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Tech Giants Bankrolling IP Hoarding Start-Up
theodp writes "Microsoft alum Nathan Myhrvold so strongly believes intellectual property is the next software that he's studying for the patent bar exam. His company, Intellectual Ventures, doesn't actually make anything - only patent attorneys roam the hallways. Myhrvold isn't the only true believer. Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, and eBay have contributed to a $350M bankroll which the firm is using to buy up existing patents that can be rented to companies who want to produce real products."
I've though about doing this, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who came up with the idea. Dammit, should've patented it when I had the chance.
Let's see how all of this will play out for linux... Good or bad?
What in the world is the world and in particular Amecia coming to?
Thanks for all the help, Patent and Trademark Office! Without you, we'd all be able to have nice things and we can't have that!
I really want to recommend the book "Te sleeper awakens" by H.G.Wells ;)
Read it, and then you will see that this is on topic
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
It's a complete perversion of the original intent of the system.
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Intellectual property is the biggest export of the US. People say we import everything and export nothing, but that's not true. It makes sense there would be an industry built around the largest export.
How much more broken does our system have to get before it becomes completely disfunctional.
The way I see it, These guys will basically crank random noise into the patent system until virtually every idea that trys to come into production will have a lien of some kind on it. Thereby blocking any kind of developement by the small guy, only the mega corps will be able to produce new ideas and they will keep the pace as slow as possible to maximize there profit returns on current technology. In short THIS Bites.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
What about the "don't be evil" google motto? more like Don't be evil, unless it gives you a s***load of money
...if we truly are in "The Information Age". These sentences in the article sum it up:
"Patent owners get money upfront for the dusty ideas sitting on their shelves, the investors get the rights to use the ideas without being sued and Myhrvold gets to rent those same ideas to other companies that need them to continue creating products. Intellectual-property experts say his plan is audacious and unprecedented, customized for a new, rapidly dawning business environment."
It certainly seems like a Win-Win... of course, until the first lawsuits start flying. But we'll just have to see how this shakes out. In the meantime, it makes sense to parlay information as a product in "The Information Age", and that's what's being done here.
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Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
Some of those patents are a little spooky... patent on using two wires to pass data on a serial bus? Scary to think of what they could start demanding with a few of those patents. Someone REALLY needs to start pounding on the patent office with a clue hammer!!
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This is an unfortunate turn of events, and I believe one of the biggest threats to the open source movement. Some of the patents are so oddball or general that anyone can use them to hammer away at some underfunded Sourceforge group to keep them from developing anything that can be used as a competitive product.
The small software houses can't afford to hire patent specialists, and the big behemoths will steal the ideas out from under the little guys. I wonder how well the patents will hold up in other software-rich countries, like India, Russia, Croatia and Serbia.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
If "only patent attorneys populate the quiet hallways" then who thinks up all these ideas? It isn't patent attorneys doing it.
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Wow that sucks. The last thing the world needs is more lawyers pushing more IP. Surely this will finally grind progress to an end.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
QUICK KIDS!!! Go change your CS major to a law degree!!!!! It's the wave of the future!!!!
I sure as hell hope litigation and royalty fees aren't going to be the "new" new economy.
As a side note, with how many "patents" Amazon has, I'm pretty surprised they aren't on board with this.
sigh...
Except all small developers and inventors (IMHO, the backbone of technological innovation) might move to Asia, where they don't have to put up with American/European software patent crap. The patent worshippers can then stew in their stagnant, protectionist filth.
Stop this nonsense. Michael Badnarik '08!
Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, and eBay
Apple zealots and google bashers please enter stage left.
Lessee; they create nothing. Instead, they take the product of creators, auction it to others who want to create something and, voila, profit!
These people are nothing but evolved parasites!
This big group will be able to use 'innovative' patents like icons, one click shopping, etc; whereas small software developers (shareware authors will have to pay royalties to do the same thing.
What an absolute crock of shit. As another poster pointed out it is a complete perversion of the original intent of the patent system.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Now some wacko can take these IP-a-holes out with just one truck bomb.
I, for one, welcome our new patent holding overlords!
They're probably too late!
Someone has likely already patented that idea!
$$$$ CHA-CHING! $$$$$
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
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It should go without saying, but this is basically everything that's wrong with the patent system today. How exactly does one company imposing a tax on other companies increase the productivity of the marketplace? The whole point of patents is to give a limited monopoly, in order to encourage innovation. These kind of companies exist to discourage innovation, and suck dry anyone who dares to improve on what has come before. Let's face it, for software, copyright over the actual bits of a piece of software is more than enough to spur innovation. Patents, on the other hand, are a hideous drain on everyone in the industry.
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The purpose of intellectual property law is promote innovation and investment in our societies. This 'rent-seeking' approach by major companies shows we need some serious reform in this area of law. We need to get back to basics -
Copyright is to reward authors NOT publishers and distributors.
Trademarks are to help consumers identify choice b/w products NOT assist virtual monopolies stifle competition.
Patents are to promote innovation and reward inventors NOT allow lazy rich companies to 'rent-seek' from others.
People need to remember that IP law ultimately exists to help the public. If it is not doing that it is seriously flawed.
Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase Think Tanks, except that in this case -- it's not creation, merely "adoption", or a corrupted version of it.
Maybe in the future, we may have companies which create and "rent" ideas through patents. Ouch.
Scary thought. That'll be the day innovation really stops. If it hasn't happened already ofcourse.
We seem to have "progressed" from companies that competed on product (ie free market choice), to those that competed on lock-in (eg. MS anti-trust stuff) to those that compete by making IP roadblocks.
Perhaps soon the minimum start-up "capital" for a tech organisation will be measured in patents and not dollars. The patents would be like nuclear weapons: sufficient threat to prevent other people suing you and shutting you down. The small organisation with no IP capital would be shut out.
Nobody is going to benefit if this happens.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...the sole existence of this kind of company a proof good enough that the current patent system rots?
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
"Tech Giants Bankrolling IP Whoring Start-Up"
This might just as well be protection money. Sony, I expect this from, ditto MS (who has an aweful lot of legal IP, despite not being a litigation-happy company)... but Apple and Google might just be investing because they work at the forefront of technology and could easily run into bad IP issues, and it would be good for them to have a firm like this on their side. We'll know more when we see who else invests.
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The sad thing is, this has always been the biggest danger with patents, but the people who could make a difference were too busy worrying about the big-guy-licensing-out-little-guy problem (or making their own money, depending) to notice.
Patents should work like trademarks: if you aren't actually using the invention and don't have any plans to do so within a reasonable timeframe, you automatically lose the patent rights and anyone can use the knowledge your patent documentation provides. (It would be better if you had to demonstrate a use or intended use before a patent application was approved, but that's obviously unrealistic right now.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Dont know what gave you that idea. Its not like they have ever given away their own IP. However they will license it to you for a fee, its almost as if they think that their ideas and work are worth money. How insane is that?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Once of the main reasons for the patent system in the first place was to discourage European style printer's guilds from hoarding all the knowledge. With patents, after a certain amount of time new ideas became publicly available after all. This isn't just perverting the system, this is turning it around 180 degrees. Pretty impressive I'd say.
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It's scary. Each passing year seems to move us inexorably closer to an Orwellian society. Soon it won't be possible to have an original idea any more without the system crying foul and demanding you hand over cash for a part of it.
There needs to be a change in the Law. Once you take out a patent, you have 2-3 years to bring a product to market that makes use of the idea, or you loose claim to the patent altogether. Further more, the patent should then be transformed into an Open Patent. Available for anyone, free of charge. This is the only way to prevent further abuse of the system.
Software is machinery built in logic which can perform useful tasks, manage information, save lives, entertain, facilitate communication...
In contrast, unrestricted patents have no intrinsic usefulness, rather than the imposition of an artificial scarcity.
Unlimited-scope patents (eg patents on software concepts) could be useful if they actually facilitated innovation.
I can actually see how a non-technical lawmaker could imagine a developer tackling some design/coding issues, entering a few search words into a patent company website, and getting pages of concepts which this developer then uses to write a better program, or finish the task in less time.
