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Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents
theodp writes "The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"
I'd patent first posting, but it's been patented. that's why I waited before posting this so it wouldn't be an infringing first post. Thank you.
With so many small boring companies sueing them, they need to get more patents for self-defense. By the way Microsoft has never sued anyone on patents till date.
Well, you could do it, but now it's only prior art.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former" - Albert Einstein.
... but nontheless the summary of what geeks like us always assumed.
It is, however, interesting, that the US mainstream media actually writes about this problem.
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
That he could see patents physically stacked into pyramid form.
Oh, and he'd be upset that he's in another place named Washington while there's no state name Jefferson.
Doesn't the entire typography community have prior art by o I don't know a few hundred years? "starting on February 23, 1455."--wikipedia Or even sadder the koreans by atleast a thousand years? as seen here
It's actually soo amusing...why doesn't someone patent 'patenting everything'?...the thing that microsoft seems to be doing. This patent game has gone far beyond normality and now it's just very funny and sad.
The correct spelling is "obnoxious".
Identifying when baseball is exciting is not a trivial task, even for human cognitition. Trying to explain to a non-baseball-fan what's important about a given moment in baseball, is like trying to explain to a non-deadhead what was so great about one particular concert.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Here we have Microsoft, which has led to an enormous creation of
wealth and jobs, and has been *good* for the US economy and some of
the billions generated are being channeled to some worthy charitable
causes as well. Clearly, 'more Microsofts' are needed and it would
have an immense impact on the US economy, among other things. If there
were software patents in the 60s and 70s, there would not have been a
Microsoft, and the associated billions and the PC revolution. Some
research intensive company would have held on to some critical patents
and could have just sat on them and produced no meaningful products.
However, the present Microsoft is doing almost everything it can to
prevent another Microsoft from ever occurring, thereby causing a
"future loss" of billions of dollars and harming the US economy. One
company cannot be allowed to dictate the future of America. Microsoft
is hurting America in a significant way since by being very aggressive
and seeking a huge patent arsenal, it wants to almost ensure that the
next tech revolution doesn't happen. It will happen, surely, but is
more likely to happen in countries with nascent patent laws, such as
in India and China.
After Microsoft was found to be an 'abusive monopolist', it should
have been barred from obtaining any patents. Infact, maybe that is
what is needed, to target a big software company like Microsoft which,
if barred from obtaining patents, would itself lobby very hard to ban
software patents for all ! And a strong case can be made aginst why
Microsoft in particular should not get the protection of patents.
All it will take is a determined senator to recognize that America
needs more Microsofts, and the current Microsoft should be reined in
appropriately. It can barred from obtaining any more patents and/or
it's current patent portfolio could be dissolved. Then let Microsoft
spend some of its billions and unleash it's army of lawyers and
publicists to try and convince the rest of America why software
patents are bad and no one should have them. That would be
interesting.
Someone needs to tell Microsoft: "Abusive monopolist. No patents for you !"
Patents are government-certified monopolies. Of course Gates, commander of the greates monopoly empire ever, wants a fleet of targeted monopolies. The PTO Monopoly Department is Gates' bitch, working overtime on the public dime to keep Gates the only guy who gets to do those businesses. The rest of us have to figure out for ourselves how to earn the money for the licenses to use our own computers, listen to our own CDs, watch our own DVDs, play our own games, pay our own taxes...
--
make install -not war
I'd patent the process by which a monopolistic company takes out patents on any conceivably useful electronic process, thereby stifling innovation and employing lawyers for the next thousand years.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I wonder what would happen if Microsoft tried to enforce a mearly questionable patent against a defendant, and the defendant were to use Microsoft's own patent arsenal as evidence? Just picture it, they take someone to court over a patent that to a non technical person might seem reasonable, and the defendant shows that it is an obvious idea and then shows for further evidance Microsoft's more ridiculous patents like the note related to a phone call thing to demonstrate that Microsoft has made patenting obvious concepts standard operating procedure?
Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!
The article submitter says this like it's some newfangled scheme freshly dreampt up by big bad Bill. It isn't. Around 100 years ago when Thomas Edison ran his lab it was a patent mill; hired inventors had to submit a weekly quota of patent applications.
3,000 sounds like the expected total for Longhorn/ "Vista" security gaps and bugs. Hmmm. Produce software, patent the bugs, sue for revealing trade secrets if anyone reports them. Profit!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The reason why is that they can use this against the small developers who can't afford to fight the valid or invalid patent. Getting a bunch of patents and then you can make sure that you won't be left behind if someone does come up with a new innovation.
If you have a patent filing you can sick the lawyers on the small developers and squelsh them while you develop the product. A small software company would likely give in to the patent filing and the lawyers. The patents won't hold up against IBM or someone else in this class, but it certainly is an advantage against the small guys.
This is why the patent system is not fully functional at this time.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
OK, it's been said enough already. Can we move on?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Unknown host pong.
Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!
Could we pretend to be somewhat non-biased?
I think I will patent Bill Gates' hair style....
Linux is the OS of the Christian Church. Linux wants to burn homosexuals at the stake and re-enslave persons of color.Linux starves the poor while transferring all of their meager wealth to the decadent rich.
Only Mr. Gates stands in the way of the Theocratic Totalitarianism of Linux Hegemony
Do you know the Toyota Prius and 99% of Organic Farms run Windows?
While the Engine computers of Chrysler Hemis,Vipers and Corvettes use yes.......Linux.Genetically modified Big Agribusines uses L:inux to design their toxic "Devil Plants".
Gaia loves Bill Gates while all intelligent Progressive thinkers HATE LINUX!
Obviously stripping whitespace from documents is just a ridiculous thing to try to patent, but identifying when baseball is exciting would not be trivial. After all, not all exciting baseball moments are scoring related, there can be many excellent defensive plays as well.
A strike out can be thrilling, it can also be mundane.
Software patents are tame and fairly meaningless in the out-of-control state that Patent Law is in; when GE won a patent in Appeals to the ownership of a bacteria that they "engineered" to eat oil, the Patent Office stated, "Everything save a full term human being is patentable." Since then almost 5% of the human genome has been patented by various biotech firms, under the basis of medical trade secrets and pharmaceuticals treatment. I'm not making this stuff up, The Corporation is a good non-technical learning start.
Just yesterday you ran a story about Google's nonsense RSS-for-delivering-ads patent like they were doing something great by revealing the inner workings of their system, and Microsoft files equally inane patents and only now do you call this evil?
Bah! Fair and balanced my ass!
Identifying when baseball is exciting actually sounds like it could be useful.
Wonder if it could be used on cricket?
threadeds blog
We keep hearing stories about Microsoft or IBM or Amazon trying to patent these ridiculous things that people have been using in various forms for about 100 years, and I have to ask myself what kind of drugs these guys are on if they think they can get away with this sort of behaviour. Are any of these frivolous patents defensible in the context of a courtroom, or do they add effectively to IP warchests when it comes to cross-licensing deals? Are they just a shotgun approach on the off chance that some moron in the USPO gives them a patent on a technology that everyone is already using?
What is available for estimates on the overall cost to the industry of frivolous patenting? If we're talking about a lot of money, why isn't anyone influential taking up the cause of de-porking the patent system?
