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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.
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.
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
#
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!
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
No, the people who would lose are the ones who settle. Since they didn't fight it, they basically said "here is free money, stop annoying me." Most settlements don't include agreements about if this patent should "go away." Though frankly, I would want to make sure my lawyer worked like hell to get it in.
Now I'm curious. Disney's lawyers are as infamous (or infamouse) as IBM's. What are they doing settling out of court for an iffy patent?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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
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.
And what you think the Playboy lawyers didn't already look at this and say fuck it, cheaper to license than take it to trial?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
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.
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?
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!
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!"
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.
A lot of careful thought goes into deciding how much to request (or pay) in licensing fees. There is some magic number at which the potential licensee decides it is cheaper to pay the licensing fee than to risk going to trial. The patent holder is going to try very hard to accurately predict that number.
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
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..."
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 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!?
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.
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)
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.
Thanks for the offer, but you can keep your $1. I thought for sure, you would simply change your sig and make me look silly ;-)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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
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?