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Google Talk Targeted In Patent Lawsuit

Posted by Zonk on from the suing-is-such-a-noble-business dept.

JamesAlfaro wrote to mention an Ars Technica story, which goes into the recent filing of a suit against Google Talk. A Delaware corporation claims that Talk infringes on two of its patents. From the article: "You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services. By all appearances, RTI is a company that was set up to collect licensing fees and pursue settlements related to the company's patent portfolio. Gerald J. Weinberger, president of Rates technology Inc., once said that the company was 'an enterprise based on patent licensing,' and that much of its business depended on the courts." Certainly seems like there are a lot of those businesses around nowadays, huh?

49 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Yawn... Nothing here, move along please. by XorNand · · Score: 5, Informative
    The two patents in question are not for inventions, but processes relating to using a regular telephone to make long distance calls. The patents focus on the use of a centralized database with pricing information for the purposes of determining the cheapest phone call carrier on the fly.
    Are you kidding me? It's called "least cost call routing" and is pretty much a no-brainer. The VoIP service company that I run has six different trunks from four carriers for redundancy reasons. It didn't take long for it to dawn on me that maybe I should take advantage of the different rates to different destinations. One carrier might be cheaper for calls to Italy, while another is cheaper to Japan.

    As for prior art, can we cite OSPF? How about using a map to avoid toll roads on a trip? Or choosing from several of those 10-10 long distance services, depending on who's cheaper at the moment? It's all the same process (which is the basis for the claim). Just because the calculation is done with a computer instead of a human brain doesn't make it any different.

    Somehow I'm not worried about a legal precedent being set though. Rates Technology Inc. just put a company with a $123 billion market cap in their crosshairs. They might as well be using a slingshot and they know it. This is a blatent effort to extort a settlement out of someone with deep pockets. RTI would never try this crap with my company. I hope that Google viciously spanks them on principle.
    --
    Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
    1. Re:Yawn... Nothing here, move along please. by isdnip · · Score: 5, Informative

      OSPF? You're not even touching a huge well of prior art that predates OSPF by years! This goes right back to telephone network switches and direct distance dialing. By the late 1970s, most major PBX systems had least-cost routing features, some more sophisticated than that named in the Weinberger "patent". And after Equal Access created 10xxx codes, there were boxes that updated tables to decide which 10xxx was cheapest for any given call. All of this directly wipes out the patent in question. (And yes, I've offered information about this to a high-placed person in Google.)

      However, the VoIP service doesn't even seem to infringe upon the patent itself, as if the patent were valid, so the case fails on those grounds too. This looks like a blatant attempt to use a trash patent against a deep-pocketed victim in hopes of getting quick cash, rather than dealing with a lawsuit that might somehow upset investors.

    2. Re:Yawn... Nothing here, move along please. by rainman_bc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      One of these days some Attorney General planning to run for Governor will wise up to this scam, and go after these firms for criminal extortion.

      Generally though the Attoerney General is a lawyer and has many lawyer friends, probably some of which funded his campaign.

      Beacuse the US has such an open system of corruption (which country doesn't though?), it's unlikely you'll ever see this business model done away with any time soon.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    3. Re:Yawn... Nothing here, move along please. by syzler · · Score: 2, Informative

      The patent 5,425,085 appears to be for the device that implements least cost routing using a database, not the concept and patent 5,519,769 appears to be the method to update the database. A conversation with the CEO of RTI indicates that Sharp Electronics, Cisco, Nortel, and Lucent have already paid for the permission to use this patent or a Covenant Not Sue (CNS).

      I'm willing to bet that you are using Cisco, Nortel, or Lucent gear at your shop to perform least cost routing which why you would not have to pay RTI a CNS since you are covered by your gear's manufacturer. In addition, the patents only refer to devices that use databses to determine routing, if your configuration is manually updated the patent would not apply to you. The problem with Google talk is that the "device" is the clients' computers (and I doubt seriously that Dell, HP, Apple, etc have paid for the permission to use this patent) and the database is Google's server.

      Now I am not sure how his patent can apply towards Google Talk since telephone lines are not used by Google Talk and the patent '085 explicitly specifies telephone lines. I also read references that the patent has been revised over the last few years, but I lost the links to support this statement.

  2. Who does the law protect? by dada21 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here is the end game of all patent protection laws -- making the attorneys wealthy. Patents are a government granted monopoly. All government granted monopolies take advantage of their power over time -- and the big winners are the lawyers, of course.

