Let them see how patenting IP and having closed source propietary software will constantly hose the ability to "do your work" and just keep costing money and money and money and money and be a serious PITA to actually DO anything. Eventually, doing anything even remotely fun, interesting, or productive will be so expensive that the system will crash and burn under it's own bloat. Let it become unprofitable to use patents and restrictive copyrights. Let them keepdoing what they are doing. The lawyers and licensing fees alone will start to make companies just stop being involved with it, eventually it might even get through to some legislators noggins that the patent and copyright system is completely broken and has been broken for a long time. It won't end until joe user all the way to joe big company needs to have a lawyer on a tether with them all the time, and just have their paychecks direct deposited to the lawyers account, and the lawyers cut you a small chump change allowance.
In other words, let it burn! I feel the same way about this as I do vulnerable windows machines. The quicker it gets to a ridiculous level of unusability level the quicker it can be fixed with a REAL fix which is a total replacement system, because sure as snot they won't fix it until then, just keep applying patches that just make it worse, because they refuse to address the core issue, which is intangible thoughts shouldn't be patented in the first place. It was an INSANE precedent to let the first intangible anything get patented.
I can place a patent on a device that stabs people in the face over the internet!
In other news, SCO released training materials on "howTO sue, without having any true legal basis."
You can license this seminar* for the low low cost of your soul.
*Seminar's are patent pending by SCO.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Here are the patents in question (from an ExtremeTech article -- December 16, 2002 -- Porn Kings Aflame Over Multimedia Patents)
Excuse my lack of understanding of the patent system, but I thought that in order to patent a process, you had to actually have a working system.
In reviewing this patent, it doesn't appear they had much of a working system.
"Judge, we have never actually been able to stream ANYTHING to our clients. Just ask our customers!"
Simply send all patent applications to competing companies/scientists and allow them to draw up a list of prior art. Start from there. If the lists are all bogus, accept the application.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Turns out one of the key objectives of this patent:
Seems to me that all current broadcasters I know of that are listed in the suit fail to meet this criteria of sending the signal in a fraction of real time, and hence, bye bye lawsuit. I wish they would, but I have to record only one show at a time, during the broadcast window, and cannot record anything else during that broadcast window, hence, I believe they fail to infringe upon this patent. of course, the obligatory: IANAL.The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Im filing a patent for whatyamacallits, thingymajigs and doohickeys.
In one round of legal cases you're going to take on:
You've named 5 multi-billion (and hundred million) dollar businesses right off the bat. Not to mention that Rupert Murdoch has a controlling interest in DirecTV and would rather tear his own arm off than pay royalties on a bullshit patent. Oh yeah, great business plan. Jeeze, at least SCO had the common goddamn scense to only go after one big business.
Personally, I feel that software patents should only be awarded if the source code is open.
I hear you, though in a fairly literal interpretation of the existing rules, this already is the case, sort of. Patents are (supposed to be) for a particular implementation of an invention. Part of the requirement of getting the patent (software or otherwise) is that it has to be described in sufficient detail that someone with "ordinary skill in the art" could recreate it.
So if the patent office is following the rules they are supposed to (and we all know they aren't but bear with me) a software patent essentially should provide a psuedo-code implentation. While this doesn't fit the Stallman definition of Free Software, patents are supposed to make the internal workings public knowledge in exchange for a temporary (hah!) monopoly.
"Can someone remind we - what makes a valid patent?"
A $2500 cheque, payable to USPTO.
They gave a list of 9 instances of prior art, right in the patent! Any time you stream media, this patent covers it. So, for instance, the telephone (invented 1876), the television (patented 1948), and "computer channels" (Z3 built in 1941) all operate primarily (exclusively!) by the means described in this patent.
Inconceivable!
Still, it should make the defense a little easier when Acacia has been nice enough to catalogue prior art for us! It's like shooting wealthy, very well-defended ducks in a barrel.
Another one bites the dust
Fight the Patent
Internet Media Protective Agency
From the article, this sums up everything and this country's possible future business landscape:
Certainly, a finding in Acacia's favor will herald the arrival of a new kind of player: a company that controls technology but doesn't create it; a firm that buys patents but that patents nothing. From its roots in venture capitalism, Acacia has morphed into something that has no real peer.
We can only hope to elect officials and (indirectly) judges that frown on this practice.
