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Linux Violates 283 Patents, says Insurance Company
Apro+im writes "According to this article over at ZDNet:
'Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.'
Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections."
That most of the code was written in Europe BEFORE we had software patents.
There is some question about whether Microsoft has an explicit strategy of using patents as a weapon against open source.
Until someone jumps up and down in court with their army of lawyers, we'll keep it at "potentially"....
Kind of like an auto insurer producing a report on which car locks are least secure, and how to pick them.
Phil
Almost.
This sig no verb.
Seriously - can anyone think of the kind of thing that anyone could have patented? Disk I/O? Threading?
Join the Free Software Foundation
Well if these are big issues then OSRM will go bankrupt at the first patent attack of doom. And all your money paid to them will be useless.
On the other hand if the patent claims are bogus then your investment will be useless, too, as there is nothing to defend.
The money would be better invested in a real legal insurance which covers being sued by teh mad discrimination laywers of NAL-p'ThUK-NZer-RaK etc.
Does the US-Style patents are valid on the rest of the world?
This doesn't count nothing, almost every computer user violates the double click patent of Microsoft.
The problem with Linux is that there is no one organization with sufficient stake to specifically pursue such a strategy. Though I'm sure if push came to shove, IBM would be willing to use its patent arsenal in defense of its Linux-using customers, given how much they've invested in Linux deployments and Linux-based services work. Anyway, of course it's in this insurance company's interest to point out every possibly infringing instance.
Im a little skeptical when the news comes from selling protection against the same problem. Hey look, there is a problem here, but guess what I will sell you protection agasint it.
Interestingly enough, at least one person works for both orginizations, Daniel B. Ravicher.
What does everyone else thing? is it something to be concerned about or is it a ploy to sell insurance and drive up the cost of linux adoption?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Since its the same company that is selling insurance saying there 'might' be a problem... Sounds like they are just trying to scare up some business for themselves..
Either that, or OSS is screwed, and the other shoe is about to drop. ( don't think it would stop with the Linux kernel, much more is vunerable if its taken that far.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, they should get sued like Microsoft get sued for everything else that they do. Infringing on 200+ patents and thats not a joke.
If they are selling insurances againt it, then they won't believe it would be a problem. Otherwise, they would loose money. Simple as that.
Anyone believe that is they really thought this could happen, they would sell insurances against it ?
morcego
Sounds like a protection racket, to me.
~*~ Tara
So this is the new 419 scam coming out of Nigeria. Seems inventive.
That number may seem high, until you remember that everything under the sun (and probably the sun, too) is patented nowadays. How do the following sound (pulling descriptions out of my hat for now):
"Method for temporarily moving unused memory pages to a storage device"
"Method of embedding networking functionality in a kernel"
"Method of using a code fragment at boot time to load an operating system"
"Display of a penguin-shaped image overlapping computer startup messages"
Sound anything like what "Linux" does? Too bad, someone else thought of it "first"...
Mafioso walks up to some army commander:
Mafioso: "It would be a shame if someone would steal those tanks..."
Ditto ... seems to be cookie related. If I clear out the cookie, it works. You using Moz?
Of course it's a publicity stunt. Their whole business is dependent upon anti-Linux FUD. If PHBs believe this crap, as well as the junk they see in the press from SCO, they start thinking about who'll take the fall when they get sued for using Linux. Nevermind that it won't happen. If that particular PHB is the one that might get fired, he just might start trying to convince his own PHB that thy need Linux insurance.
It's like selling earthquake insurance to a farmer in Indiana.
Considering the four patents that IBM pulled out against SCO (not that I feel sorry for them), I'm surprised the Linux kernel doesn't infringe more patents.
You have to remember that for just about every significant traditional programming task, there are several conflicting patents out there somewhere. None of which whould ever have been granted, and all of which pretty clearly cover the way everyone builds their software now.
I'll make you a great deal on Giant Attack Bunny insurance. Want a brochure?
"It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
This whole thing might be a nice way for companies to pool together for a legal fight.
If someone does sue the OSRM insured companies, the insurance company's best interest is fighting the battle with its resources (insurance money) pooled together instead of each companies having to fight on their own.
It might not be that bad of thing.
Check this out.
OSRM is the company PJ (you know, of Groklaw) joined a few months back to provide indemnification for Linux users. This organization isn't the enemy, folks.
[I thought that name (OSRM) sounded familiar.]
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
And how many patents does Windows (or DID windows) violate of Apple? (Before Microsoft either changed it, or bought the patent, etc) This happens all the time!
stuff |
So if things get really bad, maybe one should do the development elsewhere.
So, What are the patents that Linux supposedly infringes? How about a list of patent numbers?
Sure, Linux may have some features that are listed in several registered patents, but to me the question is: Who has prior art?
My guess is that very few companies will persue any litigation in this area because of the possibility that the OSS community came up with the concept first, thereby invalidating the patent they claim to be protecting.
The purpose of patents is to encourage innovation by protecting the income for the developer/innovator to recoup the cost of innovating/developing, not to discourage innovation.
If Linux truly violates patents, why are they only bringing it up now that Linux is becoming a viable alternative for mainstream america?
Besides, the whole thing is suspect simply because it comes from a company selling insurance for patent suits.
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
This violates my patent on FUD.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Heck, I accidentally violated more than that in the last 2-tier app I wrote.
The article didn't mention it, but are the potential violations in kernel-land, or do they also entend into user-land and ``Linux'' is being used in the broad sense of the term?
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Normally insurance companies offer a large population indemnification against certain things. The likelyhood of a large number of, say auto drivers, needed to cash in on their policy is low. But it seems that if you are insuring people who use the Linux kernel and there is a patent infringement in the kernel, then you could be faced with paying out to ever single one of your customers. Plus - couldn't it be a strategy for patent holders to go after those with insurance because they have a certain dedicated portion of money set aside specifically for that possibility?
With 'friends' like PJ and Bruce Perens, who needs enemies.
Anyway, I'm sure Ballmer is overjoyed to hear he owns 27 patents on Linux, and isn't scared at all of their broke-assed "insurance" FUD company.
Looks like yet another attack dog being sent out by it's ma$ter to mame and chew up Tux...quite possibly just like the others we have seen recently (frenchy sounding group and SCO). This is really shaping to be some slugfest...and you know who the slugs are in this one. Perhaps someone could start looking into using the RICO law to turn back these mafia style business practices....you know....racketeering and such. Hmmmm....maybe I could patent the method for producing unique sounds out of my rumpus or the artistic way in which I can pick my nose and make $$$. ;-)
"With God All Things Are Possible" State of Ohio Motto
about how enforcing the law was unfair just a few years ago.
Are they going to be showing the patents to the kernel dev list, or at least Linus personally?
And how many patents does Windows possibly infringe upon, not to mention court judgements, consent decrees, and articles of law?
I wonder how much of a tax write-off it would be to donate use of a patent to the open source community.
Yes, they are. They're running a protection racket, and what they're protecting is Linux. As has been pointed out:
(1) They know Linux doesn't violate any patents. If this were not the case, providing such insurance would be a terrible idea (hey, look at us! Come take our money!).
(2) Their attempt to get the public worked up about this is pure PR (Hey, there's a problem. And guess what? For a mere ($$$) we have the solution!).
(3) One person working at a company does not make that company "good" or "bad." This company's business plan is ethically bankrupt and nothing like "real" insurance (normal insurance covers random happenings, this insurance covers something predictable and researchable). As much as companies are not "good" or "evil" (they're just groups of humans), I wouldn't associate with this one.
Namely, insinuate that Linux is somehow more "unsafe" because it is not controlled by a good old American-as-apple-pie capitalistic company whose sole reason for existing is profit motive. If it isn't made to make money, it isn't legitimate (and, if you're Scott McCollum, is probably an Al-Qaeda plot against the nation). Nevertheless, the idea is to engender an attitude of danger and trepidation toward the decision to move away from proprietary software.
This also underlies the whole "indemnification" dog-and-pony show. Why does only Linux need to be indemnified against copyright infringement? Why is there no one calling for people to indemnify Windows, even though Windows can potentially have more untraceable copyright-violating code? The answer: Windows is assumed to ipso facto contain no such code because it is made by Microsoft, a trusted company which is believed to only employ legitimate business practices also ipso facto.
I'm not sure who benefits here. I get the vibe that it's just an aura of "perceived safety by following the procedures".
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Seeing how m$ gets every and more both obvious and non-obvious patents granted, soon everyody and everywhere will infringe some m$ patents when writing more then 2 lines of code.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Just 'cos PJ's associated with this company doesn't mean it's entirely benign. They are still trying to scare up some business, insurance is their business is after all.
PJ will be advertising this on Groklaw next (good luck to her), still, fighting SCO on one hand and producing FUD with the other, gotta be good for business!
Forbes has a rather more critical article about this.
Same here, also mozilla. I've also had internal server errors while metamoderating.
talked about earlier in slashdot.
Ah. Lawyers. What can ya do about 'em?
Forbes has a rather more critical article about this.
I'm not sure but I have patents on tinfoil hats. For a mere payment of $699.00, you can wear as many tinfoil hats as you want without the worry of lawsuit.
