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Eminent Domain Applied to IP Due To State Secrets
NormalVisual writes "Wired recently ran a story about a group of inventors that found themselves unable to sue Lucent Technologies for infringement of a patent they held on a novel design for a pipe/cable connector. They had been working with Lucent on an underwater application for this connector, but unfortunately for the inventors, Lucent's application was being developed for an as-yet-unnamed branch of the U.S. government. The government is now claiming a state-secret privilege, and is refusing to let the inventors sue Lucent for patent infringement, citing national security concerns. In the meantime, Lucent continues to directly profit from their invention without paying any royalties or other compensation. The patent in question can be found online. It's doubly a shame because, unlike so many other patents that we've seen here, this one is actually creative and non-obvious." We've touched on this topic before.
So we want Chinese peasants to pay to watch "Steamboat Willie", but real, live inventors are SOL. God, what a country!
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Ah yes our current government, ever the defender of the small business and common man.
Sounds more like theft than eminent domain. With eminent domain, the government takes your stuff but has to give you market value for it. Here, they're just taking patents away from the inventor. OK, maybe not taking away, but denying the holders of that patent the right to use it in this specific case, which is just as good as taking it away.
If its a foregone conclusion that the 'Government Agency' are using this tech as provided by Lucent then I don't see how 'state secret' can be a problem (or excuse).
If the 'Government Agency' is allowed this holier-than-thou stance then the plaintiff should just be able to ask: Are you using our tech as provided by Lucent? The agency can then just say yay or nay.
I'm pretty sure the value of the defence contract for Lucent isn't any kind of secret so the courts should award a *fair* share of that ammount to the plaintiff if it is found that Lucent infringed their IP.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
So can someone tell me which criteria of fascism we haven't had happen yet.
Essentially this means that the Federal Government and the contractor working for them can't be sued. All they have to do is invoke the states secret privilege and the suit disappears. Anything can become a secret if the government decides that it is important for the safety and security of the country. Since terrorists and hurricanes can strike anywhere, and at anything or anyone, it is all up for grabs.
Sure, while this may actually be a valid use for patents - its gotten to the point where the entire system is beyond repair. Personally I'd love to see this case as being something that helps to revamp the entire patent law (which we all know is necessary). The whole idea of patent law (and copyright law) was to create a system that helped the 'little guy' - instead what we find now is that it only helps the huge corporations that are able to sue for millions in 'damages'. Sad as it may be that someone actually has a valid patent... if this leads to someone (that can do something) to actually look at the law and reform it, I'm all for it.
1) the company didn't get any cash, like they would in an eminent domain case
2) the company still has patent rights for other uses. Lucent can't license the patent to others for any non-secret projects.
It's more like Lucent is engaging in software or music piracy and thanks to "Kings-X" getting away with it.
Now, if the patent holders refused to license the patent at all, or put onerous restrictions on it, and the government siezed the patent in toto so industry could license it, and paid off the patent owner, that would be eminent domain.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Funny how they rejected this court case stating that going forward would provide more information on this patent to the public, thus causing a "national security" concern due to its secret use. Of course doing so causes it to be national news.. Yep good way to keep it secret.
Why not a secret trial? We have all heard about the military tribunals, why not do that for a corporation?
Not only "land of the free" but "land of the lawyers" who love a good old 1st amendment smackdown. Shihar 153932
for the article summary to call this an application of eminent domain?
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Hmmmm. IFF the Declaration held the power of law...
Petents don't help innovation, and they especially do not help the little guy. They are also not pro-business (contrary to popular belief)
I think it is in human nature, then when a system doesn't work, that we try to force it and tweek it to work even if it's premise isn't sound. If people would stop thinking about the "theory" of patents, and stop thinking about the "business" of patnets, and start thinking about the nature of patents - that is to coerce, threaten, and nickel and dime others who use shared ideas by imposing on them the full force of government. I think the debate about patnet problems would take on a whole new meaning.
Are patents evil, or are they good?
...because you know everything has to be one or the other. It's not like some things could be beneficial when applied in certain ways (like traditional patents on non-obvious inventions) and yet be detrimental when used in other ways (patenting business ideas, existing inventions, existing common practices or ideas with "on the internet" appended, software patents, etc.). Can't someone please come up with simple absolute rules for everything so we don't have to think?
It's hard to let Slashdot tell me what to think when they post stories on _both_ sides of an argument!
