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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.
"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.
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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?
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.
"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.
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!
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".
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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