I also sell alien abduction insurance to go along with the Linux insurance for a well arounded protection.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Wasn't there something about patents on here Friday concerning Microsoft. Is Microsoft planning on using patents now? They can't possible use any type of legal defense, so they have to resort to patents.
Since source code has been ruled as expressive speech, do software patents mean speech is patentable? Or will the stack collapse from that end?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Imagine that, an insurance company trying to claim the product they're insuring is unsafe. You really expect them to say "welllll, we looked at it and it seems pretty safe - but if you pay us we'll insure you anyway!!!"
May be embedded in devices other than plastic toys found in breakfast cereals and happymeals
May be built without bloat (a prohibitive patent owned by Microsoft)
Able to run for months, or years, without reboot (another prohibitive patent)
Uses letters of the alphabet
Uses arabic numbers
Multitasking
May be networked with multiple other computers
Enables a spoon to stick to admins nose during boot
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The wonderful WTO will bring our grief to your shores soon..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I have here in my hand a list of 283, a list of 283 lines of code made known to the Secretary of OSDN as being patented by Microsoft and who nevertheless are still working and shaping functionality in the Linux department. ...I have here in my hand a list of 57 card-carrying patent infringements... ...I have here a list of 81 patents potentially infringed by LINUX, including three big ones...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I'm thinking more along the lines of Mafia-style protection payments here. "You pay us, and we don't link to your site." Heh.
And because PJ works for them, the entire company is comprised of saints?
For all I respect PJ and Groklaw, this does look like a pretty grimy attempt by OSRM to stir up business. Just the headline gives it away: "Results of First-Ever Linux Patent Review Announced, Patent Insurance Offered"
I mean yes, there may be patent issues with OSS. Yes, it's good that someone did the research. And yes, it is important that someone have answers ready for when the CIO raises the issue. But there are obvious vested-interest questions about OSRM's research.
I'd like to see it replicated outside OSRM. Or at least some disclosure, with right-of-reply to OSS developers. Spill the beans OSRM: what are those 283 patents?
I disagree with most posters here--patent infringement lawsuits could be a real problem.
The fact that there may be prior art, that other software does it, that code can be re-written, etc. doesn't matter. Companies often collect patents then choose to enforce them to be a nuisance to competitors. I've seen research programs in my field (biotech) killed over patent disputes and other disputes drag on for years with legal fees that could have funded a startup.
Supposedly a lot of software companies get around this licensing frivolous patents themselves and then cross-licensing, but AFAIK that's not a real option for Linux.
Solutions would be to write your congressman for sensible patent laws, or figure out a structure that could ensure corporate Linux customers don't have exposure. Ignoring it? May or may not work.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How much to do a search for MS Windows and then publish the results?
-- less is better.
Normally you buy life assurance - essentially insurance against something that IS going to happen.
Whereas insurance normally insures against something that won't happen (in most cases).
If someone independently produces some code that does the same thing described in someone else's patent, is that not reverse engineering? If something can't be reverse engineered(such as the infamous 1-click amazon patent), how could it possibly hold up in court as a valid patent? Any patent like that should be declared invalid in court, I would think, if the defense attorney is any good. I am against software patents anyway, but even allowing for software patents, there has to be some sort of novelty and complexity to qualify something for patentability. I know the USPTO has totally hosed the issue, but most software patents should not hold up in court, given a good patent attorney. Patenting things like the 1-click would be like patenting kung-fu moves. Any schmoe can make his body do that move, it's just not novel. If a patent can't be reverse engineered, it really doesn't qualify as complex enough to warrant a patent. If someone independently develops the same idea, doesn't that exempt them from liability to the patent? If not, it should.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
Dude...you're living in a dream world if you think linux doesn't violate any patents. How long have you been reading slashdot? There's been all sorts of articles about "Microsoft granted patent on double click" or that sorta thing. I'm quite confident that linux violates quite a few patents, though I've never done a search myself. I'm also quite confident that MS Windows violates quite a few patents (they're in some law suits now about it).
"They know Linux doesn't violate any patents. If this were not the case, providing such insurance would be a terrible idea "
Do you think car insurance companies provide insurance knowing that people don't get into accidents? No, the idea is that the majority of people who are paying for the insurance will not need it, but having that insurance will help them secure support within the company for migrating to linux. Both companies benefit from linux insurance. This is especially true considering that, if I get sued over patents for using a commercial product, such as windows or oracle or something, you can bet that the creator of those products would step forward and help me defend myself. With linux there is no one to do that, unless you're subscribing to a particular distribution that might or might not have the money for it. This is why larger companies don't need insurance for running commercial software, but it's quite helpful when running open source software.
I welcome the option of getting insurance for running open source software, as the major effect it'll have is to encourage big business to switch.
...because I'm going to patent a system of connecting to a remote computer using an ethernet cable.
Alright, I'm joking, but I'm willing to bet the fee to obtain that patent that I could get it. Just because someone has a patent doesn't mean anything until it's proven in court that it's meaningful. However, I think this will slow adoption of linux and other OSS projects until managers can be sure that they won't be sued for running linux. I think it'll work like the SCO case where companies will think twice, delay switchovers, wait for SCO to look like idiots, and then consider switching again. This is SCO Effect Part 2 in my mind. I'm sure the courts will do the right thing and be fair to linux and OSS, but it's going to be a while until we have that guarentee.
...it would be someone running their entire infrastucture on Windows. How many BILLIONS have been lost due to bugs, viruses and exploits? Why doesn't anyone offer insurance against that? Oh yea...because it is a freakin GIVEN that a client would collect.
What could possibly be more counter-productive and stifling of software innovation. Sheesh!!
It's time to march on the PTO with flaming torches and pitchforks.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Starting to sound like Open Source Fear Mongering to me.
You have to look at it from an insurance company's perspective. They provide insurance for things that go wrong. Sometimes the product is something commonly asked for (hey, can you insure my boat that runs on nitroglycerine?). Sometimes insurance companies come up with a product on their own and market it (hey, we'll sell you meteor impact insurance). In either case before they can tell if the product is viable is to set a good price for it. To set a good price for it, they have to study the market - find out what risks there are. Once they decide what chance the bad outcomes have, and how much they would cost, they can come up with a price for the insurance. After that they add a little onto the top for their own pockets and some fudge factor. Finally they can come around and say, "look, we see you have this problem with patent suits and we can insure it for 38 dollars a month" or whatever. So just because they come to the table with this does not automatically mean that it is a bad idea - in fact I think it can be used to cheaply get out of the bind of software lawsuits by big companies against little guy developers. They probably think the same thing, along with other markets as well. Sure you need to shell out some money. Sure, if everyone got together and just paid for lawsuit costs together it would be slightly cheaper. But since other people giving you money out of the goodness of their heart isn't a sure way to foot legal bills, a small premium isn't so bad. This article is a solution not a problem.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
My wife and I are currently trying to move our web hosting and Linux support business into an office, and getting cheap insurance is proving to be a pain in the rump. Mainly because most insurance companies won't cover Internet Services companies and the ones that do charge as much as 7 times more than they charge other businesses. Yet they don't cover anything that would be a threat to those businesses.
Now this. What is a person to do who wants to offer state of the art services and technologies? I'm sure I'm preaching the choir here, but patents are hindering cutting edge technology rather than helping it these days.
What is a shame is that an organization that is purportedly pro-OSS (they are the owners of Groklaw.net) is pushing the idea that there is an unacceptable level of liability in using Linux, for the purpose of selling their insurance product (which is of negligible value due to the extremely small coverage amounts). It's FUD, and surprisingly it's coming from "our side". PHB THINK: If a large enterprise is considering Windows vs. Linux, but wait! Linux requires user insurance because of its questionable pedigree, and Windows does not, the choice is obvious. Lot's of people have suggested that SCO and the various M$ toadies are trying to deep-six Linux. I think ORSM is doing quite well at this also.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If the code was written before software patents were officially acceptable, then Linux coders could argue that extending patent protection now to companies like Microsoft would be in violation of the Constitution's anti-ex post facto clause.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Insurance industries employ more stat geeks than the gambling industry. I would consider their conclusion very closely. Know the difference betweeen risk and gamble, and act accordingly.
I also get 503 errors quite often... on firefox.
Their actions indicate that they are an enemy. If PJ and BP find this ethical behaviour, one has to question their standards, not blindly accept them because of what they have said in the past.
There are plenty of copyright infringements in proprietary code
Patents are another story. Given right now the patent system seems to suck (even though it's supposed to serve a valid purpose) -- is patent infringement truly patent infringement in many cases? I would argue a lot of the patent cases will be thrown out because of prior art, no merit, etc. I'm not advocating patent infringement, but just saying that a lot of the existing problems are most likely not really problems at all. Only some will be huge problems.
The US lawsuit culture is just screwed, and won't survive. As an American living in Britain, I see US patent culture stifling productivity and future success. The concept of litigate rather than solve and improve is deadbeat, and inspired by f***ing lawyers, who are not productive members of society.