However, I could see the Republican Party converting en masse to Islam before this happens.
This sweeping regime of unrestricted, increasingly fine-grained patents amounts to an historically unprecedented privatisation of the Astral Plane (which I define here as the space of all possible realities, imaginings, concepts, ideas).
Up till now, the Astral Plane has been traditionally honoured as a Public Common, except where expressed into the physical plane in concrete tangible form (eg specific text, music, machinery etc).
If my own (small) country makes any moves to legislate this Astral Plane land-grab, I'll do everything I can - even agitating for national strikes etc - to stop it.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Reason #4532 why this century will not belong to America.
Businesses will simply go to places that don't give a shit about "Intellectual Property" and the people that pushed so hard for globalization and free trade will be reconsidering.
Just as shipping and airline companies setup shop in places like the Congo to avoid taxes, companies that want to produce innovative products will start doing the same.
You mean they're making M2SO4MIII2(SO4)324H2O ?
"The five-year-old firm's plan is to create or buy new ideas, accumulate patents-exclusive rights to use the inventions-and rent those ideas to companies that need them to do the gritty work of producing real products."
Anyone else read this as, "The five year plan is to..."?
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
If I have understood it correctly, this is really sad... Why are companies so focused on fucking patents/laws instead of just focusing on advancing human knowledge? :(
In America's fastest growing industry: Litigation.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
IBM is the leads in new patents every year. Their IP release form they make you sign as an employee is pretty lengthy. But IBM rarely let's their patents go because of which IBM's success is partly due from those thousands of IP patent's they attain every year. IBM already has one of the largest patent portfolios worldwide and it continues to register more patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in one year...3,415 patents in 2003 more than any other company ever has. It was the eleventh consecutive year that IBM was awarded the most patents, and it brought IBM's total over those 11 years to more than 25,000 U.S. patents. I don't think they'll be treading on Big Blue's turf for a while.
Microsoft: -1
Intel: 0
Sony: 0
Nokia: 0
Apple: 1
Google: 1
eBay: 0
--------------
Total: 1
This is awesome, now something good will happen!
"Intellectual Ventures"... it's almost an unsettling idea to think a company like that is out there. It's an interesting idea, but I have to say I don't like it. It reminds me of the people buying up 50,000 domain names incase someone might want to use one in the future and then just sitting on them like a jerk. What a pain in the ass it would be to come up with some new idea in the future only to have to match it against a company who is sitting on 500,000 "patents" on as many broad topics as possible just to make sure the idea was never thought of before in any way shape or form. It kind of defeats the purpose of patenting if you ask me.
It's a pain enough as it is trying to find a nice domain name these days. At least when you find one you know it's yours & you can own it with certainty.
If all these "patent hoarding" companies are going to be out there claiming any broad idea that might ever be useful you won't even be able to tell if your idea's already patented or not. It won't be a simple/instant check on register.com, it will be a "Egh... well, let's start up the business, make a few million, and then hope we don't get our !@# pounded 5 years from now from 4 patent-hoarding companies claiming to have already thought of something kind of similar. What a mess.
Perhaps Eric S. Raymond should begin to write "The invasion of the noosphere"...
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
Most really innovative ideas don't come from US citizens but from imported high tech workers and foreign PhDs. I would rather say that you are the largest IP imported of the world.
These days the US isn't really able to produce anything by itself which you can see on the huge trade deficit.
A: We are Lawyers. Our ship is the Mondar. It is broken!
B: What do you need?
A: We need things.
B: What things?
A: Things to make us go! *points at Indian looking fellow* He is smart, he will make us go.
A patent lasts no more than seventeen years. In any realistic economic sense, that's no time at all. Frankly, it's such a short time that it doesn't affect anyone except taillight followers and copycats. Having somebody floating around whose only real motivation is ferreting out such scum and getting them to pay for the hard work that they're trying to sponge off of is a good thing.
Companies like this will destroy the free enterprise we Americans enjoy. If these companies are not stopped, every startup company will be paying royalties to these patent pirates, which will keep the big companies in control (maybe that's the motive).
I mean seriously, WTF.
I thought patents were supposed to stop the competition from ripping off your years of work, not to help a bunch of the laziest bastards on the planet profit from renting out ideas.
What could be more lazy than actually having NO PRODUCT?
Someone should patent a clue and rent it to them.
this is about the most despicable wrongheaded thing i could ever think of. good god when is somebody gonna find a way to fix this busted ass IP system we have?!?!?!
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
Exactly. And they'll sell these products to massive emerging markets like China and India where they generally don't care about IP.
We will all be in trouble if someone patents "a method for slashdotting sites."
Scott Simontis
Actually, in the US, Law is a graduate degree and you need a technical undergrad degree to even sit for the Patent Bar.
So, maybe you should keep that CS major.
US Patents mean nothing outside of US, but more than likely thats somewhere you've never been
A business plan David Hume would write.
"Nothing exists, there are only ideas"
Haven't we told these people that a giant goat is going to eat our planet and send them off to recolonize another one?
I can't wait for the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Exchange - Automated Litigation System to get going. Then we can all get into the game and buy and sell shares of IPs valued by such fun things as LPS (Litigations Per Share). That is, until the bubble bursts on the USPTO forcing thousands of 20-year-old american lawyers to go back to serving fries, using their knees this time, because "A method to sell fast-food using human extremeties" has been patented.
Maybe you should actualy read 1984.
Because "hav[ing] an original idea any more without the system crying foul" isn't part of that book.
Slashdot may mod you up for inserting the buzzword "Orwell" into your post, but to those of us who have actually read 1984 you look like a fucking moron.
In the meantime, it makes sense to parlay information as a product
Damn the man that thought up parlay!
The parent is making fun of an old mac troll.
what are you talking about "export", no one else respects US patents, they are only valid in USA
from the kids page at US patent office
Q:If I get a patent from any country's Patent Office in the world is my invention protected in all the other countries?
A:In general, patents are only effective in the country for which they are granted.
so there you have it, the kids know so why don't you ? all this company are doing is screwing the USA, the other 191 countries will carry on without you
Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, and eBay have contributed to a $350M bankroll which the firm is using
That doesn't surprise me, once I think about it. Haven't all of those companies been stung by patent lawsuits in recent years, of one kind or another?
It makes sense that they'd want to invest in a company devoted to buying up unused patents, rather than waiting for the owners of those unused patents to jump out of the shadows and claim Apple or Microsoft is infringing on an unused idea they had fifteen years ago.
So one day your African start-up is merrily going along infringing one or two of Megacorp's patents, and then suddenly Megacorp's "security force" shows up and kills all the workers, burns down the factory, and confiscates the "pirated" material.
Megacorp: 2000384348783 Enterpreneurs: 0
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A government by, of, and for the corporation.
Welcome to the USA, circa 2000!
Suing people for things you didn't invent in the first place...
This is exactly the type of thing the Campaign for Real Time was created to prevent.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Because, you know, Apple are a bunch of saints who would *never* have gone lawsuit happy with dodgy IP claims in the past.
What a horrible idea.
Quick, someone patent the idea of patent-hoarding-like-a-jackass and don't give ANYONE the rights to it.
A cynic would say they are making sure the billions stay in their cold scaly hands by freezing out opportunities for "other Micro$ofts" - or more likely (since the last thing the world needs is another M$), by freezing Open Source, the only truly innovative game in town.
One has to ask. Is it necessary for the mega-rich to continue to enrich themselves beyond caricature, at the expense of human progress. How can I cast my vote against this nonsense? Uh, wait...
you had me at #!
How do you this company does not own "accessing data via an index in ram"?
Maybe Google had to in order to prevent being sued?
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he is most certainly against us, and with the terrorists
If you want to sell your stuff in the USA or Europe, you need to worry about all the patent crap regardless of where you developed it, and Japan's patent laws, as far as I can tell, apply to software just as much as in the USA.
Anyway, in the last few months I've been forced to do lots of patent searching, and it's amazing the stuff we've found that's covered, not as in the Slashdot OMFG they patented double-clicks!, but genuine all-encompassing patents that must surely have prior art, but require a team of lawyers to work around or challenge.
