Lucent Sues Microsoft, Wants All 360s Recalled

robyannetta writes "Lucent has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, demanding that they pull all Xbox 360s from the market. Lucent claims that Microsoft has violated their MPEG2 patents which they claim they patented in 1993." While it's unlikely console will be pulled from shelves, it's one way to generate some publicity.

Comments

This is a nonsense article.

[whileoneagain]

no value whatsoever. lot's like this comment

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[afaik_ianal]

Yep, the linked article is unfortunately pretty light on both detail and factual accuracy. A much better source of information, with a reference to Lucent's patent is available here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30743.

The patent being disputed is available here

Still, the original GamerNode link for this story is an amusing read, with gems such as, "Lucent claims that Microsoft has violated copyright patent laws". Uh.. What is a 'copyright patent law'? Are they trying to say that Lucent has the copyright on the patent laws? Or are they just confused about the difference between these two relatively unrelated concepts?

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[TubeSteak]

If you had RTFA, you'd realize that their goal might not be to really get the Xbox360 pulled.

What would make the most sense (from a business perspective) is to force a settlement that involves a cash payout and licensing.

Licensing is like mana from heaven for companies. It represents a long term income stream that can only add to the value of the company and the value of their patent.

I can't imagine that Lucent wants an honest (and drawn out) court case.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[70Bang]

Licensing is like mana from heaven for companies. It represents a long term income stream that can only add to the value of the company and the value of their patent.

Something of which Microsoft has no experience. (When offered the opportunity to sell or license DOS to IBM, they went with the quick money and just sold the software to IBM, right?) Oh, and:

I can't imagine that Lucent wants an honest (and drawn out) court case.

Maybe they do. They couldn't have enjoyed the turn your head & cough circus which was going on in parallel with IBM, but now that the money might be flowing into their pockets it may not be such a bad thing. The money certainly isn't going to rip a bigger hole in Microsoft's pockets, is it?

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Something of which Microsoft has no experience. (When offered the opportunity to sell or license DOS to IBM, they went with the quick money and just sold the software to IBM, right?) Oh, and:

Royalties are indeed wonderful for established companies who aren't looking for a quick infusion of cash. OTOH, at the time Microsoft accepted the quick money, chances are that they needed quick money badly.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Twench]

If you had RTFA, you'd realize that their goal might not be to really get the Xbox360 pulled.

I managed to take the 3 seconds to RTFA. The passage you mention is simply an editorial add-on from this presumably Sony affiliated gamer site. They have no more knowledge of Lucent's intentions than anyone here. Though, no lawsuit is filed with the intention of having a product pulled from the shelves. There is no profit in that. My guess is Lucent wants a big pay day and they hope M$ will simply pay up because it will be cheaper.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[moro_666]

I can't imagine that Lucent wants an honest (and drawn out) court case.

Maybe they do. They couldn't have enjoyed the turn your head & cough circus which was going on in parallel with IBM, but now that the money might be flowing into their pockets it may not be such a bad thing. The money certainly isn't going to rip a bigger hole in Microsoft's pockets, is it?


  I agree, sometimes a banana is not just a banana. We have no idea here if it's even the interest of lucent itself that is making this show or is it maybe a "enlengthened hand" of sony, who want's to freeze down xbox-360's to push their own ps3-s instead. maybe it's somebody else who want's to play around with microsoft's stock price.

  Life rarely is as simple as it looks at the first glance.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think they mean that Microsoft violated the laws concerning a copyright patent (so, a patent on copyright, whatever that may be), otherwise, they'd had stated 'copyrightED patent laws' :)

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Half a dent]

The console can't be pulled from the shelves if there are none on the shelves to begin with.

BTW do Lucent have any ties with Sony?

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[niskel]

Umm... MS _did_ lisence DOS to IBM. The GP was being sarcastic.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[shotfeel]

A big payday, or maybe a sweet cross-licensing deal for some MS goodies? Only Lucent knows.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

they only want the ones in japan :P

now for the sake of seriousity the xbox360s are showing up in the smallish town that I live in on the east coast of Canada. Surely, if you can't find xbox360's on the store shelves, then try leaving The Sony Store and go into an EB or Wallmart.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[mausmalone]

From the patent:

a means responsive to the digital video input signal for producing a field frame coding type signal which directs a selected one, but not both, of the frame coding means or the field coding means to code the digital video input signal.

Wait, let me see if I'm reading this right. They're going after people who use MPEG2 because they patented the interlace bit? You've gotta be out of your freaking mind! Can anyone really own a patent to add a single bit to a frame that says 0=progressive, 1=interlaced?

I don't see how this could possibly hold up, being a patent from 1993. There were video codecs before 1993, and surely they all had information stored in each frame that described how to decode the frame. Storing whether or not the frame is interlaced isn't enough of an advance from just generically storing frame information to warant a patent, and it never should've been granted.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[wwphx]

Actually, according to histories of Microsoft, Dos, IBM, and the early PC revolution that I've read, Microsoft did want to sell MS-Dos outright to IBM. They wanted IBM to buy their company, too. But IBM didn't want it and licensed it instead.

It was probably a good thing, considering that IBM has never figured out how to market personal computers. It could have killed the PC market before it ever formed.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, is it just me, or does Microsoft have enough trouble getting the 360s on shelves without threats of lawsuits?

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me, I know they don't. I work for Lucent now I have seen plenty of examples of how NOT to do things!

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[jZnat]

If you would consider Microsoft's long history of avoiding the need to license patents from MPEG, you'd see why WMA/WMV exists and why they didn't bother licensing for the Xbox 360. MS will do whatever they can to avoid paying anyone for patent licensing, trust me (and its history).

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Thuktun]

IBM didn't want [MSDOS] and licensed it instead. It was probably a good thing, considering that IBM has never figured out how to market personal computers. It could have killed the PC market before it ever formed.

DOS clones sprouted even with a non-IBM company controlling DOS. They might have been even more popular if that hadn't been true, since I think the availability of well-marketed clones was probably more influential than the third-party OS in the PC revolution. (I suppose it could be argued that the clones wouldn't have shown up in such numbers if they didn't have a third-party OS they could easily apply to their IBM-compatible hardware.)

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Lucent is trying to sell itself at the moment. This makes their stock look attractive.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[flogic42]

It's nice to see Microsoft on the recieving end of their own dirty tactics. It's time for a massive reformation of patent and IP law.

Re:This is a nonsense article.

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

Who are they really generating publicity for?
How many kids are going to remember Lucent and their MPEG2 patent?
Then think how many kids will remember that their 360 was threatened to be taken off the shelves, and possibly rush out and buy one. Sounds to me like Microsoft is lovin this.

Too little too late?

[GreenPlastikMan]

(I am not a lawyer...yet)

Didn't Lucent just get merged/sucked up by another company (Alcatel?)

In any case, generally speaking, RIM lawsuit aside, it is highly unusual for cases like this actually to go to trial. But even if Lucent were to win, isn't MPEG2 a software thing? Asking for a recall seems frivolous considering you can just do as software...um...downgrade(?)

In any case, where was Lucent's patent on MPEG2 when all this technology became popular in all kinds of other goodies? This couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Micro$oft has roughly 40 billion Dollars in actual Cash, could it? If you don't enforce your patents and wait for a big fish you risk losing your ability to enforce the patent for lack of policing, also there may be laches defense for failure to file the lawsuit sooner, though that seems less likely as final specs weren't out so long ago that Lucent would have had reasonable timeframe to do any due diligence. Anyone know what the statute of limitations, or laches defense timeframe is on a patent claim?

*shrug*

Lucent to get some weird Vista perk in 3...2...1...

Re:Too little too late?

[pavera]

You like most other slashdot folks are mixing your metaphors, or IP jargon. Trademarks must be inforced or you lose them, patents not so much. You can selectively enforce patents all you want. The "statute of limitations" on patents is 24 years, or however long patents are good for now... As long as your patent is valid you can sue infringers of that patent.

Re:Too little too late?

[DrMrLordX]

It's 20 years I do believe.

Re:Too little too late?

[typical]

But even if Lucent were to win, isn't MPEG2 a software thing? Asking for a recall seems frivolous considering you can just do as software...um...downgrade(?)

Not necessarily. I don't know what the situation is regarding the Xbox 360, but it used to be common to include MPEG decoding hardware. I believe that consumer DVD players do so.

Even if not, it could be in ROMs or something else.

But, really, when it comes down to it, Lucent just wants to get its fingers into the pie.

Re:Too little too late?

[kfg]

isn't MPEG2 a software thing?

MPEG is a codec. If you implement it in software it's a software thing.

If you implement it in hardware, like a DVD player, or 360, well, it's not.

KFG

Re:Too little too late?

[LMariachi]

Not exactly. Google the "laches defense" parent mentioned. Yes, patents can be selectively enforced, but you can't knowingly allow an infringer to continue violating your patent in order to make them a juicier target before bringing action.

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

My DVD player (i just opened it up) has this thing called DVD-2002 MPEG 08129 in it so I'm assuming it isn't just a software thing.

Re:Too little too late?

[Matilda the Hun]

True, but it does say that they tried to do this earlier. The suit was dropped because of a typo or something that made the whole thing moot. So, that having been said, there's a chance they actually have a decent case here. And I always enjoy seeing companies like MS getting shook up a bit. (Not, of course, that I have any expectation of this not settling for a large sum of money out-of-court, but I can dream, can't I?)

Re:Too little too late?

[MichaelSmith]

Didn't Lucent just get merged/sucked up by another company (Alcatel?)

This has the feel of SCO about it to me.

1. Buy a company with a lot of IP
2. Sue anybody who may be infringing on that IP
3. Profit

Re:Too little too late?

[dbIII]

RIM lawsuit aside ...

Let me be the first to suggest a new name for this type of patent abuse solely to screw over other companies - RIMMING.

Re:Too little too late?

[StoatBringer]

But even if Lucent were to win, isn't MPEG2 a software thing?

Kind of. It is possible to decode MPEG entirely in software (I know, I've done it) but it is a real nightmare. The only way to do it sensibly is to use hardware for lowest level of the decoding and colour conversion (and everything else, preferably). This is why most graphics cards have MPEG decoding built in.

Untangling the bitstream is horrible in software as well, as there are one or more interleaved audio/video streams which need to be stripped out, and each stream is made up of Huffman-encoded numbers of varying bit-sizes which cross byte boundaries, which involves much annoying bit-twiddling to make sense of. Untanging/unencoding/decompressing/converting all this is best left to hardware.

As to why I let myself in for that horror, I worked for a crazy person who wanted it.

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of. It is possible to decode MPEG entirely in software (I know, I've done it) but it is a real nightmare. The only way to do it sensibly is to use hardware for lowest level of the decoding and colour conversion (and everything else, preferably). This is why most graphics cards have MPEG decoding built in.