OSRM is just out to make a buck, and when SCO looses, OSRM will be out of business.
- Try to enforce the patent. Doing this risks having the patent invalidated, losing one of their trading cards. And the best they could hope for is to collect a little money until a workaround is found.
- Follow suit and release the patent for uses in Linux. Sure you won't make money off this, but you could still trade the patent with other companies for use of their patents.
The one fly in the ointment is any company (*cough*Microsoft*cough) that has a vested interest in seeing Linux fail. They might be willing to sacrifice some of their patent portfolio in order to make that happen. It also makes them number one on the patent examination hit parade.===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Ravicher found that about a third of the 283 issued patents are owned by large
corporations that are friendly to Linux - ones with some current financial interest in broad Linux
adoption, including: Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Sony, and others However, to date,
no Linux vendor has [...] entered into an explicit agreement promising never to use its own patents against Linux users.
How about this one?
Each time you redistribute the Program [...]. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
I think threatening patent infringement action against any user of a Linux distribution that you had provided them with would be placing a further restriction on usage, hence a violation of this term that a Linux distributor must have agreed to in order to distribute Linux.
The part I don't quite understand: if I buy a Linux-based system from a big company, say IBM or RedHat, buy as in pay money for it, wouldn't I be protected by future silly^Wpatent lawsuits? It seems to me that the vendor would be responsible. So why buy some bogus insurance, when I can just buy from a vendor and let them deal with the legal crap, and get decent support as well?
IMO, the best way to shut up idiots like this company is to get Linux and OSS vendors to indemnify their paying customers. If I'm a Linux-using corporation scared of lawsuits, I buy from the vendor. If I'm an individual who couldn't give a shit, I download and use the gratis version.
This organization isn't the enemy, folks.
Oh grow up already will you. There are no absolute "enemies" and "friends," we're not talking about kids in a schoolyard, we're talking about business. In business, organizations aren't friends or enemies, we just evaluate every action they take separately and move on. Any other way and you're screwing yourself (and being the laughing stock of the rest of the business world).
The Forbes article mentioned by parent is written by Dan Lyons, a person who appears to have an ax to grind and a rather worn-out stone with which to grind it. In my opinion, it should not be considered an article, but rather an opinion piece; c'mon, the only person he got a direct quote from was Rob Enderle!
Of course, your mileage may vary.
Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought. -Terry Pratchett
This is the equivalent of an insurance agent
driving by your house, spotting smoke coming
from the basement, and knocking on the door to
sell you a fire policy.
Ain't gonna happen.
If they KNOW of infringements, then they also know
they're liable for perhaps billions in claims.
No one in their right mind would take such a risk.
Therefore, their claims can only be pure bs.
With friends like OSRM, who needs enemies?
A patent is for a given algorithm. If it's known a piece of code in Linux or other OSS violates a given patent, a new algorithm has to be invented or another algorithm has to be added to the code instead of the patented one. As soon as that's done, the issue is gone, as the code added is not covered by a patent plus serves as prior art for future patent filings for that new algorithm.
Keeping the patented algo's in the code can only go wrong in the future.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I thought BSD required it more ...you know in case it dies or something
Python script to convert photos into "artsy" portraits: http://p2pbridge.sf.net/pyPortrait/
1. No one, and I do mean no one, will ever be able to stop me from using Linux.
2. File all the patents you want, then see item number 1.
Does he mean the kernel, which is linux or the rest which is Gnu?
Get a free ipod.
Forbes has a rather more critical article about this.
that Forbe$ article is by the very same rabid anti-Linux pro-Micro$oft zealot Daniel Lyons, who obviously is too confused about the issues to know what he really wants and resorts to badmouthing anything about Linux even when he contradicts himself.
This is the same guy that was badmouthing IBM last year for not indemnifying users for Linux. Hello Daniel, IBM doesn't indemnify its Windows users either! But I think it does indemnify AIX users, because it actually develops that OS. Ya dink.
And now (when lots of companies have weighed in with indemnification for Linux and you are silent) and this is extended to patent insanity... you freak again. What's wrong now, ya nutjob?
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
"Do you think car insurance companies provide insurance knowing that people don't get into accidents?"
Note how I mentioned that this is NOT like traditional insurance. Traditional insurance is gambling on future events. This is not. This is saying "Linux either violates patents or it doesn't, and we'll bet money it doesn't." They then try to lure people into this terrible bet which they have thoroughly researched by publishing information saying Linux does infringe. Are you going to believe what you hear from their press release or what you hear from their wallet?
I'm tired of all these "+5 Insightful" comments about how this is a protection racket.*
/who/ would get what, when (it's like life insurance -- everyone will die, but no one knows how much money will be paid into insurance before that date. But, statistically you can get a good idea and charge people accordingly. That's where actuarial tables and increasing rates come in. But I digress).
Look, insurance is not some crapshoot. It's highly dependent on using statistical analysis to mitigate risks. Stats require data. Insurance companies are ALWAYS trying to get more data to understand the risks they need to hedge against.
Why does the insurance industry fund Underwriter's Laboratory (you know how everything under the sun is "UL Approved"?)? So they understand (and, by engaging in the process, can minimize) the risks associated with using electrical appliances (electrocution, fires, loss or damage). They then price insurance accordingly.
Ideally, an insurance company will contract (or fund) a third-party company to do the analysis. The insurer gets the stats and determines their rates, while the 3rd party works to minimize the risks. The UL label program has dramatically reduced house fires, for example.
This is exactly what's going on here -- OSRM engaged PubPat, a group dedicated to FIGHTING bad patents, to do the analysis. They get their data, while PubPat can work to get those patents invalidated.
There's another benefit here to the Linux community: companies should feel more free to adopt Linux now that the risk is known and there's a way to minimize it (i.e., insurance). Which is more likely to keep you in the house, knowing that if you go outside you can be violently murdered, or that there's a less than 1% chance of being murdered that can be made to almost zero if you avoid certain behaviors?
Put another way: Companies don't mind taking risks (it's what they do), provided that they're identified and can be hedged. Unknown risks that can take down a company, however, are untenable.
Everyone knew that patent suits were a huge risk to Linux, but it was an amorphous big deal that was unquantified. Now it's known. I'm surprised that people who so violently disagree with "security through obscurity" are against the public release of risk information around patents. Understand the problem, make it public, then address it quickly. It's the same situation, just a legal one and not a programming one.
As an aside, this is not to say insurance companies can't be evil -- dropping people after genetic testing shows a proclivity for a disease is just wrong, IMHO. But, economics dictates that if everyone knew exactly what chance they had of contracting diseases, there would be "genetic protection insurance", since no one knows
In short, what you're seeing is a responsible insurance company going about their business.
* Full disclosure -- I only read the comments on this article at +5 before writing, so sorry if this is redundant.
This isn't insurance for Linux, it's insurance for Linux *users*. The 'bet' is that a particular user to which insurance is sold will not be the target of a lawsuit. Are you stupid, or just a troll? This isn't rocket science.
There's no such thing as a reverse class action. To get money for patent infringement, you would have to sue each individual user.
I see a lot of posts saying that these 280+ patents are invalid or ridiculous. Are we burying our heads in the sand? It only takes one well placed patent lawsuit to disrupt Linux development. Look at the SCO case, they used the scatter shot method and it has distracted Linux development and adoption. Not severely, but enough for the FUD machines to have companies and persons re-evaluate their Linux adoption. The enemies of Linux and Open Source will use patenets against us. Have we all forgotten what happened to the companies that stood in Microsoft's way? Once they do find a weakness, they won't hesitate to exploit it.
What can we do to counter act software patents? Can we create some sort of "prior art" / "idea" database online that holds instances of prior art or ideas for software programs that the community could build up and use as a weapon in defense of the open source software development? If we create a resource for prior art then it may be easier for the USPTO to deny some software patent applications...
Just my two cents...
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
How is this unethical? If it is acceptable to do a patent review of Linux when you have nothing to gain by it, then it's just as acceptable if you do have something to gain by it. We ought to be more suspicious of the results, but it's not unacceptable on the face of it.
How do you propose that anyone gain knowledge of whether Linux infringes any patents, other than by doing a review? And how do you propose that anyone offer insurance against infringement unless they have researched the basis for possible lawsuits?
It seems to me that the only thing you could take issue with is the non-disclosure. But what if some of those patents belong to SCO? How happy would you be for them to add fuel to that fire? What if Microsoft looked over the report and said, "Gee, we have 50 bazillion dollars. Let's sue Novell and Red Hat and Suse and the FSF and the Debian organization and anyone else we can think of. That should slow Linux migration!"
Presumable this means that SCO has Run out of money and credibility so Microsoft had lined someone else's pockets in their crusade.
...
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Heh. You're kidding yourself, man. In business there are *definitely* friends and foes. That is not to say that friends can't become foes, or vice versa. But a lot of what happens in business is payback, both positive and negative.
Ravicher's online bio also claims that he "practiced law" at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the country's most prestigious law firms. Actually, he spent eight weeks at Skadden as a summer intern while he was still attending law school."