Yeah we all hate it when a discussion site posts both good and bad things done by a person, organization, or process. That might foster, well discussion.
Man I hope you're trying to be funny, because some days I really can't tell on Slashdot anymore.
Funny the US wants a global IP plan, but yet they screw the IP holders in their own domain. Makes one wonder the fun times of the future in a global sense.
No power gives the government the ability to take property from you and give it to someone else without compensation. Yet, in this case, that is the result. Why? It's a loophole, and Lucent has exploited it marvelously.
Consider: The executive priviledge in question (and the court case cited) gives the government the ability to restrict the release of information deemed important to national security. That's all.
How did Lucent exploit this to their advantage? They promised to pay for the technology, signed contracts and everything. Then they simply didn't pay. Now, it's up to the screwed party in this case, the plaintiff, to sue for recompense. The plaintiff brings suit. And, in the course of the trial, the plaintiff requests discovery from Lucent to verify it's claims and help make it's case.
Uh-oh. Here's where Big Brother steps in. The government says "you can't talk about that" to the courts, and to both parties. Now what is the plaintiff supposed to do? What evidence can he use? There's probably a contract that details specific technology that they now can't disclose. If they blot out the parts that are sensitive, Lucent can use that to claim reasonable doubt. They can't investigate Lucent to find out that they actually took and used said technology, because Lucent can't reveal that information to the court. The plaintiff is completely screwed, against all logic and reason.
I especially love the quote from the Lucent representative: "You can't try this case in your publication". They understand the issues well enough to know how to screw people; and they did it intentionally.
This is becoming more and more common. I have high voltage power lines, 100 ft tall, in my back yard. Yet, I never gave permission to the power company to put them there. I rejected their low offer when they called to try to purchase an easement, and they said "fine". They never filed condemnation proceedings to take the land. They simply built the power lines illegally, over my objections. They can do this because, in Oklahoma, the constitution provides that the maximum damages for them doing so are the same as the cost of the easement. The most it will cost them is what a judge decides the easement is worth. But, now, it's up to me to file suit to get those damages, which means I'll probably just end up with their low offer minus attorney fees.
And they do this as a matter of course, to everyone. It's fascism by definition.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
RTFA!
It's doubly a shame because, unlike so many other patents that we've seen here, this one is actually creative and non-obvious.
Patents CAN be good, but in the current state the patent system is in it gets abused. But here we have someone using the patent system as it was designed, to protect non-obvious ideas and they can't fight it.
This is ridiculous. What information is relevant to the patent, and possible patent litigation, that the inventors do not already have access to?
How much the government is paying Lucent? What the end use of the technology is?
The US Government should either allow the lawsuit to proceed, in a closed setting, with NDAs all around (provided security checks pan out), or pay the inventors.
Is the not the purpose of the patent to allow dissemination of knowledge while protecting revenue sources for the inventor?
If the knowledge is not being disseminated, Lucent should not be protected by a patent.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Of course, doing this would make major patent holders a little more nervous, but it's still a more equitable resultion under the rule of law than "no, you can't sue him, even though you're getting screwed." In the meanwhile, all these guys can do under the current mess is fall back on "peacable petition for redress of grievances"... which is not likely to be effective in this political climate.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
They're *supposed* to give you fair market value, but as the recent cases involving Wal-Mart, etc. have shown, that "fair market value" is often nothing of the sort, and equates to theft just as much as the situation in the article. "Eminent domain" in the headline was intended to be seen in that context, not necessarily in the strictest definition of the term.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The Constitution forbids taking private property for public use without just compensation. If the Feds want to take the "intellectual property" for "National Security" or whatever reasons, they are required to compensate them - assuming the patent owner files a lawsuit in the right form asking the right questions. Doesn't sound like they've done that yet.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They're not claiming eminent domain, and the original article doesn't mention it; that's from the summary written by the submitter.
They're claiming instead something called the state secrets privilege, which has nothing to do with property (intellectual or otherwise) but rather with quashing the lawsuit. Eminent domain has to do with real, not intellectual, property, since it is a "taking", and as is incessantly pointed out on Slashdot you can't "take" intellectual property.
What that big state secret is, of course, I can't say, since most of the filings in the case are (duh) secret.
In other words, the government isn't claiming that it has any rights to the patent; it's just claiming that the guy isn't allowed to sue, because that would violate some big state secret.
So they get to use the patent, with no legal right to it, but what kind of right is it that you can't enforce under the law? No right at all. Sound like a totalitarian regime to you? Gold star!