What is communism?
CPUSA
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
There a bunch of patents that slashdot should obtain:
These patents could then be used to selectivly procecute trolls and spammers.
Currency calculator that understands 'convert 100 euros to canadian dollars'
I fear this will be the latest step in their FUD linux campaign....... luckily the Penguin is protected by Big Blue and a few others who might have a few patents violated by Gates.
But what about the rest of Open Source? What if they go against small to medium sized developers that dare to make things for Linux but not MS?
The patent system as a whole need to be reevaluated. What's being patented in this list aren't new nonobvious processes or solutions to things anymore but just combinations of old things to a new medium (creating a note relating to a phone call). I fail to see the innovation, I hate when someone can patent stuff like that because it will only restrict what we can do in the end with the computers and languages, things they were made to do - solve problems.
With just about every company patenting crazy things these days, it's no wonder that this happens. It's like an evil cycle. Once one started it, they all felt like they had to just to protect themselves and now it has just spiraled out of control. Seems like the only place this can be fixed is at the patent office because companies obviously aren't going to behave.
All your white space are belong to microsloth. Now_I_can_only_talk_like_this_without_any_spaces_o r_tabs._ will_only_be_able_to_talk_in_binary. Since they only patented white space, maybe we could move to beige space...
2 30256&tid=155
Whats_next?_patenting_letters/characters?_Soon_we
Though, since parts of DNA and skin have been patented, white space isn't that big a deal. Soon someone is going to be able to patent the patenting system, if they just word it obscurely enough.
I think when patents were first invented, they weren't meant to be made by the thousands by multi-billion companies. I think they were meant for indepentant people/small companies and protect them FROM the multi-billion companies.
Maybe people will someday rethink the flawed patent system. Either that or the patent system might eventually stop: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/29/1
I think Thomas Jeffersons's first reply would be, 'Holy fuck! What demons doth live in this glowing box!?'
Say what you want about Microsoft's attempts at the so-called "innovations", but identifying when baseball is exciting ??? That is like trying to prove P=NP. God speed, Microsoft !
Yet...
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Maybe pigs fly ...
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
I love that imagery. It's too bad we can't reify patents so that they could really be stacked like cannonballs. Imagine Microsoft, IBM and other companies each surrounded by their stacked-up patents, fortifications, lawyers and lawsuits as cannons peeking over the battlements, threatening to rain down havoc on anyone who challenges them.
Maybe once we have effective AR systems we'll be able to make manifest the underlying corporate realities which are all so invisible and intangible today. People passing by the Microsoft campus will be able to see the stacked cannonballs and other accoutrements of corporate warfare. It will make for a more colorful world!
I used to work at a software company that made contact management software. We had a mechanism built right into the main function of the software that specifically handled notes based on phone calls. The first iteration of that function we did in 1992.
It's pretty trivial to identify when baseball is exciting:
bool is_baseball_exciting ()
{
return false;
}
There. Can I have a patent now? Please?
Microsoft is in a position where they can act to fix these problems, yet they are only taking advantage of them. It seems that they have not watched Spiderman, in which even a young boy with powers that are a huge advantage over others, realizes that: "With great power comes great responsibility"
The implication here is that Microsoft is piling up meaningless and obvious patents. Curious if this were the case, I picked the least meaningful-looking one, and read through the app: The Baseball Patent.
Now, I hate MSFT probably a bit more than most people here, but this patent actually a good idea. It describes a technique which allows a computer to automatically show you the important parts of a game, saving vast amounts of time watching batters meander about and pitchers scratching their ass.
The cool part, though, is its simplicity. Rather than learn the rules of the game and a vast array of human likes and dislikes, it just listens for an excited-sounding announcer and flags those parts as being important.
It seems that this technique could easily be applied to, and effectively remove boredom from, any other televised game (except for golf and billiards, which will always be boring).
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
Why shouldn't ideas like this be awarded a patent?
Kid-proof tablet..
They probably just don't want to far behind. I don't think they were even in the top 5 or 10 companies last year as far as # of patents. I believe #1 belonged to IBM. Even after this push they probably won't get as many patents as IBM, lol. They'll just get more news coverage of it because people are always looking for a reason to hate M$.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
You know im no Microsoft apologist, but it seems very odd that we bash microsoft left and right but never even mention IBM, which indeed is always number 1 every year in getting the most patents! What do we make of this bias here at slashdot?
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
With not only the accelerated rate at which patents are being accumulated, but the changing nature of the things being patented, the barrier for entry for any inventor that cannot afford an entire legal team to check for possible infringement is getting far, far too high.
In the past, if you wanted to make a better faucet, all you had to do was make sure your idea was so unique that it was unlikely that anyone had put something of that nature together before. Now, with the new attitude of the Patent Office, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that the very idea that water comes out of a pipe is possibly claimed by someone out there. The amount of squatting on basic concepts is going to doom innovation, as a great deal of truly innovative and world-changing inventions have come from a man or woman working in their basement or garage in their spare time.
Just thinking to yourself, "Has the underlying concept been demonstrated before and left in the public domain?" means nothing, absolutely nothing. Prior art has grown increasingly meaningless. Hell, millions of year of prior art in each and every person that reads this has been patented.
Company A discovers that gene X causes disease Y and patents this gene that has existed since the dawn of humankind
Company B develops a test to establish wether gene X is present using nothing but their own methods except for the basic presumption that gene X will cause disease Y.
Company A sues Company B for patent infringement because they violated their patent on the gene.
This scenario has occurred before and Company A is the winner.
While I respect the fact a market economy is a neccesity for the human race at the present time (I say that in the hope that replicators are invented at some point) I don't see the neccesity to blindly approve of the persuit of profit at all costs simply because people want to and "That's just the way things have been done". There is a cost associated with such activity, a cost for which we have no means to compensate. The free flow and generation of capital should never undermine or be put ahead of the greater free flow of ideas in society as a whole , or the freedom of individuals, or you inevitably end up with a "snake eating his own tail" situation.
Locking down entire realms of study because of a overreaching patent does far, far more harm for us as a people than the good it does for the patent holder. It forces innovators to be reluctant or unwilling to pursue their ideas. The long term effects of this kind of stagnation should be self-evident.
The desire to make a buck - which should be encouraged - does not validate the methods employed to do so. Right now, the laws are structured to permit and encourage the lack of any focus other than short-term gains for the investors. Short-term gains which will likely pan out to be massive losses financially and otherwise for many in the end.
I don't know if I can positively answer that, but I think I can tell you when baseball is NOT exciting.
When the Mets are playing.
Hence, my sig...
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I have this really neat way of putting my socks on in the morning... think I should patent it?
Here we go, copying Google again ;)
There a bunch of patents that slashdot should obtain
You forgot one of them:
7. Method for posting dupes
Sorry, this sig is beneath your current threshold
Because we are biased towards Linux, and IBM and Linux are friends.
The most boring band and the most boring sport - and someone might try to determine when either is exciting? Fuck - why not watch paint dry or one of those old movies by Warhol?
"I like the part where the pigeons fly by."
"Did you see that bug get stuck in the paint? AWESOME!"