Oh it's certanly possible. If you've used any open source media player, you've probably used this. It runs fine on a modern CPU without any special hardware.

Re:Too little too late?

[Ailure]

Wouldn't it be firmware then? I'm not a expert on hardware related stuff, so sorry if i'm way wrong now. :)

Re:Too little too late?

[LordOfTheNoobs]

Yes this is great. Huzzah, Die Microsoft.

Surely they are the only ones who have ever created an MPEG-2 compliant video device. Surely such a thing doesn't exist in _every_ Free movie player that exists.

You and many others might not care, but this is far more frightening for free video software ( i.e. mplayer totem etc ) than Microsoft.

This patent runs on linux to the whim of the shareholders of Lucent.

Re:Too little too late?

[Kilz]

Surely they are the only ones who have ever created an MPEG-2 compliant video device. Surely such a thing doesn't exist in _every_ Free movie player that exists. You and many others might not care, but this is far more frightening for free video software ( i.e. mplayer totem etc ) than Microsoft. This patent runs on linux to the whim of the shareholders of Lucent.

You are mixing hardware and software. A device is hardware, a player like mplayer or totem is software. The suit also includes dell and gateway because they are M$'s hardware partners Ecmmercetimes story .

Re:Too little too late?

[fleck_99_99]

The doctrine of laches doesn't invalidate your ability to defend your patent; it merely prevents you from receiving retroactive damages in a case where you are proven to have egregiously and willfully ignored infringement to allow for bigger claims. You can still enforce your patent moving forward.

Trademarks, on the other hand, have to be actively defended or risk moving into common language.

Re:Too little too late?

[alienw]

Bullshit. Companies do it all the time, and that defense never held water in patent cases.

Re:Too little too late?

[Aim Here]

Wrong.

Symbol Technologies Inc. & Cognex Corporation vs Lemelson Medical, 2004 WL 161331 (D. Nevada).

Lemelson had 14 patents efectively declared invalid and unenforceable because of the doctrine of prosecution laches.

Hope this helps.

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lemelson had 14 patents efectively declared invalid and unenforceable because of the doctrine of prosecution laches.

That's prosecution laches, or what is most commonly called a "submarine patent".

For a more general case of a patent claim being barred for long-term failure to enforce the patent, see Wanlass v. General Electric. (also Wanlass v. Fedders where the claim was allowed due to slightly different circumstances)

Re:Too little too late?

[SatanicPuppy]

Oh so appropriate, given the scatological (pun intended) meaning of that word. I wish I had mod points.

Re:Too little too late?

[JoeSavage]

Nice try. How about RIMjob?

Re:Too little too late?

[LordOfTheNoobs]

From an earlier poster :
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=5,227,878.WKU.&OS=PN /5,227,878&RS=PN/5,227,878

The patent covers ( at least in part ) ideas concerning ways to encode/decode video frames.

As far as I can tell the patent does not specify whether the invention is implemented as an apparatus composed of genuine circuits, or an apparatus composed of a certain program loaded into a general purpose processor.

IANAL: The patent seems to cover the `ideas' of MPEG-2, not just a mere implementation. That an implementation is created in the logic of a general purpose computer instead of a more specific hardware device seems irrelevant.

The odds of anyone creating the device as a purely analog system seems low to me, though I will not doubt it is possible. More likely than not, the MPEG-2 ideas have always, including by inventor, been implemented in a device which internally ran them loaded from memory ( including the possibility of static write once memory ) on a general purpose processor.

It seems that any `software v. hardware' is not relevant to the topic, as the patent would cover either.

You point out the hardware vendors had previously been sued, but I counter that it was due to components in their products provided by Microsoft. As far as I am aware, Microsoft only provides software to Dell and Gateway. Hence this filing has always been against software, making it very relevant to both mplayer and the like.

Re:Too little too late?

[budgenator]

per patent number 5,227,878

17. The apparatus of claim 13, in which the decoding means comprises:

a means for receiving a compressed digital video signal comprising at least one DC coefficient representation related to the video signal;

a means for producing an estimated DC coefficient in response to a coding type signal; and

a means for producing a decoded DC coefficient signal in response to the DC coefficient representation and the estimated DC coefficient.

I fail to see where this is limited to physical devices

Re:Too little too late?

[ultranova]

In any case, generally speaking, RIM lawsuit aside, it is highly unusual for cases like this actually to go to trial. But even if Lucent were to win, isn't MPEG2 a software thing? Asking for a recall seems frivolous considering you can just do as software...um...downgrade(?)

How about simply posting a letter to each (known) XBOX owner, stating:

Due to the US Patent Office fucking up again, you cannot legally watch DVD's on your XBOX. Doing so means that you are no better than any other kind of Intellectual Property violator, and won't become any worse by downloading movies from the Internet, for example from Pirate Bay (http://thepiratebay.org/). We ask you to give this letter the value it so obviously deserves.

Sincerely, Microsoft.

That should do it.

Re:Too little too late?

[Shadyman]

But how much money could Lucent make enforcing patents on FREE products?

Re:Too little too late?

[mzwaterski]

Haven't read the rest, but because it is a dependent claim you need to look at the limitations of claim 13 as they are included. Also, each of those "means for" clauses means that you have to look to the specification to determine what those mean. For example, if the spec describes a means for producing an estimated DC coefficient as several different types of processor chips, then the patent only covers those chips and the equivalent of those chips.

Re:Too little too late?

[Rydia]

Claim 13 (and therfore 17) both teach an apparatus. Apparatus is a term d'art for a physical system. Were it a claim for a method (aside from likely not being valid) it would be describing a nonphysical system.

Re:Too little too late?

[Rydia]

Uh... no it wouldn't. Lucent is claiming that MS's chip infringes on their patented design. Making and selling it is the infringement, not the end user making use of it.

Re:Too little too late?

[symbolic]

It seems that any `software v. hardware' is not relevant to the topic, as the patent would cover either.

I was under the impression that it was the distinction of a hardware component that made software patentable in the first place.

Re:Too little too late?

[Karzz1]

Wouldn't it be firmware then?

I also do not claim to be an expert but this is my understanding of the distinction between firmware and hardware: firmware is software that can be programmed onto a generic chip. Said chip could theoretically host other software (ie. EPROMs). A hardware chip is one in which the transistors themselves perform the logic involved, however the chip is single-purpose; once it is made it can never be reprogrammed.

Re:Too little too late?

[kfg]

Wouldn't it be firmware then?

Yes, it would, but firmware is hardware; and there is firmware and then there is firmware.

It is possible to imbed the software on a permanent chip. For mass produced consumer items where the software instructions are never going to be changed (such as the codec in a DVD player) this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It eliminates a manufacturing step, thus saving time and money, but leaves you with the captial expense of setting up to make the chips, so make sure you're really going to need a lot of 'em.

My first IBM compatible PC actually had its OS on such a permanent chip. This confered all sorts of performance benefits on the computer, but. . .was nontheless a huuuuge mistake, because to upgrade the OS you had to actually physically change the chip.

So most firmware for such items is done with an EPROM or an EEPROM. You have to program an E(E)PROM, but you don't have to make the chip, you just buy 'em and zap 'em. Once you zap an EPROM, that's it, it's now a permanent chip, just as if you had manufactured it with the instruction set hard coded. For most consumer items you'd use an EPROM, because they're cheaper per unit and you never expect to change the instruction set. If you expect the instruction set to need changing at some point in the future, however, (like the BIOS chip in your computer) you'd cough up the extra pennies per chip and plop in an EEPROM, because the extra E stands for "erasable."

Of course, even if you use an EEPROM it dosn't mean you've bothered to include a means by which the user can erase and reprogram it. Say in a DVD player. In such a case the chip would have to actually be remove for erasing and reprogramming. Welcome to the $40/hr electronics shop.

So what course did MS take? Well, they're making a mass quantities consumer item that they don't want users mucking around with, so one might deduce the most likely means of embedding the software, or we can simply to the horses mouth at ATI:

"I had a brief but enlightening conversation with Bob Feldstein, Vice President of Engineering at ATI, who helped oversee the Xbox 360 GPU project. He spelled out some of the GPU's details for me, and they're definitely intriguing.

Feldstein said that ATI and Microsoft developed this chip together in the span of two years, and that they worked "from the ground up" to do a console product. He said that Microsoft was a very good partner with some good chip engineers who understood the problems of doing a non-PC system design. Also, because the part was custom created for a game console, it could be designed specifically for delivering a good gaming experience as part of the Xbox 360 system."

Custom designed, hacker resistant, if you want to upgrade buy our next product, console only chip.

Oh well.

I'll point out, however, that in their 2005 annual report MS notes that Lucent is seeking damages for patent infringement on several patents and the case is not Xbox specific but against all computers with Microsoft software preinstalled.

Pretty kettle of fish, no?

The demand for removal of the 360 from the shelves is because it is the only MS product in which the relevant technologies cannot be easily changed.

Way to go for making the Xbox hacker "proof."

KFG

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

The could remove them from distribution if they were competing with their more profitable licensed products. They won't chase down small timers because the PR loss is worth more than the license benefit. However if any free distribution were to pick up enough customers they'd likely get this hammer dropped on them. That's why none of them distribute codecs by default.

Re:Too little too late?

[yourlord]

If you expect the instruction set to need changing at some point in the future, however, (like the BIOS chip in your computer) you'd cough up the extra pennies per chip and plop in an EEPROM, because the extra E stands for "erasable."

Actually, the E in EPROM stands for Erasable. The EE in EEPROM stands for Electrically Erasable. A standard EPROM is usually erased by exposure to UV light.

Re:Too little too late?

[nuzak]

> As long as your patent is valid you can sue infringers of that patent.

Actually, no you can't, if it can be shown that you didn't attempt to take corrective action. Google for "estoppel" and "equitable doctrine of laches".

Unlike a trademark, estoppel by laches doesn't usually tend to prejudice future claims you might make (unless of course those claims are estopped by the same doctrine. Gotta love that word, "estop" ... is it even cromulent?). And contrary to popular belief, you never truly "lose" a trademark that's registered to you either, you simply prejudice your case against defending it as a common term if you allow it to become common jargon. Just try marketing your own facial tissue called Kleenex or copiers called Xerox and see how far you get.

Anyway, it's official now ... Lucent is a loser that can no longer innovate.

Re:Too little too late?

[kfg]

Mea Culpa. As a Gyro Gearloose pure prototyper I only work directly with EEPROMs myself and haven't actually built any custom hardware for a few years. Skills and knowledge unused are skills and knowledge lost.

I left out PROM and bungled the rest, even though I looked it up first to make sure I got it right, because I knew I wouldn't otherwise. Turns out I couldn't even get it right by using a reference. My mind is elsewhere today and I'm only posting at all to keep it a bit occupied. Not a good strategy for maintaining an air of erudition.

KFG

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that a pun?

Re:Too little too late?

