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Epicrealm Uses Vague Patents to sue Web Sites
An anonymous reader writes "InfoSpinner/epicRealm holds two patents that basically describe every dynamic Web site in existence and is now using them to sue companies like eHarmony.
This patent seems to describe a standard web/application server setup.
This one describes 'dynamically generating a Web page in response to the request, the Web page including data dynamically retrieved from one or more data sources.'
If enforced, these patents could shut down almost every dynamic site on the Internet, including the USPTO."
If enforced, these patents could shut down almost every dynamic site on the Internet, including the USPTO
Perhaps that would facilitate some change. It seems that, throughout history, things only got better after they got much worse. Gas prices will probably continue soaring until we have a Boston Gas Party (which will probably be a lot more fun than the Boston Tea Party - at least in the south). The combination of asinine software patents and litigious bastards will most likely continue on too, at least until things get so bad that some as insane as suing the USPTO actually does happen - or until we have our own little patent reform party =)
I hereby patent any/all form(s) of thought(s). You all owe me $.02 for each thought you have. Gotta love being able to put a patent on something you didn't come up with, especially since it's virtual, and not even physically existent.
I've news for you. In case you haven't noticed, Europe is not a single state. There are many countries in Europe, and different countries have different policies for software patents. For how long will this situation last, i do not know.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
I'm frankly excited about the suit. No sitting judge could possibly hope to rule in favor of Epicrealm (at least not without an embarassing overturning by another judge). Every loss by a software-patent holding party weakens the whole idea of software patents, and hopefully expedites the severe restriction/outright end thereof. Kudos to Epicrealm for fighting for the right side, even if it is only accidentally.
"Fight for lost causes. You may discover they weren't."
Should they be suing the company that made the server software, instead of the client who purchased it? Unless eHarmony developed they're on webserver, in which case, how did they find out??
The Digital Couture Collection
We need a high-profile case of a patent abuser getting a stiff fine. Or even frogmarched to jail for a stint. If I got the County Clerk to hand me a title deed to some "real property", without proper boundaries drawn on it, then went around the countryside demanding rent, there would be hell to pay. The first time, I'd probably just get a spanking from the cops and the District Attorney. After that, I'd be in jail for harrassment. And if the Clerk did that more than once, they'd be fired. If not, their boss would be fired. If not, then the obvious collusion to enable me to harrass and defraud property owners would send them to jail, too. If I were doing this to collect rent on land that no one owned, like a public forest, I'd go to jail the first time around.
Patent abuse is not only a fraud exactly like that scam. It also destroys the fragile system defended only virtually, without the actual land that backs real estate, and makes the whole economy more solid. Patents, the office that issues them and the laws that back them are already pretty stupid and abusable, even when they're administered as carefully as possible - particularly on software. Now it's obvious that they are a tool for interfering with "progress in science and the useful arts", rather than promoting it. Heads must roll before the crooks are running the entire landscape.
--
make install -not war
as a simple example, the Inktomi and AltaVista search engines were publicly available before April, 1996 (the filing date) and they used dynamic content generation (by definition).
Wake up,
EU Commission is busy trying to make patent infringment as crime (it was in that Criminialise-all-IP-infingements directive they just released). Not only could they close down the EU Patent office website, they could get them locked up for up to 4 years if this patent existed in Europe.....
The EU Commission really has to be raked in before its too late. How about their power to propose directives is removed. That would be similar to a proper Parliamentary directive where the civil servants don't create the laws.
And how does the studying of patentese further the progression of technology? If a patent cannot be understood by a person skilled in the art, it is 100% useless as a means of disclosure of an invention. As disclosure is the reason we have patent law in the first place, this argument seems to contradict the existence of patents.
Maybe it's time that the OSS community began to get 'investors' to patent obvious ideas...
The concept is simple: Start a dynamiclly driven web site (Oops... ;-), which lets users add ideas for patents and vote on what they think are the most likely to actually be implemented. Then find donors to fund the EFF to write patent applications, and to submit them.
If the patent succeeds, licence it under an OSS licence, that gives unlimited use unless the site's portfolio is challenged in court. If this happens, all users must come to the rescue of the site.
But the better outcome is that the patent office rejects the patent as 'obvious'. If the average /.'er can think of it then it must be obvious ;-)... And then when you get sued by someone, you can take your site and the rejected 'obvious' patent and ask the court to rule how that someone else's patent is not obvious, because you implemented based on what the patent office already declared obvious...
Regards,
-Jeremy
Fucking "Ajax". IT'S A CLEANING PRODUCT!
Nothing makes me angrier than some idiot jumping on the nearest bandwagon and suddenly deciding that their newest favorite toy is applicable to EEEEVERYTHING, Ignoring the fact that the web is supposed to be entire documents, not little tiny chunks of session-dependant XML, the bar to entry for displaying an 'Ajax' based page is much higher than that of a normal web page. And lightweight browsers are coming waaay back into fashion (who has a browser on their cellphone? does it handle javascript? how about non-standard extensions, such as xmlhttp?).
It's a stupidly named buzzword, based on a function Microsoft implemented first (which is also stupidly named)
AJAX, supposedly, stands for "Asyncrous Javascript And Xml". Well,
a) It doesn't have to be asyncrous. There's a flag on the xmlhttp function to tell it whether to run syncrously or asyncrously. In many situations it's often better to run it syncrously, if the user has to wait for whatever-it-is-you're-doing, rather than just silently sending a request and suddenly popping up with a result unannounced.
b) It doesn't have to be Javascript. You can implement it clientside in whatever scripting language your target browser supports. Not that that's a good idea. (and don't get me started on the name 'Javascript')
c) It doesn't have to be XML. In fact XML is quite a heavyweight format for a lot of things. Yes you can compress it as part of the http connection, yes it's a very flexible format, but if you're dumping, say, coordinate data, xml is 1) very bulky and 2) harder to parse than something a bit simpler
So the only part of that acronym that isn't bullshit, is the word "And".
Idiots.
Filed in 1996? Are they out of their freaking minds? There is so much prior art, it's hard to even quantify it.
I think there should be a special type of punishment for people who apply for patents like this, long after the technology has gone into use, and it should go double for any moron who approves it. Perferably something with ants, fire, or boards studded with nails.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The patent specifically limits itself to sites that dynamically generate HTML.
Simple solution, use XHTML.