Grumpily,
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
IBM is to a great extent a research company; they do huge amounts of work in diverse fields. I remember when they were working on blue-laser optical disks back in 1998, for instance. Thus they come up with large numbers of what most Slashdotters see as legitimate inventions.
Microsoft is a software development company. It's debatable whether the idea to perform a specific operation on a machine that has been shown to be capable of any operation constitutes a legitimate invention.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Why does Bill Gates want 3000 new patents
Why, to keep with Jeff Bezos, of course.
What would happen is that every other large corp would then destroy Microsoft suing them for violations of their own frivolous patents.
Nothing short of a full revision of patent law will do.
What is interesting is that things are becomming like a poker game. Everyone knows sooner or later that the house is going bust when patent law is reformed and millions wasted in lawyers fees and applications goes down the toilet. But even though the corporations know that all these patents will eventually be worth nothing they are locked in a mutaual death dance of talking up patents and making applications for ever more ridiculous things to outfox one another in the short term.
Rather than learn the rules of the game and a vast array of human likes and dislikes, it just listens for an excited-sounding announcer and flags those parts as being important.
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
What nonsense. Of course it's obvious. Haven't you ever had a game on while you do something else, and then look up to watch when the announcer gets an excited tone in his voice? Or when you hear the crowd roar?
we all may end up paying M$ because we think!!!
All it will take is a determined senator
Yeah, one senator. Keep dreaming.
I'll bet $10,000 you were born in the US. US immigrants understand its government better than natural born citizens, because they actually have to prove they understand the country before being accorded citizenship.
I'm veering totally off-topic, but then again, this is Slashdot, where off-topic is is always on-topic...
Know what would make this country, any country, a better place? It would be a better place if every person who had a say in its governance (i.e. voters) actually understood the principles upon which the country operates. No one should be able to vote, no one should be able to run for office, without passing the country's civics exam. I don't care if you were born here or not. Where you were born has nothing to do with anything. That's one of the poorest excuses for priviledge ever. "I was born here." So fucking what?!
Now of course, revolutionary activities fall entirely outside the purview of tests and other beaurocratic formalities.
which are.. ... on a computer ... on the web
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. "
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. "
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. "
"Any cute black slaves around? My wife is out of town."
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
We do have laws that prevent convicted felons from voting in presidential elections. I don't see that it would be too unreasonable to impose extra ordinary restrictions on corporations that are convicted of abusing their monopoly position.
"All it will take is a determined senator to recognize that America needs more Microsofts, and the current Microsoft should be reined in appropriately."
Well, I think it would take more than one congressman to do it. Finding honest representatives of the people isn't easy. Unfortunately the people are no longer represented by the people they elect. It's mostly corporate interests that are being protected a corrupt Congress. Tragically the public is too apathetic to do what is required to force a corrupt Congress to change.
Until enough people get angry enough to come out of apathy and take action Congress will continue to be motivated by special interest money. If enough people do get angry and take action Congress will predictably take token measure in an effort to make the public believe that things are getting better. The measures will likely be little more than a PR campaign that will last just long enough to placate the populous before going back to taking special interest money and returning to business as usual.
I know. I have a very pessimistic view. I wish Congress would prove me wrong at least once before I die.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
What is communsim?
CPUSA
Usually the spacing is already at optimal settings. Or maybe you don't know about text justification. Most online texts don't use it. and I find it annoying in newspapers and magazines.
i on
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22text+justificat
First item turns up CSS3 Text Effects Module and it appears to be this that Microsoft is patenting
Beat the Mets,
Beat the Mets,
Step right up and Beat the Mets,
Bring your children out for the fight,
Show them how to squash what's not right!
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
It will take a company with a lot of money and a lot of lawyers to finally push the whole broken software patent system over the redline. When it becomes obvious to *EVERYONE* that the software patent system in the US is completely broken, Congress will be forced to finally address the issue. (Perhaps patenting the space " " character will do the trick.)
I can only hope that all software patents are abolished. IMHO, software patents are bad, software copyrights are good.
On the other hand, as long as the software patent process continues in its current form it is only smart defensive business to patent everything under the sun. In this situation the only intelligent strategy is, "If I don't patent it, my competitor will." Microsoft itself has been stung to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by stupid patents filed by others. Don't blame corporations for filing stupid patent applications, blame the Patent Office for granting them."The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of fourteen years; but the benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
... It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors.
"Inventions... cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:334
"The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me:... Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding __ years, but for no longer term and for no other purpose." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:451, Papers 15:368
"In the arts, and especially in the mechanical arts, many ingenious improvements are made in consequence of the patent-right giving exclusive use of them for fourteen years." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:356
"Certainly an inventor ought to be allowed a right to the benefit of his invention for some certain time. It is equally certain it ought not to be perpetual; for to embarrass society with monopolies for every utensil existing, and in all the details of life, would be more injurious to them than had the supposed inventors never existed; because the natural understanding of its members would have suggested the same things or others as good. How long the term should be is the difficult question. Our legislators have copied the English estimate of the term, perhaps without sufficiently considering how much longer, in a country so much more sparsely settled, it takes for an invention to become known and used to an extent profitable to the inventor. Nobody wishes more than I do that ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement." --Thomas Jefferson to Oliver Evans, 1807. ME 11:201
"No sentiment is more acknowledged in the family of Agriculturists than that the few who can afford it should incur the risk and expense of all new improvements, and give the benefit freely to the many of more restricted circumstances." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1810. ME 12:389
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jef f1320.htm
It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the pos
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs?
That it's cold enough in hell to freeze the balls off a brass monkey?
"seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs?"
"Brass monkey."
Jefferson has been dead for 200 years. People may disagree with patent law, but there's not historical basis to assume Jefferson would have objected to this practice in the IT industry. Save the Ouije board for parties, and stop imposing your opinions on people who've been dead for a century or more.
Thomas Jefferson was a racist, slave-owning piece of shit. Who cares what Thomas Jefferson would think?
Microsoft does not need validation from slave-owning evildoers.
IBM have been far less destructive to using it's money/power/money sources to drive out competition out of market. Yes, they are no saints, but Microsoft eats and breaths by laws of war.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
They patented a shell script.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
his argument is to abolish all software patents, not just MS.
Wow, must be an internet first. Somone mentioned a band (any band will do) and then someone posts how much they suck...
sssssssssshhhhhhhhhocking
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
IBM doesn't pump out buggy software year after year for insane prices, and almost-non-existant changes. Also, IBM actually carries out innovative research instead of trying to remarket office 950 which is exactly the same as office 97.
Way back around 1988-1990 I had an interview with a company that had developed and marketed caller id triggered lookups. Before the receiver even picked up the phone, the computer would already be retrieving customer account information and other notes so the receiver wouldn't need to waste anyone's time retrieving the information manually. Obviously the information retrieved and stored was more detailed than just a generic note (which was only one data field in the system.)
Many IVR (interactive voice response aka automated answering services) also use such technology to do information retrieval and storage.
The patent applied for by Microsoft is a toy in comparison, and the only thing "new" is using the computing resources of an integrated device like a cell phone instead of multi-line call center hardware.
In other words, they seem to be trying to patent the idea of performing the processing for the case where n = 1. Pathetic, but typical of their single-user mentality.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I wonder if Microsoft will try to patent a method for stating the obvious?