[SatanicPuppy]

Scatological

You're going to have to look up "Rim", "Rimming", and "Rim job" up for yourself...I'm at work...But I think you'll see how it relates.

Re:Too little too late?

[yourlord]

I figured you knew, just wanted to clarify for any others reading it.
I bungle details far too often.

Re:Too little too late?

[LordOfTheNoobs]

How much will their likely soon to be biggest licensee ( Microsoft ) pay them? I doubt it is illegal to pay someone to enforce their patent. Maybe with anti-trust, but still I doubt illegality.

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or forced the accused to give the plaintiff a "RIM job".

Re:Too little too late?

[rzebram]

I have mod points! Oh, damn...

The continuing problem of patents...

[Falcon040]

It shows the continuing problems of patents. Although patents were initially intended to stop techniques being kept secret or lost from the public or King in England, then extended with the intentions to assist the small inventor to protect itself from larger predators, it has done neither of these.

Patents are mainly used by the large companies to keep out competition. Competition being the only great thing that produces innovation and efficiency in a competitive capitalist economy that has served the world so well.

While patents continue to be a hindrance on new entrants to the market, Copyright and Design law, in additiona to Trademark law continues to help protecting innovation and innovative products while maintaining a
competitive capitalist economy, where continued competitiveness in a fair market is the most important factor contributing to a nation's lead in the world.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

I'm sure this has been said 9.7 * 10^24 times, Copyright law now does nothing of the sort. Infact it could be argued that if anything current copyright law stifles innovation because there is no drive to innovate when your copyright will last your lifetime + 95 years.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[gameforge]

I personally like how John Carmack relates software patents to getting mugged... to state loosely what he said, you think of the patent system as being in place to help the poor inventor guy who spends his whole life working on his one little invention, and then some large billion dollar company comes along and steals the idea and gets rich, leaving no credit to him. In that case, patents are great.

But if five companies hire five programmers to set out and do the exact same thing, the first one to make it to the patent office takes the cake and everyone else gets sucked into the legal blackhole (or just goes home with their tail between their legs).

It's definitely time to revisit our patent laws regarding technology; the industry moves too fast - patents like this literally stop innovation and cause consumers to pay out the ass for everything.

I agree that copyrights are a little more reasonable; it should be illegal to clone the next guy's solution; but it should not be illegal to solve the same problem.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[kfg]

Copyright . . . law continues to help protecting innovation . . .

"There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works, and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is, one must be half a tradesman." - Beethoven

KFG

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[catwh0re]

I agree with most of what you have to say. Despite me not being a fan of Microsoft's business practices. (And seemingly just finding ways around settlements/agreements to continue this behaviour.) I don't believe Microsoft should have their 360 console removes from market and recalled due to a patent infringement. At most MS should have to pay a whopping fine (and license fee) if the patent infringement is proven true. Patents should not be a tool used to disembowel a company, similarly patents should have legitimate consequences and not simply be a game where the person with the biggest financial backing wins. Also with that in mind the idea of patenting something that is trivial (for example the double-click) is simply abuse.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

Copyright law certainly does encourage creation of works -- what is bad is the ridiculously long periods for which copyrights are now granted. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm an artist/writer, my girlfriend is an artist/writer, we're friends with many, many other creative professionals. Every one of us is able to do what we do precisely because we can pay the bills, sell our work, and have it not be manipulated by others or outright stolen (on any large commercial scale).

That said, I don't know many creative professionals who think we need "protection" for decades after we're in the grave. While the original 14-year period of copyright might be ludicrously short for modern use (since oftentimes, especially when producing a series, it will only become commercially successful 10 or 20 years into the project), the idea that what we create will be disallowed as source material for several generations of future creators is equally ludicrous. As Picasso said, Good artists borrow, great artists steal. After a certain period, the works themselves become a part of culture that needs to be commented on through art, and saying that this arbitrary part of common culture should be off-limits is damaging to all.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[syousef]

Bzzzzzt. Wrong. No.

Patents are flawed.
Copyright law is flawed.
Trademark law is flawed.

All 3 are very artificial means of attempting to return value to a creator for his or her work. All 3 counteract themselves and increase the problems they're intended to solve.

We need to ditch the existing systems and find a way to compensate creators and inventors without hindering the public's ability to use their creations. Specifically any form of compensation must allow things that are easily copied to be easily copied legally and without artificial restriciton (ie no DRM).

Before some arrogant fool comes back with a Wikipedia link to Communism like the last time I posted something similar to this, I'm not talking about a political system, and I'm not talking about group ownership of anything. I'm talking about a system of compensation that depends on the use of a product rather than possessing a copy of it. I'm not saying I have all the technical solutions for this.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[shmlco]

"...because there is no drive to innovate when your copyright will last your lifetime + 95 years."

Right, because people today are spending a major percentage of their income on books or music written or created a hundred years ago. And how many 1930's classic saturday matinee serials have you bought recently?

The fact is that vast majority of published material is lucky to remain in print or in stock for a year, much less a decade. Which means that for most "your drive to innovate" consists of creating new content which people will pay for so you can pay your bills.

Yes, you could be, say, a King, Clancy, or Rowlings and get "lucky", but odds are you're not, and that you "might" earn back your advance so you'll get another contract so you can spend another year writing another book. Though speaking of King, Clancy, and Rowlings, it's a shame that they got lucky and only wrote one book and no more. No drive to innovate, I guess...

But personally, if you can write something that people think is still worth paying for a hundred years from now, then more power to you.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[stony3k]

I think what the OP was trying to say is that only a small fraction of artistic work is still relevant after 100+ years, but the current copyright situation locks up all works for the same time. If any new artists want to draw their inspiration from earlier art, they now have to look back 4+ generations, which is mostly going to be pretty irrelevant.

I personally would prefer to have copyrights apply for say 30 years, but it could be extensible for another 30 years on paying a certain amount of fee. Allow a maximum of 3 extensions.

This way artists can have more say in how long their copyright should be valid. Of course, they can currently release their work to the public domain - but that requires active intervention, while this would be a passive way. Also organizations like the **AA would be more inclined to let the copyright expire for stuff they feel is not so popular - which may result in socme of these music/movies being copied or spoofed and becoming popular again.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Falcon040]

Well said, I totally agree that although copyright law is good, the continual extension to which copyrighted works are covered is too long. As Disney amongst other copyright holders lobby for a longer and longer extension, it is becoming effectual perpetual, therefore with no works entering the public domain and indeed hurting the way in which previous works can be used to produce diversity and innovation. Amongst the so-called collection of 'Intellectual Property' law, it seems that this continual extension to the good copyright law and the ever more restricting Patent law is very bad for innovation and competiton and will thus only help to stifle an otherwise successful competitive free market capitalist economy.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an artist/writer, my girlfriend is an artist/writer,

so both of you work at McDonalds, hey?

so much for copyright expert, McSlashdotter!

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[shmlco]

First, I agree that periods are too long, but I disagree with your interpretation of the OP's statement. By saying, "because there is no drive to innovate" the implication is pretty clear that he believes someone will create a single work and then do nothing but sit back and collect royalties. Perhaps because that's what he'd do in that situation.

Whereas my view is that his statement is far from the truth. Look at any successful author, singer, or director and you'll almost always see a prolific body of work. These people are successful because they have something to say, are driven to say it, and because we want to hear it.

As to, "If any new artists want to draw their inspiration from earlier art...", here again I fail to see the point. There's nothing stopping anyone from being "inspired" by earlier work. Plenty of people have been "inspired" by JRRK and The Lord of the Rings. Or by "inspired", did you mean copying those characters and that universe wholesale?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[kbastuba]

if five companies hire five programmers to set out and do the exact same thing, the first one to make it to the patent office takes the cake

While this is true in essentially the entire world outside the US, here it's the first to invent that gets the patent. There is legislation pending to bring the US into line with the rest of the world and go first-to-file, though.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[gameforge]

Was MS the inventor of double-clicking? They have the patent on it, IIRC... Do pre-Windows versions of MacOS (or Xerox's GUI, or whatever) feature double-clicking? Something tells me MS didn't invent the idea. But theoretically, every GUI company everywhere today has infringed on such a brilliant ...ahem... "invention".

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[stinerman]

I'm for very limited copyright terms, but do understand your concerns.

What I don't understand is why all works need to have copyright protection for the same amount of time. Yes, your series of novels might need more than 14 years protection, but software certainly doesn't. Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. Does that need as much protection as a novel, a piece of art, etc.? I'd actually like to know how much business MS does in Windows 1.0 these days. Hell, how much business does MS do in any of their EOL OSes?

Perhaps software should get a 5 year copyright with an option of another 5 if the product is still commerically viable (as most people know, 10 years is an eternity in the world of software development). Maybe novels should get 15 with a similar extension. The nature of artistic works are not the same, so perhaps they shouldn't get the same protection

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[GoatPigSheep]

>Patents are flawed.
>Copyright law is flawed.
>Trademark law is flawed.

I'd like to add: IN AMERICA

In countries that actually respect the rights of their citizens such as sweden, all the above are much more fair

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[gutnor]

"poor inventor guy who spends his whole life working on his one little invention, and then some large billion dollar company comes along and steals the idea and gets rich, leaving no credit to him. In that case, patents are great."

Even in this case, the poor inventor will have very hard time to defend itself against a company that can afford a whole lawyer company during 100 years.

I would also like to add, that not every 'little invention' is a 'revolutionary invention'. For 1 revolutionary invention (like something like LigthBulb in his time), there are 1000 minor useful inventions.(like something that improve lawnmowner blade durability by 5%) The inventor of a revolutionary invention has a good chance to get CNN/Fox coverage and enough public support to win a case; the minor inventor on the other end is just screwed up !

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

I tend to agree, there is a vast difference between functional items like software and more "expressive" (for lack of a better term) items like a novel or painting, and that should dictate different terms.

In my mind, the division is more of personal vs corporate works -- part of the reason I support copyright for the life of the artist is because it just seems insulting to suggest that in my 60s I should be forced to watch other people change and resell my own earlier work in ways that might be completely contrary to my original intent. Personal works usually draw from the life of the artist, from the people he knows and situations he has been in, so in that sense there is more than commerce at stake when discussing what is fair to the artist. And it certainly WILL curtail the work created by an artist if they feel they are losing control of their own creations, we see this with work-for-hire situations and short copyright terms would only exacerbate the situation.

But a corporation has no ego or feelings, Microsoft won't have restless nights of tossing and turning because somebody recoded DOS 3.0 to advocate kicking puppies (though they'd have legitimate trademark concerns). There's little chance that by changing a line of code in AutoCAD, you'll inadvertantly be slighting the beloved neice who was the inspiration for that modal dialog.