This reminds me of the excellent film Wall Street, where we see the insightful contrast between the working man (ie, someone who produces something played by Martin Sheen) and a big-time trader (ie, someone who gets income without, at any point, adding any value--played my Michael Douglas).
G-Force music visualization
There is one interesting thing about these patent issues that I find ironic. I am now cheering for companies that I would normally scorn. First, it was Microsoft having the embedded object in browser page patent revoked, and now it is porn companies and the digital streaming(?) media patent. I have to admire the porn companies for their willingness to fight the patent. In this fight they are serving not just themselves, but the community at large.
someone owned the patent on the internal combustion engine, and Ford had to pay them in the early days. What was the recourse? They just waited for the patent to expire. These things do expire, you know.
stuff |
I saw an article long time ago about how internet is ruining all the high profit companies, such as cisco, oracle, sun, since you can buy stuff eletronically, including used stuff, off-lease stuff. Also small companies can easily establish its sales channel by using the internet. in the same way, financial industry is taken a big hit since people utilize internet to learn HOWTO and make investment themselves. same here, can we just ruine those lawyers by creating internet version of HOWTO and make us as powerful as those $150/hour lawyers in court? let's ruine their lives...
...in an episode of Kingdom Hospital. A civil lawyer comes into the emergency room with chest pains. One of the doctors says, "Wait a minute... He's a civil defense lawyer."
From that point on EVERYTHING is signed in triplicate, videotaped from every angle, and witnessed by at least three people. Funny, but I'd LOVE to see this sort of thing happen.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Ok, you owe me a dollar...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'd like to patent data communication via spooky action at a distance... now to just sit back and wait for someone to show me how it'll work.
One of the claims in their oldest patent, 5132992, is:
"1. A transmission system for providing information to be transmitted to remote locations, the transmission system comprising:
library means for storing items containing information; identification encoding means for retrieving the information in the items from the library means and for assigning a unique identification code to the retrieved information;
conversion means, coupled to the identification encoding means, for placing the retrieved information into a predetermined format as formatted data;
ordering means, coupled to the conversion means, for placing the formatted data into a sequence of addressable data blocks;
compression means, coupled to the ordering means, for compressing the formatted and sequenced data blocks;
compressed data storing means, coupled to the data compression means, for storing as files the compressed, sequenced data blocks received from the data compression means with the unique identification code assigned by the identification encoding means; and
transmitter means, coupled to the compressed data storing means, for sending at least a portion of one of the files to one of the remote locations."
From this description, it sounds like web, ftp and gopher servers fall under the patent. However, I would think that, since the method that is described was first published in 1971 in RFC 114, 21 years BEFORE the this patent was filed, this patent would be disqualified via the prior art argument.
As for the other patents, you can find their IP list here and the USPTO patent search engine here. Have fun.
-Valen
You can't patent anything that's obvious to practioners in the art. If scores of people independently come up with the idea without having heard of the patent, then that's pretty much the definition of obvious.
You have to wonder if there is a politician in the world that has a functioning brain cell. Why in the world would the EC even consider following the broken disaster that is the US patent process?
I'm also expecting a push from the US to "simplify" world patents a few years after that by "consolidating" the patent databases. Of course then they can claim that the whole world is subject to this insanity, and try to extort revenue from global industry.
It's not surprising the EC politicians don't see that endgame. Like most politicians, they don't look beyond buying enough votes for the next election.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Can you see how far did they come? The Country of Opportunities became The Country of Unopportunities. Nothing can be done without infringing a patent. It's not possible even to use a Double Click(tm) without using a patented idea.
The patent law is becoming a drawback to the development of new technologies. Companies now have to worry about research and development, in order to avoid lawsuits in the near future, and to spend even more to make a new product avaiable.
This is a major problem to US economy. It reduces the chances of small companies being sucessful, and big companies begins as small companies.
The consequences are simple. New high-tech players will grow in other countries, like China, India and Brazil, while companies in US will remain the same. The market that could be developed inside US will be developed around the world.
It's not such a bad thing for worldwide wealth distribuition, but also isn't a good thing for US economy.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Reading stories like this make me proud of my patents. They never earned anyone any money, but at
least they made sense.
After reading the abstract, I'm surprised that the RIAA is not fighting this patent, on the grounds that it promotes piracy.
Extract from the original patent, with gross
spelling errors.