Well, one thing is clear: OSRM have provided us
their implicit judgement on the probability of
successful patent litigation against Linux. The
news.com article mentioned 150k$ buys you 5000k$
worth of protection. If all the start-ups I have
joined had VC's demanding such good chances of
success, I'd be rich or at least employed!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Hmmm, maybe I should seek a patent for the process of patenting software -- might be profitable.
Some POSITIVE steps they can do for us:
1) PubPat can investigate these and assess them a threat level with respect to the Linux kernel.
2) they can work with IBM and other "friendly" patent holders for GPL-complient patent licenses
3) They can invite experienced kernel developers who are NOT working for any distributor or the kernel-maintenance team to "rewrite" parts of the kernel that are affected by "high-threat" patents. Unfortunately, this would have do be done quietly to preserve the Linux maintainer's "ignorance is bliss" legal protections.
4) They can notify device driver and other "non-core" component authors that there is a cloud over their code, giving them a chance to pull the code out of the official kernel until it is rewritten, if it can be rewritten.
Hopefully, within 6 months, they can announce that
1) friendly companies have GPL-compatibly-licensed or dedicated their patents,
2) there are only a few high-threat patents covering "core" aspects of the kernel, and that those parts of the kernel are being actively rewritten, and
3) They have petitioned to invalidate or reduce-in-scope any "lower-threat" patents and/or have a court declare that the Linux kernel is non-infringing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can see the MS share options swaying someone into actually stamping this. It will not kill Linux, but probably screw America.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
GrokLine, brought to you by the folks at GrokLaw of SCO v. IBM fame, is PART of what you are looking for. They focus on Unix-related prior art. However, they probably don't cover things like device drivers.
Here's a blurb from their web site:
2004-05-23
Grokline's Launch
Welcome to the launch of Grokline. We are ready for you to start to help by contributing what you know about UNIX.
We hope with this living UNIX history project to be able to identify any conceivable legal problems that those wishing to block or hobble GNU/Linux may try to use in future assaults on the community. If there are litigation risks, even just from nuisance lawsuits, particularly with respect to patents, we want to find those risks, hopefully before they do, and mitigate or resolve them now. Also, if we can carefully document prior art, we may find it comes in very handy one of these days. I am personally convinced, as you no doubt are too, that the next wave of attacks on GNU/Linux and the GPL will involve patents.
I hope this helps.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It is almost certain that for any random 10 lines of code you pick -- in any software program -- there is going to be some sort of patent-violation, because there's so many patents in software, the vast majority of them for ridiculous things.
How many patent violations are there in proprietary code, violations that no-one can see, due to the closed nature of the code?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The software patents are already here (30,000+ of them), they're just not yet enforceable. If the software patent directive comes through like the Commission/Council wants it, it will suddenly become quite easy to enforce them in courts.
So the EU really wants to make thousands of companies who are doing nothing wrong today suddenly become patent infringers tomorrow? That's nuts!
No, the "purpose" of patents was to encourge the disclosure of knowledge. The "means" by which it does this is to grant a limited monopoly to those who publically disclose information.
Never do patents protect or grant the right for someone to make money, nor do they even grant the right to use/manufacture the idea that was patented. Patents only restrict anybody else from making money or otherwise using the idea.
This is why the "don't look, don't know" advice is so indicative of a really messed up system. In order to minimize your legal liability, you have to not look at patents...which means the primary purpose of patents (the disclosure and distribution of knowledge) is directly subverted by the very law establishing them.
(of the existence of some applicable patent) *is* a defense in patent cases. You do not have the onus of defending other people's property.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Maybe I'm being naive here (and I'm certainly not a lawyer), but the vast majority of kernel hackers aren't associated with the same legal entity. If hacker X adds a patented algorithm I suppose he or his employer could be sued. His maintenance of ignorance on the patents is justified. However, if hacker Y doesn't work for the same legal entity as hacker X, surely he can know about the patent. As long as hacker Y doesn't distribute Linux, he must be in the clear.
Maybe there's an opportunity for some kind of "clean-room" patent team.
In the article it mentions that half of all patents are found to be invalid in court. I was wondering how this differs when considering just software patents. Come to think of it have any software patents been used successfully?
This is an insurance company who has created a new "product" (OS insurance) and is looking to drum up business (by spreading fear). Nothing to see here, move along.
I was thinkng just the same thing. Of course, this is in the best interest of this so called OSRM.
I find it funny how the only way detractors seem able to attack Linux is by legal FUD and court-mudding. Linux still has a way to go, but some people seem to be scared shitless.
It gives a whole new meaning to "Illegal instruction."
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
In this sense, the patent system generates an environment of, as Daniel Egger puts it "studied ignorance", that inhibits rather than promotes the "progress of the arts and sciences".
Linux almost *certainly* infringes on software patents. This is true of almost any large software product these days, including Windows. It is no longer possible to legally write a significant piece of software without infringing on software patents. I'm sure every major piece of Internet-using software I have infringes on some patents.
This is not a sign of "Linux is broken", this is a sign of "software patents are broken and it's fucking insane that the US allows them".
I'd love to see IBM lobby against them, but IBM, like all large tech companies, has their own healthy patent portfolio to keep competitors from entering their markets.
Very depressing. Every day that we continue to allow software patents is another day worth of patents that must be grandfathered in if any fix occurs -- the US legislature will never, *ever*, *ever*, even if they eliminate software patents, not grandfather in old ones. Lots of comopanies put a ton of money into getting them, and they won't yank assets from under their feet.
If we stopped allowing software patents today, we'd still have a two-decade-long software patent minefield to deal with. If you're fifteen today, you'll be thirty-five before the industry is free of software patents. If you're twenty-five today, you'll be middle-aged when the industry is patent-free again, and if you're forty-five today, you'll be retired when the industry is patent-free. Assuming software patents stopped today, which isn't going to happen.
May we never see th
Take a good look at the pharmecutical industry and the cost of drugs in the third world, and you will be convinced that patents do kill people. Doctors Without Borders has a good case on this, search them on the web.
The drugs protected by patents wouldn't even exist to save anyone if the pharmaceutical companies didn't think they could profit from developing them.
Do you think that brilliant research doctors and investors decide to develop drugs because they'll get a warm, fuzzy feeling in their hearts?
Do you think that a geneticist is going to work his tail off to develop some vaccine to save some people in sub-saharan africa, who can't pay for it, or work for a profitible company that will reward him so he can live comfortably and maybe even send his kids to college?
I certainly appluad companies that decide to play nice and sell drugs cheap to third world countries. I hold no ill will against those who do not. Either way, nothing would get developed without the profit motive, and no one, rich or poor, would benefit from the non-existent drugs.
And if you're going to bring up 'public funding', at least show me an instance where a government lab in the same field as dozens of private companies has managed to hold even a candle to private enterprise. I'm not saying such an example doesn't exist, but they will be few and far between.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
No insurance company in history has ever hired a claims adjustor to take care of the policy holders. They are hired to deny everything they can possibly get away with and give the board members and shareholders big checks.
Once you understand this, everything about insurance becomes clear.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Of course they won't point a single line of code. They'll wait more then a year and try to show something. And, of course, it will be so insane that it nobody will care.
The point here is that OSRM can't just point out every line of code that has copyright issues because they will have to pay if companies get sued. They need to show that it has copyright issues so they can capt clients, but can't show too much or the issues.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Someone who sells linux IP insurance to companies says linux may be affected by IP problems and that you should get insurance!
There are tens of thousands of software patents and probably hundreds of thousands of software patent applications. Given the fraction of those patents that are granted despite prior art or that will be denied and the relatively small problem space, it is actually quite amazing that the entire system is "potentially" in violation of only a few hundred patents.
...thanks OSRM; you're pushing Microsoft's interests nicely.
In case you missed your vocabulary class on the day the word "potentially" was discussed, here is the meaning of the word. Please read it; understand it; then perhaps you will understand why your headline is not at all what the fucking article says.
For years it has been the "wisdom" of the Linux community that there are no problems with the OS. Everytime there has been someone pointing out a potential problem, they have been figuratively burned at the stake. You just don't question the religion.
Some of these naysayers are obviously wrong, like Microsoft and SCO. But maybe, just maybe, Linux isn't the perfect bed of roses you pretend it is. Maybe, just maybe, this company is trying to keep your butt out of the legal wringer. So instead of instinctively dismissing them as fudmongers, be honest and admit that the possibility of patent infringement exists in Linux. Large corporations with hordes of lawyers routinely violate other companies' patents inadvertently, so what makes you think a bunch of hackers are more legally savvy?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Hmm, they sell insurance to protect you from supposed 'violations' they find?
That sounds a bit odd to me...
'Well, Well, Well, we found three more violations you're gonna haveta pay for, mister - and pay big! Looks like you'll need our protection for a long time, right Sonny?'
Dat's right boss, a llllong time...
Why not just publish all 'violations' so the community can develop work arounds and corrections?
This is exactly the reason why Richard Stallman advises against using the term "Intellectual Property". It is an ambigious term that in common usage includes patents, copyrights, and trademarks. These are three different areas and the broad term creates confusion.