I wouldn't mind at all also seeing a requirement of some sort that corporations could renew copyright on works by reissuing them -- one of the biggest problems currently is the out-of-print but still protected work that will quite literally disintegrate before anyone is legally allowed to make a copy for posterity. I don't know how exactly it would work, but especially given the ease of digital duplication, such a requirement wouldn't be a huge burden any more than the similar requirements that trademark law make on corporations (for those who don't know, trademarks must be used periodically to maintain protection, which is why you'll see a lousy series that doesn't sell be published every few years anyways -- they're just printing the books to protect a trademark that might be more profitable in TV or film).

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[grahamm]

If the five programmers from the five companies all come up with the same solution to the problem, surely NONE of them should get a patent as it would not pass the obviousness requirement.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Shihar]

Personally, I liked the original US system of copyright. It was almost perfect. If I recall correctly you could register creative material for a 14 year copyright. The default was that copy write was an opt-in system. In the current system, EVERYTHING is copyright by default. This fucking message is copyright. After the first 14 years was up, you could renew for another 14. The idea was that only stuff that was worth copywriting was copyright, and that it was for a LIMITED amount of time. With copyright laws as they are, they might as well be forever. ...yeah, someone has been reading FreeCulture...

As far as patents, they are an entirely different beast. The biggest issue I have with patents are the mind numbingly low bar they have set to get an idea patented. Further, they also tend to scoop very wide swaths of "ideas" that have little to do with the original idea. The entire idea that you can patent business models and methods is infuriating. Speaking as someone who has been involved in getting things patented, the entire system is completely fucked. Don't get me wrong, I am all for patents. Patents do serve a very useful purpose and do indeed help innovation. I just am not a fan of the way they are set up now.

I really have no problem with blowing a billion dollars to develop a new drug and getting a patent for it for a few years. That encourages innovation. Without that patent, they would be leery about spending so much money on developing novel new drugs. On the other hand, you have dumb shit like how a cereal bar have patents on "mixing different cereals" and filling a bowl 1/3 the way with milk. Patents in such cases are destroying innovation, not helping it.

I think the point people miss is that patents and copyright are NOT there to compensate IP holders or even the creators. They are there to encourage innovation and nothing more. When the law starts throwing wrenches in the cogs of innovation, the system is failing.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[stinerman]

one of the biggest problems currently is the out-of-print but still protected work that will quite literally disintegrate before anyone is legally allowed to make a copy for posterity.

That is one of the major questions that begs to be looked at by Congress. Using a previous example, Windows 1.0 will, if I'm not mistaken, be placed in the public domain in 2080 (1985 + 95). I don't think MS (or whatever derivative corporation exists at the time) will be too big on keeping the source to a 95-year old OS anywhere. Assuming there are no other copies of the source anywhere else, it will not matter if the source lapses into the public domain as no one will be able to get a copy.

Software is especially precarious in this way. I don't need the master recording of a song to be able to distribute and change that song, but if I don't have the source to a program, all I can do is distribute a binary. I think this is a very important and fundamental issue with copyright law that Congress has not fully thought through.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[HappyDrgn]

In countries that actually respect the rights of their citizens such as sweden, all the above are much more fair
 
And that's why Sweden is the world leader in... oh, that's right, nothing. No innovative tech, no huge exports. Why? Because Sweden values society's use of a work over protections for the creator of the work. Whether this is good or bad I guess depends on how you feel about individual rights as a creator of a work. Many economists would agree, this type of collectivism does not do well to foster innovation in the market place. If you want companies to pay people to create new products, you need to provide sane protections for those products. Personally, I'd rather have more paying jobs than a free ride on someone else's idea.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

In british copyright law you do not need to register a copyright. You just need proof of when you created the works. The copyrights also last until the holders death.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Znork]

"Copyright law certainly does encourage creation of works"

You mean, extra economic incentive may encourage the creation of works.

Copyright law, however, also creates a disincentive through monopoly rights, which prevents the rapid creation and evolution and functional/form migration of derivative works, and another disincentive in the form of encouraging economic control over distribution channels.

Wether copyright as a whole (or, in fact, any IP) is a net benefit or not to society is proving extremely dubious, and is really a moot issue; the construction of monopoly rights is not a necessity for an economic incentive.

You could just as well have a system where the attributed author has no monopoly rights, but still gets paid by levies off the duplication channel (the ones who make money creating the copies), and gets partial payments for derivative works, etc.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Ambassador Kosh]

Copyrights and Patents I totally agree with you on.

What is wrong with Trademarks though? I always though of trademarks as something like forcing companies to tell a limited ammount of the truth. Ie Pepsi can't make a drink and call it Coke and make it look like a coke can etc. It means that when I buy a Panasonic device that is what it is. It is not something else that anyone can just put that name on it.

I don't think that people should be able to call their products by the name of some other product and even make them look the same. It makes it far too hard to find what you are looking for if people can do that.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[rdoger6424]

And that's why Sweden is the world leader in... oh, that's right, nothing.

You forgot something...

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[16K Ram Pack]

It could definitely end up as a disincentive. If you can write one hit record or novel that goes huge, and pays you enough each year to give you a decent living, what's the incentive to write another one?

Except of course, that you enjoy doing it, in which case, you don't need a copyright system.

Plenty of great music and novels were written when copyright had a far shorter life.

We've got a bunch of old performers in the UK complaining that their 50 year performance copyright on some records is about to run out - but none of them have made any quality work in decades, and that 50 year copyright didn't stop them making it 40-odd years ago. Therefore, no disincentive existed.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[barefootgenius]

How about this.

* Business cannot hold patents, only people can.
* Person/s cannot refuse usage of patent.
* Person/s get 5% royalty from any usage of patent.

(Offtopic. I have heard that business's are legal persons. Are they? If so, why are they never imprisoned?)

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[16K Ram Pack]

I seem to recall something about Alexander Graham Bell getting to the Patent Office just hours before someone else. If someone's that close, then it should be non-patent worthy, on the basis of being obvious.

The other thing is that someone, somewhere can invent something having never seen the original patent, and be unable to use it.

The main area that patents should be allowed is in truly revolutionary technology, not evolutionary.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[FireFury03]

Perhaps software should get a 5 year copyright with an option of another 5 if the product is still commerically viable (as most people know, 10 years is an eternity in the world of software development).

If you're giving software a maximum of a 10 year copyright, the original Linux kernel would now be out of copyright. Now the problem is, what do you do with an ongoing project like the Linux kernel - some of the code may well be over 10 years old, whilest other bits of the code were implemented yesterday. How do you track and apply that copyright?

If you're going to apply the copyright to the project as a whole based on when the original code was written then long-term ongoing projects like Linux, GNU, etc are screwed.

OTOH, if you're applying the copyright to the whole project based on when the latest code was written then you've just allowed any company to extend their copyright indefinately by making a minor update every few years.

With version control systems you might be able to track copyright on individual lines of code but now you are getting into the worrying world of the law dictating the technical development procedures for a project.

I agree that something should be done to prevent large corporations abusing patent and copyright laws, I'm unconvinced that your idea is the solution.

I'd also like to see laws requiring interface specifications to be made public for everything. I.e. you shouldn't be tied to using a particular word processor because the company who write it are keeping the file format specs secret and so you don't even know how to access your own data. Similarly, specs for interfacing with hardware should be made public - when you buy a piece of hardware isn't it reasonable for the manufacturer to tell you how to use _your hardware_ rather than being forced to use the accompanying software? I'm not advocating requiring people like nVidia to open their internal code optimisations - just making them publish specs for interfacing with the hardware would be a good start rather than having to reverse engineer it.

I can remember the good old days where you bought a piece of hardware and it came with a bloody great big technical manual. I've still got the manuals that came with my old printers which provide detailed specs of the control codes you could use to control the printer, and I've got the Creative Sound Blaster developer's manual somewhere (which is pretty big and was a free download from the Creative BBS).

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[gameforge]

The main area that patents should be allowed is in truly revolutionary technology, not evolutionary.

Exactly!

Even in this case, the poor inventor will have very hard time to defend itself against a company that can afford a whole lawyer company during 100 years.

This is true. But, people like to think of the lone inventor who's spent his entire life, yada yada yada.

not every 'little invention' is a 'revolutionary invention'...like something that improve lawnmowner blade durability by 5%

I agree with you. In that case, if ten lawnmower companies all hire ten alloy chemists to improve the durability of their blades, then it's just ten people doing their jobs. Neither the chemists nor their employers should have any patents on anything - they took an existing invention (the power lawnmower) and improved it (slightly).

Neither MS nor Lucent invented MPEG, and neither of them invented microchips. MPEG and microchips are both patent-deserving revolutionary inventions; but putting a software algorithm into a chip is basic stuff. If MS used Lucent's exact specification for doing so, perhaps there's a copyright infringement somewhere... that's about it.

The more I think about it, the more I think we should do away with patent law altogether, or mainly apply it to credit's sake i.e. if I come up with a new kind of telephone, I would have to give credit to A.G. Bell for his invention; not pay him a bunch of royalties. He didn't build my phone, he built his own and has every right to market and sell his phone. He also has every right to claim that he's the inventor. But I built my phone, and thus should be making the money for it, while stating something like "Based on technology from Alexander Bell, etc."

There's six billion people on the planet. Two of them are likely to have the same idea; it's absolutely not fair that one of them gets all the money just because he made it to the patent office first, or that he thought of it first, or whatever. People work for money. If I think up a brilliant idea and patent it, I did a little work... but all of the other people who perfect my idea, produce it, market it, support it, etc. are the real workers, and should be compensated as such. Essentially, the lone inventor is at fault for trying to do everything himself and not trying to work with all of the other talented people in an organization that could really make his idea work for society in a beneficial way. It's a radical idea I suppose, but very applicable to software. After all, we as programmers are constantly taught not to reinvent the wheel, when in fact patent law forces us to.

Am I in another universe here, or does that seem reasonable?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are "persons" for legal purposes only. Think of them as figment of the legal systems mind.

They are legal entities whose status is determined by the place they were incorporated in. Legally, they are afforded similar rights to that of natural persons though not all of the rights of a natural person.

You cannot put "imprison" a company. Take a look at Enron. Imagine if _all_ of Enron were imprisoned. Not only would you imprison those who deserved it, you might also imprison those who were the victim of a crime.

However, you can imprison the individual(s) responsible for a crime. If everyone in a given company were in on a crime (assuming they were all found guilty in a court of law)- you could imprison each individual (be they tried separately or together).

Also, you can sue a legal entity just as you can a natural person.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Angostura]

You could just as well have a system where the attributed author has no monopoly rights, but still gets paid by levies off the duplication channel (the ones who make money creating the copies), and gets partial payments for derivative works, etc.

Yeh, that'll work. I'll go and make a feature film of my favourite book tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll give the author a bit of cash, despite the fact he doesn't want me making a film of it, and is in the middle of making a film himself. I've got a great Beatles soundtrack I'm going to use.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[ArsenneLupin]

here it's the first to invent that gets the patent.

How do you prove when exactly you invented something?