For example, I've seen patents for self-extracting compressed executables, comparing a ROM hash versus a factory-calculated hash, and comparing another hash versus a precalculated hash that incorporates some machine-specific values, etc, etc, all submitted within the last 7 years or so.
Patents used to require hard work, experimentation, and demonstrating that something actually works. These days, Nathan invites some buddies for a "gabfest" and writes up the results as dozens of patents. Nobody cares whether it actually works, it just needs to contain a high enough proportion of patents that can be used to pressure companies to pay in order to pay for itself and make a handsome profit. And for a few thousand dollars a pop paid to his buddies for ideas that people can generate in a few minutes, Nathan's company gets to control millions of dollars of investments.
Unfortunately, many of the usual suspects are a member of this little club. Fortunately, if this company can do it, lots of other companies can do it, too. And if one of their client is being sued by another patents-only company, it doesn't matter how big their portfolio is: cross-licensing won't get them out of their legal troubles.
Looks like this puts Google on the "bad list" company. So much for a company full of benevolent, educated philanthropists.
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There should be a patent on this thread.
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
Is it just me or does this seem like a real shabby way to earn a living. I mean really, a company whose business plan is solely litigation?!? How do these guys look in a mirror.
What this really says to me is that Google is looking for places to invest the money from their IPO. Presumably that means they can't think of places to spend it themselves. That would make the chance of Google having some big, revolutionary plan much less likely, since such a plan would probably consume as many resources as they could throw at it to improve the chances of success. That makes me kind of sad. Google had a chance to change the world, but it seems all they really changed is the world of Internet searches.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
I understand Lawyers get paid whether they win or not.
I am serious here. 44 is not too old to start over, right?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Actually, I think nonsense like this hearkens back to a story about tulip bulbs and unsustainable markets.
The end is coming for the corporate kings, and it's nonsense like this that will expedite their demise.
Go, Bill, Go...
That's a narrow view. Are they just supposed to sit around and let others pave the way to new "IP based economy"? Face it, lawsuits and patents are the future of IT. Think that Novell won't/isn't doing the same thing? Defensive or not, OSS backer or not, every company with the resources is in an IP frenzy either acquiring patents or making sure they aren't infriging on them. Personally I hope the whole fucking system collapses on itself. That or an Ice age, that would be fine as well.
If you own Google stock, you can say that your an investor in this patent squatter of startup as well.
So this is what Google is spending their IPO money on...I was wondering if they had some great ideas that would change things and take the company to some heretofore unknown level. I guess not. This investment makes them a VC fund without the track record.
I would consider this a signal to sell Google stock.
I think the opposite will happen.
Rather the whole company will move or buy a PO box and claim to be an Indian company so they wont be sued and use cheap labor.
Meanwhile all the nice tech jobs will further deminish as it becomes more cost effective to move completely oversea's to avoid IP litigation costs as well as a cheap supply of labor.
Who loses? Us and employee's.
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I hope some company will pull a bicentenial man legal strategy and fight to lose up to the supreme court so that this kind of business will be invalidated.
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It's back to the good old days of business where you could blow your nose without asking your legal staff if you might be using a technique that would cost millions in licensing fees!
Sell products with the features that make competitive sense, instead of the features you can afford the patents to! Write the software the way you want, using the formulas and functions the most efficient and understandable way! Take advantage of advertising and internal company documents where every other word doesn't have to have (TM), (R), and footnotes listing that you have no actual connection or relationship to the intellectual property and trademark broker (IPTB) "Customer Satisfaction", "Cost-Savings", or "Product Benefits" Corporations!
Selling prime locations in the scenic slums of Geneva for the unbelievable bargain of a mere $10 million per square foot! Imagine what you'll save on lawsuits and licensing fees!
DISCLAIMER: Independents, entrepreneurs, and startup venture capital business worth less than $100 billion need not apply. Military escort through Berne Convention signatory countries not included.
Having somebody floating around whose only real motivation is ferreting out such scum and getting them to pay for the hard work that they're trying to sponge off of is a good thing.
Have you ever written any substantial piece of code? Chances are that you are infringing dozens of patents. Are you "scum" or a "sponger" because of it? I don't think so, since I doubt you even know of the existence of the patents you are infringing.
Many ideas that are being patented are so obvious that many people have them independently. The one who happens to be first to the patent office wins.
The real scum are the people who patent things that they know full well (or should know) are part of the public domain: ideas that others have talked about, ideas that have been discussed, ideas that are in textbooks. They steal from the public ideas and property to the tune of billions of dollars.
The perversion of the U.S. patent system, especially as it relates to software inventions, lies partly in what the USPTO considers patent-worthy and partly in how difficult it is for smaller firms or noncommercial entities to license a patent.
Discuss.
A quick scan of the US PAtent office of the assigned patents to Intellectual Ventures are that most of them are General Magic's patents - of which Microsoft acquired a license to use them in 1998. It clearly has made a big difference already.
... r
who do you think grants that a particular piece of real estate is, in fact, real, and is the estate of a particular person? [The government!]
It's possible to defend real property against intrusion without help from a government, namely by using firearms or other weapons, lethal or non-lethal. As for published intellectual property such as works of authorship or inventions, on the other hand...
And if you think that only physical property is in the provenance of capitalism, I guess you believe the stock market is fictitious.
A share of stock is a contract between willing participants, namely a board of directors and a shareholder. Even a government that enforces contracts isn't necessarily bound to grant privileges to a party (such as an author, inventor, etc) over a less-than-willing third party (a user of a work or invention) and enforce those privileges.
The purpose of the patent and copyright systems, when they were created, was to stimulate creativity and business. Now they've been turned around and twisted into a noose around the neck of the United States. I foresee countries which don't kowtow to our notion of Intellectual Property, even if they aren't allowed to export their creations to the US, will now be able to outrun us simply because they don't have to deal with the over-regulation.
You're either with us or against us.
The problem is (and I don't think many people truly understand this) that the collapse of the "whole fucking system" involves the collapse of the American economy and whatever industrial capability we have left. People will be hurt by this, make no mistake, and it won't just be the U.S. ... an economy as big as ours will have worldwide effects when it collapses. This is not a joke: ALL modern industrialized nations depend upon a continuous stream of ideas and new capabilities based upon older ideas: by shutting off that flow we are cutting our own throats. Ideas don't need protection, but that small percentage of our population that is capable of significant acts of creation certainly does. All this is doing is putting a cap on America's ability to remain competitive with other societies that don't restrict that creative spark. Sad that it is the United States that is at the forefront of this.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This really bothers me, anyone know if there is anyway I can not-support this trend? (Btw, I'm a Canadian Citizen)
Apple lost (this was the one lawsuit many of us were hoping would sink Microsoft once and for all) because their UI elements were not 'patented'. They learnt well from this lesson and have since been patenting every widget under the sun.
I fully expect Google know their history well, and also know that Microsoft is sniffing around their territory. They would be fools to think that Microsoft would treat them any differently to Apple, and are probably thinking how to protect themselves as best they can.
From Intellectual Ventures to Intellectual Vampires
If I (or my crappy dictionary) am not mistaken Copyright is "the sole right to reproduce, publish, and sell a literary or artistic work." [...] There is no mention of ownership in [the] definition or possibly any other definition that you might find.
U.S. law defines something called "ownership of copyright" in 17 USC chapter 2.
Because any new automobile manufacturer would be locked out of the current dealerships, he'd either be out of luck or would have to build thousands of dealership across the country. A daunting task for sure.
Define "dealership". Does a dealership have to be brick-and-mortar, or does it just have to have an office and servers in each state?
Heh - 40 here. I've asked myself that many times. I've known a few people who went over to law in their 30's and currently make slightly more money than God.
However I'm convinced my wife's head would actually explode if I told her I was thinking about going back to school again - Grad school will have to do.
Or a well funded venture like Lindows. A broke legal system bites everyone eventually. When nothing gets done, no one has anything. Where would M$ have been without IBM and thousands of x86 and DOS developers who were free back in the early 80s? Don't think this is limited to software either. What will the scum suckers feed off when no one can do anything? Nothing, but the dummies think they can get rich and retire well off before that happens. It won't work, because no one works without real rewards.