According to RMS (I am paraphrasing from memory), if someone is using the "intellectual property" they are either uninformed or they are trying to fool you.
I saw one article where she was quoted several times, and made it apparent she agreed with this "evil" organization.
Besides, when you see a risk, you take precautions against it happening. That is known as risk management and it is well-known as a cost of doing business.
I don't want to hear any BS about Linux not infringing on any patents; there's so many ridiculous patents out there (see the icon of this story for an appropriate analog) that it would be good to have a buffer against another SCO coming along with a patent suit, specifically to give strategic partners (read: Microsoft) a weapon against Linux.
For many companies, it's worth the money for the ability to say to some submariner "Here's the information for my insurer. Take your case to them."
The Penguin Producer
More people would die if Drug companies could not recoup their cost. Where would these new drugs come from if someone didn't think they could make money on them?
Governments? Get real, look at the majority of drugs that better life and see how many were the result of a government project?
What you have is a group who knows how to play on the hearts of the public. They go out of their way to never mention the costs involved to treat the drugs and instead throw up pictures of little kids and sick adults, some who the drugs they claim they need won't help. Its called pushing your agenda by scapegoating.
Yes Doctors without Borders does good, but they aren't always telling the whole truth. That whole truth involves one major thing I mentioned, the same drugs would not exist if groups like this had their way where these drugs were basically giving away.
As it stands now it is Western consumers who are paying for this research and the fees charged to most 3rd world countries are paltry in comparison.
What next? Threaten to confiscate as in South Africa. That went over really well....
Theft by arms is far far worse than patents ever were.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I used to think extortion was illegal, but then I grew up and realized that it was actually encouraged by the U.S. government. That is, of course, as long as it's done with high-paid lawyers (which represents another level of extortion).
I wonder how many of the potentially infringing patents were granted after the patentented item was in the kernel.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
That's rubbish. Why does such nonsense get modded up to 5?
An insurance company that insures you house against fire is certain that some of the houses it insures will burn down. (An interesting, but little-known, fact about the insurance business is that insurance companies plan on paying out slightly more to policyholders who suffer loss than they collect in premiums. They make their profit by investing the premium money, because the premiums always come in before the payouts go out.
I've said it a hundred times, you could get a patent for the wheel approved by the trained monkeys at the Patent Office, what really matters is getting it past the judge.
Many of those that are approved have obvious flaws and the holder will never make a challenge based on it knowing that the resulting court case will only cost lawyers and the loss of their patent. They may look pretty, but they end up being useless.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
The OSRM site says they will indemnify kernel developers, but what can project leaders on less-popular projects do to make sure they - and their users - are covered?
Why? Because PJ works there? Be serious. The company might be a scam for all we know. Just because PJ and Bruce work there doesn't mean a damn thing. We had FLOSS friends working at Caldera/SCO too.
This is the exact concern that several of us raised months ago: OSRM hiring PJ and Bruce looks exactly like an attempt to buy credibility. And apparently it has already worked.
"Linux potentially infringes 283 patents" All of which I'll bet already has prior art and have been approved without proper study of said prior art.
The thing about insurance is, it enables all sorts of wrong stuff.
... the insurance industry makes out coming and going.
For instance, 5% of doctors are responsible for 53% of malpractice suits. But virtually none of them are shut out of medicine by their state medical boards, and the law suits don't put them out of business because the insurance companies pay them. Meanwhile all doctors buy insurance to cover all this malpractice mostly by the few, and don't mind too much because they pass the cost on to health insurers in the form of patient fees. Which means that you really need insurance to afford the high cost of patient fees
Or consider car insurance. When I lived in Brooklyn insuring one old car was $120 a month because there are lots of fraudulent claims there that insurance companies are happy to pay off - because then they can raise their rates. You can't even legally drive a car without the insurance, so you're stuck. Now I'm in a small, rural state and in costs only $60 a month to insure two cars - because people are more honest here (they sure don't drive safer).
Insurance corrupts society, by substituting for responsibility. Would a responsible society even have software patents? This problem should be solved by political means, and insurance coverage will just divert resources and attention from the necessary political effort.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fact that Pam Jones of GrokLaw works as a Director of something for OSRM. She's not a big fan of software patents, but she's obviously very good at finding prior art.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Next, insurance people. Frankly, the only thing worse than a Lawyer is insurance agent. You don't NEED a Lawyer, but if you're going to drive in the old US of A, you gotta find one of these bastards. You own a house? Gotta go to the Am Fam whores. Who doesn't have a brother-in-law who is more than willing to sell you whole life? Lawyers helped me get out of a speeding ticket. Some frickin' adjuster raised my rates.
These clowns just discovered a new feeding hole, and are flocking to it.
Regarding how much I expect to make, I have helped create several companies so far without making anything. Maybe someday Progeny will be worth something, I don't know. So, I am not expecting anything. Nor do I see that my rep is suffering among those who take the time to examine the issue. The main reason I am participating in this is so that there will be a force able to defend Linux while being independent of hardware vendors and distributions, with their proprietary agendas. I am also working hard to fix the system, but politics takes years or decades to change. What else do you suggest?
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
" It's like selling earthquake insurance to a farmer in Indiana."
I was thinking volcano insurance to a factory worker in Rhode Island.
If you don't get it, watch more TV.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Knowing how the patent office works, most of those patents probably are jokes.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Nobody owns Groklaw but me. Keep your FUD or antiFUD or whatever you think it is straight, please.
PJ
Why, as a Linux user, would I need this sort of insurance? If (and this is a large if) Linux violates a valid patent, then the people liable are the creators. When Eolas thought Microsoft was violating their patent, they sued Microsoft, not all their users. If Linux is found to be in violation, the people liable will be people like Red Hat, Suse, etc.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Linux "infringes" on quite a few IBM patents, which of course IBM has waived enforcement, licensed, or whatever as required with the patches they submitted. Probably quite a few others are similarly allowed uses.
Are those patents counted as part of the 283?
Sure, they have an agenda, and a product to sell. However, I think they are raising a valid issue and making an attempt to address it. Pooling a defense fund for patent nuisance suits makes sense. How to do that with open source software is new territory, and whether it will work is still anyone's guess. This is a first attempt.
Note that OSRM has put themselves in the position of being strongly incented to NOT see Linux infringe patents (whatever they tell their customers in the way of fear-producing press releases). One possibility, which we should look for in the future, is that OSRM will quietly guide the community to move Linux out of and around infringing areas. If you see mysterious, unjustified kernel change requests from OSRM, it might be worth listening to them (and it just might be evidence that they are on "our" side.)
where you're betting you're going to get hurt, and the insurance company is betting you won't.
Amgine
My car violates the mouse wheel patent.
They just haven't done the research yet. Patents are often used in a defensive manner in the industry.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
One the other hand insurance companies have the conflict of interest in that exaggerating the risks of open source software has a positive effect on their bottom line thereby discouraging the adoption of open source software.
I do not claim the system is perfect. I do claim, however, that it is better than a completely state funded medical research endevour with no patent rights to worry about.
The effective NIH subsidies could be argued as compensation for the FDA raising the standard for permissible medicines to ridiculously high levels, or the roll of the dice when it comes to litigation down the road when a drug may be considered to be imperfect.
I would personally like to see the standards for new medicines lowered by the FDA, and you and your doctor can decide if a particular medicine's side effects are worth it's benefits, and at the same time, a little more sanity return to our courtrooms. I'm talking about allowing personal decisions as to what risk is acceptable, and then people taking responsibility for those risks they chose should things go sour. This would bring more drugs all the way to market, so each successful drug would only have to support a dozen drugs that failed in trial, rather than two dozen (those numbers are wild-assed guesses.)
Doing those two things, we could easily eliminate NIH grants and the market would continue to develop drugs. Even better if the US wasn't the only market were companies could charge what they want, so we wouldn't have to support all the research with our dollars (both in NIH-spent taxes and drug purchases) while socialized medicine countries barely let drug companies charge the marginal cost.
Maybe we could even eliminate NIH subsidies now. Not really sure.
Now, in general, wether or not an industry is the most profitable in existance- this doesn't matter to me. I say good for them. Some industry has to be, and I'm not one to run around tearing down giants just because they're giants.
Could the system use a good deal of reform? Absolutely. Is a capitilist driven system superior to a state run system? Most definately.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Yes, and insurance companies do it too in order to try to force a low-ball settlement.
It is illegal, and it's called "barratry", but when the offenders have bought off the government through "donations" and lobbyists, there isn't much anyone can do about it.
Bottom line is it's our governments that are not doing their job in protecting us from abusive corps, and it's our own damn fault for continually re-electing them even after we know about the scams and scandals they're involved in.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Laws like this are all too convenient for the SCO's and other scammers, they don't have to show us the contents of the magic breifcase that contains five million lines of code printed in a 12 point font on who knows how many kilograms of imaginary paper. This whole "you're doing something wrong but we can't tell you what, but we will punish you" is not the mark of a lawful society, and is not the sort of thing that should be encouraged by a judicary in a democracy.
