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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!"
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?
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?
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.
keep in mind that patents expire, so if you patent something too far away in the future, then you may never profit from it. and that patent would then become public domain after it expires and so no one would ever be able to patent it again.
though i think you sometimes need a working prototype to patent something
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?
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.
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.
Could you please make sense? Lobbying for a change in laws is different than lobbying for people to break laws.
Your example can be refined and clarified. Copyright law: Copyright law is broken and needs to be fixed (DMCA, copyright duration are two examples). Copyright itself: Good idea, so don't violate others' copyrights, even if "other" is slime like Microsoft, RIAA or MPAA. Similar logic applies to patents. We don't like details of the laws, so they should be changed, but we like the concept behind the laws, so the laws should be obeyed.
...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..."
I disagree. If anything needs to be changed in the cost structure of the patent system it is the fees required to question a patent.
If we are going to have a patent system then we need a fee system that doesn't show preference to corporations with deep pockets, the little guy needs access as well.
In reading the publications from the USPTO I discovered that while the fees required to submit a patent are rather low the fees required to question a patent are significantly higher, something like 4 to 10 times if I recall.
It seems that the current system has incentive for people to file patents but not for people to question them.
Now to tell you the truth I don't really believe that changing the fee structure is actually the solution. What I think needs to be changed is what can be patented and who can patent.
An idea of how you COULD do something should not be patentable. It used to be that you had to bring a copy of what you intended to patent down to the patent office. Of course that is not a reasonable practice today, however, the idea behind this practice should still be enforced. The mouse trap itself should be patented, not the idea that you could build a device to catch a small mammal.
And patents should only be given to individuals who are in business to produce the patented device, whether that be a real human individual or a company. If an individual wants to be in the business of generating patents or holding patents then they need to make their money off selling off their patents to someone who INTENDS to actually produce something. This idea of hording large numbers of patents with the hope that someday one of them will become a windfall should be outlawed for the same reason that extortion is considered a crime.
burnin
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)
The first google hit for "al gore created the internet debunked" is http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
This shows how fucking blind you are to reality. Jeez, man. Think! I said 'immigrants' because they can't speak fucking English!
How well do you think they can communicate with my grandmother, who's from Cape Cod and only ever been to Scotland in her whole life? Not well, I can tell you. It seriously pisses me off when you suggest that there's no objective difference between an immigrant in an extremely sensitive position such as a hospital, and a native English speaker.
That's bullshit. She could never get things across to the nurses she had. I don't care how much you pull the wool over your eyes, there is a difference.
This is reality, man. Not some fucking liberal paradise. I have nothing against people because of their race or where they came from. I have something against a system that puts people in a position they shouldn't be in for practical, objective reasons.
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?