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Kodak Wins $1 Billion Java Lawsuit
nberardi writes "The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle is reporting that Eastman Kodak Company has just won a patent suit against Sun on the Java Language. According to the article Kodak owns a patent which describes a way for a piece of software to "ask for help" from another application. What they are claiming is that Sun violates this patent when Java byte code uses the Java engine to run the code. This may really upset the industry, because not only Sun uses this technology for Java but Microsoft uses this technology in .Net."
And people laugh at me when I say the stock market is nothing but a legalized casino.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Okay so a program asks for help from another program. I guess the internet now belongs to Kodak!
I do not welcome this.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
And this proves yet again that software patents are evil...
If Microsoft starts to get seriously hobbled, perhaps they will buy legislation to ease their plight???
"Kodak praised the verdict and said it was part of an aggressive push to convert innovations -- both homegrown and purchased -- into real money. The company over the past several years has been issuing licenses, filing lawsuits, forming spinoff companies and finding other uses for its technologies."
It seems that today, companies don't produce products, they produce lawsuits, and that's how they get their money. How long can this continue?
Furthermore, since 1.06B is about 1/3 of Sun's cash on hand (here), what will that mean for Sun? It's 7% of their total value, so this can't be good for them.
In the end, it's only the lawyers who win.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
First the Eolas lawsuit, now this. What is going to take for Bill Gates to wake up and say that suing OpenOffice developers isn't worth being able to lose $1.06B to a company that actually has the legal resources to wage a protracted war with Microsoft? If Sun loses this, the Microsoft had better be willing to settle in a very generous was or Kodak will go after them. $1.06B for Sun, since Microsoft has much, much more money it could just as easily be $5B from Microsoft.
This is all starting to become like nuclear weapons in and after the cold war. First it seemed like no big deal, hell it was even a requirement to be a big player to have nukes. Now all these little players are getting them, and Eolas and Kodak IMO are no different or better than the rogue states getting their own arsenals of nukes. Now the big boys are getting attacked so, what do they do? Disarm by pushing for the elimination of all software and business method patents, to keep these guys from having legal nukes to use against them, or do they just pray that not enough ankle biters will get enough patents to bankrupt them in independent and coordinated lawsuits?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This seems quite similar to how scripts work in Unix-land. If you're writing a script in the KornShell language, you put the "#!/bin/ksh" header on the first line of the script. When the script runs, it asks for help from /bin/ksh to execute. Surely that concept has been around longer than this absurd patent?
Not just Sun.
However, it is really fucking funny considering the extent to which Scott McNealy has been telling people in his talks that open source is going to be problematic in the future because patent concerns are going to blow up and it will be difficult to operate as a software project unless you have a large patent portfolio, as Sun or Microsoft do.
I wonder if McNealy, after seeing this judgement, still views patents as such a good thing for his business.
Isn't this not just prior art, but also blindingly obvious?
Either of those would be enough to invalidate the patent...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I saw the headline, and do you know what my first reaction was? It wasn't "grrr. Stupid software patents". That came later. My very FIRST reaction was to look for the foot. Because obviously Kodak pursuing software patent claims is absurd. No foot, so I read the article.
I'm not a patent lawyer, and I have better things to do with my time than try to decipher the deliberately-obfuscated language of a patent the article doesn't bother to mention. However, I do know a little bit about computers, and that patent better be a damn sight more specific than "ask for help".
Because I'll bet system calls predate whatever patent Kodak's waving around.
I'm still looking for that foot, only now I want one to kick Kodak in the head.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
First, after damages are decided, Sun will move with JNOV (asking the judge to set aside the verdict because there was insufficent evidence to support to verdict). There is probably a 10% probability of this happening in any given case, even more when there is alot of money at risk.
Second, Sun will appeal to the Federal Circuit, which usually overturnes 60% of district court decisions because district courts usually dont know anything about technology and know even less about patent law.
So, IMHO, its too early to start running around in circles over this decision, at least until the Federal Circuit affirms.
you seem a little slow; you've just again *stated* that groklaw censors; I think the op was asking for evidence besides your mere words
Patent reform will not happen until it becomes unprofitable for large companies to have them as they are today. I see Kodak like a rouge nation. They once were like the other sovereign, stable, and knowing that if they launched a patent war the other side would retaliate in kind, with the most likely solution to cross license each other's portfolio. This sort of thinking fails when the attacking company has nothing to lose. SCO is not really a good example of this. The stock was going downhill fast, so about a two years ago they came up with a brilliant pump and dump scheme. They don't actually care about winning the case. (IBM lobed the patent counter attack anyhow, to scorch the earth) Kodak does, however, and cannot easily be litigated into extinction.