Did the examiner actually read it ?
>Time encoding by time encoder 114 makes itmes and subsets of items retrieveable and addressable throughout the transmission system 100. Time encoding enables subsequent compression of the information to be improved because data reduction prpcesses may be performed in the time dimension.
If you are reading this from any part of the world aside from the United States, you already know this history. Hell, you're living it. That's why you hate us. That's why you either shake your head in disbelief or merely point your finger and chuckle. You see the black muck that is the personification of the stereotypical American. From outside the bubble, man, that is one ugly sight.
No one can argue that it is sickening how members of a rich society are able to chuck their conscience and morality out the window and shamelessly take advantage of a hampered and flawed system. All this without a hint of concern on how their actions may be affecting the lives of millions of unwitting countrymen. But, what is often overlooked is the long term detrement these actions have on the American economy.
Based on this kind of crap, who in their right mind would ever consider basing a business, of any type or any size, in the United States anymore? Even the stallwarts of the ecomony are picking up and moving. Offshoring is a big a problem as most folks think it is, regardless of what the "industry insiders" have to say about it.
If asshole "business executives" and their brigades of lawyers are further allowed to get away with this type of behaviour, who is going to be left? Folks in the service industries, that's it. And they'll be catering to people from other countries who stopped by for a visit to see all the carnage. And where do you think these idiots who are causing all the problems will be? Not here, that's for damn sure. They'll be at their beach house on some remote island far, far away from the garbage they left on the curb.
This isn't about being conservative or liberal, black or white, rich or poor to us normal folks. This is about a few talentless nasty bottom feeders ruining the most powerful economy in modern history.
Well, gee, thanks. Maybe I can have a slice of apple pie with the dung heap you're feeding us. That should make it all better.
"These things do expire, you know."
Unlike Copyrights.
So now I have to root for Comcast, DirecTV and Charter? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you have ESP?
There have been other organizations that have done lawsuits on vague patents like this. One of the ones that I have heard a lot about and looked into is the patents involving bar codes and Lemelson's vague patents. If you google for lemelson and lawsuit, you will find lots of information on this. These guys are following the same example.
Companies were told to pay up or risk being sued if they used bar codes. The price kept going up as they went to bigger companies every time. Finally some companies stood up against the vague patents and beat it in court. Those guys are pro's at patent law and went around telling people to pay up or get sued. It looks as if there are more playing the same old trick.
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
IANAL but... Seems to me there is a "prior art" clause in patents, and it includes publishing. All you have to do to prevent a method (not an idea) from being patented, is to publish something saying "look, you can do this in this way!'. I.e., once Arthur C. Clarke had described geostationary satellites - impossible at the time, but a good idea and coming soon - that particular method could not be patented. (But a specific technology for fine-tuning the orbit daily to stay on course- probably could have been.) Even if the inventors themselves publish the concept, if it predates the patent application, they are SOL, IIRC? For example - here's my big idea I'm going to get rich on! The CCD and laser technology is such that you can build a bank of cheap CCD eyes and IR laser diodes aimed at movable mirrors; construct a spread-out array (20? 100?), each laser too weak to damage human eyes or flesh. Hook it to a computer, with targeting software that can pick out insects; use several cameras for depth perception. An insect flies by, the banks of lasers swivel to focus on it, and within a second, voila! Crispy dead insect, no harmful insecticide. Acquire next target! Of course, my prior art is the movie "Millenium" with Chris Kristoffersen, and seveal generations of kids with magnifying glasses. So I probably couldn't patent that anyway! But, now that it's described, can anyone get a patent for anything except specific portions? (I.e. quality targeting software?)
So, how long do you suppose it'll be before they go after RIAA and MPAA? Now, that's a fight I might enjoy seeing. :-) Maybe we'll see it on Pay Per View?!
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Were they compressed, stored, transmitted and then decompressed?
Yes. The final human-readable form of the characters was a 6x9 array of dots (bits) that formed a glyph on the paper. Those 54 bits were compressed into an 8-bit byte for transmission by recognizing that most combinations of those 54 bits did not result in recognizable English letters, arabic numerals, or punctuation marks.
I take it you haven't seen the section in your local pr0n shop with the videos/dvds "Bridget the Midget" and "Demented Dwarves" then...