You put too much trust into Big Blue. Unfortunately, their only incentive right now is "anything but fall prey to Microsoft." If Big Blue could be MS themselves, they'd be, in an instant This open source support seems just a defense for them. The motto: Better work for free and give the stuff away, then work for free and be hung out to dry at MS's whim.
Can't find it on USPTO's site, but I realized that Microsoft's strategy compels the office to review 8.2 applications a day, 365 days a year... and that's ONE company.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You forgot 7. Method for posting dupes.
How many EU software companies are taking advantage of this fact and actually making products to compete against their US counterparts? It could be that EU software companies have no incentive to innovate in the software field without some patents.
Why is Slashdot posting links to appft1.uspto.gov that are redirected through dw.com.com? So that .com.com can track our viewing habits? Do the editors not check for this?
How would we feel about Slashdot accepting a story from some guy that had his Amazon referall on all the links?
Use as many obvious patents as possible in every program you write. Just make sure that they are from a multitude of different companies, that way they're fighting each other over who gets to sue you.
I wonder when MS will patent "looking at a computer screen". The end is coming.
Come on!
... perhaps one day we'll be able to tune in for that magical 2 seconds of each game without having to watch the other 3 hours!
Anyone who can actually find some way to detemine when baseball is exciting can't be all that bad!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Slashdot should make love, not war! And in this spirit another useful patent would be an automatic option for breasts in the polls.
A difference I see between IBM and Microsoft, is that Big Blue seems to have at least done some truly innovative cutting edge stuff, I've yet to see something from Microsoft that makes me go "yeah that's realy impressive they came up with that". Some IBM researchers have actually received Nobel prizes, I've yet to see a Microsoft employee do that.
From http://www.research.ibm.com/know/top.html
- Copper Chip Technology
- Giant Magnetoresistive Head (GMR)
- Speech recognition technology
- Scalable parallel systems
- Token-ring networking
- High-temperature superconductivity (1987 Nobel prize)
- Fractals (Mandelbrot)
- Thin-film magnetic recording heads
- Scanning Tunneling Microscope (1986 Nobel prize)
- Formula Translation System (FORTRAN)
- Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) architecture
- Relational database
- Magnetic disk storage
- One-transistor dynamic RAM (DRAM)
Disclaimer: 1) I am in no way affiliated with IBM, and know they abused their monopoly in the '80 too. I just think it's ridiculous to compare IBM and MS R&D results, just name 1 significant MS innovation.
2) I'm no big fan of software pattents in general, at least in their current form, because checking 20,000,000,000 pattents each time a program a line of code is impractical.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Irrespective of how horrific you may think a particular patent is, it runs for only 17 years. If in fact, the GIF patent had been somthing that we had been unable to get around, if we had to suck it up and have overlarge image files for 17 years, would it have been the end of the world, or would "Image Freedom Day" have been even more fun?
The "when is baseball exciting" patent is clever as all hell. If MSoft can make some bux off it for the next 17 years, so be it, but eventually, your FOSS automatic digital tv-watcher will be able to snippet out game highlights for you for your quick review, in about 17 years. Wanna bet on if the software's actually ready?
Now, if congress starts passing PATENT EXTENSION bills. THEN and only then, does your doom and gloom need to take over.
I think the open source community should start worrying. IT doesn't have any patents, and most likely will not be pursuing any. It also doesn't have the deep pockets that will be required to defend against someone claiming ownership of a specific method. Are there any other options besides making the software unavailable, or changing it so much that it may no longer meet the objectives set forth by its original author?
... who on Earth (excluding Lawyers) can read these applications? Or maybe that's the point? Lawyers protecting their own interests as usual.
There seems to be an entire 'dialect' of the English language which only exists on Patent applications, and any attempt to read such text aloud results in severe tongue-twisting (not to mention headaches).
Maybe, if they MUST keep allowing patents, they should only allow READABLE patents...
I swear we should be allowed to give mod points to sigs... "-1, Offtopic"
Alright people, this is stupid. Computer software patents in the U.S. have to be abolished. I've written my senators and representative. What else should we do now?
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
> IBM is to a great extent a research company;
l
IBM makes $2 billion/year from patent licenses. With that amount of money and over 10000 patents in diverse areas, they make MS look like a grade-school bully.
From: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html
After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.
An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"
>Thus they come up with large numbers of what most Slashdotters see as legitimate inventions.
Legitimate?;
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/10/17/005232.shtm
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I don't myself understand how anyone could even believe that software is really patentable. All modern computer languages are context free grammars ...
We've got to stop thinking of the law in these sort of terms. The law isn't written in stone so that interpretations may be debated forever (e.g. patents only apply to X. let's argue about the definition of X). The law changes. If we decide we want patents to apply to language, then patents apply to language. If ambiguity exists in the law, we can argue over how it does or does not apply to new situations, but at some point we need decide how we want it to apply to new situations and make it so.
Patent law was designed to to promote progress (which I define as "encourage more invention") by rewarding the work put into invention with exclusive rights. Is work put into computer programs? Yes. Will some sort of protection promote the invention of more computer programs? I think so. Does the patent system do this? Of course not; it's a complete mess. But my point is that arguing about things in terms of "well, technically it's just language" or "technically, it's the same as a mathbook" is not useful. We are free to make laws allowing the patenting of math; the above argument then boils down to "we can't patent math because it's math". We need to make the argument that these laws need to promote progress, nothing more. They are not currently doing so and are in serious need of reform. And we need to be very clear why the law should promote progess and what damage can and is being caused by the current state of things.
I was doing some reading the other day, and based on what I found, I'm not certain that software, technically, and legally, is patentable. The latest ruling determined that the loading of software into a machine makes it into a new machine, and thus, patentable, but it didn't go so far as to say that software, by itself, is patentable- the USPTO has held that software is primarily a series of mathematical algorithms, and as such cannot be patented. I'm wondering if there's still a fundamental question here that needs to be decided by the courts.
At once, this article is both disturbing and encouraging. It's disturbing that the US patent system has become such a farce. Patenting using a handkerchief or napkin when sneezing... crossing a letter T from the left to the right, or sitting on a cloth chair when on a date and needing to pass wind... all patentable, and apparently, done so by Gates and Co. It shows just what a farce the patent system has become. Everything people do every day (and have for hundreds of years) is now worthy of this public tax by private individuals!!! At some point, software patents will be put out of their misery in the US because of this (sooner would be better than later though).
I am the original poster.
...right...*sound of flicking the switch*. This move will hurt your shareholders, fine, that's what they deserve for supporting an ABUSIVE MONOPOLIST.
Copyright on software is a better alternative to patents. You create something, you get a copyright on it. Someone else copies it, go sue. That is fine. But if you come up with some idea and patent it, and don't do anything with it, that is stifling innovation. Especially when you are a large corporation like Microsoft, you are really hurting the whole industry and the nation's economy by stacking up so many cannonballs. Even if you (Microsoft) say that you don't go around suing others, we cannot trust you anymore since you have already been found to be an ABUSIVE MONOPOLIST. Sorry, you had your chance. It is like you go and kill someone and say you won't do it again - yeah
A "no software patent movement" in the US would see opposition from almost the whole industry. Patent reform thing would involve the whole gamut of patents (pharma, etc). Target just Microsoft; convince people that Microsoft shouldn't have patents beacuse it is bad for America. Let Microsoft be sued and crimpled, as that is what would create the next boom.