I wonder how well the patents will hold up in other software-rich countries, like India, Russia, Croatia and Serbia.
Or Germany, France, Spain, GB, the rest of Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and the Americas? Hopefully, they will ignore the demands for tribute these asses will level at them, just as they have ignored the fiaSCO.
The only special problem free software has is that it can not hide it's internal workings. Closed source software can, but it won't really mater. The new business method patents are general and encompass all methods used. They too will be burnt if these patent hoarding morons have their way. We can be sure that your sourceforge nightmare will happen first and much FUD will be slung around, continuing the now very boring M$ line of questioning free software's legitimacy. They will strike weak members, just like other IP pirates struck porn operators to build precedents. But just like the first wave of pirates, it won't end with small players.
Broken, broken, broken. I'm ashamed of my government.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Is seventeen years "reasonable" to you?
Even if patents worked as they should and were only granted to worthy inventors for new and non obvious inventions, your idea would still be a bad one. Think of all the cases where your invention is useless outside of a monopoly industry. As it is, the monopoly player waits 17 years for your patent to expire, knowing that you are not a credible threat to them. If you have your way, the monopoly player will not have to wait as long before they take your idea. As more industries are consolidated to a small number of players, what I say is more true.
In a competitive market, no good idea goes to waste. It gets licensed for something close to it's real market value. Many things need to be fixed before inventions stop going to waste, but giving monopoly players free reign to steal is not a good first step.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Just look at the numbers from you own government.
Paying protection money is evil. It strengthens and encourages the extortionist. It is better to fight.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Read http://www.pubpat.org/ and http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~devanbu/FSP.htm
There will be a time when these patents expire and the commons will be richer
Damn.
It's like a dream. I remember posting this more or less same comment in a PC Magazine online forum back in '98 or '99.
This is the endgame, folks. This is what Gates has had planned for years -- the real endgame. Not some iffy market monopoly over PC operatings systems and office software.
This is the whole enchilada. They want to own EVERYTHING worth owning. This is why the "Intellectual Property" meme has been pumped so hard these past few years. the real reason why the RIAA, MPAA, the SPA, and all the overseas equivalents are suing anything that moves. It's the natural outcome of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
The biggest boys are pooling their resources to start the ultimate monopoly. They want to put a meter on every conceivable human idea they can beg, buy, borrow or steal. I'm not overstating how enormous their ambition is. Don't look at the distracting smiling face; keep your eyes on the magicians' hands.
I DO understand that they are talking about patents. But it's really irrelevant. They are going to force revenue to precipitate out of the ether into their hands that dwarfs anything Gates ever dreamed of. And that kind of wealth, driven by monoploy players, will be used to buy up more than merely patents.
It's why MS has been pumping the RIAA and MPAA to adopt MS proprietary codecs. It's why the X-Box REALLY exists. It's about owning the culture, or more precisely, the circulatory system of the culture. They want to own processes, patents, and eventually, every piece of ownable video, audio, and images of art. They will own the newspapers, or at least the means of disseminating the newspapers. All cable networks. They want the internet(s) under their control, if only to control the information flow so it can't affect their power.
The biggest boys are lining up for a piece of something even they can't visualize. The ultimate shape of this monster will be worldwide. It's power will be greater than any government or combination of governments.
They won't permit any real change in patent or copyright laws. They might let us have token victories on things that don't matter much, but the final shape will be dictated by them.
Here's the final outcome:
A loose confederation of very wealthy men will run a structure composed of corporations that will really, truly own every copyrighted work of man. They will own our history. They will meter it out to their advantage. Witness (NBC?) refusing to permit use of a copyrighted video of Bush making an idiot of himself on TV before the election, just because they could, no reason necessary.
And these corporations will hold copyrights and perhaps even patents, in some form, for ever-extended periods of time. Effectively for eternity. Corporations can't die. They can't go to jail. You can't arrest them. They are fictions designed to hide real men from real responsibilty for their actions.
We're going to have immortal fictions own our world. Americans say, "So what? I'll buy stock."
That's why privately owned corporations are all the rage right now. Why some of the biggest are invite-only for those they deem worthy. ICANN was bought by one of these monstrosities. Some corporations are buying back their own stock with an eye to, well, not share the wealth.
I'm only pointing out the obvious.
I'm not anti-business. I'm anti-corporation. There is a difference. I want expiration dates on IP. I want the corporate shield for individual malfeasance to be gone. I want this incestuous network of greedy buggers to hew to some kind of law that they didn't write themselves. We fought long and hard to break up the 19th century trusts that were smothering the life out of representative government; I DON'T want them back, only immortal, anational, and unkillable.
Now, on to the ballpark on-topic Coca-Cola question -
0% goes back to the US as royalties. It goes to Coca-Cola's offshore IP (intellectual property) entity which is not taxed because it's not a US corporation.
Even those companies which originally formed in the US of A only need to re-form offshore and presto-changeo - they're an offshore company with subsidiaries located in the United States...and don't have to pay all those pesky taxes.
Taxes are for those who are too poor to dodge them.
There's this convoluted relationship between Coca-Cola, the IP (intellectual property) entity, Coca-Cola the syrup producers, and Coca-Cola the bottlers. When one entity gets sued, the other is theoretically blameless.
Example: Coca Cola's Death Squads. You see they "don't own or operate the [bottling] plants..." after all.
If you come up with the same idea, sooner or afterwards, then we should compete in the marketplace, not the courtroom. Let the consumer decide.
The flaw to this argument is that if you come up with a sucessful product and SCO wants to take your business it can simply 're-invent' (not independantly) the process and then start completing it your market with your idea. The concept is for you to be able to build up your business and establish yourself in it without unfair competition from larger sharks.
I am not 100% in favour of patents but I am not against them either. I have heard some real problems with banks stealing business ideas and selling them to competitors with the person they stole it off left with nothing. I wonder how that sole person would have come up with $30K to register the patent. Patent system is flawed but there are good ideas behind it.
Google is a business, not a charity. It exists to make money and for no other reason.
1. the US's largest export...is money (just ask Saddam, don't fsck with the Money)
2. Allowing this 'rent-seeking' behavior on a massive scale is an end stage behavior before some kind of societal blow-up or blow-off, something is going to change, probably for the worse in the US.
(Meanwhile don't fsck with the Mouse [didney] )
So: Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and Google all perform the EXACT SAME action.
Sony and Microsoft are being very, very naughty.
But Apple and golden Google are doing good?
I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.
So in 19 years when their patents expire we'll all be done with this mess. In 2024 we'll finally be free from this stupidity.
I wonder about how this BS affects foreign companies.
For example, if some US company send me a cease & desist letter or something like that (I live in Canada), invoking one of their dummy patents on how a button has a "push effect" when clicked on, can I just stop selling in the US and tell them to go f*** themselves? Anyway, I'm way too small to even worth the C&D letter, but well, we never know.
If yes, that's one more reason to come to Canada...
One day, loosing the US market will become less costly than engaging a legal battle there.
Within a couple of years, all sane people will have left the US...
perception is reality
Well, you can - but our government also has a system in place to effectively bypass this "obstruction" whenever they find it too inconvenient... eminent domain.
I live pretty close to a major airport that forced practically an entire municipality out of their homes for the sake of runway expansion -- and now, it's really questionable if they'll even use the extra capacity! Did they give any of these people true "fair market value" for their property? Heck no... They claimed it was all practically worthless and kicked them all out for cheap.
What's my point here? I guess nothing, except it's interesting how government always finds loopholes for its own purposes - but the "little guy" is probably stuck. Think I.P. patents are any different? Yeah, right.... How often do you hear the military get in trouble for violating someone's patent when they're developing secret new weapons technology? If it's "in the interest of national security", average Joe patent-holder isn't going to even be allowed to find out if they ripped of his idea or not.
They should begin negotiations immediately with the owners of this business model, SCO, to get the best possible rate on their licensing fees.
Wow, this is maximally evil. A pure parasite company extracting monopoly rents for patents on the obvious, AND a cartel to exclude non-members from developing any useful software without paying an arbitarily high tax.