    Do you expect another result? Do you expect patents to make people innovate? We've been human for thousands of years, we've innovated for thousands of years. New products hit the market every day that were designed by some mom or some kid in a garage -- they didn't think of patents when they started designing.

    The force of the law can not truly protect inventions, which is based on thought. Intellectual property is another word for "we want to control how you think and how you process a thought into an action." It seems criminal to me that I can't take a person's creation, make it better and sell the better version myself. This is how our lives get better -- innovating, modifying, perfecting, debugging. No idea is truly revolutionary, we just take little bits and pieces from what isn't working perfectly, and we find ways to make things better.

    We elect lawyers to make laws, and in the end, the laws only protect the lawyers. We have accountants write tax code and in the end, the tax code only protects the accountants. This is what comes from excessive government force.

    There are many people here who want patent laws to work -- I commend you for continuing to try to find a way to force other people to be good to one another. I have yet to hear HOW we can make patent protections work. We're humans, we're out for our own interests, and that will never change. Why would I want to give certain elected greedy humans this power?

    1. Re:Who does the law protect? by angaram · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree with the front half of your criticism: the system is broken and makes lawyers rich. Yet without some kind of protection, corporations can cut out the middle man and outright steal ideas and take them to market faster or cheaper than the upstart/mom&pop inventor can. Again, I agree that as it is the little folk have little recourse, de facto. I guess all I am saying is that some kind of legal protection system is not only good in principle, but is actually needed; but a whole brand new, reworked, better system.

    2. Re:Who does the law protect? by dada21 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The funny thing is, show me more than a handful of inventors who truly made it big from their inventions.

      Most inventions are performed by hired staff in the research and development wing. There is nothing preventing companies from creating a "protect our inventions" wing, or figuring out how much the initial product must sell for to recoup the costs before competitors knock it off.

      Define "whole brand new, reworked, better system" as I can't think of any, other than canning it entirely and replacing it with nothing.

    3. Re:Who does the law protect? by Chowderbags · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The majority of countries with high protections for IP have been well off for decades, if not hundreds of years. Do you think that if, say, the Congo instated US patent law in full force, that all the sudden they would become the patent producing capitol of the world? Ain't gonna happen.

      Those countries which have time to invent in the first place also happen to have time to dick around with IP laws, and generally they aren't helpful to the little guy if the court case to protect his IP is going to end up costing him more than he'd get from licensing.

      I'm not going to go so far as to say that all patents should be eliminated, cause that's no better than the above, but I also think that unless a company is actually producing (or trying to produce) a product with it's patent, they shouldn't get to sue someone. That would at least eliminate patent leeches on some level.

    4. Re:Who does the law protect? by kryonD · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd agree with you here except for one minor little detail, RTI doesn't have a product that needs protecting. It's not like they filed the patent to ensure BigCorp wouldn't steal the idea and beat them to market. They are basically running an electronic protection racket that would make the Mafia proud. I mean seriously, the only thing Google will get from licensing their patent is protection from being sued. RTI doesn't make any money on their idea unless someone else needs to use it. It's straight up, clear cut extortion. I too am waiting to see Google take this one all the way to the Supreme Court.

      --
      I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
    5. Re:Who does the law protect? by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While civilization has been innovating for millennia, but most innovation seems to have come in the last fifty, hundred or two hundred years. That isn't a case to say that patent law works as in causation, but the correllation is interesting and I wouldn't mind seeing whether there is a causal link between the rise of patents and the rise of innovation.

    6. Re:Who does the law protect? by aaronl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, there's a correlation, but you're just missing a lot of things, both on the inventions, and on the reasons.

      Some other factors that come to mind: greater population, stable governments, stable economies, safety, rising standards of living, rapid communication, rapid travel, etc. A few inventions enabled us to produce many many other inventions.

      You also forget that inventions before used to be huge things, too. The wheel, fire starters, crop technique, medical basics, optics (glasses, microscope, telescope). There was also the development of math, science, medicine, etc.

      I'd say we've had a pretty steady rate of invention to population over our history. Today, we have more population, so you have more inventions. Now we're seeing invention slow down, since it is extraordinarily difficult for a random person to have a quantum physics breakthrough, or design a new semiconductor. Just coming up with a possible new invention or discovery requires more resources and more knowledge than ever before.