STRONG MICROSOFT = BAD FOR AMERICA
WEAK MICROSOFT = GOOD FOR AMERICA
took me five seconds to find this yes, you are right, MS never actually had to go to court... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualDub
What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs?
Thomas Jefferson would be mightly unhappy!!! Origiannly TJ was against patents and copyrights however his friend James Madison eventually talked and showed him how they could be beneficial and support the creation of new art and objects. Once he was convinced TJ, using an actuary table, calculated patents and copyrights should only last 28 years, if I recall right 14 years with one 14 year extention possible.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you got a bonus in your pay check because something you did at work (for MSFT) was accepted as a patent, wouldn't you be looking for ways to patent everything you did, even if it is borderline acceptable?
I'm willing to bet that this is the source of the increase in patent activity from MSFT - employees are being incentivised to do it.
If you got a bonus of a month's salary for patenting an idea at work, would you still continue to be "anti-patent-the-world" ? If you can pull that off two or three times a year, what then, hmmm ?
I don't know if this is the case, but in American companies, everything is for sale and given that patents are a tangible representation of intangible ideas (or IP), it seems pretty straight forward, to me.
is there anything we can do to stop this from going on? Does anyone know of any political groups that are actively seeking to end software patents and genome patents? Where do I sign up?...I could sit here and say how stupid software patents are over and over again but it isn't going to do much good in the long run. What can I do besides being one small voice to my reps in congress to help change the patent system? Links, phone numbers, e-mail lists...anything you guys got I want to know about....and hell Slashdot should provide a link to such political groups on both sides of such issues when they are brought up in articles.
It could be that EU software companies have no incentive to innovate in the software field without some patents.
Why does software need the protection of patents when they already have the protection of copyrights?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I think I'll take out a patent on creating a patent.
Seriosuly though, why should anything that is fundamentally 0's and 1's be patented, unless its revolutionary it should not be a patent.
Does MS have some agreement with the US government where they must create work for 10,000,000 new lawyers per year?
If or when MS goes bust all those lawyers will have no work, other than deciding who creditors are.
Why UNIX?
Of course if you've been brought up in the Cult of America you believe that every word that exudes from the mouths of the Holy Founding Fathers is the wisdom of the Gods.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Patent "Making fun of Microsoft".
I have a patent that predates your code
:)
int isCricketExciting() {
return 0;
}
thus it and the MS patent are void
-steve
Non-Western SoftCo: We wrote some cool new software.
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: Ha! We have software patents that cover your program! Hand over all your money now!
Non-Western SoftCo: Do we look American? Fuck you, and fuck the horse your lawyers rode in on.
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: B-but... you can't talk to us that way! We'll use our bribed, uh, 'lobbied' politicians to stop you entering our market!
Joe Public: [Downloads software from non-US site]
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: Shit! Our revenue stream! If only we actually made something! Aiiieeee!
ThiS, of COurse, may have happened already...
You must think in Russian.
Q: How many IT workers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, at Microsoft. Everyone else has to license the process from them or wear night vision gear (Microsoft is working on the candle patent).
"Method for convincing people you have a hamster on your head"
I started using the same algorythm since I was eight (1990). Sometimes people will take me to terribly boring shows, and I couldn't help but let my mind wander away (I was a very creative boy, to use an euphemism). But, to carefully hide my total lack of intrest, I would clap my hands and fake to look intrested when I heard clappings or comments from people near me. Btw, don't reply to my post, I won't be reading it, I'm on my way to the patent office...
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
we see a patent for blatent misuse of patents?
I've lived in Eureka and Arcata for awhile now and if you think that such a movement ever died you are misrepresenting the pioneer spirit alive and well up here. One day they will legalize marijuana and block the roads it is just a question of when.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I'd say you're wrong on two counts:
He could have had no conception of the ability today to transfer gigabytes of IP practically instantaneoulsy, or the way vast economic enterprises today are founded on products for which physical presence is more or less irrelevant.
Perhaps not, but that doesn't matter. He certainly had an idea of unstiffled free enterprise, though. Which is certainly more valuable than the ad-hominem attack you masked as a comment.
He has no special insight into patents.
""In the arts, and especially in the mechanical arts, many ingenious improvements are made in consequence of the patent-right giving exclusive use of them for fourteen years."
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
The method that slashdot uses to post dupes is so good that it shouldn't be patented. It is a trade secret that competitors might spend 20 years and millions of dollars to discover, but still not figure out how slashdot editors are able to post so many dupes. Filing a patent just make their secrets public and competitors would be able to post dupes just as well in fifteen years when the patent expires.
Not the extreme left or right?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."
--Bill Gates
Welcome to the future.
eh-heh ;-)
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Patent's aren't a bad thing. They allow a *limited* monopoly on an *invention* for a period of about 15 years at *most* (in the USA). Yeah, technology changes... The Lempel Ziv Welch patent which recently expired is an example of a patent of a non obvious method which changed our lives and is now free to implement. There are better algorithms and tons of other patents in the image compression space, but this was a particularly high profile patent.
Any patents on obvious or previously implemented technologies won't stand up in court, but of course, it means paying lawyers to stick up for the little guys who don't have the money.
But just because you don't like the law doesn't mean that you can suddenly chnage the rules, unless you are a congressman, and then you can only make the rules under your jurisdiction.
Microsoft may not be the worlds best team player, but that doesn't mean that MS doesn't deserve to use the inventions its employees legitimately invent. It also doesn't mean that Microsoft can't charge licensing fees for the usage of those patents.
What is scary is the number of companies whose sole existence is to buy up patents with potential litigation and then sue people with products that potentially violate the patents. These companies of lawyers suing companies making real products is a disturbing trend in the industry. Normally, when one large company sues another for violating patents, the other counter sues, and the two companies shake hands and agree to license each other's patents. But when a company that exists solely to sue large and small companies sues, they tie up our court system to take money from people who build the products that make our world run.
That ends up coming from all of our pockets to make a few people who bought a few inventions fabulously wealthy.
The moral of the story is that all the large corporations now seem to be cross-licensing each others patents so that hungry lawyer companies attempting to claim huge amounts of money can be beaten down with a big "I licensed that technology from XYZ corp" stick. And the big corps have also started licensing some of these technologies, Microsoft for example has this website here. Is this progress? Well, OSS needs to develop its own patents if it wants to compete. Is it not unreasonable for individuals in the Open Source movement to compete like this?
"Hello Pot. This is kettle. You're black."
from back when Microsoft bought a license from SCO:
"Asked to comment on the news of the licensing deal at a news conference today, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison seemed to have no compunction about drawing a link between the agreement and SCO's litigation. "Bill [Gates] is innovating. Microsoft has always had incredible innovation. You've had advanced bundling, and what you see now is extreme litigation. They have a lot of experience with extreme litigation, actually," he said."
What's the connection between this and TFA?
I'll tell you.
First of all, PJ at Groklaw wants the discovery in the Novell vrs SCO suit to take a deep long look at exactly WHAT "patents and IP" that Microsoft allegedly licensed from SCO for "millions of dollars."