I thought the point of first-to-file was because date of filing is straightforward to prove, and thus can serve as a useful proxy for actual date of invention.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism/

;-)

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[ArsenneLupin]

After all, we as programmers are constantly taught not to reinvent the wheel,

And there is a very good reason for that. Doing so would infringe on John Keogh's valuable intellectual property.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is actually not a big problem: the Linux kernel, like new editions of encyclopedias and school textbooks, would have new copyrights on new kernel releases. Copyright law is different from patent law: let's not get them too mixed up.

Manuals for hardware, unfortunately, are now deliberately incomplete in order to protect the "secret sauce" of the manufacturers. BIOS's, network chipsets, and CPU's all have numerous hidden features that reveal details of the design. In fact, revelations of the details in design manuals could leave the manufacturers open to patent lawsuits: as companies gather large patent suites, not to enforce patents, but as protective arsenals to protect against lawsuit, it makes it very difficult to innovate without accidentally violating an unrevealed or obscure patent that may be invalid, but a small company or developer may not have the resources to battle in court.

The result is stifling to innovation.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[zenthax]

I think what a lot of people REALLY want out of IP laws is very simple. Something that protects the little guy and is useless to the large corps. Basically IP laws that prevent media cartels from existing while still providing a revenue stream for the artist. IP laws that protect the inventor in his basement while preventing ghost patent hording companies from benefiting. Simply we want to fix the patent system so it is not exploitable by people and corporation to make ludicrous amounts of money. Now the only thing in the way of this change is simple, the people currently making ludicrous amounts of money don't want that to stop and well....they have ludicrous amounts of money.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[gameforge]

*rolls eyes*

I bet that guy is real freakin' proud of himself, too! I wonder if he gets up in the morning and considers himself to be a good person... I mean to be a lawyer is one thing - to be a patent lawyer is another thing - but to be an all-out dickhole to all of society... geez!

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an artist/writer, my girlfriend is an artist/writer, we're friends with many, many other creative professionals. Every one of us is able to do what we do precisely because we can pay the bills, sell our work, and have it not be manipulated by others or outright stolen (on any large commercial scale).

so Music and books never existed before patent law?

wow... you pioneers must be proud.

So do you know the guy that wrote Homer's Illiad or all of Shakespear's works? Obviousally because before copyright laws existed nothing was created because of the lack of protection.

Get real. if ALL copyright were removed tommorow not much would change Yes musicians would not get everything handed to them on a silver platter, but it also would get rid of these bland wannabe writers that are only in it for the money.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[zootm]

Without "ownership" of their work, you'd need a fixed-tariff scheme for the "partial payments" thing, I think, and that's even worse economically.

The "monopoly rights" issue is the problem though, yes. I'd prefer a short "default" copyright term, and (extremely low-cost) opt-in copyright beyond that, meaning that works drop out of copyright when the economic incentive associated with keeping copyright is over.

None of these systems is perfect, though.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[zotz]

"Patent law is very bad for innovation and competiton and will thus only help to stifle an otherwise successful competitive free market capitalist economy."

The things is, things protected by copyright or patent laws don't participate in Free Market economies. They participate in economies based on government granted and government protected monopolies. This is by their very nature. Why is this so hard for the general public to see?

Do you not believe that the successful competitive free market capitalist economy can come up with a better solution to the payment for creative works than a government granted monopoly?

all the best,

drew
-----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924
Bahamian Nonsense

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[TheRaven64]

And that's why Sweden is the world leader in... oh, that's right, nothing. No innovative tech, no huge exports

I don't know if you are aware, but Ericsson is a Swedish company. As well as being a world leader in telecommunications supplies and owning a significant portion of the mobile 'phone market, they also developed (and released as open source) one of the nicest programming languages for highly concurrent systems that I've encountered.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[ThosLives]

It could definitely end up as a disincentive. If you can write one hit record or novel that goes huge, and pays you enough each year to give you a decent living, what's the incentive to write another one?

Except of course, that you enjoy doing it, in which case, you don't need a copyright system.

Finally, someone else has seen some facts behind things.

At the risk of going unheard yet again, I will repeat myself: When I compensate you for a piece of software, or work of art, or performance, or piece of hardware, I'm paying for your ability to create that experience or object. I am not paying for the object itself. With software, books, music, "ideas", and the like, society has chosen to provide compensation on a 'per item' basis rather than on a 'per creator' basis. Look at it this way: it is not so important that we have screwdrivers, but that we have people who know how to make and people who are able to make screwdrivers. The difference between screwdrivers and "soft goods", though, is that the resources required to duplicate "soft goods" like programs, music, books (in electronic form) is almost zero.

When I pay for a screwdriver, I'm willing to pay because I don't have the metal ore, the plastic stock, the refining and machining equipment. If I had those things, screwdrivers, for me, would only cost the time to create one. Technology will never be able to remove that necessity from physical goods (even if we have Star-Trek style replicators, the equipment and raw feedstock will still be required). Technology does, however, give us the ability to replicate software, instructions to create music or images (which is what recordings are), or electronic representations of words, with almost zero cost. What technology cannot replace, though, is the creative forces behind the development of a screwdriver, or of a particular peice of work.

It is my opinion that if the market were truly completely open, in that there was no protection of soft or even hard works, that society would be forced to find a new way of compensating creative and physical ability. I do not yet have an idea of what this mechanism might be, however.

Yes, I believe that people who develop software should be compensated. But, I do not believe that I should have to continue to compensate them forever for something they did even 5 years ago. When I purchase a screwdriver, I pay for the work it took to manufacture and deliver that single screwdriver (probably some amortized bit of tooling as well). If I pay for a bit of software, I should only pay some portion of the opportunity cost of the person's time to develop the software plus any distribution costs. I should not have to keep paying for the person's continued desire to develop something I may not want, which is what licensing requires.

Requiring payments for existing goods is not a reasonable economic practice. Requiring payments for continuing services, however, is a reasonable practice. Most current "intellectual property" licenses do not fall into the second category but the first. That is, society gains no additional value but is required to keep paying someone for what was done long ago.

I would love to see a society that was free enough and had a balanced enough system to where you would get paid on the basis of a development, and you had to actually keep developing (music, software, new designs for machines) new things or be willing to labor physically to be compensated. Expecting, or even merely hoping, that you should obtain the equivalent of several lifetimes wealth for a single idea is very selfish and, in my opinion, unreasonable.

Now, does society today benefit from creative works 50 years ago? Yes. But does the creator of that work - or even worse, his estate - still deserve compensation for that? It may sound harsh, but I do not believe so. Especially not in the case of the estate.

This was, admittedly, a bit stream-of-consciousness. I also do not yet ha

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Kombat]

Business cannot hold patents, only people can.

If I work for IBM, and IBM is paying my salary, and I spend 6 months in a lab owned by IBM, where IBM pays for the electricity, air conditioning, all the hardware, and I my team comes up with the next great encryption scheme, who gets the patent? A member of my team? And the rest of us get nothing?

The important question here though, is why would IBM invest all that money knowing they will be prohibited from holding the resulting patent? Why should an arbitrary member of the team (bought and paid for by IBM) get all the control of the resulting patent? Your suggestion would crush innovation and investment in R&D.

Person/s cannot refuse usage of patent.

I believe this is already the case. Holders of patents are required to license the use of their patent for "a reasonable fee." I don't believe they are allowed to simply refuse to allow other parties to use their technology. It's part of the condition of being allowed to hold the patent.

I have heard that business's are legal persons. Are they?

Not in Canada or the US, no. When the company acts illegally, it is punished financially. If it was a criminal act, and real heads must roll, then the people responsible for the decision are (theoretically and eventually) held accountable.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

While the original 14-year period of copyright might be ludicrously short for modern use...

You meant to say "ludicrously long", right? Fourteen years is an eternity in our modern digital economy.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bzzzzzt. Wrong. No."

That is how an arrogant fool replies, BTW.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[ansible]

Oh my, how naive you are. (I'm not trying to be mean or snarky.) This is exactly what is supposed to happen, and that is what is written into the law.

However, this is not at all what happens in real life with the USPTO. Through plan or incompetence, almost anything can be patented. Obviousnenss is not a barrier.

Just look at all the patents where someone took an existing business process, and put it on the web. Yah, new patent! Ka-ching!

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[amliebsch]

With evidence, of course. Things like written logs, notes, and designs. It is a complication, though, which is why the law will likely soon change.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[eosp]

You have a girlfriend? We don't like your kind here.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[PatHMV]

The problem with that argument is simply this: Would either Bell or the alleged other guy have worked so hard to invent the telephone if they didn't have an expectation of being able to patent it and make some money off of it before somebody else made a generic version? Maybe, not everybody is motivated by money. But I doubt it. It cost Bell lots of time and money to invent the first telephone. He needs a way to recoup that. The concept of patents is very sound and necessary to encourage innovation in areas where replicating the invention is cheap, but thinking it up in the first place is not. The problem today is with the implemenation of patents by the USPTO and the expansion into areas like "business practices" and truly mind-numbingly obvious things like "one-click shopping". Marketing gimmicks should not be patentable.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[amliebsch]

I have heard that business's are legal persons. Are they? If so, why are they never imprisoned?

Yes, generally, when it comes to civil law, to which imprisonment is not applicable. No, when it comes to criminal law (as a corporation by definition cannot have a mens rea.) That's why they can't be imprisoned. No, sometimes, when it comes to civil rights (e.g., corporate speech is not nearly as protected by the First Amendment.)

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[the_Bionic_lemming]

And how many 1930's classic saturday matinee serials have you bought recently?

about a couple of dozen. They are finally letting out the old batman and robins, and the Buck rogers serials I love watching.

Only new dvd's I've purchased over the past 8 years have been StarGates seasons. So yes, the majority of the money I spend on DVD's are exactly for 1930's serials.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Haeleth]

And that's why Sweden is the world leader in... oh, that's right, nothing. No innovative tech, no huge exports.

Ahem.

Ingvar Kamprad is one of the richest men in the world (possibly the richest, depending on whose figures you believe). What a terrible country Sweden must be, if it stifles its entrepeneurs so much that all they can do is dominate international markets and end up richer than Bill Gates!

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[WinDoze]

Person/s cannot refuse usage of patent.

I believe this is already the case. Holders of patents are required to license the use of their patent for "a reasonable fee." I don't believe they are allowed to simply refuse to allow other parties to use their technology. It's part of the condition of being allowed to hold the patent.

You are not required to license a patent you hold to anyone. You can keep it all to yourself if you'd like. But you'll probably make more easy money if you license it.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[debest]

Nothing should force the copyright holder of a piece of software to release the source code: the only work that should be accessable to you after the copyright expires is the binary, not the source.

Here's the analogy to the music business: let's say you compose a piece of music for the piano. You write the composition down on sheet music, so you don't forget. Then you record the music, and sell the music on CD (you never sold the sheet music). Both the sheet music and the recording are copyrighted, but only the recording was distributed. There should not be some obligation on your part to release your sheet music after the copyright expires.