The US should fix it's patent system before it tries to enforce it on the rest of the world (which is in the process of occuring). If patents are to hold the power of law the patent office should do more than rubber stamp anything that comes in - and great care should be taken to avoid influence by inducements and bribes.
I put life over profit, no matter what, as any sane individual would.
Such a decision is easy to make if you're in a situation where the choice is between completing a lucrative sale to someone, or giving the hiemlich manuveur to another person who is choking next to you.
When we get into the larger matter of researching drugs and distributing them to market, the decision is not so easy.
Charging an arm and a leg for something that can save lives is perfectly justifiable, because if the companies that developed and made the drugs couldn't charge an arm and a leg to not only recoup the hundreds of millions spent in research, but profit on top of it, the drugs wouldn't exist at all.
Because no one would create them to begin with. So your choice, as adapted to our current situation, would be to save only those who could afford the drugs, or to save no one at all.
Why would a company spend all that money- in basic theory, in chemical or treatment development, in animal trials (and the animals are often custom made to create problems the drugs are supposed to cure, so they ARE expensive. We're talking $100,000 a mouse for dozens created intentionally with a specific genetic structure. Not cheap.), in refining the chemistry further, then in a few phases in human trials, and if they can actually take it to market- a rare occurence- a marketing campaign on top of it. Television ads, whining and dining doctors, etc.
Again, the cost of the failed drugs must be recouped by the occasional succesful drug. This is why charging an arm and a leg for something that can save lives is not only excusable, but acceptable. It's not pretty, but it's the way it works.
So, you ask, why not just publically fund a giant research lab to do this work? Well, it's all about resource allocation and accountability.
The dynamic allocation of resources by dozens of corporations is bound to be more efficient at solving problems than a Congressional budget line item that gets it's money with little accountability, because they only have to answer to a congressional committee for a few hours every year or two. Those companies that act unwisely die off, or are purchased by better companies.
In contrast, a large government research bureaucracy could waste money unaccountably for years before anyone even noticed. The legislators have a trillion dollar enterprise- the US government- to look over. Several billion a year squandered at one department- this happens all the time now, and it won't be any different for a huge federal research lab.
Profit, self-interest, greed, bragging rights; these all drive drug companies to develop new drugs. If they screw up too much though, they're dead.
On the other hand, politics will dictate development in a government lab. If they screw up, they keep getting money, because the government takes it by force, and it's already got way too much to keep track of. Already NIH research dollars are mispent, by what I would imagine would be your standard.
From what I recall, AIDS and Breast Cancer kill about the same number of people a year. Breast cancer, however, gets about 10 times the public money AIDS research does. That's government resource allocation for you. And you're proposing to enlarge and empower it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
About 99% of software patents are invalid anyway.
I like computer science and I want to make a living of it.
Now, if CS dies to the profit of microsoft, what will I do?
Will I have to suicide myself because I can't do what I was born to do?
I seriously scared about my future.
This line of "reasoning" has gotten repeated so many times, people are starting to accept it as true without questioning it. So let's stop a moment to question it here. Yeah. And no one whould write an operating system from scratch if they weren't assured of making a fortune. Or, for that matter, a novel.
And, by the same logic, nobody ever makes food or thinks up new foods because you can't patent or copyright them.
No, the brilliant ones do it because they are obsessed. It's the dedicated ones that do it because they care.
Oh, and (in my experience) the ones that only do it for the money are the hacks that we'd be better of without. Pretty much the same as in any field.
Well, given the fact that they always seem to talk about the choice (again, in my experience) in terms like "selling out" vs. "doing what I love" the fact that many of them "sell out" doesn't mean they like it.
There are actually many logical steps here, all highly questionable if you stop to think about them:
- Nothing ever gets created without the creator being reasonably assured of a profit
- The more talented and creative people are, the more they are obsessed with money
- You can't make a profit at all unless you can crush anyone who tries to compete with you
- R&D is the reason companies need to make so much money, even though they spend far more on marketing, lobying, etc.
- The pharmaceutical companies profits are causing all the progress; and, by implication, general advances in science and technology have nothing to do with it (oh why didn't they think to give patents and promises of obscene profits to the alchemists! Think what they could have accomplished!)
...you get the idea
-- MarkusQWith how loose software patents seem to be I expected nothing less then thousands in most places and in the usa I except it infringes on millions of patents. Heck I suspect hello world in any language infringes on at least a dozen patents. Stuff like python,perl,java,c# their runtimes etc probably infringes on tens to hundreds of thousands of patents.
So many stupid things have been patented that people seem to come up with hundreds to thousands of times in other places without ever hearing about the patent it just does not seem to matter very much. If you are writing softare you infringe on software patents and there is nothing you can do about it so why worry about it. Work needs to be done to change the patent system but worrying won't solve anything. I don't think it is possible to write software that does not infringe on various software patents and with that being that case it means that software patents are broken horribly. A patent it supposed to give someone a limited monopoly on an idea in exchange for sharing a unique idea with the rest of the human race. When people are coming up with them indepedently all over they are just not doing the job they should. Overall I don't even think patents should exist at all anymore. People do not come up with these ideas on their own, they get a lot of help from the society they are in and then they use that help and gouge the society with "their" invention of which likely less then 1% of the idea is actually theirs.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
If the Linux software infringes on patents, it might not be to blame in a sense. The situation with software patents should be to blame. Given the supposed thousands and thousands of software patents in existence, it is close to impossible to avoid violating every single last software patent in existence. An individual or company could easily use or distribute infringing software without ever realizing it. Who knows if the web browser being used to view this comment infringes on some obscure software patent? Patent searches are not necessarily a solution. With software authoring and production, individuals and small groups play a significant role and patents are especially difficult for them to consider.
Proprietary software should not be considered immune from patent problems. A difference is that patent violations with proprietary software might be less obvious, unless the software did something like creating a compressed GIF image file for example. That does not mean that patent infringements would not exist, and they could become known later on. It would be interesting if a party disassembled a proprietary software package in violation of the EULA and found patent violations as a result.
Bruce, why all the hiding ?, OSRM has never come forward with positive information for the community to better understand this 'insurance', no, just this in-house FUD. Back in April 2004, the 19th in fact, OSRM 'cleared' linux of copyright problems; how did the patent problem get looked over then ?, it was a 6 month study ?. You as well as the others don't seem to like questions. You want a mindless community to trust and to just follow ?, none of you talk to the community, you claim to belong to.
You and OSRM don't make the headlines on Groklaw anymore ?, what is the problem there ?.
Shamless Coward. Just too lazy thats all...
The advice about not looking at software patents is smarter than one might think. For example, see this article. It was written by an attorney who has worked with patents, and it talks about the idea of not looking among other things. The article says that parties are often advised by lawyers not to look at patents for the reason of willful infringement. Also, it is said this cautionary advice defeats the supposed advantage of the patent system increasing public knowledge.
Sorry about the comment title. Mozilla filled in the form field for me :-)
Bruce Perens.
You seem to be missing the scope of the matter.
...no one whould write an operating system from scratch if they weren't assured of making a fortune. Or, for that matter, a novel.
And, by the same logic, nobody ever makes food or thinks up new foods because you can't patent or copyright them.
Those are all things, that given enough time, one person can do. Accomplishing any of those, in fact, could probably be done by someone as a hobby over the course of a year.
The notion does not apply at all to the tremendous amount of resources required to develop medicine.
As to the motivations of various researchers, and how you don't want hacks who are in it just for the money- no matter how noble your intentions are, you still need the resources of a large corporation to carry out medicine development- and while you're choosing between a few companies or even a university or government lab, wouldn't it be nice to do your life's work while getting paid hansomely and working with state of the art equipment?
Just because someone does it for the love of helping people or for the pleasure of tinkering with the genes and chemicals doesn't mean they won't respond to the incentives put in front of them.
Now, back to the resources required to develop medicine:
1. Basic research- identify a health problem, isolate the mechanism of the illness.
2. Initial development- develop some sort of therapy for the problem- some conconction of chemicals, or a gene spliced aomeba, or whatever.
3. Animal trials- I had a roommate who's father ran a company that supplied lab mice and other similar creatures. Did you know that for a specific drug development project, this company custom made mice with the defect that was meant to be treated? They sold them for $100,000 a piece to the company working on the project, and couldn't raise them fast enough.
Now are you getting the idea this is a little beyond staying up late coding for a new operating system?
4. So the animal trials were more or less successful, but you have to work on some side effects, some delivery mechanisms, that sort of thing.
5. Multiple phases of human trials. This is where you track down willing human test subjects and see if the drug works on them with no or acceptable side effects. Finding and compensating test subjects, using control groups, paying even more researchers to run it all- large process here.
6. Now that you've already spent at least $100 million, you submit it for FDA approval. And if it doesn't meet some capriciously high standard of safety, the drug company can't sell it at all. Never mind individuals deciding what they want to risk to solve a particular health problem, because the FDA has removed that choice.
Chances are that each drug that makes it to market has to support a number of drugs that you never even heard about, so that drives the cost up several fold right there.
Are you still with me here? Making medicine in the modern world isn't amature hour. Making an OS just because you feel like it, or a novel, can be.