I don't see patents going away, but I could see the bar being raised for what qualifies for 'patent' protection and eliminating some of those pesky submarine style techniques. But not until someone has nothing to gain from cross licensing. The IE plugin was close, but they lacked the law staff (not to say anything about right or wrong) to keep the patent valid....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
"PJ has an excellent analysis [groklaw.net] of this case and what software pantents mean for the industry [fatherryan.org] over at Groklaw [groklaw.net] this morning."
Oh, I can tell you what it means to the software industry, in a single sentence.
It means that ANYONE who dares to write a successful piece of software will be SCREWED as long as patents are allowed to be filed with ambiguous language and meanings that are open to interpretation.
Anyone have a link to the patent?
Software that needs to "ask for help" is way too broad. What does this even mean?
What about loading a DLL/.so into memory and calling functions? Is that asking for help?
Or how about offloading processing onto a daughter board? Is that asking for help?
Gimme a break.
The judge who granted Kodak the win obviously doesn't know a thing about the software industry. The case is bogus. I can't believe Sun's lawyers lost this case.
Oh well, at least it's just Microsoft play money that they might have to fork over. Easy come, easy go. Of course this doesn't take into account the chilling affect a precedent like this will have on the software industry.
Do you have any examples or are you talking out your ass?
I'd say a bit of both. There were a flood of trolls over on Groklaw, people being actively disruptive, and almost certainly SCO backed astroturfing and disruption.
PJ started deleting such posts and accounts.
Unfortunately when you do that some innocent people with genuine differences of oppinion are going to get caught in the crossfire. There is wild speculation over how much of the deletion (if any) was justified, and how much of it (if any) was abusive. Naturally SCO-turfer's are spinning PJ as a Hitler over it.
On one hand it's PJ's site and she can delete whatever she likes. On the other hand it is a community and I'm not a fan of censorship tactics. On the gripping hand Groklaw simply does not have any sort of moderation system, thus no other way of dealing with attacks and disruption. In general I admire PJ and the work she's doing, but I have no way of knowing what's been deleted so I really have no way to comment on the fairness/unfairness of such deletions.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I don't see how Smalltalk isn't direct prior art for this, at least as it would apply to Java. These are, I believe, a good example of bad software patents that are becoming more and more common. You can't really figure out what exactly they're claiming, you have no idea what might infringe on it, it's so vague that you can't figure out what prior art might invalidate it, and once you do figure it out, you say "you can patent that?". It's like patenting "Ok, take an automobile, turn right and go around the block THREE times, not just TWO times like everyone has done in the past, THEN turn right on red without waiting for pedestrians." And then claiming that airplanes landing between 2AM and 3AM at airports without lights infringes on it, since they never wait for pedestrians, and they have a red light on the wing.
What hangs on a wall, is green, and whistles?
I give up. What hangs on a wall, is green, and whistles?
A HERRING!
A herring? It doesn't hang on a wall!
Well, you can put in a nail and hang it.
Ok, but it isn't green!
You can paint it green.
Ok, but whistles?
Oh, I just put that in to make it hard!
A screenshot or saved copy of the page would be a start. Not proof, as either could be fairly easily faked, but still evidence. If censorship were actually going on, the obvious first step would be to document it.
what's interesting here is that this case was tried in Rochester, NY: The home of Eastman Kodak. Recently over the last 10 years, thousands of people have lost their jobs because of Kodak's poor management.
I tend to think this was not an unbiased jury, maybe there is some hometown "support the hometeam" thing going on.
Then again, I've only lived in rochester for about 6 years now.
Wheee, I forgot an entire paragraph.
To boycott Monsanto, avoid buying NutriSweet (particularly Equal), Roundup (the son of Agent Orange and granson of DDT), any Ortho lawncare products. Also, avoid any food made with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's); many of them are Monsanto GMO's, and the other GMO's aren't any better.
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Open mind, insert foot.
(1) Anyone have a link to the patent?
(2) Software that needs to "ask for help" is way too broad.
(3) The judge who granted Kodak the win obviously doesn't know a thing about the software industry. The case is bogus.