The U.S. court system posthumously awarded patents for the invention of radio to Nikola Tesla in the 40's. It's been posited that the reason this was done was because current patent holder Marconi was suing the US Army for infringement. The US Government sidestepped paying out massive royalties to Marconi by ruling that Tesla, dead and unable to collect, was the rightful holder of the patents.
And what are they supposed to say?
"I'd like compensation for DELETED, which consists of DELETED, and is worth DELETED on the market, because it's comparable to DELETED which costs DELETED yet is better because of DELETED improvements."
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The difference here is that Lucent is PROFITING from IP they stole from the inventors. There's nothing they can do while Lucent will continue to commit theft in (likely) an ongoing sole-source contract to provide connectors.
Perhaps the inventors should talk to someone from the Global Intellectual Property Rights Academy?
This has absolutely nothing to do with eminent domain. It would be better for the inventor if it was eminent domain, becuase under that doctrine he'd have to be paid a fair market value for his property. Under this, a more favored vendor is allowed to steal is property, and the government is taking away his right to defend his property in the name of national security. It has nothign to do with the government taking the property itself.
This is the state secrecy doctrine. It says to right in the friggen linked article, with a highly informative blurb in the third paraqraph:
I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_Domain for more information on Emininent Domain and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Secrets_Privil
The linked article would have been more informative if they had mentioned "US vs. Reynolds", the 1953 case in which the US Supreme Court which actually established the privilege in the US . In that case, the widows of three crew members of a B-29 sued the US government for information relating to a crash that killed their husbands. The US government claimed that since they were working on a classified project, divulging the accident report would undermine national security.
As it turned out, they lied. There was nothing sensitive at all in the accident report. There was embarassing information about incompetence and negligence in the maintenance of the aircraft. Which goes to show what Ben Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." There is nothing more dangerous to liberty than allowing the government to act without accountability, purely on its say so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To all my US friends (and enemies if I have any) - RTFA!!!
This isn't about patents, so much as it is about how the executive branch of the US government (nope - not just Bush) can and does abuse its powers. Its used to allow kidnappings, extortion, and yes, the rip off of legitimate patent holders.
There is no oversight that conforms to the principles of natural justice - and to think that the US dares to want to train foreign judges on patent/copyright. The US executive branch is unfortunately comprised of a bunch of unaccountable hypocrites, speaking about freedom and democracy publicly, but doing exactly the opposite behind closed doors.
Each of you, if you truly believe in freedom and justice, should be writing to your members of the Senate and Congress. If you want a fair and just government - the type of government you thought the founding fathers had set out in the consitution, you should be reading the article, sitting down and making your thoughts known to those who can change this.
1. State secret.
2. Publicly posted patent.
I suspect this is not a legal/governmental snafu at all, but rather a behavioral experiment to see how stupid an excuse the government can manage to get away with foisting off on people while essentially conducting crimes that they'd never let the people get away with.
Maybe that's a little far fetched. OK, so it's really just people in government offices fucking with people and laughing about it. There, that makes more sense.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Evil when they're owned by big companies. Good when they're owned by little people and infringed by big companies:)
One-sided posts are all my feeble mind can handle!
Judging from the results of the last election, you're in good company.
This looks to me like it would be useful for attaching two cables using an ROV. The inventor in the article mentions that the other solution was like a thermos bottle and was inferior. If you look at the way the pieces mate, regardless of the initial orientation, they will slide into each other properly. The "thermos bottle" solution might be two cylinders, one of which slides into the other making a tight fit. Suppose you have an ROV which has to mate two cables. The grapple may have an error in mating in rotation, translation, and angle. If you push these connectors together with reasonable errors in any of these parameters, the connectors will properly mate and make a seal. Robots have a hard time doing things like putting keys in locks, but this doesn't have that problem. Also, a human doing the mating might have trouble with other connectors because of the suit he would have to wear in very high pressure has limited maneuverability.
This could be useful for tapping cables if they used the widely known technique the NSA used of storing data in a recorder and coming back periodically to retrieve it. You have to connect a cable to the recorder when you come back to read out the data. It would make sense to have an ROV do this. Also, ROV capability has been emphasized in the public information about the Jimmy Carter. Another possibility is that the submarine would hold a shortish length of cable from the tap site due to limited capacity (although the Carter has quite a bit), pay that out, and have a cable laying ship drop an ROV to connect to a longer cable which would go to shore. If you had a connector that you could connect with an ROV, you could do the long cable lay with the surface ship after the sub was done to make it harder to figure out what cable was being tapped.