In fact, there's no obligation (nor should there be) to the copyright holders to maintain the content that was distributed, just so that it will fall into the public domain. That would be charitable and ethical to so, but no one is required to be either in our society. I recall reading stories about motion picture production companies many decades ago who would clean out and destroy all of their older films that were about to fall out of copyright, because if they were accidentally released there would be no way to prevent their distribution. This was in an age where copyright actually expired, but also when very few parties but themselves had the realistic ability to obtain and keep copies of films at all. As a result, a lot of culture was lost, but it was the right of the movie companies to act this way if they chose to. If the public wants to benefit from expired-copyright works, it is ultimately up to the public (someone who owns a copy) to make sure that it is not lost: the original copyright owner does not have the responsibitity to see that this happens.

(Of course, the issue of criminal laws that prohibit bypassing DRM in order to get at public domain content is entirely another matter, and one that needs to be fixed.)

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[vertinox]

Are you aware that Paris Hilton has the phrase "That's hot!" trade marked?

No... I'm serious. She does.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Haeleth]

Yeh, that'll work. I'll go and make a feature film of my favourite book tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll give the author a bit of cash, despite the fact he doesn't want me making a film of it, and is in the middle of making a film himself. I've got a great Beatles soundtrack I'm going to use.

Sounds good to me. The free market decides which film people want to have. The author doesn't lose out, because he gets royalties from your film if it succeeds, and profits from his own film if that succeeds, and he's already made a load of money from writing a popular book in the first place.

If authors do not have an absolute right to control their work - if that right is a privilege granted by society - then society has a right to revoke, or restrict, that privilege as it sees fit, and the scenario you describe would be a perfectly fair scenario for a society to choose to permit. It's only a nightmare scenario (as you seem to have intended it to be) if you take the line that authors have some kind of God-given right to decide what happens to their work.

And in that case, even the present system makes no sense. If authors do have an absolute inherent right to control their work, then copyrights must be made perpetual, because we cannot take someone's property rights away after death! Imagine if your kids got to keep everything that you leave them in your will, but 70 years later the state came along and reclaimed everything that had been your property? That's clearly ludicrous. So if copyright is a property right like any other, it absolutely must become perpetual.

Good luck finding the rightful heir of Shakespeare when you want to put on a production of Hamlet, though.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it is worth, true communism can be mostly placed under the label of an economic system rather than a political system. Sure, communism lends itself to certain types of political systems, but there is not much in theory to prevent a democracy from being communist (in fact the two ideas gel pretty well... in theory at least).

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Ethidium]

Realistically, microsoft will not have to pull their product from the market. It just won't happen. They're better businessfolk and lawyers than that. RIM got dangerously close to having to make drastic changes in the Blackberry technology, but even they settled (after the trial judge's forceful expression of disgust that they were in court at all).

As far as the party with the deepest pockets winning, not necessarily true here or in any other trial. But it does help. A lot. More in the case where one party has deep pockets and the other has none, than when the difference is how many billions you have to throw around.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[LordKazan]

I believe the subject is more technical innovation than atrist innovation

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Omaze]

Great. You've just created a whole new sector to the political lobbying industry. The "my art is different from your art and so requires a whole different set of laws" sector.

You've got politicians drooling at the chops for all the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money they can waste debating and legislating and litigating over this.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Gonarat]

The guy didn't patent this to be a dickhole, he patented the "circular transportation device" to show how broken the current patent system is. This patent would never hold up in court if it was actually enforced (thousands of years of prior use), but the point is that his patent should have been denied (and laughed out of the patent office) but it wasn't!

Now the broken system is starting to bite everyone in the ass, even those (such as Microsoft) who might have been for the current system. Unfortunately, until the big boys are made to suffer, nothing is going to change. Perhaps we are seeing this start to happen (this suit, Eloas, RIM, etc.)

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Millenniumman]

How would writers get paid without copyright? Anyone could give away the text for free, or print them and give them away cheaply.

The state of literature in the time of Homer was entirely different from what it is now.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[bhalter80]

I think copyright is a good thing as it protects me as the inventor but I think there needs to be a production test associated with copyright and with patents. I believe patents should expire at the rate of advance of tech for that industry. For example the computer insustry has an obsolescence rate of ~ 5 years, whereas other industries expericence obsolescence much less frequently.

With respect to copyright I'm ok with giving people exclusive rights to reproduce a work for as long as they wish, but I think in the copyright case that 2 years after the work goes out of print that copyright should only require attribution to the original creator. That way if I am continuously printing a book I am covered, if I only do a small run every 2 years I am covered but if I have no more interest in producing the work I still get credit for the work but others are free to reproduce it at will.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[symbolic]

One of them would surely get the patent - the "obviousness" would only be discovered after any of the others decided to fork out a large sum of money to have the patent tested for validity (a lawsuit).

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[symbolic]

I see a big problem with a first-to-file method, since there seems to be some confusion between the terms "invention" and "patent". With first-to-file, you haven't necessarily invented anything...you've simply filed an idea with a government agency that can grant you a monopoly on that idea.

An invention (at least in my mind) carries with it a physical manifestation- something that has been built, a process that is in use, etc. First-to-file will only keep the patent mills going, churning out whatever garbage they can muster to "protect" even the most vague, and in many cases, most obvious means of accomplishing something.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Falcon040]

Indeed. You speak wisely.

I'm sure when the original Copyright, Trademark, and Patent laws were originally devised, the current state of affairs were completely unforeseen.
With out new experience, I think it could be possible to redesign these laws to better help a innovation and efficiency in the free market economy. But, this is certainly a big job that I certainly am unable to go into detail and secondly it is unlikely to happen, as the largest companies and hence the largest lobbyists have only their self-interest of profits in mind, and so this means making copyrighted works to be copyrighted for ever longer periods, and to make Patents ever more restrictive to keep out competition.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

It cost Bell lots of time and money to invent the first telephone. He needs a way to recoup that.

I spend a lot of time and money on pr0n. Does that entitle me to some sort of financial compensation?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[DrSkwid]

The "Plan 9 from Bell Labs" GUI doesn't have double clicking.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[iminplaya]

No. Copyright, like other forms of property encourages hoarding and speculation. It never was about protecting the artist/creator. Some early copyright law left the creator out of the picture entirely. It's about protecting a method of doing business no matter how corrupt or obsolete it might be. Here it's about protecting the distributors/publishers, which has now become obsolete. Artists will now need to look elsewhere to make their contracts. Each work serves as advertisement for the next. Everybody gets paid through their performance, not by sitting their butts collecting rent. I don't get paid that way. Neither should you. You are welcome to sell your work, of course, but you have no right to control what happens afterward, any more than an architect has a right to tell me what color I must paint my house. Yes, we must throw out the bath water. Somebody peed in the tub.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[typical]

Although patents were initially intended to stop techniques being kept secret or lost from the public or King in England, then extended with the intentions to assist the small inventor to protect itself from larger predators, it has done neither of these.

The problem is that the idea of patents is that there are relatively few advances, that those advances are easy to reverse-engineer, and so forth. I know that I can't make a new plow like that one that the company down the road produced for two decades, because they came up with the design first.

But an engineer in any modern industry has orders of magnitude more patents to be familiar with. As a result, no engineer has any idea what IP is covering his field (despite the efforts of the USPTO to provide a free, searchable database). This means that patents, as a whole, simply generate more business risk, since it's impossible to predict what is safe to do.

(Actually, so many broad patents have been granted that it's not safe to do much of *anything*, but that's really a different complaint).

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[hesiod]

> I don't need the master recording of a song to be able to distribute and change that song, but if I don't have the source to a program, all I can do is distribute a binary.

Do decompiling and reverse engineering no longer work? If you know enough assembly you can always modify a binary. It may be harder to do, but it can be done. Similarly, yes, you can modify a song and rerelease it, but without the master, the result will usually not be as good. What if you wanted to change the drum line of a song? Yes, you can use equalizers and filters to remove them, but drum set frequencies are all over the place (kick drums & hihats are not very similar, acoustically).

So it's possible, but difficult to do effectively; so is reverse engineering software.

Of course, I am not a software engineer and have not decompiled anything since the early nineties and I imagine there are ways to make it more difficult, but if the processor can execute the code, you can figure out how it works. I have, however, "decompiled" music.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[iminplaya]

I think someone from Microsoft said that their biggest competition comes from old versions of their software. If it was freely available, they believe that very few people would buy the new version. So they felt that they have to lock down the other. From their point of view they are right. And as far as the artists are concerned, they can make contracts to perfom, not just sit on their coatails as they want to do now. They should not receive special priviledges that my line of work does not enjoy.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Inominate]

BUT If you use someone elses patent without bothering to license it, the courts will just work out the license for you, rather than stop you from using the patent.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[swillden]

Software is especially precarious in this way. I don't need the master recording of a song to be able to distribute and change that song, but if I don't have the source to a program, all I can do is distribute a binary. I think this is a very important and fundamental issue with copyright law that Congress has not fully thought through.

I completely agree, and I've been saying here on slashdot and elsewhere for years. I think the solution is very simple, too, and very workable although it will strike many as a bit radical:

Copyright protection should only be available for software whose source code has been published.

That's it. It doesn't require companies to publish their source -- if you think that your source contains sufficiently innovative ideas that they need to be protected, you can use contract law and trade secret law to require your customers not to duplicate and redistribute your work. You can actually use contract law to create a very similar set of restrictions to what copyright law provides, and you don't even have to leave any Fair Use loopholes in place, but you'll have to get each customer to sign a legally binding contract.

In practice, most software contains a few clever and useful ideas, but nothing that is really worth protecting. The value in software source code is the code itself. Copyright prevents a competitor from outright copying any of your source code, even though you distribute it in order to obtain copyright protection (for source and binaries built from the source).

I think that if the law required source to be published, most software companies would publish the source and otherwise do business just as they do. I don't think we'd suddenly see a rash of people stealing others' code, in fact I think there would actually be less of it because copyright infringement would be so easy to prove. In my career as a professional programmer I've seen several cases where illegally copied code was put into a commercial product with the idea that no one would ever notice -- and no one ever did.

I also think that having to publish code would not only ensure that it's available when it goes out of copyright (though whether or not anyone will care when Windows 95 finally goes out of copyright in 3895 is a separate issue), but it would also have salutary effects on the security, reliability and general quality of computer software, and I think it would massively increase the pace at which software is developed and the pace at which software development turns from a craft into an engineering discipline.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[swillden]

Nothing should force the copyright holder of a piece of software to release the source code: the only work that should be accessable to you after the copyright expires is the binary, not the source.

I disagree. I'll address your analogy with music in a moment, and explain why software is different, but my key point is independent of that issue.

The main reason why software (in binary or source form) should not receive copyright protection if the source is not published is because that's not what copyright is supposed to be for.