That this company obtains decades-long monopolies based on the results of an afternoon's "gabfest" shows how incredibly unjust the current system is.
BTW the difference between these kinds of parasitic lawyers and a real research operation like IBM or Microsoft Resarch is that real researchers tend to evaluate their ideas and patent only the good ones, also publishing them in ways that advance science. So they're at least adding some value to the community. Patenting the entire flood of ideas that any competent researcher's mind spews out every day adds nothing, simply steals. Especially when the "results" (I use the term loosely) are available only in obfuscated lawyer-ese. (It breaks my heart how lawyers take scientific publications which people have worked hard to make consise and clear, and smear them into untelligible legal gibberish, thus defeating the ENTIRE ORIGINAL POINT of the patent system.)
Now I'm getting even more off topic than I was to begin with, but here's another thought I just had: I think Europeans don't drink as much sweet soda as Americans do. I mostly drink water and juice to kill the thirst, and while I can get foo brand soda at pretty much the same price, 'the real thing(tm)' is more expensive. It's nothing I guzzle all the time, it's almost a bit of a luxury (like chocolate). So the higher price is justified -- firstly to hold up the image (the best cola in the world at a discount price -- unthinkable!), secondly to make up for the lower quantity in which it's consumed over here.
I'm sure only a tiny fraction of the price difference goes back to the USA, but I wouldn't be surprised if the total sum -- over all bottles and cans sold outside the states -- amounted to, well, you know, some pretty huge amount.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
With this you can say goodbye to any original idea and any sort of small businesses - eventually all the IP will kill each and every one. Patent law is crap and needs to go, its gotten to the point where it only stifles innovation.
one of the main goals of the modern patent is to prevent small companies from bursting into and revolutionizing industries. This tends to suddently devalue stocks in older, bigger players. That's the reason we got software patents especially. Anyone can come along, be a mathamatical genious and start blowing established players out of the water. If you've got a 100 mil in Microsoft, the last thing you want is somebody like Redhat comming along and making that investment worthless. So you get on the patent bandwagon like everyone else and watch your stocks climb slow and steady. Are you gonna get rich this way? Who cares, the people making the decisions are already rich.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You know, during the 1800's there were those who believed that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cottin gin to expand their plantations for unlimited groth and profit. However, what the industrial revolution really demanded was a mobile and educated workforce - the anti thesis of the plantation system. At first they made laws so harsh you couldn't even teach a black person to read and extended slavery to forever, then they tried to regulate all the industries in the north and force them to respect slave ownership rules in the south, and when that failed they tried to break themselves off from the union and fence themselves off from the rest of the world causing all hell to break loose.
Well today, there are those who believe that the entire purpose and meaning of the information age is leverage their IP holdings to the four courners of the earth for unlimited growth and profit. But what the information age really demands is the uninhibited and unrestricted flow of information. At first they passed harsher laws until a person who coppies a CD can get worse penalities than a violent murderer, then they extended the terms of copyrights to effectively forever, then they tried to fence themselves off from the rest of the world using Digital Rights Managment technology. Well all hell is about to break loose.
Dear Mr. "colmore":
We, the firm of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe, hereby inform you that our client has for several years held the intellectual property patents on both the phrases "more streamlined engine" and "going down the wrong track" and all derivitive works based upon the combined usage of said two concepts.
As such, we regret to inform you that your recent Slashdot posting in infringing upon said duly awarded legal rights of our client. Please immediately cease and desist use of such phrases, both individually and in combination thereof, or contact our office immediately to arrange for what we are sure you will find to be rather reasonable licensing fees.
Sincerely,
Huey Louie Dewie, Senior Partner,
Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe, PLLC
I don't recall Rambus doing all THAT well.
Yup and the opposite of this would be.....
is an andor really just a billy at the gates... does it use bits or bytes, or just eat tin cans!
I need to find a place to move!
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Since large companies own most of the software market, and they're going to leverage their patents to prevent anyone new from trying to come in and make a buck...
Since releasing software in closed-source proprietary form isn't very neighborly, and lacking GPL protection a nasty, patent-owning company can take it right out from under you in a court case, even preventing you from using your own stuff...
Well...
Looks like it's pretty pointless to try and sell software. So much for THAT idea. Even if I release it open-source I could still get sued over the patent thing.
It occurs to me that I might go on the hacker model, in which I write whatever software I want, and only release it to my friends, who I trust. They, in turn, give me their cool stuff. And we, as a group, get stuff the rest of the world doesn't even know exists. It's like The Force, baby. Some have it. Most don't.
Alternately, I can write something and sign over the copyrights to the FSF, who have much better legal resources than I do. This is as good as keeping it under the rug, only it lets many people use it.
Then again, I could mix the two approaches. I could keep a version of my software with "special sauce" for myself and my friends, and let the FSF have a more vanilla version...
Looks like we're all heading underground, me hearties! W00T...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
This is without a doubt the most screwed up thing I've ever heard of.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I'm struggling to think of any product America makes that a near equivalent of can't be bought from somewhere else. Care to name one ?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Well, this looks like the end.
Still, been a fun ride while it lasted, eh?
Options that come to mind:
1. Write books. You can't be sued for writing about how to do something. Freedom of speech protects you, and as a "copyright holder" the Machine will think you're one of its cogs. Must... Protect... COG!!!
2. Get a joe job doing IT for a public agency or college or whatever. Can't be sued for working with existing tools. Only people who produce and sell tools will be sued.
3. If you create software for your own internal use, no one can sue you for THAT, either. So, make software that does something interesting, and rent out your services DOING that something interesting without making it clear exactly how you're doing it ("Elves do it for us. Sign here"). You're not selling a thing anymore, just a service (in a better world, you'd be able to sell the something interesting and let everyone do it for themselves, but the dicks are in charge, so tough luck, world).
4. Be a consultant setting up bland, boring, same-old systems for boring, staid, large companies. You're just a technician! No patent infringement here.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
"I understand Lawyers get paid whether they win or not."
Depends on what kind of job it is. For example, personal injury lawyers (e.g. Edwards) only get paid if they win. Criminal lawyers get paid regardless. It's also worth noting that many lawyers never "win;" they simply write contracts, wills, applications, etc.
There is a _very_ simple fix to this issue. To aquire a patent, you must have working prototype. While I don't agree with software patents, this can still be applied. It would prevent people from just thinking of crap and getting a patent. There is not cost or R&D in thinking of something. The real purpose of a patent it to protect the investment of all the R&D by people. To just look at the market and try to guess things that may come up in the next 5-10 years is not innovative or deserving of a patent. If a patent would just require the submission of a complete working prototype, most of the problems of the patent system could go away (not all, but the biggest ones).
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
--
make install -not war
Isn't this something that the U.S Department of Justice should be able to regulate/check/enforce? However, I'm losing my faith in them as well. Mega-mergers are always given the green light and final outcomes against monopolies like Microsoft never seem to be just.
Read: "Intellectual Property" is all about protecting the dinosaurs.
Copyrights and Patents only work if it is reasonable to the extent that the general public respects it. You cannot share an idea with me, collect your money, and then wipe it from my mind. I now have your idea. The only way to stop me from sharing it with others is to appeal to my sense of fairness. Asking me to keep it between us for a limited time in order for you to make a living and recover costs generally works; People understand those needs.
However, this gentleman's agreement is quickly undermined by abuse. Asking that I keep an idea under my hat so that your children's children will never have to work for a living does not work. This is the current failure of Copyright. Asking that I respect your ownership of an "idea" that is blatantly obvious like "One-click Shopping" also does not work. This is the patent system's failure. The general population regards this as abuse. If enforced, it will be regarded as tyranny.
As a result, I see this venture ultimately failing. It won't fail because the idea behind it is faulty. It will fail because the system on which it is built is faulty. I see America's growing dependence on the idea of "Intellectual Property" leading to its own failure. Poorer nations will reject the very notion of "Intellectual Property" for what it really is: Intellectual Monopoly. This abusive monopoly system will be abandon by poorer nations who cannot afford AIDS drugs and a Windows OS. It will in turn drive innovation out of America and into countries that don't punish innovators for not being counted among an elite few. The elite few will kick and scream and throw a tantrum, but in the end, what's good for the majority will prevail.