Now as to your logical steps- wich are insulting and show you have nothing more than a superficial, anti-business understanding of the nature of things...
1. The more resource intensive an endevour is, the more likely it will need the resources of a large company, which is by definition interested in profit.
2. The more talented and creative people still respond to incentives given to them and the ability to do their work with the best equipment and resources available. Which are usually found at a profit seeking company.
3. I have no idea where you came up with this. Reading too many Slashdot MS stories lately?
4. It takes what it takes to run their business. I don't say that the system is perfect, no one has proposed a realistic alternative here.
5. Do you think general advances in science and technology come out of nowhere?!?!?! They come out of pharmecut
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Though OSRM's patent protection won't start until the beginning of 2005, it has set pricing: $150,000 per year for coverage of lawsuit and settlement costs of up to $5 million, Ravicher said.
From the previous we can calculate that they presume the odds to be less than 1 against 33 that Linux-user will be prosecuted during any year for breaking patents! Other wise they would be out of business quite rapidly.
No problem. Just another fortune hunter trying to sell us snake oil.
Insurance is just a way of coordinating funds: one user cannot afford the legal defense. But collecting fees from many users allows the insurer to defend them collectively. Car insurers don't base their business model on the assumption that one car would be involved in an accident (or would be stolen, or burn...). Their business model is based on statistics: a certain percent of the clients would file claims. The same with the patent infringements that might be present in LINUX or any other kind of software: There is a certain number of possible infringements. There is an expected cost of defending them (including a certain percentage of lost or negociated settlements) and an expected income from clients of the insurer. The fees charged are expected to cover the expected costs of claims plus profit.
> For example, Let's say I went down and bought ... Can Ford sue me for hauling my turnips in
;-)
> a new Chevy truck so I could haul my turnips to market.
>
> a truck that violates their patents?
If they patented the "business method" of "hauling my turnips in a truck" then they might have a case...
> ...when we did a patent search, we turned up ...
> several patents we potentially might be
> infringing
That means that the basic strategy, if sued, is to lie and say "we didn't know". That's possible with "closed source" if you are careful enough not to leave evidence that you knew about possible patent infringements, nor leave evidence that your company normaly does check for possible infringements on every product.
Open source doesn't have the option of "covering traces": everything discussed is in the public domain. So lying in court is not an option. No wonder some closed source producers think open source is a broken business model. It doesn't have the most important component of doing business: lying!
> Now a memory map maps from your virtual memory address,
...
> to your physical memory address.
> Now you get 10 points for guessing what a reverse memory map is
Oh, so it's OK to have a table with two columns for vitual and physical memory addresses, but you may only sort it by the "virtual" field, because sorting by the "physical" field is patented? No! It's OK! you just have to license the technology!
Now give me your money or you'll get sniped.
http://www.neobard.info - wacky world of me
Programming involves solving thousands of little problems. Every step in a procedure is a solution to one little problem. Almost all seem straightforward or trivial to the programmer. Some require more thought (and most, when solved, seem straightforward, as in "this is so obvious, what was I thinking?")
I don't think it is really possible to do a real "patent search" on software, since every line of code might be something that someone else thought is "innovative". Actually every single step in a program is "innovative", and deciding which ones are "more innovative" than others is very subjective: when the solution to a problem involves combining many little ideas, then each person trying to combine them would have problems with a (possibly quite random) subset of them. To that person the solution of that subset would seem non-trivial, while it would seem trivial to someone else who got stuck on a different subset.
Also, how do you find what patent each of your lines of code might infringe? In practice you'd have to compare each of thousands of lines of code to each of thousands of seemingly unrelated patents. Keyword searches would probably miss most of the relevant patents. One would have to guess what might have made each of one's trivial solutions untrivial to others to guess the right keywords to find relevant patents.
Theoretically software patents are not different than "traditional" patents. The difference is in the numbers: an engineer designing a machine doesn't worry about the "technology" of using a certain number of screws of a particular shape to connect two elements of a particular size is patented. Nor does an engineer needs to worry about a patent for the technology of "including a switch to activate a certain functionality". For some reason a programmer does need to worry about such things as actually including a control in the user interface or how two components that have to communicate with each other do communicate, or whether the "idea" that those two particular components might communicate information has been patented. So a programmer has thousands and possibly millions of ways of unknowingly infringing.
For avoiding patent infringement, a programmer has to do a copmplete patent search after every minute or two of programming. Who's to know if the trivial solution you just thought of wasn't already patented by someone "not as smart as you" that thought it was not trivial?
I don't think that it's really about "prior art". It's more about the nature of things being composed of thousands of tiny components, each component separately patentable, and different people ranking "triviality" differently, based on the way they approached the problem.
It's not much different from the spam problem, where any single message is harmless, but combined together they become a problem. Or terrorism, that statistically is threatening almost nobody, and is much less lethal than things like traffic accidents, smoking, obesity, but once amplified by mass media, becomes a real threat.
In software patents, it's the large number of simple components that builds software, and the inability of software authors to guess which of their trivial solutions was untrivial to someone else in the past! It amplifies the effort needed to avoid patent infringement to the point that it becomes impossible to avoid.
I think in many different problems that arose in modern society, the problems arise from a single effect of "amplification" that arises from the nature of things such as "mass media", "mass production", "universality" (as in a "universal turing machine"), "global village" etc.
"Anti-isurance" is a method proposed to reduce "insurance fraud". Of course, the inventors are patenting this "business method".
d =288090
See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i
in the last 15 minutes, i violated 17 patents, 4 owned by microsoft:
i scratched my arse (3 patents)
i made a coffee (2 patents)
i drank the coffee (1 patent)
i put the coffee back on the shelf (7 patents)
i sat down and turned on the computer (4 patents)
i hope nobody finds out though because i haven't got IBM's vast portfolio of patents to protect me like linux has. for those who are humourously challenged, some of this post was in jest as there is only 1 patent held on arse scratching. apparently a small company from washington owns it, but they're waiting until arse scratching becomes popular.
Being scared makes opportunities for others. This whole patent talk is now at center stage because of the success of linux. If linux were a proprietary OS the same things would be happening. Microsoft has been successful at keeping another OS from growing a market, so, anyother OS taking market away, Microsoft would have the same reaction(s) to the change. Scared people running to insurance is just what Microsoft wants, loves the idea that it can remote-control linux users. The real problem, the real threat to opensource is those that created it and use it. Fear has some wanting to take cover with the first thing that comes along, like insurance. Opensource was to be a freedom, those that created the freedom now support the fear for profit and that makes them hypocrites on the basis of their software freedom rhetoric, when they first told of the so-called freedom. Insurance is not going to free opensource, if you look at other types of insurance, the insurance companies tell those insured what to do to some good degree. If the insurance company says no, then it will not happen because the insurance company can within its rights kill the coverage; and you will be out of business if they do !.
Freedom has its cost thats true, that cost should be money and time spent on fighting patents now, making the changes to patent law now; and not wait, as insurance has you do, for the day after many more patents gained, you allow the insurance to fight a small handfull of them at a time. With the patent problem growing, how much would such insurance cost in the future with the threat being allowed to grow ?. OSRM is a growing number of such opportunities for those that only care about how to gain control and profit. Large companies and corporations have their legal sh*t together and don't let the OSRMs tell you otherwise. These with the "deep pockets" need to wait ?, while OSRM continues to work on their win approach with the opensource community. The question is, if the general community does not need the insurance, why is it, it seems the community's negitive reaction holds up the offering of OSRM ?. From the first version, when OSRM would charge $1000 to scan, then after the community's out-cry, then it was changed to $250-up a year. Why is the community's money so important when the "deep pockets" are waiting ?. Something in the shadows of my suspicious mind tells me this is not right.
That cult of personality is manifested in the attitude that Groklaw is somehow a private, personal sanctum, and that any criticism of Pamela is both a personal attack on her, and utterly unreasonable.
That attitude is utter nonsense, as I've said before.
A publicly-accessible web page is just that: public.
Any illusions of privacy or personal space are just that: illusions.
Now, one can control content of a publicly-accessible web page, as I do for example at my web site, but in the context of what Groklaw is alleged to be (an "advocacy" site), as soon as content beyond obvious spam and/or obscenity is edited or deleted, it should raise the obvious question of censorship, and it should pose the obvious question as to whether the issue being "advocated" can stand on its own merits, or whether it needs to be protected and can only survive within a limited context where not all questions will be allowed, let alone answered.
But I find this unrepenatant true-beliver mentality very off-putting (particularly when it's advanced by individuals who are to some extent on a payroll around here, and when they do it not only at Groklaw but on other message boards) and I would state that such a true-beleiver mentality is little different than that of SCO's, at it's core.
Once you buy into the idea that your cause is pure, and you can say and do anything to support it, and you *do* do anything to support it, you've lost me.
Other posters have made reference to the research here being used by IBM; a completely different issue.
IBM is a clear and visible party to the battle being fought here [at Groklaw], a battle that is the foundation of why and how Groklaw came into existence, and I would be proud to think that I had personally contributed to the sucess of that battle.