The intent of modern copyright was never to protect or remunerate the author. Those are the most obvious effects of copyright law, but they're side effects, the real purpose is to enrich the public domain. Society pays a lot of money to enforce ownership of something that on it's face would seem not to be ownable. Why should society do that? So *society* benefits. If the author benefits, fine, but that's not the goal.

Modern copyright law was introduced to benefit society by encouraging authors to publish their works so that others could use those ideas to advance the arts and the sciences. The key notion is that copyright is all about spreading ideas, not protecting them. It does this by protecting expressions so that authors are incented to distribute -- but again, the *purpose* of the law is to spread the ideas.

Now, apply that to software. The reason software is different is because binaries are opaque. I can't really pick up any but the most obvious ideas from your program, because 95% of your ideas are obscured by the process of turning source into binary. This is as if an author were able some how to publish a book that people could read, but without being able to see the actual words that were used to make the story. Obviously, that possibility never occurred to the lawmakers who first defined copyright law, and not enough thought was put into the issue when software first arrived on the scene.

Finally, keep in mind that copyright is not the only IP protection mechanism available to you. If the law worked the way I think it should, you could still choose not to publish the source code. In doing so, you would opt out of obtaining copyright protection, but you could still maintain control of your software through contract and trade secret law. It would be more cumbersome, you'd have to get each customer to actually sign a contract (and click-wrap agreements wouldn't work), but you could do it if you felt it was important enough.

In such an environment, I think most software companies would just publish the source. If everyone is publishing source, copyright infringement would be so easy to identify that it wouldn't happen much. If nearly everyone is doing it, those who choose not to publish source will be scrutinized closely, since a good reason to keep your code secret is because it contains copyright infringement.

Here's the analogy to the music business: let's say you compose a piece of music for the piano. You write the composition down on sheet music, so you don't forget. Then you record the music, and sell the music on CD (you never sold the sheet music).

The relationship between sheet music and recordings is actually a little complex. The recording is a derived work of the sheet music, which is why if you record someone else's composition, you have to pay royalties to the songwriter. But the recording is not equivalent to the composition, if both you and your friend record your performances of my composition, both of your recordings are derived works of my music, but they're otherwise unrelated from a copyright aspect. The fact that you recorded yours first means nothing about your friend's ownership of his recording.

Why is the ownership of the two recordings different? Because the performance involves creativity and the act of performing adds new creative content to the result. Actually, the act of recording and mixing adds additional creative content which is

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[driddle]

The problem with that argument is simply this: Would either Bell or the alleged other guy have worked so hard to invent the telephone if they didn't have an expectation of being able to patent it and make some money off of it before somebody else made a generic version?

What about Einstein or Maxwell or any great Physicist or Mathematician that has spent years of their lives on creating great theories? They never see any compensation from the many engineers that apply their equations to almost every thing we use. Why did not Maxwell get a 95 five year patent on his equations and why did not he and his family derive royalties from every electrical device made from 1864 till 1959? Why did not Einstein and his family make royalties off all the aerospace space companies that use relativity when designing thier products?

The idea of patents to me seems as though it is very unfairly and narrowly applied. Many people that make great contributions to society never benefit from it but people that make minor uses and sometimes not so minor uses of far greater mans ideas make great fortunes with patents. This too me seems illogical and unfair. No invention comes from nothing it is based on the greatness of others and I see no reason why a few smart people that are fortunate enough to make something that people value should be so greatly rewarded when the truly brilliant people make very little.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[WinDoze]

They will certainly try, but again, you're still not forced to. For example, RIM essentially had the choice of being put out of business, or taking the licensing deal. In this particular case I'd be willing to bet that Lucent knows damn well not every 360 that was sold can be recovered, and they also know damn well that MS isn't going to just bail out of the console market. They're essentially going to try to force a licensing agreement on MS.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[HappyDrgn]

I was not aware, thanks. What language is that?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[bill_kress]

I TOTALLY agree, except that since Microsoft funded SCO to do the same thing vs Linux, I really can't feel too sorry for them. It's just payback. Kinda like south park during the "Cripple Fight" episode, the kids just kept saying "I'm staying out of this one"

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[shmlco]

So? Technological innovation's shelf life isn't any better. If you want the dollars to continue to flow in you have an incentive (i.e. drive) to continually improve and update your product.

Be that as it may, that wasn't what the OP was complaining about, and what I replied to, as copyright isn't the major factor in the technological arena.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

erlang

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[gameforge]

Hrmm... methinks I should have read that one a little closer. :) Good for him.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trademark isn't that flawed. It's in place to keep names of products and companies recognizable. It's detrimental to the customer to have fifty boxes of cereal out there named Crispy Flakes - but you know it would happen. (it happens all the time in the software world..)

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

Honestly, the solution need not even be so radical as publishing source code. Just modify the way Copyright is registered -- in order to register a work you have to send in a copy of the material to Washington, which ultimately goes to the Library of Congress. Simply require that any softweare program must also include source code to be registered, but the source code itself will be held in escrow unavailable to the public at the Library of Congress until the term of protection expires.

Then the LoC can be the gatekeeper in charge of making sure the data is kept in current physical media for the period until it is available. They already handle such data updating issues, and have more incentive than the company itself to make sure it is done properly.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

"Copyright law certainly does encourage creation of works"

You mean, extra economic incentive may encourage the creation of works.

No, I meant what I said. While economic benefits are important to creators in allowing them to create full-time, they are not always the most important thing. To a creator who has just made a personal work drawn from his own life, control is the most important thing, not money. It would be great to make money from it, but what would be even more upsetting is to see someone else change the work into something that is anathema to your beliefs.

If someone takes the beautiful drawing I did of my neice and uses it on the cover of a book of sexually explicit drawings of children, I'll be far more pissed off than I ever would be if a publisher made more money than I off some random drawing. One of the key aspects of copyright is not that it guarantees money (because it doesn't, by a long shot), but it guarantees control over how the work can be used.

This is not theoretical, I know several creators who have stopped releasing anything other than their coookie-cutter stuff to pay the bills, simply because they've been screwed over one too many times by publishers doing something they find unconscionable with works they've created. We all lose when that happens, and it would happen far more commonly in a system where publishers had no minimal need to keep creators happy in order to have access to their creations.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

I can think of very, very few creators who stop creating because they became successful. The motivation for creators is rarely financial. But that hardly means society will get as much benefit if we remove all compensation from creating.

Stephen King isn't exactly putting out books to cover rent these days, but you can be sure if he was working 50 hours a week as a plumber to pay the bills, there would be a lot fewer Stephen King novels available for people to enjoy (or hate, depending on your taste).

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

If you want to troll, you could at least look up the difference between patent and copyright before you begin. I mean, we do have some minimal standards here on /.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[syousef]

I really hate personal attacks by anon coward. Aptly named. Shows a lot of guts and maturity.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Lehk228]

as an artist how would you feel about a change of copyright to 25 years? a quarter century is quite a while but not too long for popular works created in a person's lifetime to drop into the public domain within their lifetime.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[syousef]

Person/s cannot refuse usage of patent.

I believe this is already the case. Holders of patents are required to license the use of their patent for "a reasonable fee." I don't believe they are allowed to simply refuse to allow other parties to use their technology. It's part of the condition of being allowed to hold the patent.

It all hinges on the definition of "a reasonable fee". If you're allowed to factor R&D into a life saving drug that costs millions to develop but cents to manufacture, you're then allowed to sell it for a small fortune. Never mind that people will die for lack of something you can easily manufacture. The whole "what's the incentive for developing it otherwise" argument also comes into play here. Bottom line is that's self serving nonesense. People can and will invest in something if money can be made over the longer term, so forcing a reasonable price to be well...affordable by the man on the street would only result in a situation where companies recover their costs over a much larger period, and I believe the R&D will happen. (In any case what the hell's the point if no one is allowed to use it or rediscover it until the patent expires. It only serves to make people richer, while average people without great wealth die). Companies however hire lawyers to ensure that they recover costs over a shorter period - otherwise executives can be sued by the shareholders for not looking after the shareholder's interests.

It's a really sick game.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[AK Marc]

What is wrong with Trademarks though?

One word: Stealth

Just look at what's happened with a guy that claims to own the word. I've included one link below, but there are lots more out there. It makes for a fun read, but you do understand how trademarks can be misused.
http://www.hypocritae.com/?ART=170

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[swillden]

Just modify the way Copyright is registered -- in order to register a work you have to send in a copy of the material to Washington, which ultimately goes to the Library of Congress

That's how it used to work and, sort of, still does.

Until 1976, copyright in the US wasn't automatic. You had to register and you had to send a copy of the work to the LoC. That was changed so that the mere act of creation of a work also creates the associated copyright. Still, even today, if you want to go to court over a copyright, you have to have formally registered it, which in the case of software requires sending a copy of the source code to the LoC.

Sort of.

To prevent the LoC from being buried in huge masses of material, you only have to send the first few and the last few pages of the text to the LoC, so the LoC doesn't really have everything -- but that's because the LoC doesn't *want* everything. Asking them to archive copies of the source code to every version of every formally registered program for the century (or more! The USSC says Congress can continue extending copyrights!) that must pass before the material goes into the public domain would be a huge burden. Keep in mind that Microsoft registers every sub-release and every patch of every version of every product, and so does every other software company with a legal department.

Yeah, drives are cheap, but maintaining that mass of data for that period of time would be very costly.

Further, it's a bad idea to hold the source in escrow. The purpose of copyright is to enhance the spread of ideas, and the ideas can't spread while the code is secret. See my other post in this thread for a fuller explanation of why source code should be published in order to do what copyright is supposed to (or at least was supposed to) do.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

I tend to support the idea that a work created by an individual should belong wholly to that individual until they die. Works created by a corporation would more easily fit a fixed time limit.

It just seems "unfair" (if that word applies at all when discussing commerce and law) that Stepehn King should be forced in his 50s to see his first books be republished, rewritten, and changed to include whatever horrible thing he disagrees with, and have no say whatsoever about it.

A novel or painting is just much more personal and it seems disrespectful to say that when a person gets older they'll lose control of their own life's work simply so someone else can make a buck. But I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of "in-print" clause for commercial works that requires a work to actually be available if you want to maintain commercial exclusivity. Authors get just as frustrated as readers when their books are no longer available due to publishing houses that maintina the copyright yet don't find it profitable to publish the book. They should have to either give the copyright back to the author or publish the book.

I DO know that if a fixed period were used and it were much less than, say, 20 years, it would actually change the work being made available, particularly in series and larger works. There would simply be very little personal incentive to create amazing characters in an ongoing story if you knew that before your kids were even old enough to appreciate your writing, the characters would be headlining in porno films and used to sell cigarettes.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[barefootgenius]

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of fishing boats. The percentage would be split among the team. Yes, it would mean the end to the mega-business. Is this a bad thing? If so, how?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[seanmcelroy]

Patents are supposed to be a hindrance to new entrances to a makret. They're a reward for R&D, and encourage the development of technology, which reduces the marginal cost of products, and eventually, price to consumers.