Secondly, this is likely to prove that Microsoft doesn't need to litigate open source based on their patents - up until now, anyway. They'd been able to pay other people to litigate FOR THEM.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
American capitalism is a huge, varied area of activity. Some of it is fascistic: corporate welfare, absolutely protected by government officials who really work for a corporation. Some of it is socialistic: the Public Library system springs to mind, as well as public schools. Most of it is in the middle, though generally closer to fascism than communism. And it's always in flux. I'm talking about the majority of economic transactions, which are just somewhere to the right of the exact center. As opposed to the communist and fascist extremes I inferred from that post.
--
make install -not war
You know, having all the pages in a document re-format, just because you added one line of text really is annoying. I'm glad MS has invented a solution and I can't wait to use it.
Call me when patentball gets exciting...
Seventeen years is an eternity in computing.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is the actual cost of obtaining a patent. (I looked this up a while back, so I only guarantee order of magnitude.)
Registering a patent w/ the USPTO runs around $1000 for the first 3 years, more after that (up to the 17 year term.) That is nothing compared to the cost of hiring a lawyer to fill in the paperwork, which can easily top $10,000 but which greatly improves the odds of getting a patent, especially a frivolous one.
Most individuals can't pay out this kind of money, even for good ideas; MS, who has legions of lawyers on staff, can afford to register thousands. Incidentally, their patents are worth much more than one issued to an individual, since they can afford to litigate them: MS can use a completely bogus challenge to bankrupt a small competitor without ever setting foot in court; only a company the size of IBM can realistically challenge MS no matter how good the case (hey, they beat the US government and made fools of the Europeans!)
The patent system, like the tax system and any of a hundred federal court rulings over the last few decades, has departed so far from the Founders' intent and plain common sense that it makes the entire US government look banana-republicish at best, self servingly evil at worst (and most likely.)
Anyone recall when they first saw PocketPCs that make call related notes? I see this one was filed in January of 2005. If anyone not under an NDA saw that feature before January 2004, Microsoft's goose is cooked. The US is almost the only country that allows you to file a patent a year after you first publicly displayed it. Most other countries do not allow you that grace period. The PocketPC phone I purchased last year had that feature, but I did not buy it until Q4. Anyone see a demo at a trade show or Microsoft event?
You make a decent argument for the abolition of patents. You may be correct, I'm not certain. I am certain that software patents should be abolished.
If that isn't what you meant to be arguing, then perhaps you could say it explicitly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Where patents become meaningless. The kicker was "adding and removing whitespace from a document" , done with Unix's "sed" program nearly 50 years ago - much more quickly than any editor running under M$. These people are essentially patenting air so they can charge everybody to breathe. At some point, perhaps after you've patented DNA, sunshine, and the orbiting of galaxies, a credulity barrier must be breached. M$ has made it so that software patents in the future will hold as much water as those famous http://www.legal-forms-kit.com/legal-jokes/dumb-la ws.html
"dumb laws" ; pushed onto the books...just to quietly rot.
Patent violations are in all or most software. There are too many stupid patents being issued to prevent it. Most of them would be thrown out of court if challenged but the average individual does not have the resources to defend himself. In particular, groups of people who gather in cyberspace to express themselves though software development will not have the resources to do so when facing legal and financial terrorism by monopolistic corporations.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Turing would help you understand this. A 'computer' being a general purpose machine becomes whatever code is run on it. Since the number of programs is infinite, a computer is ANY possible machine (that transforms signals). Since the interpreter (harware) is invariant and the code is variable the definition of its function is contained entirely in the software. By that logic ONLY pure software can meaningfully be patented.
Imagine, in accordance with Church-Turing, that you also made the hardware as fluid and invariable. Any algorithm can be expressed in an alternative syntax ordinated on alternative hardware. Cheap desktop VLSI fab is going to make a nonsense of any patent system that tries to separate harware and software.
The patent system is screwed because it contains a point of self contradiction and denial. It professes to protect the work done in implementation, but instead serves the protection of abstract ideas. Anyone can have a great idea and as technology improves the amount of work needed to turn a good idea into an implementation decreases. That is what frightens established business, and that, imho, is why patents are being subverted from their original role of protecting tangible work, to that of inhibiting competetive, and indeed cooperative development.
Every program is a proof. When the prog language is typed, the types are propositions of the logic that is defined by the type structure. When the language is untyped, type resolution happen (through a math. alg. like Curry Res) and then it's a proof of a logic... Every prog language theorist knows this. Go and patent a proof.
The latest ruling determined that the loading of software into a machine makes it into a new machine, and thus, patentable, but it didn't go so far as to say that software, by itself, is patentable- the USPTO has held that software is primarily a series of mathematical algorithms, and as such cannot be patented.
From what I've read, it is the USPTO that allowed software patents on its own. The SCOTUS ruled that genetically-engineered organisms were patentable. Apparently, the patent office leadership thinks software is a man-made organism.
The D-R-U-G-S.
The didnt call it Drums>Snacks instead of Drums>Space for nothing.
Identifying when baseball is exciting? printf "Never";
You know im no Microsoft apologist, but it seems very odd that we bash microsoft left and right but never even mention IBM, which indeed is always number 1 every year in getting the most patents! What do we make of this bias here at slashdot?
The fact that IBM released 500-some patents to OSS might have something to do with it. How many patents has MS released to OSS?
According to TFA the software industry now expect a patent for every $500k spent in R&D.
That may sound like a lot of money but it's not, compared with other industries where they cost on the order of 10x as much at least, potentially a lot more for the pharmaceutical industry.
Hence software patents are on the average not based on much research or development, i.e. are not worth that much in terms of efforts.
I'm a holder of several software patents, both issued and pending. I vehemently disagree with the whole concept of software patents, but in today's broken environment, you have to apply for these patents as a defensive measure. Otherwise you may find that someone else can prevent you from commercializing your own ideas.
And having been through the process, I can tell you that most examiners at the USPTO are simple, unimpressive bureaucrats with nowhere near the capability and insight needed to evaluate software innovations. They are not operating in bad faith, they just aren't equipped to do the job that the big shots in our industry are asking of them. (Further proof of this point is that they usually retire as soon as they are eligibile, and ever-increasing numbers of them leave the service early. It's a crummy job.)
The path of least resistance for the PTO is to just grant about 60% of the applications put before them and hope that the courts will sort out the conflicts. That's a great solution for the small technology shops and individuals that produce the real innovations, isn't it? Especially since you're now relying on an equally ignorant judge and jury, who will be favorably impressed by those nice, polished, well-dressed attorneys from IBM/Microsoft/Oracle/Toshiba/whoever.
LEGISLATION is needed to solve this problem. The community needs to draft a revision of the patent laws and lobby its passage through Congress. Anybody interested in taking up the challenge?
The same can be said of invention/innovation in America today. (In fact, it can be said of a lot of things in America today, but that's getting off-topic.)
The barriers for real progress have become almost impossibly high and most of the real inventions, these days, are to be found elsewhere. Take a look at the pioneering work these days - in stem cell biology, it is taking place in South Korea. The Japanese are have gigabit home networks and public IPv6. That's also where most of the hybrid car research is taking place. The inventor of the clockwork radio moved to South Africa, in order to get funding - America and Britain considered the idea a joke. He's now a multi-millionaire. That's one hell of a joke.