America's system depends on a handful of privileged elitists to out-compete billions of people who are all brilliant in their own right. Even if you collected millions of the most brilliant minds on Earth and gave them unlimited funding, they could not compete with billions of the more modestly brilliant minds on more modest budgets working together and building on each other's ideas to achieve success. And then there is reality: America does not have all of the most brilliant minds on Earth or unlimited funding. In the end, America will look around and see all production and manufacturing outsourced, which leads directly to all American capital flowing one way out of the nation, which leads directly to faltering strength in the dollar, which finally leads to accelerating inflation and the collapse of the American economy. What will those elitist in America do when they are forced out of their think tanks? Get a real job or starve I would imagine.
And in possibly unrelated news: I'm searching for a nice place to live that accepts American emigrants, Rome fell to corruption, history repeats itself, and bees survived the mass extinction while dinosaurs did not.
these people need to step back for a moment and ask themselves: "What Would Jesus Do?"
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
that these pieces of crap all choke to death on a bone at Thanksgiving diner.
Please God, please.
Thanks...
Every king dies.
Base your products on expired patents. That way, you've got prior-art protection and you cannot be sued for patent infringement. Of course, the system delays innovation...but only in the first 17 years after something is patented. After that, it's free game.
....Physics of Abstraction (abstraction physics)
... well... us humans. Elements or facets of abstraction physics include the actions of abstraction creation and use, such as defining a word to mean a more complex definition (word = definition, function-name = actions to take, etc.), Starting and Stopping (interfacing with) of an abstraction definition sequence, keeping track of where you are in the progress of abstraction sequence usage (moving from one abstraction to another), defining and changing "input from" direction, defining and changing "output to" direction, getting input to process (using variables or place holders to carry values), sequencially stepping thru abstraction/automation details (inherently includes optionally sending output), looking up the meaning of a word or symbol (abstraction) so to act upon or with it, identifing an abstraction or real item value so to act upon it, and putting constraints upon your abstraction lookups and identifications (when you look up a word in a dictionary you don't start at the beginning of the dictionary, but begin with the section that starts with the first letter then followed by the second, etc., and when you open a box with many items to stock, you identify each so as to know where to put it in stock.)
Abstraction enters the picture of computing with the representation of physical transistor switch positions of ON '1' and OFF '0' or what we call "Binary" notation. However, computers have far more transistor switches in them than we can keep up with in such a low level or first order abstract manner, so we create higher level abstractions in order to increase our productivity in programming computers. From Machine language to application interfaces that allow users to define some sequence of action into a word or button press (ie. record and playback macro) so to automate a task, we are working with abstractions that ultimately accesses the hardware transistor switches which in turn output to, or control some physical world hardware.
Programming is the act of automating some level of complexity, usually made up of simpler complexities, but done so in order to allow the user to use and reuse the complexity through a simplified interface. And this is a recursive act, building upon abstractions others have created that even our own created abstractions/automations might be used by another to further create more complex automations. In general, if we didn't build upon what those before us have done, we then would not advance at all, but rather be like any other mammal incapable of anything more than, at best, first level abstraction. But we are more, and as such have the natural human right and duty to advance in such a manner.
There is an identifiable and definable "physics of abstraction" (abstraction physics), an identification of what is required in order to make and use abstractions. Abstraction Physics is not exclusive to computing but constantly in use by
Abstraction Physics has yet to be established/recognized in a broad "common acceptance" manner, similiar to the difficulty in the acceptance of the hindu-arabic decimal system (which included the concept that nothing can have value - re: the Zero place holder). It took three hundred years (from inception) for the innovation of the now common decimal system to overcome the far more limited Roman Numeral system. (NOTE: mathmatics and the symbol sets used are also abstractions and therefor a subset of abstraction possibilities and certainly an application of abstraction physics.) Though the act of programming is still younger than many who apply it, we are technologically moving at a much faster rate of incorporating innovations and better understandings of reality. There is a physics to abstraction creation and use which can be used to model and create a non-patentable user friendly general use, and dynamic, automation (abstraction creation and usage) tool, that also allows for organized placement and access of abstractions in a logical or mapable and navigateable
I'm studying mechanical engineering stuff now, but am also dong "lawyery" stuff like studing for the LSAT and taking more non-engineering classes than usual. It's good to see that there'll be opportunities in the future for what I want to do. Upon reading peoples comments, I don't really see much wrong with it. The whole purpose of the patent system is to protect people. Any idea that someone can think of now is probably within the grasp of technology. When someone comes up with something that actually causes an paradigm shift, then I'm willing to bet that it wasn't patented yet, because no one thought of it. That's true innovation and true innovators stand to make money and be protected by the patent system despite this company.
2) assholes
3) dweebs
Well, most of us geeks are already dweebs. If we were assholes, we'd probably have gone over to the dark side already and be in sales.
I don't have the personality for ambulance chaser.
The only question is whether JD dweebs make more than geek dweebs. lol
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
We hate these kinds of people.
P.S. my subject was only a '...' but Slashdot here doesn't like that....
Interesting that this didn't happen back before software patents were legal.
It wasn't too long ago that you COULD NOT get a patent on software algorithms because they were considered mathematics.
Once you can patent the tiniest bit of software, it's like patenting nails and screws.
It wouldn't be a problem except for all of the zillions of carpenters out there that can no longer be self-employed because they can't afford to negotiate exhorbitant licensing fees for nails.
What about the "don't be evil" google motto?
As a short definition of "evil," I submit that "evil" is the "willingness to fuck over other people for your own profit." That provides a quick-and-dirty litmus test for evilness.
The current marketplace encourages evil. Google is a prime example-- they make a big deal about how they don't want to do evil, but then they invest in a company which is designed from the git-go to perform evil.
The reason is simple: if they don't, they will be in a world of pain when everyone else starts using trivial patents as weapons of restraint. (99.999% of all patents are trivial, IMNSHO).
So, either they do evil now and protect themselves, adding to the decay of honest business; or, they take the moral high road, and risk death by a thousand lawsuits.
In an area where thugs rule the streets, only thugs may walk the streets free of worry. Our current system is ruled by thugs. Google is just arming themselves like the rest of the miscreants; but by doing so, they are joining them.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
let it be known, this is my cry, my plea!
/end rant
that software patents stiffle innonvation, and take it from
the small guy, working in a garage, doing his best to devlop a product
to the big buisness, who has the bucks to buy any patent they want. usually in quite liberal and generic form.. and can sue said small guy.
prevent it.
The only people smart enough to realize and understand it are too few in number to actually do anything about it.
I welcome it though, it will bring quite a bit of chaos to the world, and chaos is always more fun than the norm.
All your base are belong to Google.
Think about it for a minute...
When Enron collapsed, the US didn't really loose any energy capacity, because Enron didn't actually own any power plants. The entire scam was just a scimming operation where they bought and sold energy, making a bit of profit (actually in some cases like in Louisiana and California quite a bit...) on each sale. Unfortunately they got too greedy for their own good and lost everything, including a lot of pension plans $$$.
This new corparate entity will be doing the same thing, but on a different level. Just think what it would be like to own the patent for words like the, John, Buffy or Katzenjammer? Wait! I digress... Those are copyrights?
Not patents! Where's my lawyer?
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
Innovation is promoted when ideas are disclosed.
You see farther when you are standing on the shoulders of giants.
"...No wonder India is becoming popular. If I owned a small to medium sized programing shop not only would I be tempted to outsource, I would move my whole company there. I do not need these IP laws hanging around my neck in order to compete..."
Where are you going to be selling your software? Where are your users going to be based? Don't forget that end-users can be sued for using patent-infringing software.
A few shot-across-the-bows press releases from the patent monster (MS, Sun, Apple, Sony et al), and no customer in a western country will touch you with a twenty-foot pole.
T&K.
Political language
can destroy anything regardless of whether or not the target of the lawsuit is guilty.
This applies to anything within the bounds of our legal system really.. murder, theft, etc.