They can be connected, but I was more addressing just the useability aspects. To me it IS more moral and ethical to share with others. Patenting thought and thought alone will never work in the long run. A short term patent on an actual built tangible product is a different matter. We as humans always shared thoughts in a lot of cases, but tangible products were treated differently, they got bought and sold and traded and it was a benfit to all. When we had examples of what we can now analogously mention as a patented and closed source intangibles as "things" system as regards "thought"-the old closed and secret guild systems with closed ideas to outsiders and only monks could read and write for the most part and copying was expensive and in some cases the commoners weren't even allowed to read and write-we had what are now called "the dark ages". It sucked mostly.
All this intangible IP patent and closed source copyright action now does is to try and reintroduce the dark ages with a modern skin on it and try to apply it to modern technology. Thought prohibition didn't work very well back then,it slowed human advance by centuries basically, and we are now seeing it's starting to impact modern civilisation as well.
"Thoughts" are the genesis of tools and processes, tools are what gets the "real work" done. The easier/cheaper/faster we get thoughts out to as many people as possible, the quicker/cheaper/better real tools and processes can be devised to allow real work to be done so we all benefit and profit from it.
It's time to end thought prohibition. Good thinkers who can think of original thoughts benefit just as much from sharing with other thinkers, because no one has a lock on being the only thinker. We build from each others thoughts. Advances don't come about from restricting the advances of others. Good thinkers are also smart enough to DO something practical with their thoughts, and with other peoples thoughts. The wright bros built a successful plane, but they didn't invent the gasoline engine, and they didn't invent cracking and distillation to even have gasoline from crude. They didn't invent the way to build a fabric skin to use for the wings. They just used a combination of others thoughts and did something practical and tangible with it, and society more or less benefited from it.
We can slow it down and keep all thoughts restricted and regulated, and make it even more complex daily, or we can speed it up immensely and allow thoughts to just get out there. That's the only two basic choices we really have as humans in organised society.
since process and business method patents are so freaking popular, why couldn't someone go and patent the business method of aquiring IP and Patent portfolios for the purpose of profit by licensing and profit by litigation...
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Sorry, you still have no attractiveness of which you are aware. Whatever that means.
Because US software giants with the money are pressing the politicians.
m$ is behind Ireland. No wonder they have suggested such a ridiculous proposal, squarely against what the EP has opted for.
Then when voting, the irish guy made fun of the danish, who was the first to say something against the proposal.
Or look at France, where the politicians ask the patent office if the proposal is good or not. The patent office!
Gee
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
... then is not use patented software or closed source. Just keep using the alternatives. If it's new code, it shouldn't be affected.
;)) but it IS better in the long run to use a well thought out plan than to just kludge something up. Short run just slapping a seed in the ground is easier, but the results sucketh. And I've only gotten to be a good gardener from building on my own previous works and using the *freely shared ideas of others*, and I've had a garden every season now no matter where I have lived for 40 something years, lemme see, 48 years to be exact since my first little garden as a kid. So, ya, good stuff can take a long time, but I got close to what I have now after only a few years of gardening, but I still learn and implement new techniques and tricks, some I think up on my own, other ideas I go find someplace else, and still get the occassional FUBAR. I accept that reality. You can't get perfect, it don't exist, but you can get steadily better, especially if you try harder than the other guy and rely on skull sweat as much as grunt sweat. And it never bothered me that good stuff just takes time, time is *free*, it's handed to you free as soon as you get hatched. It's just what you do with it that's important.
to me, in a way, and this is an analogy and it's flawed but it's close enough-we've seen were firefighters just let some structure burn to the ground. It might be that the house had gas leaks and crappy wiring and was coated with a flammable paint, whatever. Fixing the house was never an option, as it would take more work then just rebuilding it. ignoring it let the house catch on fire. it would have been better to do a controlled demolition and then rebuild it correctly, but sometimes that isn't done, so the house burns. if it's too fast, they a lot of times just make sure it burns down all the way and doesn't jump over to next door, where the house is built correctly.
The time limit-eh, no control over that really. The best you can do is inspect a house before buying it, or build it yourself or in collaboration with like minded people who want quality over speed of building.