      When you add in the difficulty of actually marketing a product because of the patent/copyright minefield, it gets much worse. Now you have to be quite wealthy to afford the patent search, to fend off the leeches like NTP/SCO/RTI, and to fight with or license other patents that may actually be sensible. Most of the problem is a direct result of "intellectual property". When you had to patent a specific design for a device, it mean someone could get to the same result in a different way, without infringing. The crap that constitutes IP does not have specific designs. The patents are broad, often obvious, and never necessary when it comes to IP.

      I think you will find that the advent of IP and IP protection slowed down development, and is going to result in a decline in innovation in the countries that fell into its trap.

    7. Re:Who does the law protect? by bit01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Um, explain then how the majority of innovations come from countries with high protection for IP (including patents) and countries with poor protection produce virtually none?

      Standard, bogus argument from the PTO.

      You're confusing correlation with causation. It could equally be that high innovation countries attract a patent mafia wanting to profit off of inventor's work. You have no evidence either way.

      It could also be that patent laws and innovations develop independently but at the same time as a consequence of some other factor involving normal social progression. Again, you have no evidence.

      ---

      Scientific, evidence based IP law. Now there's a thought.

  3. The New New Thing by MarkEst1973 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    IP Holding companies. I think we all know it's ridiculous, but so long as the law supports this kind of business I imagine we can expect to see more of the same.

    Let's hope that the big companies calling for patent reform manage to effect some positive change. Microsoft and Oracle in that article, I'm pretty sure IBM has sounded the call, too.

    1. Re:The New New Thing by plopez · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, the original purpose of patents was to help advance technology by forcing the inventor to disclose how something works. In exchange the inventor gets a limited time government granted monopoloy. If you do not patent and someone steals your idea, you cannot sue. If it is patented you can sue.

      IP holding companies do nothing to advance the state of the art. They are parasites leeching off of the efforts of the actual inventors and using extortion (threat of law suits) to make a buck, and so they should be destroyed.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  4. slashvertorial content is off by Surt · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Certainly seems like there are a lot of those businesses around nowadays, huh?


    And with good reason. An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims. He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits.

    There are many things wrong with the patent system. Patent holding companies are not among them. If you accept patents at all, licensing companies are vital to the success, fairness, and effectiveness of the system.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    1. Re:slashvertorial content is off by Zeveck · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Patent holding companies are indeed one of the key problems with the current patent system. Your suggestion is that just somebody thinking of an idea should be able to turn a profit. That is simply not the case - plenty of people *have ideas*, and were that the threshold for a patent then countless inventions could have been patented long ago. Hell, by that reasoning von Neumann could have patented the computer and then sold that patent to some parasitic holding company that just holds the patent and profits without ever producing anything. A patent it meant to protect the integrity of an invention, typically a product - not to make abstract ideas profitable in-and-of themselves.

    2. Re:slashvertorial content is off by Surt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, that's a problem with the patents being offered, not the holding companies. If the patent is for something that:

      a) can easily be invented by someone else
      b) can't be produced by the inventor

      then something is wrong. That's why there's an obviousness clause, and there used to be a requirement to actually deliver an implementation.

      Suppose we give credit to von neumann for inventing the computer, and grant him a patent on it. Suppose, further, for a moment that we feel he deserves the patent, and that the patent is completely valid, and that he has in fact built a computer.

      Suppose he has not the resources to manufacture computers, and so sells his patent to a holding company. This allows one of 2 things to occur:

      1) some other company steals his invention, and starts making computers. now since we agreed that the problem is not with the patent, by your theory, we shouldn't mind when a company steals inventions, and the holding company should not be able to look out for von neumann's interests, von neumann should get screwed.

      2) the holding company can approach other companies, offering to sell them the rights to build computers, and thus transferring the rights to someone capable of mass manufacture. but maybe we should just all live without computers for another 17 years because holding companies are bad.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    3. Re:slashvertorial content is off by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And with good reason. An independent inventor has virtually no way to pursue such claims himself, the cost is far too expensive. Instead, patent holding companies allow an inventor to sell his invention to a holding company, and have the company pursue claims.

      So you are suggesting it is in the natural order of things for an inventor to invent something, patent it, then sell the patent to a company that has no intention of ever producing or using the patent for anything other than extortion? I know of no inventor who would like that idea. Every independent inventor I know would rather have no patent system than invent something and sell the rights to someone else knowing it would never be produced. Inventors are like artists. They don't do it because they want to, they do it because they have to. If you gave an artist the choice of putting up one of their best paintings in the Louvre or selling it to a private collector to be in storage forever, I think more would choose to get no income from giving it to the Louvre. The recognition and use of the art/invention is more important and greater incentive to create more than pure profit. Profit might motivate corporations to hire more people for the R&D department, but it doesn't seem to be the motivation for the independent artists and inventors I know.