Given the first statement it is clear that you have not read the patent in question, and therefore you have no idea what they are actually patenting other than the incredibly broad summary given in the article (i.e. "software that asks for help, statement (2)).
Therefore, I really don't see how you can condemn the Judge of the this case and Sun's lawyers for losing since you obviously don't have 95% of the important facts which are needed to make a fair decision.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Nice try, but I believe Kodak's all but given up on making a profit out of their consumer products. Having been left behind by the digital age, they have changed their strategy to profit by litigation. So you can boycott their products all you want, they just don't care anymore.
Their contact form
I told them that I'd never buy another Kodak product again as long as I live... and I'm dead serious about it.
Ok, so my first thought was like: oh, shit! Shit shit shit sheeeeet! What the fuck? Fuckity fuckity-fucking fuck!
.NET, Perl, PHP, Python, VB, and C/C++ debuggers, aren't many of them VMs? Lisp, ML, Scheme, Prolog, and more. So what is going to happen, all VMs will have to pay royalty to Kodak?
But then I thought: Ok, keep it together, for f..ck sake!
Ok and now I am like again: arrghh FUCK!
I don't know, I just want to see that little piece of shit Kodak in ruins, that's what I want to see.
And it has nothing to do with Sun or Java, it's everything. I am so fucking tired of this fucked up life and little scum sucking shit eating pieces of trash that live on this planet who run 'businesses' like kodak.
Since when is kodak a software company? They are not. They bought this patent from another company.
On the other hand the court that made this decision must consist of the dumbest assholes ever. Ever. Unfucking believable.
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Ok, now that I vented. Such a rulling was foreseen by many, there is a reason why IBM has something like a million pattents in their war chest, including a patent for using a crapper.
Obviously now companies started using software patents in the worst way possible - attempting to destroy entire industries.
What will Sun do now with Java? I don't know, they must appeal and hopefully take it to the highest court and get this decision overturned and hopefully they will achieve a reform of the software pattenting, as in prove it to be detrimental to the economy in principle and to any company in particular. Obviously a smaller company would just go under, this war has to be fought by gigantic companies like Sun, IBM or even Microsoft. How many patents can Microsoft fight off, especially if the attacker is NOT a software vendor. How do you fight a non software vendor? They don't care about software in principle, I suppose Kodak would WANT all software to be gone. After all, all they need is chemicals to run their shop.
On the other hand I don't see IBM or MS helping Sun in this battle, they are compatitors after all. But Java will suffer enormously and so may
This is a serious issue, I think this has to be the most serious issue that hit software industry ever, patents I mean.
Software should not be patentable. Copyrights are fine and dandy but patents are something else all together. Patents of ideas are much worse than copyrights of implementations. Software patents will without any doubt ruin software industry and the economies that allow software patents will pay a heavy price. I think it is time to support EFF more than ever. I think we need to see a wide range of law suits against Kodak one way or another and try and get the court to overthrow software patents.
And I think that Freeing Java is becoming more important than ever for the [Java] platform.
You can't handle the truth.
I've done a few searches on the USPTO website but their search engine is throwing fits and I can't find it.
Prevented from independent research into the topic, we the people must trust the news (this scares me to no end).
The news, apparently, only knows that the patent applies to "asking for help".
The Java runtime is just virtual machine and some base classes. So which is it, the virtual machine or the base classes? Either way a HUGE segment of the industry is affected. C++ has base classes. Everything has base classes or base libraries. And virtual machines have been around forever. Do you think they'll sue Intel too for emulating ia32 on ia64? Maybe IBM for its multiple-machines-on-a-server thing (is that the eServer?).
I hereby condemn the judge, if not for making a piss-poor decision, then for not giving any information to the press. The People have a right to know.
Hail the Philosopher King!
It kinda brings to light the outrageousness of the Patent Office's "let the courts sort it out" policy. Because convincing the courts means one lawyer trying to convince a jury of laypeople it's obvious, and another trying to confuse the shit out of them. These are "Internet Explorer is teh intarnet!!one" class people here, yet they are having the final say over just how fucked up the industry should become.
a patent which describes a way for a piece of software to "ask for help" from another application
.. give me the value of .. sub f { $x = shift; return $x^2 + x + 1 }... f(x)=x^2+x+1
Ask for help
OMG! Kodak has a patent on mathematics!
Shit!