The patent infringment part of the suit was dropped, not due to state secrets, but because there is a Federal law that states use by the government is not an actionable infringement.
They have most of their evidence eexcluded for the remainder of their case (trade secret and breach of contract) because it is claimed it endangers national security. It may be false, in which case it is an injustice, or true, in which case disclosure would harm national security - many people can be dead - if we can't intercept when and where Al Qaeda plans to nuke us (look up "Americam Hiroshima"), it could be millions. Since this possibly deals indirectly with tapping undersea fiber cables, that isn't far fetched. I live in Las Vegas, one of the cities Al Qaeda has its eyes on - I believe in freedom - but we need to protect Americans. Again, the gov't can be lying, or telling the truth, I, and you all, don't know which.
A public trial, even with the evidence already made public, could help the enemy piece things together in a coherent whole. Much of intelligence isn't just the pieces of the puzzle, but how they fit. A trial may provide that and make the puzzle "come together" and be much more useful to the enemy.
I'm afraid that even this Slashdot story might help those we don't want helped.
As for the inventors, they have not had the trade secret and breach of contract dismissed. Judges might allow them to recover if they have other evidence and they might be willing to give them leeway because they had evidence they can't use.
As far as I can tell, they are free to license the patent to others and sue them if they infringe. The application must have other uses and it appears they still have full rights in that area. Eminent domain is wrong, they still have their patent - they just have a compulsory license (which most of us like when it comes to music, etc and the public) to the government and their trade secret and breach of contract suits are impeded. Not good, and Lucent should honor contracts (if they are or they aren't I don't know) in any event.
If you wrote software, and one client got to use it without paying you and you had no recourse it would be bad, but if you have full rights in regards to other clients you'd likely be OK.
Why did the inventors only deal with Lucent?
The patented invention wasn't made secret, the patent is still available on the gov't own site!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Can't someone please come up with simple absolute rules for everything so we don't have to think?
1 - Microsoft, SCO, MPAA, RIAA, & all corporations unless noted in rule 2 = Bad
2 - Linux, Google, Apple, AMD = Good
3 - DRM, outsourcing = Bad
4 - Open source, P2P = Good
5 - Patents, Copyright = Bad, unless being used against a big corp
6 - Goverment = Bad unless they are installing WiFi in your town
7 - NASA = Good, unless they say they will not keep Hubble in space
8 - USA = Arrogant
9 - Religion = only post flames, any intelligent conversation for or against religion will be ignored
10 - In Soviet Russia, Does it run Linux, Beowulf Cluster, I for one welcome, etc = overused, but still must be modded +5 funny
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
In a situation like this where the courts are REFUSING to provide justice, people should be able to go out and get it themselves.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The Roman fasces (root of the word fascist) consists of an axe within a bundle of rods, bound by a red strap. As a symbol of state power, the rods were for beating prisoners, the axe for decapitating them.
This emblem on Mussolini's flag of office, the symbol of his Partito Nazionale Fascista, and the the present Guardia Civil (Franco's jackbooted thugs) can also be found on the the 1916-1945 US dimes, the Lincoln memorial chair; all over the US Capitol, including multiple copies on the Speaker's rostrum, the National Guard insignia, etc, etc,
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
with the pharmaceutical industry getting a lot of their basic research performed in public institutions with government grants, and then getting to patent the drug, we're the one's getting screwed. Twice!!
Yeap! BMS, Bristol-Myers Squibb, using Taxol is an excellent example. The NCI, National Cancer Institute, part of the fed's National Health Institute spent $183 million doing the research into developing Taxol from the Pacific Yew tree. Yet they practically gave away to BMS, who makes more than a billion dollars a year on the sale of Taxol, the "rights" to use all of the data from the clinical trials. The US tax payer got ripped off!!! And cancer patients who need Taxol are getting ripped off as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I remember some 50 years ago, a guy in my home town was suing the government. It went to the Supreme Court, and he won. Harold Pitcairn brought the first rotorcraft to the US in the '20's and later developed cyclic and collective pitch control, and other concepts that made the helicopter possible. Since the government wanted helicopters for WWII, they bypassed the Pitcairn patents. I don't think the secrecy card was played, it was just the national security plea. So he ended up getting a fairly good settlement from the government and the helicopter manufacturers.