We have a system where you can "lose" without even losing the court battle, simply because of the cost required to defend yourself. It all seems to be a matter of who has the most money in the courtroom, whoever can file more lawsuits and pay for them, whoever can hire the most expensive lawyer for either prosecution or defense.
Why is this? Why must someone go bankrupt defending themselves? The expenses should be a burden of government (or more accurately, the people in general), I would take a pretty safe guess that if this were to happen, most of the frivolous battles that take place in our courts would cease to exist because of how massive a dent it would make on our economy.
One should not have to have X amount of dollars to defend themselves at X level from litigation, it should not be possible to "win" through harassment rather than by due process of law.
Maybe i'm just too idealist though..
All your base are belong to Google.
The issue here is that without revenue from a real product, the company is put in a position of enforcing its patents. This initially doesn't sound like a bad thing for the company-- many people hace theorized about an "IP Vampire" which could be invulnerable to cross-licensing schemes and could cause great damage to Free Software....
But..... patents are *very* costly to enforce in court, and they are also *risky* to defend in court. Indeed, one adverse judgement, and your valuable patent becomes a worthless piece of paper *and* you are out hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
So a company like this will be tempted to buy as many patents as they can and sue as many people as they can, but this is a road which can only lead to bankrupcy. The only way to make this profitable is to *carefully* screen all patents, and be very cautious about filing suits. But then it isn't so scary is it? And will people really license the patents if they aren't scared of you?
So either way, I think that they will fail....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It will end cross-licensing and turn everything into cash...
Except for stakeholders in this company of course.
Ignoring the "exception" this might be good or it might be bad. In theory, everyone is on a level playing field:
If PatHoldCo charges $10,000 + 1% royalty for a patent, they'll likely charge the same for MS as for a little guy. The only advantage big guys might have is volume discounts. There will be no cross-licensing like there is today.
If this catches on, and I think it might, you'll see big companies spinning off their patent portfolios into wholly-owned IP-only subsidiaries.
Another thing this will do is expose just how HARMFUL bogus patents are to the public, and it will highlight the desirability for things like mandatory licensing on economically reasonable terms. It will also highlight that SOME patents, by their very existance, cripple innovation by stalling it for 20 years or causing people to "work around" it using less efficient methods.
The FOSS movement will take a hit on this, as it will be harder to use patents defensively, as some FOSS supporters are recommending. Hopefully, this fact alone will galvanize more people into demanding patent reform.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why in this whole thread has no one threatened boycotting google and ebay? Sure they put on a decent face as companies go... But come one guys why do these guys get a free pass? They have signed on the dotted line with Satan (aka microsoft), so they are out in my book.. I'm moving to a different search engine as of today. I've never bought anything on ebay and its certainly not happening now. .. Hey Sun is better than these guys now. At least they have contributed back to linux...
Sure google uses linux to make billions of dollars, have they given back a single line of code? They've gotta have the most sophisticated cluster software, did they open source that? It probably touches the kernel in a million places, I wouldn't be suprised at all if they are violating the GPL in about a thousand places. Anyway, they are evil despite their "goals" and "mission statement".
I completely agree with Astrodrabb that this is pretty much the only way to salvage the patent system. I suggest an extension to this that only this particular implementation is patentable. If someone finds a different implementation that accomplishes the same task, then they have successfully circumvented your patent. The real hard part of any new idea is implementation. All of us can envision flying cars and nuclear powered rockets, but until a person spends the painstaking effort of actually building one, its just hot air.
The current patent system gives power to people that have the money to file for patents and takes it from people that have the drive to actually build new things.
"I'm a loner Dottie, a rebel."
- Pee Wee Herman
"How much more broken does our system have to get before it becomes completely disfunctional."
It quite simple. Right now, this company is paying to aquire the rights to patents. That's merely an annoying, and expensive, start. It won't last.
The next step will be to simply take away other patents by force. Not physical force , mind you. Simply legal force. Once they aquire enough patents, they simply threaten the small companies with a lawsuit. So you'll have the choice of either paying millions to defend your patents, or sign them over with a cross-licensing scheme for free. With maybe a small (and I do mean small) royalty paid to you for each enforcement action they are able to obtain for you. Of course, you'll have to agree to this blackmail.
So, in the end, these lawyers will end up with all cards. The small patent owner won't be able to make diddly out of even trying to enforce his/her own patents, because someone else will have paid they guys for "protection", to sublicense everything they've got.
Ultimately, we're talking about a patent monopoly here. Which I don't believe is actually against the law. Nor will it ever be, because Congress just doesn't pass laws against Lawyers.
...but I guess they view it as a premptive/defensive measure. No surprise to see Microsoft or Sony on there, and Apple seems to be hell-bent on trying to play with the big boys.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I read (almost) all of the comments and no one seemed to point out that if you publish an idea first, it cannot subsequently be patented. In science you publish a paper in a journal; in computing an open source project (with verifiable date stamps) would prevent the ideas being patented.
Granted, an awful lot of stuff is already patented, but if we are entering a new age of IP, we should get as much of it out into the public domain as soon as possible. Gabfests? Organise them online: online discussions are archived (with dates?) we could stop companies like this from grabbing patents if enough people contribute.
Gives me an idea for anew blog: everyone just submits their own ideas, they get recorded, and filed and eventually we have a huge repository of unpatentable ideas.
Is there a flaw?
Cops have a great deal of discretion with regard to misdemeanors. Often the only deciding factor is how much whiskey they've had. Only felonies actually require cops not to ignore it. The same is true to some degree with any position of enforcement right up to the president. (President doesn't make law, he enforces it, right?) It is not supposed to be this way, but that's just how it works from crossing guards all the way up to USPTO.
This is how IBM gets a lot of their money.
------
insert sig here,here, and here
90% of software patents are ridiculously
obvious to any comp sci grad.
So ignore them. This is junk law.
This is the rich trying to abuse the law
to get richer.
It's bullshyte. Ignore it.
One-click this, a**hole!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Tony's comments above are right on in my opinion ... there's no way to stay out of such a consortium in the current state of IP law. I'm fairly familiar with all the recent happenings in IP (I'm contemplating law school and then the "good" side of (anti)Patent/Copyright/etc.) and they've become so mutilated by corporations that it's not even funny.
... but just wait until another innovation or business model emerges that starts eroding the current IP business model.
...
...)
...
Of course, this isn't exactly a new phenominon, companies have been strongly influencing governmental policy in this country since (and even before) the industrial revolution. As soon as any entity gets enough power, they try using it to their benifit.
Usually it swings back the other way (ie. union busters, etc.) eventually. This time around I can only hope that Copyright and Patent law go back to their original intention (ie. framer's intent of copyright was 14 years to be just sufficient enough to encourage the creation of works). It might just be possible that we're on a one way road for awhile here
Then we'll see changes.
Maybe. The only problem is that this injustice places corporate america against the people, and I gave up on the public actually caring enough to act a long time ago
(damn you red states
-S
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Or doesnt ring the phrase "The first to be put on the wall when the revolution comes" any bells?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Were the US a traditional Communist system, bribes would be paid to the appropriate officials or their relatives and the government would just ban you. The effect is the same, although the mechanism is different - and that's the giveaway.
It's just plain, ordinary, boring greed.
It works the same way everywhere, in every system. Yes, including anarchies and Anarchies.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
to figure this one out ... quote the parent ("Nevermore" ... ok, bad joke.):
... oh wait ...).
...
"Indeed, by law, the CEO of every corporation has to act in the interests of the stockholders."
Yes and no. It is true that CEO's must act for the good of the stockholders, but just like anything, there are different ways of measuring "good."
For instance, Google, as a search company that depends on public perception and use for all it's revenue (if people don't use Google, Google goes away). If they start acting "evil," that kills their bottom line, not to mention their original mantra.
Not alienating your clients is a consequence of any long term service based business model (unless your a monopoly or microsoft
Google's merely protecting their long term goals, and having a entire hord of companies attacking you with patent suits, especially as a company that depends heavily on innovation and new developements is a death sentence.
-S
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Examples include the farmer that owns the rights to an access road leading to fields owned by property developers.