"Jurors ruled that Sun's Java web software
infringes the patents, which were acquired
by Eastman Kodak Co. in 1997"
"Three patents once registered to Lowell
minicomputer-maker Wang Laboratories"
There are two things I can say about the above:
1. Sun should've bought Wang Lab, but didn't.
2. Kodak's luck isn't that bad, after all.
One question:
Anyone know how much Kodak paid for the
acquisition of Wang Lab, back in 1997 ?
Thanks !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you dislike Sun for just owning software patents, you should dislike just about every tech company that exists. Practically every company nowadays owns some bogus set of software patents, and companies like IBM (who regularly receives the most patent grants worldwide every year), own huge software patent portfolios. Fortunately, most of these companies (including Sun) don't go around abusing these bogus patents left and right in billion dollar lawsuits.
Companies are never going to stop patenting software as long as it can be done, and there will always be rotten apples abusing the system, so we need to stop this problem at its roots. New case law needs to be arrived at, or new legislation needs to be passed, to kill software patents.
"Off-hand, I'd say we're fucked... What we really need is to find a way to prove some kind of anti-competitive conspiracy between, say, Microsoft and Kodak"
More usefully, we could do with a system where all new inventions aren't automatically banned from use for the next 25 years at the option of the inventor
I am a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon. I write C++ code every day. I know at least 7 programming languages well enough to program in them professionally. For my research I design new computer hardware, compilers, database systems, and operating systems. I have helped write (non-software) patents. ...and I'll be damned if I can fully understand the text of most patents, including the ones cited in this article. How in the world is a software developer supposed to avoid infringing on patents if they can't _understand_ them? I don't know of any school which includes a course on "reading patent legaleese" in their computer science programs.
I have 12 years of post-high-school education in Computer Science. I have no idea how to write a non-trivial program that I am relatively sure does not infringe on any patent. I don't know anyone who does. Doesn't this seem absurd?
Software is math.
I've heard this said many times and quite frankly feel it is a over generalization of the case.
Lonath's post equates abstract algorithms and useful mathematical algorithms without ever identifying how software fits into the picture. Supposedly, "software is math" as stated above, and therefore, software is nothing but an abstract way of writing a mathematical algorithm which can be assigned numbers and solved using mathematical operations. Given this, it would be reasonable to assume that all software can be reduced to an equation which gives a final result. Given this, I ask you what the equation would be for the amazon one-click shopping software would be?
There are lots of computer science problems which do not occur in mathematics. For example data structures, process execution scheduling, garbage collection. Granted these make use of mathematics, but that does not make them pure mathematical problems.
IANAL, nor do I play one here, but the word seems to be that "function" vs. "implementation" matters for copyright but not patents
The question above was about "functional equivelants". If you want to use mathimatics as an example, two equations can both produce the answer of "1", but do using vastly different methods (i.e. subtraction vs. integration). The question in most patents is not the final result, but the method used to get there.
I would also argue that patents protect implementations of ideas, rather than ideas themselves. For example, the idea of compressing music is well known, but there are many implementations of that idea which are patented. However, this seems to be more of a semantics issue. Though, I am curious as to how the writter of the Groklaw post would define "ideas" and "application" in the above context.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Historically, they are the company that brought us DDT
Actually, on the whole DDT on its own was more of a plus than a minus. It eradicated Malaria, and applied in low ocncentrations for that purpose _only_ it produces relatively little damage to the environment.
Problem was when farmers went crazy spraying their field with generous quantities of the stuff. Chemical companies did encourage this use, so they are not blameless either.
That patent seems to cover anything that implements a dynamic method send based on the classes of both objects, and supports any kind of "marshalling" operation to allow separately compiled components to interact.
Since Java's class system isn't dynamic, there's no reason to expect that it would apply. I didn't think the JVM even supported the operation described in Claim 1. On the other hand it sure looks like the method send operation in Smalltalk-80, and the patent uses the Smalltalk-80 book as a reference. About the only thing in this patent that Smalltalk-80 doesn't cover would be something like dynamic linking.
The article is really skimpy on details, where's the actual explanation of HOW Java violates this patent?
From your description, it sounds like Microsoft's DCOM and NeXT's distributed objects would both count as prior art. The article states that the patent was acquired in 1997. Any idea when it was filed?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
- Smalltalk supports objects as its atomic data structure (it doesn't suffer the dicotomy between "atomic" and composite objects like Java), and
- these objects are in the heap (are not merely kept on the program's stack frame), and
- the VM has the ability to create, destroy and print objects
so that Smalltalk demonstrates both an implementation of management of data objects and (at least) an implicit statement of their value.Using your "bridge" metaphor, the Kodak patent seems more like the case where thousands of bridges had been built and then i suddenly i come along and declare: Bridges are useful for crossing rivers and other gaps that separate ridge-like geographic locations ... and then proceed to describe how to build the bridge. So, suddenly, i'm in control of building bridges because i've articulated the obvious.
