Slashdot Mirror
Software Patents Affecting Futures Exchanges
KontinMonet writes "The Financial Times reports European exchanges, brokers and traders are preparing for possible legal battles with Trading Technologies, a US software company. The situation is being made harder for potential defendants because the cases so far have all been sealed. No doubt, all those IP lawyers think this is a good thing..."
Stuff like this is just what the doctor ordered to paint the software patents in as bad a light as possible. Let the parasites try to leech as much as possible, in most disgusting means available.
One day these leeches will be crushed, but they need to demonstrate to the wider audience that they *need* to be crushed. Hopefully this happens before they are too established.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Or you could just not disclose your code!
I mean Dyson put out a Vacuum cleaner and its obvious how it works just by examining it.
Microsoft put out a modified Kerberos and nobody can figure out how it works until they gave out the documentation...
She added: "Independent software vendors may have to reconsider the way they do business, and in particular the way they roll out new software to customers."
I think she meant to say:
She added: "Independent software vendors may have to reconsider doing business, and in particular the way they make new software, perhaps they should just crumble under the weight of patent law and become resellers for larger firms?."
damn TT.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
500 years ago you needed an army of mercenaries to defend your interests. Today the people that would have been mercenaries back then, are lawyers. The resemblies are striking.
...the list could go on and on. The major difference actually is, that mercenaries had balls and risked their life while doing all this.
They benefit from all conflicts, and all sides of the conflicts.
They rape, loot and soil everything they get their hands on.
Whole areas are starved by them.
They still are asskissing servants.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
As an IP lawyer, and specifically a registered patent attorney who handles software patents, I could not disagree more. Courts are supposed to be PUBLIC fora so that EVERYONE can see justice being dispensed. Closing hearings and sealing files inevitably leads to suspicion that proceedings are not being conducted fairly. Therefore I am strongly FOR keeping things open.
That said, there are sometimes portions of proceedings that SHOULD be closed to the public. One example is a hearing where a defendant's trade secrets will be discussed. Most times such a discussion, or at least details of it, are not crucial to understanding the basic proeeding. A defendant should not have to lose its trade secrets merely because it chooses to defend itself in court instead of settling the case.
Take the IBM v. SCO case, for instance. SCO is trying to force IBM to hand over the source code for IBM's *NIX versions. Should SCO be able to force this? Theoretically, yes, but in that instance, SCO would have shown some more concrete proof of its claims. Having so forced IBM to turn over the source code, should SCO be able to make it public? NO. IBM has the right to protect its property and SCO should not be able to (mis)use the courts to destroy potential trade secrets of a competitor.
I have found that people who make blanket statements about what lawyers love or about the evils of intellectual property usually understand neither of those topics. Software development is (properly, I might add) now an engineering endeavor. Engineers have had to deal with patents in every field for literally hundreds of years. Software development is no different. If you think it should be otherwise, I challenge you to examine the basis for that opinion. I suspect you will find it is because you think or know that you could create a patented piece of software yourself without using anyone else's code because you have the necessary skills. In that case, you are no different from the skilled artisan in any other field. In that case, if you are against software patents, then you must be against any type of patents because it would not be fair to have a special exemption for one type of invention and not another.
Think about it. Think long. Think hard. Think critically. Then let me know what you think. Flamers - save your keystrokes. I sleep very well at night knowing I am providing a valuable service to my clients - many of then small and individual inventors who are looking at being able to actually PROFIT from their hard work BECAUSE they have a patent and not in spite of it.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
the problem is that TT don't have particually good tech. their platforms are universally flakey (almost daily i needed to reset accounts and restart the x-trader platforms) I used to get daily patch updates to iron out bugs. When i left my previous job as a tech support manager for a Futures and options traders we were actually looking to move away from TT to other vendors.
we couldn't even patch the servers that their gateway software ran on because they refused to support on any platform above a 2 year old windows 2000 service pack.
Our traders used to lose a fortune in exchange fees due to their downtime. It's no wonder they are desperate for money.
Working for the (other) man
Anybody who has to mention "innovation" repeatedly in their press releases, and even put it in italics, probably doesn't have much of it. Companies that actually do innovate just advertise with their product features, and the innovation is self-explanatory.