Let's look at OS research - Linux comes from Finland and OpenBSD from Canada. Plan 9 has moved out of the US and to Britain. Peripherals? Japan was the first with 60" LCDs. Sound? MPEG-4 evolved in part from VQF, which came from Yamaha. Aviation? Airbus seems to be innovating more than Boeing, these days. Shipping? The UK reclaimed the Blue Ribband several times over, and the Swedes have built Stealth Ships.
America has one of the biggest R&D budgets in the world - Japan spends more, but that's about it - but all of the big-name developments are happening elsewhere. So, what IS the money in the US being spent on?
Partly on patents, from the looks of it, and partly on pharmaceuticals that get passed by the FDA only to be banned a short time later. I'm not even going to get into the Aspartamine fiasco.
It seems to me that the current R&D situation in the US is a proven disaster. And not all off-shoring is done to save money, suggesting that American firms are well-aware that the existing patent situation in the US is a mess.
Indeed, it looks to me that the patent laws in the US have less to do with protecting ideas and more to do with owning talent. If company X owns the rights to technology Y, then the only way an American can really learn about Y is to join company X.
But this only works on Americans. Most of the rest of the world ignores American IP, because it is such a scam. Which seems to suit American businesses, or they'd be pushing harder for changes elsewhere. (Sure, one or two tried in Europe, but it wasn't that much of an effort. They only bribed one group of politicians.)
So, the effort seems specifically to keep Americans ignorant. The R&D elsewhere doesn't seem to bother the American industry that much, even though other countries now practically own the US economy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
so Bill Gates wants these patents? Or is it Microsoft Corp...
Who is this person, and why should people think that his ideas are worth listening to?
Is this something only Americans know about?
... that Bill Gates is doing more to destroy the odious concept of "software patents" than any amount of well-reasoned logic ever could.
Hell, let him patent the combination of individual letters into words, and the mathematical combination of numeric digits into other numeric digits -- assuming he hasn't already.
Whereas winning monopolistic dominance over the personal computer industry via dirty tricks, deceit, and ruthlessness wasn't enough to inflame people's sensibilities, allowing a single company to lock up an entire economy by exploiting the flaws in our patent system might be enough to provoke a response.
Hopefully that response will not be to award him the ownership papers to the United States.
You got a nice buffer overflow going on there. That strzTemp should be 4 tchars wide to fit in the string terminator.
Fuck me, this is why I use Linux. I won't pay another cent to Microsoft to feed their crazy attempts at patenting anything that moves.
I don't think patent offices do (or should) decide whether something is patentable based on purist arguments like "programs are mathematical proofs, and we obviously should not patent proofs". Instead I hope they decide these things based on whether it's good for research and/or the economy.
So if patents on theorems magically encouraged the pace of advancements in mathematics, then I think it'd be a good idea. Of course, when it comes to math, it's a little more obvious that patents won't have this effect -- that's a better reason to not want patents in math, or any field.
Bottom line: whether patents are good for software is independent from whether they're good for math, regardless of how related the two fields are. I personally think software patents impede innovation in our industry, but both yourself and I could be wrong about that.
<sizzlesizzle>
THere was a decision in early 1980 that dealt with an engineer who attempted to patent to a physical process controlled by software. Initially the USPTO refused, stating that software was not patentable, and merely wrapping within the context of a physical process did not change anything. A decision by the SCOTUS stated differently. However, the SCOTUS did not out-and-out say that software was patentable - it simply stated that, patenting a physical process controlled by software does not constitute an attempt to patent the software itself, but merely the collective whole of the implementation (the case was Diamond vs Diehr).
When people saw this, (i.e. lawyers), they interpreted it to mean that software was now patentable, and thus began the ball rolling. The USPTO, for whatever reason, has allowed the patents to continue, but I'm still not sure if there is any specific decision which explicitly addresses the issue of patents acquired for software in and of itself.
So I think the consensus is that most slashdot readers are opposed to software patents. So what? The question is, what are we going to do about it? Where do I send my check for 100$ to get somebody lobbying senators and etc?
they said the same thing about patents of living things.
i submit that baseball is not very often exciting, therefore a mathematical algorithm would be interesting for me, and i expect it would be non-obvious as the computer has no real human inputs other than score/runs/hits/and perhaps noise level.
saying all that... i hate baseball. very boring.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Patents don't cover ideas, they cover how you 'practice' an idea.
... there is a "paper cutter", a "paper shredder", cutting it with a knife, tearing it, etc. Each of these 'inventions' is a specific method which allows me to practice an idea -- cutting paper.
Lets say I have a patent for a device designed to cut paper. Let's call my invention "scissors." The patent doesn't cover "how to cut paper", it covers a specific device capable of cutting paper. There are many methods that can be used to cut paper
The idea of "making a note related to a phone call" isn't what is being patented. The particular method they used to solve the problem IS.
Etc.
I wish he wanted to patent get 3 billion patents.
There should be a treshhold somewhere which eventually triggers legislators to recognise the absurd greed behind this mindset.
Certain level of greed is simply crime against humanity.
Mr. Gates and Microsoft is pushing the limit.
Disclaimer: 1) I am in no way affiliated with IBM, and know they abused their monopoly in the '80 too. I just think it's ridiculous to compare IBM and MS R&D results, just name 1 significant MS innovation.
The BSOD, its such a helpful tool.
It looks like you're trying to identify one or more examples of Microsoft ingenuity and creativity! Would you like some suggestions?
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
You know you're reading Slashdot when three completely separate posts with "return false" jokes get modded +4 and +5 Funny.
It's not an obvious technique, and it's almost certainly unique and novel.
It's very obvious.
You want to abstract/summarise a non-computer information source automatically using a computer - an obvious task for automation. You've got sound and you've got video. With the current state of the art the computer is not intelligent enough to interpret this information source directly.
What else is the computer going to do except look for loud noises and possibly contrasting lights? Sure, you could come up with Heath Robinson nonsense variations but loud noises are by far the most obvious approach.
With the stroke of a pen the USPTO has now blocked any realistic competition in yet another area for decades to come, retarding the state of the art.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Why don't they just impose a patent limit on companies? If each company is limited to 10 patents, we wouldn't have to deal with this mess. Have an option to release a patent if you want to file a new one after you've reached 10 patents.
Or would it just start a slew of people operating multiple companies and licensing their software to their other companies?
Aren't you supposed to have actually invented what you are trying to patent...? Unless MS did actually "invent" those... techniques, then wouldn't they not be able to patent them?
I guess only if you are rich and can buy laws. >:(
Annotating programs for automatic summary generations [Identifying when baseball is exciting]
Audio/video programming content is made available to a receiver from a content provider, and meta data is made available to the receiver from a meta data provider. The meta data corresponds to the programming content...
It's called closed/open captioning/teletext data/subtitling. It's exciting when the typist/stenographer cannot keep up with the real audio. It's not exciting otherwise.
Video Production Support
That's would fix everything.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I hold a patent on an algorithm that was approved by the USPTO. I'm not very proud of it, but it was approved, without any claims that it was anything but an algorithm.