      If you are just talking about an inventor defending his patent, there are plenty of laywers out there willing to take the case, and they won't demand rights to the patent to do so. That is the recourse that inventors use, rather than just selling off their patents.

      He may sell outright or receive a portion of the profits.

      What profits? They would be selling to a company guaranteed to not produce it. You'd have to be pretty stupid to make a deal based on profits when selling something to a company you know won't produce anything.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  5. Crazy folk... by MrCoke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They are so gonna get toasted in court.

    Following this logic, ancient manufacturers of coaches could sue modern car manufacturers just because they use wheels too.

    Different times, different technology.

  6. Taste of their own medicine by matt+me · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Their idealogical allegiances aside, Googles still have a patent on highlighting.

    See US Patent 6,839,702 on the following server which clearly doesn't use mod_alias.
    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm l&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,839,702.WKU.

    A system highlights search terms in documents distributed over a network. The system generates a search query that includes a search term and, in response to the search query, receives a list of one or more references to documents in the network. The system receives selection of one of the references and retrieves a document that corresponds to the selected reference. The system then highlights the search term in the retrieved document.

    1. Re:Taste of their own medicine by boinger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have they sued anyone over it?

      There are plenty of people/companies with "defensive patents" simply to prevent a jackass from claiming it as their own.

      Remember that Mercedes-Benz commercial re: airbags? "We've never enforced that patent." Like that.

      --
      Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
  7. Reminds me.. by Klowner · · Score: 2, Funny

    It always reminds me of that drooling kid that sits idly in a sandbox and throws a fit any time someone else wants to play with their tiny plastic shovel.

  8. Re:From the Article by drpimp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "and to be King for day"

    Sounds more like they want their 15 minutes of lame!
    I am standing behind Google.

    Over 700 patents and you don't make anything? The best thing I can relate that to are the domain snatching companies that sit on domains and wait for people to want them. Only this company just sits and waits for others to come close to it's technology and prey on them. Since Google is a large company of course they saw $$$$

    --
    -- Brought to you by Carl's JR
  9. Wait just a second, your honor! by blair1q · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've just come from the Unites States Patent Office, where they have declared me the Inventor of the "Shell-company Suing Patent Infringers" business model.

    I'll take that gavel, if you please.

    Unless you'd maybe like to negotiate a nominal license fee...

    1. Re:Wait just a second, your honor! by Alex+P+Keaton+in+da · · Score: 2, Funny

      I just hope 2003 didn't place that call with any technology owned by the Rate company!

      --
      And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
  10. The Patent Claims by putko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FTFA:

    "The two patents in question are not for inventions, but processes relating to using a regular telephone to make long distance calls. The patents focus on the use of a centralized database with pricing information for the purposes of determining the cheapest phone call carrier on the fly. The patents do not deal explicitly with the Internet, however, and do not even appear to have VoIP ventures in mind. (I thank my lucky stars every day that I'm not a patent lawyer, however, so my initial reading of the complaint could be incorrect.)"

    In this case, Google may not be the best company to use. If the claims cover routing, then that is handled by a thing called the "internet", which uses some clever algorithms to dynamically route "packets" at the "lowest cost" (in a small-scale fashion). This "internet" doens't use a centralized database for this though, as their claim mentions.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  11. too many lawyers, too much greed by digitaldc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services.
    They have also been to court some 25 times, and in once instance Weinberger warned that a defendant had better be ready to spend at least US$1,000,000 on legal fees, because that's how they roll (paraphrased, of course).

    This is what happens when you have too many lawyers, not enough clients, and an excessive amount of greed. People will find a way to sue for anything. It is not a question of who is right or wrong, it is more a question is who can quickly profit in this complex legal game. The US has more lawyers per capita than any other country in the world, and you can see the result. The lawyers win in the end since they will make huge fees and suffer little or no consequences from their actions.

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  12. Oh, yes... by SharpFang · · Score: 4, Funny

    Google should agree to pay 1000x loss of profit compensation. If they didn't make their Google Talk service, the company would earn about $0 on the patents....