I don't think there's an easy answer, but there IS an easi-er answer, and that is to just start building your own, which FOSS is doing,in the totality, with the entire computing experience being the end goal gestalt, freer, better, easier, more secure, etc. and try to move away from-ignore, not associate with, not use, etc- from the neighborhood that has the crappy built houses that can catch fire easy, have no door locks, and the are so leaky the wind and rain and bugs and burglars can get inside with little effort. And paying serious folding money for that sort of construction and to live in that neighborhood is *nutz*. It's better to just move on, do it better, and accept the time limit as just reality and deal with it. Nothing really GOOD is all that instant or easy.
I garden. When I put in a new bed I go way out of my way to make sure it's designed well, that the ground is de-weeded in advance, that the soil has a good amount of tilth to it and has the correct minerals added, and so on, before I plant anything. Now I COULD just walk over to a generic patch of ground and stick a seed in there, but then I'd be struggling with endless weeds and wonder why the crop didn't do well because not enough fertiliser or from the wrong ph or something with the soil caused either too much or too little moisture retention, and etc, etc garden tech stuff.
My method takes longer,(I've actually had people stop and tell me I got the best looking garden in the county, shameless brag here
You simply have to not do it for enternainment.
Let your subscribers rate the media that they are reviewing. That way it is for a business purpose of writing or collecting reviews and entertainment is not the purpose.
Simple? Should I patent this?
Or at least all the ones broadcasting HDTV. XM and Sirius Radio look like good targets, too. Then there's the coming digital FM.
How the hell can they hire enough lawyers to sue all the people that broadcast digitally?
The patent was filed 13 years ago - and it's not that vague.
I don't agree with the general premise of cash grabs for vague crap (ala recent Microsoft, SCO, etc.), but this sounds 'reasonably' legit.
I don't like it, but that doesn't stop it from being true.
I just bought 100$ in shares for this companie.
i remember recently kicking myself that i didnt buy any sco
when the whole lawsuit happend, i could have made a shitload of money from that.
Go ahead milk the stock cow, its a stupid beast and dosent really mind.
I'm afraid that infringes my patent on stabbing people in the face using electricity in any shape or form. Look for a steampowered alternative.
And from http://www.dip.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/cost211.html
Outcome: CCITT Recommendation H.121 2 Mbit/s codec for videoconferencing
Outcome: CCITT Recommendation H.261 p x 64 kbit/s codec (1991)
Surely these people are just trying to benefit from obvious uses of other peoples' inventions. I can't even see a description of a codec in the application.
so could i patent transfering of data either audible, visual, or numerical through wire or wireless. or perhaps transfering electrons or radiowaves through anything that will conduct either of those 2
Didn't someone write a document that played a tune when printed on a dot-matrix printer a very long time ago?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
yes, politicians have functioning brain cells, but they are distracted by the pain from sitting with one cheek elevated above the other by a wad of cash. "I'm also expecting a push from the US to "simplify" world patents a few years after that by "consolidating" the patent databases." We have a patent database? I sure wish someone would let the examiners in on that nugget! :)
-- "Someone's gotta go back for a shit-load of dimes."
There was also a local BBS for my Amiga that displayed animated shapes and sounds using a special terminal program. It had commands to draw lines, circles, etc, and move them around the screen. This was prior to 1990 (I was still in school at the time).
Insert into TOS ... this service is for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, any entertainment value derived is purely coincidental.
You all might be interested to know, that I was just granted a patent on a system by which a sack expands and fills with air ( similar to a balloon ) then deflates releasing the air.
Having said patent means that you all are illegally infringing on my patent.
I will be bringing a lawsuit for everyone who breathes without obtaining a license.
Not really, but this is how anal these lawsuits sound to me. Is this not the most ridiculous thing you have heard?
Pehaps I will try to gain a patent for that, then sue every Acacia employee for patent infringement.
The rest of you will be granted lifelong license rights free of charge.
Perhaps then they will see how stupid this makes them appear to the world.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
do you?
Since Civilization 4 is being written, I do sincerely hope that the end of civilization is reflected in roving bands of Patent Attorneys suing civilization to the bedrock. Also needing to be included are myopic patent examiners and clueless judges which you need to have built before you can build The Patent Attorney.
I knew that there would be a use for all the Y2K food I have tucked away in the bunker.
Burn Baby Burn......
I got my tin foil hat on, and Ashcroft still has the threat level at orange.
Burn Baby Burn......
My patent for devices using multiple electron energy levels is going to be granted.
Burn Baby Burn......