Or, in their foresight, the county planners set up easements for future development.
Besides, it is not exactly legal to use your property to restrict access to someone else's property in most areas.
But if you own a property, and a developer wants to put a road through your property rather than along the boundaries or existing easement, because it's the shortest path for the developer, etc., then the "blocking" property owner shouldn't be forced to give that up, right?
...another thing gone wrong with the world, and nothing I can do to stop it.
You must think in Russian.
I'm sorting through 2100 patents and applications that match my keywords. So far nothing that I would infringe. But there are two outcomes:
1. Yes, I'm the first one to this idea.
or a realistic probability that
2: I could infringe on someone's generically worded patent.
Okay, so if that is the playing field, what would you anti-this-idea zealots suggest??
If I infringe, then I have to look at who has the patent and attempt to contact them. I'd have to look up where their office is, and even if they're alive.
Then I have to attempt to make contact. Phonecalls and emails out of the blue for them, cold calling for me. Then the lawyers step in and negotiate.
So a lot of ball-ache, and the kicker is that once I call they know that I'm interested, and they can start to probe me to see how much it's worth to me.
With this idea, I can see advantages for having one [or several] known company who unifies the process:
1) Known address
2) Contact details for sales
3) Secretaries to take my inquiries
4) Some corporate information so that I don't have to spend £££ getting my lawyers to translate their lawyers' documents. These are all in slightly different and convoluted Legalese. 5) A range of products so I can see how much they charge for other things
6) A better chance of them not ripping me off when they know I'm interested.
As an organistation who deals with this all the time, they'd know which are the ideas that are worth a lot to someone, rather than a idea that is close to expiry and has a lot of other patents. Single patent holders like to think their ideas are going to earn them £££ x 10^£££ and try to extort you for even the simplest idea.
For those people who bitch and moan in this topic, I have to ask: How many patents have you actually applied for? Did you think through all the avenues, including actually having to license someone elses idea instead of just complaining about You versus The Man??
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Its a crying shame that people so intellectually talented are so shallow when it comes to thinking about the damage they will do to the world economy with behaviour like this.
The USSR did not even make a pretense of following Marx's philosophy. They claimed to be somehow following its spirit, but Lenin explicitly took issue with many of Marx's points, and substituted his own philosophy for it, which came to be known as "Marxism-Leninism", but which only owes to Marx its intellectual heritage. Ideas like a Central Committee (Politburo) controlling the revolution are fully Lenin's, and completely alien to Marx's philosophy.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you can raise a private army, you can enforce your intellectual property rights with shotguns too.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
From RTFA, the company intends to a) buy patents and b) generate patents by brainstorming. Nothing else. This is the typical submarine patent strategy, which is IP piracy, pure and simple. Such companies contribute absolutely nothing to society. They are a mockery of the original intention of copyright and patents.
That Microsoft, Apple, Google et al choose to invest in such a slimy venture speaks volumes about its intentions. I can understand why Google joined - they see where this is going, and do not want to be on the receiving end when those lawsuits start flying. But this is going to either change IP law, or ruin the industry. So Google's "do no evil" mantra was just exposed as another hoax.
Unlike the big companies that invest in it, this vulture company will not be interested in crosslicensing, and it has no reputation to lose from an all out attack on free software. So when (not if) it goes after free software, putting pressure on its investors might be the only way of getting at it.
Given the number of patents granted for obvious ideas, and the size of the payouts for infringements can you blame these companies?
You either pay your money to the thugs up front and possibly make some money out of your investment, or you take the moral high ground and eventually get sued into oblivion.
I am not saying I agree with or condone such behaviour, but given the current state of IP laws it would seem the sensible option.
Sure I have a license to drug this squirrel.
...why is it legal to transfer patents? Shouldn't the only person allowed to have a patent be the person who invented the item worthy of the patent? If patents are really supposed to benefit the inventors they shouldn't be allowed to be sold or hoarded. Make transfer of patents and copyright illegal, and this situation would not exist.
More like the small minority of companies and firms than a percentage of the population. Do you think a computer engineer working at Google files a patent for his ideas or the company name Google is listed as the patent owner?
I think that on Slashdot, some people tend to miss the implied tags.
"doing exhaustive prior art searches"
Why not have a Wiki where people can submit prior art, discuss prior art, submit ideas to serve as prior art so they do not have to get a patent to protect their ideas?
I dont mind Wikipedia but I've been reading criticisms of the GFDL, and added some to the GFDL article right on Wikipedia, but hopefully Wikipriorart will be GFDL/Creative Commons type license.
One thing that would solve a lot of these problems would be if patents only covered copying of the idea/method in the patent and explicitly didn't block people from coming up with the same idea independantly. It could even be taken a step farther and if someone could prove that say 2 or more others had come up with the same idea independantly then the patent would be revoked on the grounds that it failed the obviousness test.
sorted out the disaster that is your legal system?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
"And the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profit he's made on your dreams..."
Well, you can - but our government also has a system in place to effectively bypass this "obstruction" whenever they find it too inconvenient... eminent domain.
It's known as "a ransom strip". Especially when it's the local government which owns the land... This happened in Scotland. The council sold off some land to developers, but kept the end of the road under ownership. Private house owners want to sell a field to developers and planning permission for a new subdivision was granted, so long as the plans incorporated the road as the exclusive access route.
The result: 9 square meres of tarmac = 1 million pounds.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
~48,000 pages * 1,014 words per page
And that's just core federal laws... no case law, state or local laws, agency regulations, presidential directives, etc etc etc.... I would not be surprised to learn we are already up to 1Bn words.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
It's like adding an outboard motor to the handbasket to Hell. It could slow things down or (given enough power) even work its way upstream, but more likely it'll just be used to get to the destination even faster.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I don't think that disallowing "selling" of patents can work. There is no real difference between "selling" and "leasing" a patent, or any kind of "IP", as it is not property. All of these are just contracts that exchange a current payment to the "owner" in return for possible future royalties. It's just a sort of insurance. Someone else is taking the risk.
What I think might work is a limitation on the profit that can be made using patents: not a limitation on the profit that can be made from an invention, but rather on the amount that can be claimed in court due to patent laws. The patent system is a public service to allow inventors to make a living inventing things, by limiting others from using the same ideas for a while. IMO there is absolutely no reason for the public to use this tool to allow some people to make unlimited profits. Of course profit from inventions should not be limited, but public prtection (using the legal system) for this should be limited.
It might work the way insurance works: the minimum fee for registering a patent would give legal rights limited to a minimum sum that can be claimed. This would be a sum hi enough for a single average family to make a living, say for 70 years (not the term of the patent. Just the profit that can be protected using patent laws). Then an inventor that think her/his/its patent is worth more would be able to "buy" higher protection by paying a higher fee to register the patent. E.g., if M$ thinks its method of determining the sender of an email address from email headers by following RFCs is worth $2000000000, and if the minimum protection would be set to $20000000 it would consider paying say 100 times the minimum fee for registering that patent. What this kind of system would achieve is good protection for the individual inventor, and at the same time it would prevent the kind of "IP hoarding" that is going on right now. It would also reduce the number of bogus patents and make companies think more before registering patents on trivialities (like translating the RFC2822 into pseudo code). And it can reduce the load on the patent office, while at the same time perhaps increasing its income and allowing it to more thoroughly investigate patent claims.
The system might include a procedure to increase registry fees after registration, so a rejected patent claim would still cost the same as today, and the party submitting a patent claim ths\us would not have to gamble on large sums before the patent is accepted. It would still make companies more cautious about patent applications, because those patents accepted would still cost much more to give real protection to a corporation (as opposed to an individual that would get sufficient protection for the minimal fee).
This kind of patent system would leave space for the kind of companies that "collect" patents. Only they would have to be much more selective, and would then have to play a more positive role in finding promising patented technologies that were overlooked, or whose inventor is not a good enough promoter, and promote them. These companies might even make more money in this kind of environment.
Wait a minute...I thought patents were supposed to protect people from competition while they *used* the patent for a little while. Aren't patents baseless unless the company can show that they're actually making a product from it?