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  13. Re:From the Article by JesseHathaway · · Score: 2, Informative

    :) thanks for reposting TFA. you just saved about 100 /.ers the trouble of reading it before posting.

    According to the London Times Online Rates Technologies, Inc. just got done suing Nortel Networks, a voice/video/data communications company, presumably for the same thing RTI is suing Google for: VOIP technology, or some parts thereof. The US Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier decision dismissing the patent infringement case this past February.

    If RTI actually won a case, what would they do with the patents? Sell them to the highest bidder? And wouldn't it be very expensive to build a company by just suing bigger companies? Maybe they've won some cases in the past, and are using the riches to try to make more.

    For those who know, these guys are worse than the Borg. They're... they're... just a bunch of Pakleds! ;)

  14. Away with the Patent Squatters! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We had the Blackberry fiasco, now Google Talk. Patent reform needs a use-it-or-lose-it approach among other things to clear away the scourge of patent squatting.

  15. Patent lawyers are parasites by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This one is no different.
    These people are too lazy and too immoral to earn an HONEST living so they leach off of the hard work of others. They are thieves and scum. Whale shit is a higher life form than these filthy parasites.

    While I'm no fan of Google or it's mega-corporate adventures, I'm less of a fan of parasitical lawyers. Patent lawyers are bottom feeders and this guy is just one of many.

    Patent lawyers should be classified as enemy combatants and hustled off to Gitmo in the middle of the night.

    1. Re:Patent lawyers are parasites by ajs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's totally unreasonable. Many patent lawyers are good people doing an honest (and hard) day's work. This is a different class of animal. These folks don't work for clients who invent things, they go into business for themselves in order to make money from the system without actually having contributed anything to the invention process.

  16. defensive patenting by jilles · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's stuff like this that makes the big software corporations invest in patents. Companies like google and microsoft don't draw significant revenue from patents and actually invest heavily in research. But having patents guarantees that they won't end up sueing each other. It's a defensive thing and it has gotten way out of hand. I work for a large european company that files lots of patents (Nokia) and we are very much into this thing. European patent law doesn't allow many of the patents we file in the US. Just recently we got sued by this small company from the US. Filing patents is our primary defence against this. Our money comes from selling phones, not intelectual property licensing.

    With the US patent law and office deliberately (this was/is lobbied for) weakened to the point where basically any brain fart may be patent pending, people are patenting everything they can think of with absolute disrespect to such outdated things as prior art, originality or even cleverness. It doesn't matter if an idea is stupid, based on existing ideas and stolen: a patent gives you the right to sue. The legal process is guaranteed to be lengthy, complicated and above all very expensive. The patent office rubberstamping anything they stumble upon ensures a steady stream of revenue for a growing group of companies who, in all honestly, have never lifted a finger to do anything remotely resembling research. Their revenues are based on bullshit portfolios of patents. Google is just the latest victim. Luckily they have the muscle to fight back. Many truely innovative companies don't.

    The rats of the IPR industry are becoming an obstacle for innovation. Large corporations are now starting to feel this pain (e.g. Google, IBM, Nokia and Microsoft have all recently had to deal with lawsuits from insignificant IPR only corporations). The problem with IPR only companies is that you can't countersue. In other words, your patent portfolio is worthless if you are sued by one of those companies. It is my hope that these companies will get smart and start lobbying against software patents instead of in favour like they have done in the past. Just today I joked to a colleague that Nokia should quit selling phones and focus on the Nokia Research Center I work for :-).

    --

    Jilles
  17. Seems like a difficult case for them... by linuxtelephony · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ignoring the sheer size of Google and their ability to pay for lawyers to defend themselves rathar than settle, the patents themselves are not ideally suited for the attack against Google talk.

    There are two patents. The first is 5,425,085 and is clearly for a "device" contained "in a housing" that people plug in their phone and it automatically chooses the cheapest rates to route the calls. Think of this as something that would automatically prefix your calls with a 10-10 code for least cost routing at your house.

    The second is 5,519,769 appears to be for a method of updating the routing database of the device in the previous patent. It is also directed towards a device connected to the calling station.

    The key to these patents and why standard carrier based least cost routing do not apply, is that the routing decisions appear to be made at the end points and not by the carrier switches themselves.

    Now, if you make "device" to mean your computer, and make the "calling station" also mean your computer; make telephone network mean the internet; and, squint your eyes just so - then these could be seen to be relevant to Google Talk.