"The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48" Legitimacy Le*git"i*ma*cy (-i^*m.a*sy^), n. See Legitimate, a. The state, or quality, of being legitimate, or in conformity with law; hence, the condition of having been lawfully begotten, or born in wedlock. 1913 Webster The doctrine of Divine Right, which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of Legitimacy. --Macaulay. 1913 Webster Strictly by definition of "legitimate", doesn't it appear that even though we all may not agree with software patents, they are in fact a legitimate business model ? Or does it depend upon your definition of the word legitimate?
My humor is probably your flamebait
Someone put together a script that pulls up software patents (or lets people suggest them) and rates them. People can go through and hit an "obvious" or "unobvious" button to see the next patent.
Engineers whose names are on the most "obvious" patents each month would get a boobyprize.
Give people an incentive NOT to put their names on stupid patents.
The SCOTUS ruled that genetically-engineered organisms were patentable.
Heh heh heh yeah... and I've worked with patented bacteria in bio -_-
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Worry not about patents.. make your inventions, then money. Patent fights will come later. Use your money to fight a little, pay a little, and still make profit. Those who worry about patents make nothing, and make nothing.
"Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"
/. editors would apply this mentality to the front page!
:)
Now only if the
A little late, I know
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
Seriously, I know all you foreigners are not gonna agree with it nor are most of the Americans. But baseball is always exciting. There is no other sport that during the season you can watch your favorite team everyday except for the 8 days they get off during the season. No other sport has as many "plays" as baseball. Baseball has roughly 300 "plays", meaning that there is a pitched ball 300 times per game. Football maybe has 60 plays per game. There is also not nearly as much history in other sports as there is in Baseball, and by other sports I mean the big 5 (baseball, hockey, football, soccer and basketball). The game's been almost unchanged for 150 years. What about "The shot heard round the world", or Cal Ripken playing in 2637 consecutive games. Hank Aaron hitting 755 home runs. Or even the everyday things like a 100 mph fastball or a curveball that breaks 3 feet. Or even the split second diving play at third or climbing the fence to rob a homerun. I know this is a rant, but baseball is always exciting. There is no clock, the offence reacts to the defence, there are no fouls(I mean penalties), they play everyday, and who can't root for their favorite team even if its been years since they won the world series? If you think baseball is boring it's because you don't understand the game.
Oh, and FK Microsoft for trying to shorten sports.....that is why we have ESPN isn't it?
The problem is the useless patent office. How can they approve the patent on something so vague?
Just because I word it as
'A way of inhaling and exhaling alternately, beginning at a point close to the user's birth and ceasing at death.'
doesn't mean I can patent breathing!
I think it's just that lawyer's inability to concisely state the bleeding obvious with the computer industry's ability to create new technical jargon on a daily basis. The lawyers cannot understand each other's babble and so allow the patenting of ridiculous things just because they have been carefully worded to sound unique.
It is absolutely impossible that such an operation has never been done before but you can't convince a patent lawyer that something is so obvious that there really is only one way to do it on a computer, so they allow whoever has the money to sit around all day doing this to get away with it.
Can someone with some cash and time please patent
'A method of causing a computer to take action based on a list of instructions that guide the computer and the user through a set of operations to a logical conclusion.'
so that we can ALWAYS have prior claim and finally show these guys (ie the Patent Office) the door.
'Thanks for all your work... morons! Go back to sueing victims of robberies or something.'
Aaron.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Yes, but the grandparent post did make a valid and highly important point. Both Baseball and the Grateful Dead really, really suck. In terms of entertaining ways to pass the time they rank along side being tortured by Iraqi insurgents or dying of cancer. They are two of only a few activities that would be improved by a suicide bomber.
Really. Keep it up Bill. Go for 12,000 next year.
With sufficient abuse will come sufficient pain that the USPTO position in business and science will be forced into a renegotiation as it becomes more and more obvious that you simply cannot do business in this country. While the patent farms are screaming for their right to innovate it will become more obvious that they are only trying to smother the competition. And the competition will go to other nations where US Patent enforcement is more lax. And we will be met with an overseas flood of not only our patented products being made overseas, but highly innovative products being sold from overseas nations.
The damage to the American Economy will be extensive. Between our brain-drain in Acedamia and our innovation-sewer in business, it's starting to look like someone is strip-mining the US rather than trying to keep it vital and alive.
My company is pushing the same thing, they want patents done every year so they can farm out their business space and push back the competitors as far away from their sandbox as possible. This isn't innovation, it's isolation.
A patent a day keeps the competition away.
Pixels keep you awake!
You know the patent spree could be related to shutting out opensource movement. They patent trivial things and opensource can't do them.
I am not a lawyer. However, I have worked enough with patent lawyers to pick up a feel for what makes an idea patentable.
... ", something or other. Software can be used as a component or step in the patented process. Even if one of the components were not patentable, the process (which includes a specific problem being solved) would be patentable.
One of the things that can be patented is a process transforming input to outputs. The claims for these patents can read like, "A method for
The analogy that I think of is, let's say you couldn't patent a hammer (because that represents software or a mathematical algorithm) but you might still be able to patent the process of hitting a nail with the hammer to drive it in.
While I agree that there's something about software that makes if feel intuitively unpatentable, when looked at from the perspective of patenting a process of which software is a component, software patents do not seem to represent a radical shift in what has always constituted a patent.
How long until they pattend taking a piss?
i don't care
[Disclaimer: I'm the author of the editorial.]
While I realize its great fun to come down on Microsoft for this, is this really their fault?
If the system was not broken, it would not be necessary to patent every fart that comes outta Bill Gates ass.
As it stands, any company these days has to patent the shit out of whatever they do, or risk ligitation from some other company. (I'm looking at you here Darl...)
So I welcome Microsofts patents, keep on going, break the system.
Except that that would leave Microsoft (and all the rest of us) open to "look and feel" style lawsuits. Every gui developer would face a landmine and every app that performs a similar function (say a word processor) would face claims of "similar design elements".
"taking the piss"?
To you. I find it interesting that people that shit over someone else's entertainment themselves have very lame preferences also.
Go ahead, enlighten us with the superior music choice or sports activity that put both Baseball and The Grateful Dead to shame.
Of course, you won't post anything as whatever you post will and can be torn to shreds also. But you're trying to be a troll on a thread that's already dead. The only reason I saw it was you responded to my post.
If a troll farts in the woods when no one is around, does anyone care? BTW I don't like either the Dead or Baseball...but I don't shit all over it either.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I already patented "Method In Which To Patent Bullshit". Microsoft owes me BIG now... LOL
--PATENT PENDING
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Nope. As a law student studying patent law, I can tell you that it's settled law in the U.S. Inventions involving software can be patented.
They do, however, have to create a concrete and tangible result. In other words, in order to be patentable, an algorithm cannot merely be a transformation on abstract data or numbers, but must at least be a transformation that generates as a result some data that is 'concrete and tangible'. This means that the result must have some meaning in the real world, and cannot be merely abstract numbers.
This requirement is met by a number indicating a price, as in State Street. Exactly what is concrete and tangible may play out a bit more in the courts, and in fact, may change over time, but the patentability of software is settled.
Do you have a case you can cite?
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.