But OSRM is a later-day contrivance, an entity created to fill a perceived need (no matter how "worthy" - that's open to question) as a business concept created by Daniel Egger and its only association with Groklaw is that they hired Pamela to work for them.
And after that hiring I saw no notice that our work here was going to be appropriated by OSRM.
Is the issue of potential patent infrigement in the Linux kernel one that needs to be studied and discussed?
Absolutely.
But is no one but me troubled by the fact that the study is issued by the very company that will issue insurance^W - sorry - "indemnification" for such infrigement?
Apparently not.
The true believer mentality and group-think comes forth, and anyone who has a problem with it can go back to slashdot or alt.flame.
And yet, again, I've heard no acknowledgement or discussion of that issue: in fact, the entire OSRM issue is being studiously ignored by Pamela, accept as it might appear anecdotally in isolated posts.
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
And Pam, from the article, is the maintainer of that site. Funny how Groklaw dismisses many issues related to patent issues in Linux, and its founder sells Linux patent insurance.
"...and large corporations are the only entities the U.S. government responds to anymore"
i believe that the 'guilty' verdict of the m$ anti-trust trial clearly demostrated how the u.s.government rolled over like a cheap slut. And what i find to be cleary scandalus is that m$ will give restitution by handing out 'coupons' so as to buy more of its 'tainted' product, simply amazing. i guess its thanks to g.w.?
Software patents wouldn't be so bad if they added one additional requirement:
1) The innovation/invention must be non-obvious to an expert in the field.
Read about OSRM's OFFSHORE plans !!!...
/ cz _dl_0802linux.html
" Egger says OSRM will skirt U.S. regulations on insurers by locating an affiliate company offshore, but won't go into details."
http://www.forbes.com/enterprisetech/2004/08/02
its.
"it's" is only to be used as a contraction for "it is"
If the link does not work (copy-paste): Go to www.Forbes.com and look for "linux scare tatics".
Thank you Forbes for this infromation.
Great. Give your free research to a VC funded unlisted 'insurance' company so they can charge big dough for the aggregated results while sewing FUD in the guise of altruism. Watch PJ shed those who are no longer useful while ignoring the chill their 'report' has cast on Linux in particular.
Considering how damaging this report is, would you seriously trust these people to be the only ones armed with the knowledge to destroy OSS?
I've been getting 503 errors for the last 24 hours or so on /. with Safari. Which cookie should I look for?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You think I'm evil, I think you're misguided. What are you, a college-grown liberal? Do you really think your professors, few of which have ever had to survive outside of academia, really know what's going on?
I find it funny that someone else's need would determine my obligations, in the absence of any formal contract. Same goes for drug companies.
You seem to have take the international joke of 'healthcare as a human right' a little too seriously.
See, most rights we have here in the United States list things you can't do to someone. You can't kill someone. You can't take their stuff. You can't keep them from expressing their opinion on any matter. You can't dictate who they worship. You can't search their homes or imprison them without due process. You can't quarter soldiers in their homes. You can't make them incriminate themselves. You can't deny themselves the most effective way to defend themselves or the state against threats.
What do all those have in common? They all basically say 'leave people the hell alone' To put it another way, you have the right to swing your arm wildly, but that right ends at the tip of my nose.
So why is healthcare as a right different and incompatible with natural rights?
Because in order to fulfill the 'right', action is demanded of someone else- doctors, researchers, whatever. Thus violating their basic right to be left the hell alone.
Now, there's certainly ways to publically fund health care and not call it a right. I'm no big fan of those either. But there's no logical way healthcare could ever be a 'right', and someone's inaction about somebody else's problem a half a world away is NOT murder.
Callous? Maybe. Murder? Not by any dictionary I can find.
Someone's need does not dictate what I am obligated to do. End of story.
If you disagree, I really, really need $100 bucks. Use western union to wire it to charlie's bait shop in Methuen, MA. It's for baby formula for my neighbor's child.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Thats right were children and as long as someone you and the rest believe the community will just follow ; that IS what you base you damn support for OSRM on ?.
Why don.t you ask Bruce when he is around, and ask him why, why is the community's acceptence so needed with the knowledge that OSRM has said the insurance is for the "deep pockets" companies / corporations. If the companies / corporations are going to buy 5mil+ each !, and ORSM does have a wait list already !, whats up with wanting to 'sell' the community on it for ?.
My idea ?: The money OSRM will ship offshore into a special account, that U.S. law can do little or nothing about, without the U.S law, YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS TO THE MONEY, that money will be the community's hard earned bucks; and I do not believe there is any companies or corporations on any damn wait list. Just another idea to make things look if they are good so the children (as you made us seem like) of the opensource community will follow along and drop the money in the hat without question.
In works to find the correct department (U.S. Gov) just to notifiy and bring attention about OSRM. I believe this operation needs a legal review !.
Before you all go and get your panties in a bunch
Too late. Anyway, I think many slashdotters were born with cameltoe, or at least developed inoperable wedgies at an early age.
It's common practice on slashdot to attack a product or service not intended for you because it doesn't meet your needs. It is also common practice to post comments that are based on ignorance of the issues. Usually, the more ignorant the poster, the more strongly worded and strongly held is the opinion.
This isn't meant as a crack on slashdot. That crack is already filled with tightly wadded undergarments.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I'm the CTO of a Fortune 500 company that is considering moving to tinfoil hats. Is this $699.00 on a per CPU basis (each CPU can wear as many tinfoil hats as it wants?) or a company wide basis (for $699.00, all my CPUs can wear as many tinfoil hats as they want?)?
We're looking at rolling out a test deployment in Boca Raton, although we're considering other areas that might have a lower incidence of lightning.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
There's no such thing as "counter-patent".
What exactly our they "counter-patenting"? Something that's already in someone else's work? Something that's not in that work?
What they are really doing is searching for existing patents, finding them, and then planning a strategy of pretending not to have known in advance. The other patents they register has nothing to do with knowingly infringing someone else's patent. They're just a strategy of planning to shoot around if caught!
And it shows exactly what's wrong with the way the patent system currently works: patents are registered not to allow the inventor time to make some money from her investment, but rather to be able to threaten with legal fees.
"This organization isn't the enemy, folks."
The enemy? Jesus.
The problem is the method and execution, not who works there. Likewise we could point out that Caldera used to have a Linux distro
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Yes, you got carried away, but you won the argument and made me change my mind. Not an easy thing to do, but not impossible, either.
The patent system rewards dishonesty and at this point in time actively discourages what it was implemented to encourage. We already knew this, but I'm still glad I challenged you, as you've given me a clearer understanding of the dishonesty by calling it for what it is, namely lying.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Man, couldn't some really smart people get together and figure out how to make Linux bulletproof (in regards to legal actions)? You would think there are enough of them floating around the linux arena.
Secondly, I have come to be VERY disappointed with the whole patent process. If only the founding fathers could see the crap going on. They were a really smart bunch who werent so messed up with "politics" that they could probably thing of an inventive way to fix things.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
No, this is exactly like traditional insurance. They know Linux violates patents, and are gambling on whether or not there will be lawsuits based on those patents. Most violated patents are never brought to court.
I wonder if I'm guilty of copyrigth/patent violations for this practice. What if I include a code snippet in a comercial app?
but you've stumbled on to the answer that really works. Everyone should incorporate themselves. "Hello I am Archfeld, President and CEO of Archfeld Inc." All of my property is corporate owned and I am just a representative of said corporation. My asset's are protected from seizure due to my actions. I have HUGE tax break opportunities that are denied the individual, not to mention access to simple things that people don't even notice, like a significant break on utility costs based on the status as a business/corporation...sounds silly but it works. Granted there was an initial outlay of funds to incorporate and continue to maintain the needed papers, but bottom line if you can't beat them, exploit the system they created :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The courts, however, do care about prior art. Many patents have been brought down via legal challenges after the patent has been awarded. The problem with this is such legal challenges are expensive and time consuming mothers.
People are now talking about new ways to run the patent office, so that the public can view and comment on commercially important patents before they are awarded. I hope such changes are made.
You did, however, get in the obligatory "let's blame big business for everything" swipe. Well done.
Many patents have been brought down via legal challenges after the patent has been awarded.
This is exactly the absurd, illogical world of "not knowing what the law is until one is charged with the crime of breaking it, and is subjected to the interpretation of a court in the determination of law and consequence" that Kafka so often represented.
While it represents perpetual high incomes for the legal elites (trial attorneys - any surprise one of our US political parties is owned by this class and even has a former trial attorney as a VP candidate?), it represents years of hell for the rest of us.
Want to make sure you're following the law? Ha! We won't tell you what it is until you've broken it. Better make sure you contribute nicely to our party or we won't be so nice at your trial...
Save the world. Shame a trial attorney.
Would it not be in these companies' best interest to use their formidable influence in government and over the research budgets of universities to suppress this research?
yep, that's exactly why iron lung manufacturers were successful in stopping the polio vaccine.
and the pony express was very successful in stopping the telegraph, don't you think?
gotta admire the horse & buggy manufacturers success in stopping the automobile.
and just look at all those evil film processing companies supressing digital cameras!