    --
    . 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:Seems like a difficult case for them... by linuxtelephony · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Typical /. disclaimer: IANAL.

      The first patent appears to have been filed in 1995, and reexamined and confirmed in 2001 with no updates. The second patent appears to have been filed in 1996, and reexamined and confirmed in 2002 with a few more claims added.

      Short of an in depth review of both patents, there are three areas where I think Google will be able to defend. First, the patents are clearly for a dedicated device plugged into the calling station. The device is self-contained, and does all the decision making, ultimately dialing the routing codes for the desired carrier. The patent is for the use of a telephone calling station. And, the patent is for devices that use the telephone network.

      While a computer can be argued to equal the "device" in the patent -- how the computer is used for Google Talk does not match how the device makes its decision for routing calls. And, a sound card with headset does not a calling station make. The computer would have to be considered both the device and the calling station for these to hold up. Finally, the internet would have to be considered "the" telephone network.

      The language in these patents are targetted specifically, and narrowly, to the application of their end-point call routing device. It will be interesting to see if anything comes from these, or if Google will settle quietly.

      Here's hoping Google fights.

      --
      . 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  18. Edsger W. Dijkstra would sue Rates Technology by nektra · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Dijkstra family needs to sue all those 'suers', this can make the trick.

  19. Why only Google Talk? by origamy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't Google Talk based on Jabber? Why are they only suing Google Talk?
    Don't Yahoo, AIM and MSN, Netmeeting, Skype also allow voice communication as well as dozens other apps out there? Why are they only suing Google Talk?
    Go figure...

    1. Re:Why only Google Talk? by Pecisk · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you have actually read RTFA and rest of press materials floating around about this, you will notice that most companies you mentioned already paid "protection money", and eBay's Skype is in talks about it.

      So there is nothing to figure about. It is all old style game.

      --
      user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
  20. Patent != Invention by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Um, explain then how the majority of innovations come from countries with high protection for IP (including patents) and countries with poor protection produce virtually none?


    By counting "inventions" of a country with a patent system like the US, you're counting patented inventions, which isn't the same as useful inventions coming out of a system without the same patent protection. And in many cases, what's invented elsewhere is patented in the US -- that doesn't make it a US invention.
    By presupposing that the number of patents reflects the number of inventions, and thus can be used as evidence that patents increase invention, you're begging the question. All you're proving is that availability of a patent system will increase the number of patents.

    Regards,
    --
    *Art
  21. I have an idea for that... by Reziac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Occurs to me that one solution to the "buy patents, sue everyone" business model would be to make patents protect only the original inventor, and for non-independent inventors, the company said inventor was working for at the time, and only the FIRST buyer thereafter.

    Under such a system, patents could only be sold ONCE. After that, the idea would fall into the public domain. That way inventors and companies could make a reasonable return on their innovations, but there'd be no incentive to buy up "used" patents, as they'd have no value.

    This might have a further effect in that it would no longer be profitable to buy another company SOLELY to acquire their intellectual property assets, since as of the 2nd sale, they'd no longer have any protected value. This would probably incline the market toward more smallish companies that competed more directly, and a great many more small-scale patent-licensing deals among related companies, which ought to ultimately be all to the good (smaller companies generally being more customer-centric, and less beholden to stockholders).

    And it would cut the lawyers, who had nothing to do with the invention itself, out of the profit chain.

    Oh yeah... I'm gonna patent this as my business model. ;)

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  22. reform the incorporation laws as well by zogger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Patent system is broken, yes, but the process for incorporation and giving legal personhood to corporations is also seriously broken. The two are intertwined. You could eliminate quite a bit of shady corporate behavior by making a human being always responsible for decisions made by a corporation, you could make incorporating a much tougher process and have it come with an automatic timeout, you could insist that corporations must incorporate in the states where they actually do business, not just delaware or nevada, and make any people associated with ownership/management of an international corporation lose their US rights as to voting, etc. Make them choose what is more important to them, US citizen, or citizen of nation x where they have their corporation set up, one or the other, *not* both, and not US if they are globalists. Then apply foreign lobbying rules and immigration/alien rules to them across the management board.

      You could also reform the stock market, such as placing a time limit on holding shares between transactions, such as two years, to really make it an investment and not a speculators casino, etc. And stop allowing "daisy chaining" of corporations, make them pick a name and stick to it, not 85 corporations with slight variables all run from the same tiny office with a lawyers name on the door. Put the human beings back in responsibility, overtly and openly.