I've looked throught the three patents (no i have not studied them), but the claims are stating the desirability of using libraries of functions to support operations on composite objects. Smalltalk had gazillions of objects created/printed/destroyed, so it had been done for at least a dozen years before the patent was filed. It's hard not to see how these capabilities aren't part of the structure of the Smalltalk VM, and hence represent prior art.
Of course, IANAL, nor am i a patent examiner. But it might be useful to check out flavors of Smalltalk to contrast. (Note, patent 5,421,012, which is a continuation of the other two, specifically references the Aug. 1981 issue of Byte magazine for its in-depth coverage of Smalltalk.)
Yes. We call this the Church-Turing thesis, and it is one of the most fundamental theorems in computer science.
Given this, it would be reasonable to assume that all software can be reduced to an equation which gives a final result.
No. Not all problems are decidable (and hence the equation produced may not give a final result), and it is provable that it is not possible to determine in the general case whether an algorithm will halt or not (although it is in many specific cases). This is known as the halting problem, which has been known about for almost as long as computer science has existed as a discipline (it was discovered by Alan Turing)
Given this, I ask you what the equation would be for the amazon one-click shopping software would be?
I don't have a copy of Amazon's one-click shopping software's code to hand, but if I did, and could be bothered to devote the time to it, then yes I could. Perhaps you should read this book.
There are lots of computer science problems which do not occur in mathematics. For example data structures, process execution scheduling, garbage collection.
Abstract data types are part of mathematical type theory. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with branches of mathematics such as typed lambda calculus? Process execution scheduling is an application of process algebra. Garbage collection is an application of graph theory, specifically the detection of nodes from a graph that are not connected to a root node.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What the fuck are jurors doing deciding on a highly technical matter?!
How many people in America have anything like the knowledge of software required to have the foggiest clue about whether Java is infringing on these patents? Maybe ten thousand at most, of whom I'm willing to bet not ONE was on the jury!
Has the world gone mad?
So you're tolerant to others, as long as they're not intolerant, and when they are you're intolerant of them? Nope, no irony there.
Correct. Tolerance has to have limits, and to suggest anyone believes or claims otherwise is to demolish a straw man.
A true liberal believes that homosexuals should be allowed to marry, because that's their choice and should be tolerated, even if one doesn't feel the urge to have gay sex oneself. The same liberal also believes that bigoted fundamentalists should be allowed to rant about the torments allegedly waiting for those homosexuals in the black pits of hell, because that's their free expression and should be tolerated, however detestable. But no liberal believes that the fundamentalists should be allowed to go and shoot gays, because that is taking tolerance too far: one should tolerate others saying that something should not be tolerated, but the one thing that truly must not be tolerated is someone acting to prevent something they consider intolerable.
It sounds like I'm contradicting myself, but I'm not - that's a trick of language. When I say "tolerate", I'm referring to tolerating the set of all things apart from the refusal to tolerate a member of the aforementioned set. That is a logical position. Indeed, it is the only logical position.
Interesting to note that the GPL runs on similar terms: it preserves freedom by restricting one's freedom to restrict others' freedom. It sounds like a paradox because our language does not express the concept adequately; but if you think about it for a moment, you should be able to understand.
The idea of patents has to be legally revised or done away with. I can see protecting the IP of persons with specific code someone has developed, or even an algorithm, but a software concept? Come on.
I believe it is the right of every hacker, developer, and engineer to tinker or reverse engineer code and devices computer, mechanic, or otherwise. Thats how competition is created and inovation is born. I mean what if no one but Ford could create cars or Sony could create walkmen. We would all be driving in Model Ts listening to 15 minutes of music on tapes the size of a betamax cassettes in car radios (Mono I might Add) that take up the entire trunk.
Washington is going to have to get hip to this soon. All code (open or otherwise) could be subject to the enforcement of vague patents files years ago by some company hoping to hit the lotto or have someone develop for them for free. I didn't get all the patent fuss in Europe before but I see it now. This could drive the software business out of the US in my opinion. But hell, I also though Auto-Man was a great TV series.
And that's what I think.