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Altnet Threatens P2P Companies Over File Hash Patents
devil_doll writes "I saw over on p2pnet that Altnet is trying to 'mug' a number of P2P companies with seemingly bogus patents. One of them is titled 'Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers,' and appears to be nothing more than a simple hash table."
When it comes to software isn't this just tautology?
"Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend." - Emil Michel Cioran
I did RTFA, and to be quite honest, I never knew that there were commercial p2p companies after the fall of Napster and co...
It seems that PiXPO, the company referred by the article is selling a p2p application that lets its users share photos (not trolling, but I don't see the point) - does any Slashdotter use commercial p2p products? If so, for what reason?
Any old databse basicly gets data and hashed it to generate an internal index key, ie not the real data but a unique identifyer to said data. Now given that and this approach was even taught in my days at school and were talking 20+ years ago. So just counter sue for extortion/intimidation/blackmailing and stuff these IP wannabe's. People who try to enforce silly patents are worse than organised crime, because the law dont see them for what they are; Well at least for now. Things change, just need bigger loo paper to handle it.
Yet more evidence that reporters are idiots.
:)
When I did my own patent last year, part of the process involved the patent lawyer explaining how to read patent'ese. It's just like a programming language.
Claim 1 - hashed files
Claim 2 == Claim 1 && something else
Claim 3 == Claim 2 && something else
etc
etc
So claim 1 probably has no chance of being enforced whatsoever.
However, claim 25 may be enforcable.
"some incredibibly specific thing in the context of some bigger thing in the context of some bigger thing... etc... in the context of a bunch of hashed files"
If they wrote it all in one claim, then it would only take the most minute difference to invalidate the whole thing.
So they do this 1 && 2 && 3 etc etc thing so that they get real coverage.
Nobody expects claim 1 to be upheld.
Think of it as a giant complex regular expression on the field of computing.
That said, it does appear like it's an attempt to create a blanket patent of the entire field of manipulation and distribution of hashed files, and so it's probably still qualifiable as a mugging
But it's not an attempt to patent the hash table.
When I was much much younger, I used to purchase a magazine - Micro User for my BBC Micro. For about 10+ years, this published code listings ever month. You typed in 500ish lines of code, and were rewarded with a game or a useful little utility.
It was very frustrating to enter all of the code and not have the program run. Therefore, they introduced a checksum program. This ran on the code and gave you a string of digits back, which you could compare with the digits issued in the magazine. This was active from 1984 onwards, and most likely even before that.
Prior art?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
But still, it's pretty obtuse. Even as someone with legal training, and a computing background, I had a hard time making out exactly what they were patenting.
Patents were supposed to be monopolies granted for disclosing a discovery - that's what sets them apart from trade secrets.
In reality, most patents can barely be understood by anyone but other patent lawyers. They are designed to be obtuse, complex, uninformative and in legalese. Why? So the patent will have no actual value, it is basicly a free monopoly.
At least we in Europe got away from the abomination called software patents, this round. But there'll be more...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I saw david Boies last night on Fox news talking about the fact that our justice system was broke. Even though he still didn't get it, he had to admit that it had serious problems. His scenario for effective jurisprudence was when large entities bought expensive lawyers or when poor people couldnt afford lawyers at all. He just didn't get the fact that large companies to wasting capitol on lawsuits is very bad for the whole economy and having poor people accepting rough justice is very bad for society.
It doesn't matter wheather the patent is right or wrong, it doesn't matter how rediculous the tort, what matter is if it will generate collectible fees for a lawyer. If you are upset about rediculous government granted monopolies get upset about the monopoly on justice granted to lawyers. The fact that one of the most common tactics employed by large companies to eliminate competition is litigation to death should be enough for anyone to realize its time to do something.
I suspect we would never have given software patents a second thought, were it not for the countless abuses that were foisted on the world. In other words, the people getting the patents brought our rage down on themselves by being total asses about it. One-click patent indeed...
I'd love to see a list of top-ten "good software patents". In other words, patents that meet (at least) the following criteria:
- The patent is on software (duh).
- The patent covers something not entirely obvious to an experienced programmer (the "five minute test": given the problem, could an experienced problem come up with a solution in less than five minutes?).
- The patent represents an innovation, rather than a restating of previous known techniques (as this one appears to be).
- The patent describes something that actually exists, as opposed to wishful thinking (like patents on artificial intelligence)
And since everyone who is in favor of software patents mentions that the poor inventor spent so much of his time and resources, I'll also add:
- The patent protects significant investment.
To me the "five minute test" is the most important: any problem that can be solved in that time isn't worthy of a patent, and any patents in that category will only hamper development of the field as a whole. Maybe the patent office should have panels of experienced programmers who get five minutes to reproduce each patent, immediately invalidating it if they do? That would certainly cut down on a lot of crap...
incidentally, any "all patents must be abolished" responders need not bother. go visit economic history 101 instead.
Is that the one where you learn that the USA became an industrial and economic powerhouse by shamelessly stealing every invention they could from Europe during its formative years, i.e. before it acknowledged any so-called intellectual property from other places in the world?
From the Article: 'Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers,'
From the grandparent: With these software patents, I'm prohibited from making anything that accomplishes X, even if I have a novel method, because company Y has a patent on software that does that.
What is getting under everyones skin is OVER BROAD patents.
Read the grandparent AGAIN.
Let me show you why your response doesn't show you understand his point.
From the grandparent (with a hint): With these software patents, I'm prohibited from making anything that accomplishes (compression), even if I have a novel method, because company Y has a patent on software that does that.
OVERBROAD patents are not patents on Particular algorithms (a 10x better compression). Rather, they are patents on IDEAS (a unique number that identifies an object).
post 11360699 also tried to explain this to you.
"Maybe you should try actually talking to your esteemed clients, and suggesting to them that if, quoting the music industry as an example, they didn't want to make $8 of PURE PROFIT on a CD"
I'm not sure I understand you. Are you talking Australian dollars? In the US, CDs are sold into the channel for around $8 and are sold to the consumer for about $12.95. That $5 delta is used to pay for employees, keeping the lights on, etc. shrinkage and so on and is not "pure profit." More importantly, it's money the record company never sees.
Of the $8 that the record company gets for the CD, about two bucks goes to cost of manufacturing, a buck goes to royalties, and some goes to marketing, accural for returns (the record company eats the cost when the retailer returns it) and various other realities of selling something on the retail market. Even if sales, marketing and shipping were free, and no CDs ever got returned or damaged, you're still looking at a gross of about four or five bucks, which is, percentage-wise, about what Logitech makes on mice.
I'm guessing you're confusing gross profit with net profit, but as people who work in retail know, all that matters is the actual money you have left after paying for all the expenses. The term "pure profit" would more typically be applied to the net, and not the gross. Overall, the record industry gets by with pretty shitty net margins compared to most of the stuff that you buy. It's good to argue against unfair IP laws, but claiming that "record companies make too much selling CDs" is the wrong approach.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.