        In the political process, you could make it illegal for corporations, or industrial lobbying cartel orgs, to donate any money/goods/services whatsoever to any political campaign or politician, and eliminate the profession of career politician or bureaucrat. No pensions, no lifetime career, make it ten years "government service" then back to the private sector. Then make it so no bureaucrat or politician could accept an industry position that was part of what they were regulating while in government service, and etc, i.e. no Joe FDA doofus getting out, collecting a pension, then going to work for big pharmco. This is just too obvious how this affects legislation and regulations.

      There are a ton of decent theoretical "fixes" out there, most or all of which will never be implemented because the system itself is set-up and run as a large scale criminal enterprise now. It's a racket, not a government, and the transnationals control it. That is my opinion, and it's based on just watching politics and business for a long time. The US was supposed to be "we the people" not "we the faceless nameless international corporations". Real big difference there. We are Humans, not Ferengi. Making the system try to work with Ferengi rules has resulted in the overall crap we have today.

      The entire system is broken, we had a nice experimental run at honest government and letting corporations try to do business without being scumbag crooks, we tried to let the political process proceed without corruption, but it's time to accept reality that it's broken completely and nothing short of a wipe and reinstall is going to "fix" it, IMO.

    1. Re:reform the incorporation laws as well by zogger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, personally I think it's been broken too severely and for too long a time period to be adequately fixed. I was just musing on a few of the potential fixes out there.

          I am in favor of a clean wipe and reinstall. You may parse that however you wish but I think you can get my drift there.

            I don't see it getting any better, any fairer, or any less corrupt with the system in place as we have it now. For all practical purposes we are living under a live ongoing coup situation, and there are too many entrenched order followers that will act according to orders rather than common sense and what is truly constitutional and allowed, to make any sort of realistic "within the system" changes possible. It hasn't happend yet since I have been watching, so I see no obvious reasons to think it will anytimte soon, either. it's just the odds, I run the odds, it's a dismal spread there based on past observable data. that's the best one can do, take data, analyse then erxtrapolate. That and the population has been totally scared-terrorized is the word- into accepting about anything they are told to do, and the mass media and public education systems are obvious propoganda arms of the established globalist fascists.

        We have a slide into a modern sort of Technofeudalism, and I think it sucks.

        We will not be able to "vote" any meaningful change, nor will these various public gang members or gangs ( I will not call them "parties" any longer, they are criminal gangs) willingly give up power or change to being honest.

      I do not wish to have this opinion, really, but I hold it now based on all the anecdotal and observable data over the last several decades. I used to honestly believe working within the system had some decent hope, but I no longer have this viewpoint.

      This is most generally speaking, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but for casual conversational purposes on a forum it's my viewpoint now. Any random individual or company may be totally honest and follow the letter of the laws and maintain a living and presence, but overall, no, I don't see our socio/economic/political "system" being any sort of long term ethical or practical or sustainable, and the really big over-all losers will be the honest middle class in this nation..

          I think we entered what will be known to future historians as the decline of the US approximately 10-15 years ago for most purposes, and it has accelerated greatly in the last 5 years, helped along immensely by police-state tech advances, and that is going to continue. When China is the posterboy model for modern business, and US business and political interests at the top levels are falling all over themselves to relocate the bulk of their business there, and cooperate with them, etc,well.. it says a lot to me about where these folks heads are at.

      Unlike a lot of people, I don't hold to "cost" as the only criteria for "doing business", nor do I think that 'business' is the most important thing in life. Yes, I know, heresy! heh. This is not a popular opinion in capitalist circles, but..I am not a classic capitalist, so that won't apply to me either. Although it may work in a cost/profits sense to some degree, it doesn't work when it comes to human rights and other social tenets. Again, my POV. I am not a classic socialist either, but that's another discussion for another time. hth

  23. Patent Trolls / Accelerando by ansible · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These patent troll companies remind me a lot of what LLCs and other corporations evolved into in Charles Stross's Accelerando. You can read it for free, but I encourage you to buy a copy.

    It's a very good read. Easily his best work yet. I got quite a kick out of the infovore idea from his "The Atrocity Archives".

