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New Prior Art Cited In 2nd Eolas Patent Rejection
theodp writes "To be able to reject the Eolas browser plug-in patent a second time, the USPTO had to add the teachings of G.Toye after Eolas' response prompted the examiner to withdraw his previous finding that was based solely on the teachings of the W3C's Dave Raggett and Tim Berners-Lee. It's unclear where the Toye prior art came from, since the W3C didn't offer it when it asked the PTO to overturn the patent. Also, a newly available document reveals that the W3C's widely-publicized prior art filing, which was hastily made without community input, differed little from an unpublicized filing that was made weeks earlier by attorneys from Microsoft and AOL."
From the article:
"A patent so simple a grandmother could understand it."
As a feminist and a 48 yo grandmother I am offended.
Getting that Eolas ruling overturned is a good thing. I for one am sick and tired of the bloodsuckers grasping patents to block innovation so they can make an easy million of patenting an idea they never implement.
Software patents are bad... when you come up with an idea, and go about developing a large programming project, something is seriously wrong when the legal team does patent research and discovers that all that in house code that was written violates 30 patents.
Something needs to be done... immediately.
Cheers,
James Carr
I'm getting tired of reading about this patent fight in particular. For what? Plug-ins running in a browser. Has anyone up until this point ever heard of OLE in Windows? Its allows one application to work seamlessly in another e.g. a word document in excel, or quicktime in a web browser. Though they are different in many ways, they are the same concept. Plus OLE has been around since windows 3.1.
So the W3C's prior art filing had prior art? Delicious. :)
Software patents are censorship. You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first. Software should be sold on quality not on who gets the patent.
That history is full of trolls. Just look at all the -1's. The pin head is right, the first post is an obvious troll attempting to start an offtopic flamewar. It's just as bad as making a post blaming Bush for everything in the article.
haha..bush..women's issues
Actually, there's a good case on either side, but what should really be patentable is the use of a particular algorithm for a particular use - wouldn't it be better if you could stop your competitors from copying your application? (I.E, no one else can use your nifty algorithm for a game, but that doesn't stop them from using it to develop a spam filter!)
Honestly, software patents should be like biotechnology patents - you can't stop people from using the science, but you can stop them from using the technique you developed to compete with you in your area!
Like other sciences, computer science should move to a point where creative innovations are freely available to those who want to apply them - but not so free you put people out of business who are working to develop the ideas you want to use.
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**
Ah, so we all should be eternally gratefull that people have made the concepts of "one click shopping" and "clicking multiple times" public, rather than keeping this valuable IP a seeeekriiit forever.
Yeah, right. And the money needed for really serious R&D would come from anonymous "contributors" like you?
Ah... you're right, because nobody other than a large meganational corporation could possibly afford the huge research effort that went into the "one click shopping" patent, or the salaries of the phenomenally large numbers of scientists and technicians who devoted decades of thier lives to researching the "multiple clicks" patent.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
True. In much the same way that nobody is stopped from running a business in mafia territory... they just have to pay the protection money.
having a hard time understanding complex sentences?
did you forget to take your meds?
While Ozzie was apparently unaware of this, his (very detailed) weblog entry was part of the same PDF document that included the letters signed by Counsel from Microsoft (and their outside law firm), AOL, Macromedia, and Adobe.
Software is written code, much like a book or music. Isn't it more logical that code should be copyrighted, not patened? This is much like trying to patent the idea of a book (Its about people that are living in a distopia, and try to rebel...) Everyone should have a right to express an idea through words/code, but not to steal anothers exact words. If someone tries to make money on unmodified, obviously plagerised code, without paying royalties, or does not site the author/s, then and only then should a lawsuit pursued.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Hey! I just thought of the idea of frequent-teleportation miles. You earn enough miles, you can redeem them for upgrades such as being teleported at a higher resolution without having to pay extra $. Patent!!
1. Actually, for embedded devices, WinCE actually runs on a large number of them. You're just not aware of it as they are not always branded as Windows Powered and these run on many different types of CPUs. If you mean desktop, it may be true that Windows doesn't run on most of the desktop processors, but it does run on >90% of all desktops. 2. Last I heard, you could buy a PC without Windows. And nothing has ever stopped you from building your own. This is what I did. 3. Hmmm, public domain means public domain. Not sure what you mean unless you misunderstand what public domain means. They've used BSD code and put up the necessary copyright info as required by the license. 4. Microsoft has yet to abuse their patent portfolio. While on the other hand every other week they are being sued for patent infringement. Perhaps they are building a defensive portfolio?
And OLE was based on several patents from IBM, to which they were granted licensing rights during the smooze fest prior to MS striking out on their own.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.