Acacia taking lessons from Al Capone--Gee that's a real nice business you got there. It would really be too bad if something were to happen to it.
Burn Baby Burn......
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
Q: What is the difference bewteen a lawyer and a catfish?
A: One is a scum-sucking bottom-dweller and the other is just a fish.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
1/1 is a perfectly good 'fraction' !
Interesting. Since this claim is broad enough to halt the operation of
Microsoft
Linux and IBM
The Media
Hospitals
The Armed Froces
Intelligence Agencies
Charities and NGOs
Government
International Organisations
and the Lawyers, Courts and Police...
Why don't we just kill them? I mean who is going to argue or complain?
I get the point, I just been tippy toeing around the ultimate solution, because it's illegal to even mention it in passing lest yu get a vist from the authorities. If a co opted paid off blackmailed and bribed government gets so deep into the pockjets of transnational corporations that you become a slave, it is every freemans duty to "alter reality" using the tools of his choice. You got to ask yourself what the limits are, and that's it. If joe bigagco makes it illegal for me to grow my own non poisoned food, then I take that as an act of war. Food is a necesity, not entertainment. If some totality of government actions make YOU illegal no matter what you do and you notice you are no better than a slave, then, a freeman and a people who want to be free act accordingly. There's no profit, sense or righteousness living in a dictatorship, whether that dictatorship came about overnight, over a one months time, or over a single generations time. You really got to ask yourself and see what the corporate/government answer is, are they repesenting the people fairly, will they listen to your grievance honestly, or are they so corrupt that you can rationally conclude the system is too broken to repair.
No one can answer that for another, so I won't even try, but that's my personal bottom line.
I've suggested many times here there needs to be a powerful IT union, I will say that again.
Here's another short of revolution,maybe a class action lawsuit against government in general,the patent office in particular and take a look at legislators and judges bank accounts, etc. Several hundred thousand free software developers suing the patent office for just destroying the ability to work, along those lines. I think you can also bring a civil suit under RICO if there appears to be industry collusion in the matter.
I don't code so there's not much I can do there, couldn't even join the suit, but if coders want to go there, arrange it with some groklaw volunteers and like the FSF or something. You just have to decide how much crap corporogovernment patent sandwhiches you will eat before you dare say out loud THIS IS CRAP AND WE AREN'T GOING TO KEEP EATING IT.
Catch up on the latest news about Acacia at www.FightThePatent.com and their quest for media dominance on the web and on cable.... the problem for them is the prior art and the broadness of their claims.
For those amateur-arm-chair prior art searchers like me, prior art instances of digitized audio or video must have a date stamp prior to May 1990.
Acacia's claims are so convoluted, it's like they are throwing up anything and hoping to see what sticks.
At one point, they say that audio/video systems that have timecodes (ie. Real, WMV, quicktime) are covered, which would mean MP3 is fine, but then they claim that audio w/o timecodes is covered.. can't have it both ways.
-brandon
------ Fight The Patent! website
Poor you: there's prior art ! They would win in the courts :P
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Acacia Research Corporation
Rob Stewart, 949-480-8300
Fax: 949-480-8301
Here's an idea whose time may have come: change patent law to prohibit original patent-holders from selling or even transferring their invention and patent; in other words, the value of the patent accrues ONLY to the original inventor. Isn't that what the creators of the patent system really intended in the first place? I haven't thought this through in too much depth yet, but at face value it seems to have the potential to prevent many of the worst abuses of the patent system. Wishful thinking or something more?
I daresay that transmission completion in less than "real time" doesn't seem to be addressed in the claims (skimmed), but might or might not be a side-effect of compression (which they do repeatedly mention).
IANAL too.
I surely do hope that BBSes and pkzip count as prior art to throw out this patent...
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
In the late 1980's I worked with MIDI cards as a hobby, and one popular card at the time used "tick bytes" for timing for a fairly simple MIDI "streaming" technique. The tick bytes gave the offset between event durations in a predetermined unit of time. When the buffer was full, it sent a message to the computer to refrain from sending. The CPU's in those days could not handle the MIDI workload very well, so a separate CPU, an "MPU" (Music Processing Unit) was used as part of an add-in card.
True, it was not remote, but why should distance make any difference? Just replace "MIDI messages" with video frames, and one could use the same technique almost as-is. (Some compression techniques could complicate this, however.)
Table-ized A.I.