  24. I would like to patent... by AZURERAZOR · · Score: 3, Funny

    Using a mouse to make an online purchase .... Oops too late Amazon already did it... http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/ amazon_patent.html

    Automatically updating security software over the internet ... Sorry McAfee already got that one ... http://www.dotgnu.org/patent-analysis.html

    Use of graphics and text to sell products over the internet... Darn too late again (see Pangea Intellectual Properties) http://www.chillingeffects.org/ecom/

    Tabbed browsing... You might be thinking Mozilla or Opera... Nope Microsoft http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3 406551

    Maybe "techniques for cleaning one's anus using rolls of soft paper"... I have not checked but I am sure that one's covered too.

  25. Re:Delaware?? by b4k3d+b34nz · · Score: 2, Informative

    A lot of people choose Delaware because it has the Chancery Court, which is a court designed just for business legal issues. This helps resolve business problems and legalities quickly.

    Also, there's no sales or personal property tax, and no income tax for companies that don't do business in Delaware. This is especially good for small companies to avoid double taxation. Double taxation occurs when your company is taxed for income, and then you as an individual are taxed when you pay yourself a salary.

    Additionally, you don't have to have a few things--you don't have to keep corporate records in Delaware, and shareholders can act in writing. Normally, you have to actually have people show up in a building, which costs a lot of time and money.

    Finally, it's cheap. Aside from legal fees for writing up your incorporation statement, it can be less than $100 initially, and less than $200 (depending on if you're an LLC) for the annual fee.

    As you can probably tell, this makes it really easy to avoid the potential legal risks of sole proprietorship and just incorporate instead if it's just you, or if you want to have a small startup. For an extra couple bucks per year, it's worth it to have an LLC. No money comes out of your personal pocket if you get sued.

    --
    Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
  26. Re:Same thing is happening with RIM by symbolic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Few contest that the U.S. patent system is overburdened. Only a few weeks ago, Patent and Trademark Commissioner John Doll was reported saying: "When you've got 1.3 million cases in the backlog, and it's taking [four to six] years to take a first office action, you've got to ask the question: Is the patent system still actually working, or are we just stamping numbers on the applications as they come through?

    Funny - they brought a lot of this on themselves, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they had a bit of prodding from the inside, since it the revenue stream generated by patent filings is significant. They didn't HAVE to allow the first software patent, and the could have challenged patents that veered further and further into the murky gray area associated with software, but they didn't. As I recall, there were a couple of court decisions responsible for the interpretation that it was now OK to patent software, but this was never corrected. As a result, we are now chest-deep in the so-called "IP" cesspool that we have today.

    Fixing the system now will be much more difficult, because there are many entrenched interests with a great deal at stake.

  27. Contact number and better article...631-360-0157 by THESuperShawn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Please feel free to give this cocky a-hole a call.

    This article, http://voip-blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/voip /rates-technology-inc.html , gives a good impression of what a jerk this guy is.

    --
    Repant. Thy end is sheer.
  28. Shouldn't this be illegal by thegrassyknowl · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You've probably never heard of Rates Technology Inc. (RTI), and that wouldn't be surprising since the company has no products and offers no services. By all appearances, RTI is a company that was set up to collect licensing fees and pursue settlements related to the company's patent portfolio.

    I personally think this should be illegal. These companies are preventing innovation becase they don't even have any real patents. There's a bunch of bullshit patents built on flimsy pretexes and containing mostly prior art.

    Then they go around litigating to make their money. It's really tantamount to extortion/blackmail. They are trying to scare companies into paying them.

    The companies that do innovate get dragged through the courts, which is a costly exercise (Microsoft and Google can really afford it). The smaller companies just say "fuck it" because they know they can't afford to be dragged through the legal system over something so pathetic. How can a system that was designed to encourage innovation and the free sharing of information be so perverse that it is now used to discourage innovation and extort money?

    Of course, in the mean time the court system is tied up with companies defending against these bullshit claims. This costs Joe Taxpayer, when the money spent on the court could be better spent providing better health and education.

    I say that if you own a patent and are not leveraging its claims in a product or service that you ACTUALLY SELL AS PART OF YOUR CORE BUSINESS OPRATION then your claim to enforce the patent should be invalid; that would stop pricks like these cunts from doing this shit.

    --
    I drink to make other people interesting!
  29. What... The... Fsck??? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Even ignoring whether or not the two patents in question which cover Least Cost Routing (LCR) techniques can be blown out of the water due to prior art... Google Talk doesn't do LCR in any form whatsoever! Google Talk only provides VoIP from one GTalk user to another for free (as far as I can tell at least...) I don't know how you can claim that a product does LCR for voice calls when it's only capable of making free calls.

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?