I argue patents are important to developed economies (with easy access to capital) that want to continue their leadership roles. They raise a barrier to entry, but I believe they increase competition, not among production, but among idea developers... and that's what really enriches a nation.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[jellybear]

Yeah, like Farnsworth, NOT! LOL!

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[mrchaotica]

Not to mention that software needs to become Public Domain and have the source code released in order both to be used (i.e. updated for compatibility with modern systems) and to be modified and incorporated into derivative works.

Not only should the copyright on software expire in a short period of time (e.g. 10 years), but in order to assert copyright authors should be required to submit a copy of the source code to the Library of Congress.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Lehk228]

perhapse a half drop at 25 years then? a work automatically loses protection in it's whole form, however derivitive works rights would last for the life of the author, while corporate created works would last 25 years period.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[amliebsch]

It's a bad thing because it's so ridiculously unworkable. For one, how far up and down the corporate structure do you define "team?" What about people who only work on the project a little vs. others who spend years on it? If a guy is hired onto the team the day before the project is done, does he get a full share? What if another guy quits the team the day before it is done? Does the secretary for the team get a share? What about the prototypers? Independent contractors? What about the janitor who cleans the lab? If it's an improvement of an existing design, is the original design team part of the team? How does the team decide on licensing terms? On sales terms? Who is responsible for enforcement? And most of all, who is paying for the research facility?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[mrchaotica]

Actually, Thomas Jefferson and I would disagree with you. Originally, copyright had exactly one purpose: to enhance the Public Domain. Any compensation for the creator is a side effect; only a means to an end.

In fact, originally the creator had to assert his copyright by registering the work with the US Copyright Office, and in the process of doing so, he had to provide the Copyright Office with a copy. Therefore, the Copyright Office would be able to preserve the work for the Public Domain itself. Note that this only changed when the US joined the Berne Convention, not by a law requiring a direct vote by the American People. (source)

Nothing should force the copyright holder of a piece of software to release the source code

Why not? Are you arguing this based on some historical perspective, or is it just your opinion? Is there really some moral or ethical justification for using public resources to protect the profit of creators of works, without giving anything back to the public in return? 'Cause I can't think of any!

According to Jefferson, the premise of copyright is a social contract -- a bargain between creators of works and the public, whereby the public grants a temporary monopoly to the creators, and in return the work itself is created, for the benefit of everyone. Note that absent this social contract, the natural state for the work would be Public Domain.

Let me reiterate this point, because it's important: It is not the case that the author has a natural right to his work and is granting it to the public; on the contrary, it's that the public has the natural right to the work and is temporarily granting the exclusive use of it to the creator!

Therefore, the proper perspective from which to judge copyright law is not to try to be "fair" to the creators of works, but to maximize the public's benefit by only granting the minimum protections required to encourage the creation of new works. By this standard -- which is the only one that Jefferson and the other authors of the Constitution would recognize, by the way -- it should be required for software authors to put source code on file at the Copyright Office. For that matter, it should be required for the creators of all kinds of media to file the "preferred form for modification," just like in the GPL. The only difference would be that the "source" wouldn't be released to the public until the author's monopoly expires.

As a result, a lot of culture was lost, but it was the right of the movie companies to act this way if they chose to.

Actually, it wasn't. Sure, in our warped bizarro world they are allowed to get away with it, but by all rights they were stealing from the Public Domain. They profited from the work at the cost of the public, and then maliciously denied the public the return on its investment. That should be illegal!

If the public wants to benefit from expired-copyright works, it is ultimately up to the public (someone who owns a copy) to make sure that it is not lost

And that's exactly what the Copyright Office was for, until the Berne Convention screwed everything up by infecting us with Europe's "natural rights" rationalization for copyright, which is contrary to what is allowed by the Constitution.

the original copyright owner does not have the responsibitity to see that this happens.

The original copyright "owner" has the moral and ethical -- although unfortunately, not legal -- obligation to send a copy of his work to the Copyright Office for preservation. He doesn't have to preserve it himself.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[zotz]

"secondly it is unlikely to happen, as the largest companies and hence the largest lobbyists have only their self-interest of profits in mind,"

Indeed, but we could at least start calling them on it when they spout free market concerns when people call for government to reign them in in their abuses and almost none of their products are "free market" products to begin with. This is for those where this fact applies.

Also, finding ways to turn their natural tendencies against their natural tendencies could help.

all the best,

drew
-----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/187924
Some Bahamian Nonsense for the enjoyment of all.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[bigpicture]

"contributing to a nation's lead in the world." And in that concept lies the the root of the whole fallacy. That any nation can prosper without the whole world prospering. If other nations do not prosper then who do you sell your products to? Prosperity is about free trade between all regions of the world.

Through the WTO the US is trying to sell Americanism to the rest of the world. But the rest of the world is saying "hold it" this may not be the best way. China seems to be prospering, and will soon surpass the US economy, and they don't have any tight patent or copyright laws. Why should certain industries or countries have protection and privilege in a free world economy?

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[oakgrove]

In my mind, the division is more of personal vs corporate works -- part of the reason I support copyright for the life of the artist is because it just seems insulting to suggest that in my 60s I should be forced to watch other people change and resell my own earlier work in ways that might be completely contrary to my original intent. Personal works usually draw from the life of the artist, from the people he knows and situations he has been in, so in that sense there is more than commerce at stake when discussing what is fair to the artist. And it certainly WILL curtail the work created by an artist if they feel they are losing control of their own creations, we see this with work-for-hire situations and short copyright terms would only exacerbate the situation.

You misunderstand the original intent of copyright. Copyright law was put into effect for the public interest. It was just long enough so the artist could make some money and therefore be bothered to produce the work in the first place but short enough so that within a reasonable amount of time the work would enter the public domain. Copyright for the life of the artist does not serve this purpose at all. It worked great in its original form. Currently, the disenfranchisement of the public is quite appalling and only serves to enrich the coffers of parasitic private entities.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[NMerriam]

And it certainly WILL curtail the work created by an artist if they feel they are losing control of their own creations

I'm pretty sure I said that in the message you replied to.

I don't misunderstand the original intent of copyright, it was mostly to protect publishers (creative types were considered replacable craftsmen who risked no capital in a publishing venture).

I was stating my views on what would be more fair to both the creator and the public, not what was originally intended.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[oakgrove]

Hmm...

While I accept your assertion that copyright was intended to protect publisher investments as plausible, my understanding is that copyright was instituted for the sole purpose of "encouraging the production of creative works for the public benefit". This also seems to be the view taken by U.S. courts in their interpretation as well.

If you have a credible source you can link to that supports this belief, I would be very interested in reading it.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[Znork]

"but it guarantees control over how the work can be used."

While I can certainly sympathize, to put it bluntly, that control is not in the interest of humanity. We all do things we wish wouldn't benefit those things we find despicable, but the transaction cost to the economy of adding permission tags to every single object and unit of currency would be far too high. Imagine a world where you wouldnt be allowed to use a dialysis machine because one of the creators didnt like writers?

And really, in the end the only real control we have over our own creations is to keep them private. Which wouldnt be any different anyway.

"I know several creators who have stopped releasing anything other..."

Perhaps so, but in an attributional system, the work would have to retain an edition history, so it would be entirely apparent who did what, and personally, if I liked your creator friends writing, I most certainly would order a copy of the exact edition your friend had written. And as no publisher would hold exclusive rights to publish the works, I suspect the availability of no-frills, printing-only services wouldnt be a problem.

Of course, conversely, a really great editor/writer could easily set up business picking up crap manuscripts with good story ideas and rewrite them in a palatable form, creating a derivative work where both he and the original author gets paid part.

Re:The continuing problem of patents...

[PaganRitual]

All I know is that this conversation now makes we want to patent usage of the work 'dickhole'. I'd love to be known as the person that holds that patent to that classic phrase. I love it. I reckon it's going to become my word of the week. Any intended responses to this post, I think you know what you are ...

Just because it is MS

[dcapel]

Just because it is MS does not change the fact that this is a patent-system absurdity, another reason why it should be overhauled. People are surprised when huge companies with an enormous portfolio of patents want reform; this is the reason the companies want it: they can't do the Mutually Assured Destruction scheme against small companies like they can eachother. One small company with a stupid patent can hold a company hostage.

I hate MS as much as the next slashdotter, but this evil is so bad we do not even wish it upon them. Abuse is abuse.

If you really want to follow the slashdot paradigm, then mod me down for my pro-ish MS remarks.

Re:Just because it is MS

[OmegaBlac]

Just because it is MS does not change the fact that this is a patent-system absurdity, another reason why it should be overhauled.

Yet Microsoft continues to apply for frivolous patents and Ballmer hints at launching patent suits again competing OS that just happen to have their source code open for all to see. Gee, I wonder how many patent violations Windows has in its closed up proprietary self. We can only speculate unfortunately...

Re:Just because it is MS

[schroet]

Did you just call Lucent, a global company with a $14-billion market-cap, small?

Re:Just because it is MS

[AoT]

Just because it is MS does not change the fact that this is a patent-system absurdity

I know this in my head but deep down, way deep down, where the best of the belly laughs come from, I know that Microsoft being forced to pull the 360 would be the funniest thing to happen in a long, long time.

Re:Just because it is MS

[jambarama]

Not to plug my blog, but I recently wrote about patent abuse. The problem isn't so much unethical companies, the problem is that the incentives to patent are all wrong.

Microsoft is remarkably clean of patent/copyright abuse. Most other companies have less than perfect records. Even companies we see as victimized (ex - Apple sued by creative over 'heirarchal displays' and the Apple record label) have sued others (ex - apple again suing over trade secrets and tried to get gag orders for blogs).

Yeah the Mac fans will bury this comment (just like criticizing Linux is dangerous on /.) but the patent system does need some reforming.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Tezkah]

How are you comparing frivilous lawsuits like the 'heriarchical displays' or 'Apple + music' compared to suing someone for breaking an NDA?

If they couldn't sue, the NDAs would be useless, it would be much harder to keep secrets!

Think of the chil...er seekrit Mactels!

Re:Just because it is MS

[Luke Psywalker]

Quick get your 360 while you still can!

Don't stop hating MS because this is nothing more than a cohesive marketing ploy with Lucent.

Re:Just because it is MS

[i_am_not_a_bomba]

"I hate MS as much as the next slashdotter, but this evil is so bad we do not even wish it upon them. Abuse is abuse."

Your comments are strange, I'm certain Microsoft are not feeling sorry for themselves, they understand the nature of the game they are playing, why would people feel sorry for them?? They *wanted* it this way, and now they have it (in the US at least).

Microsoft support software patents of this nature 100%, they placed huge pressure on the EU last year while it was considering whether or not to recognise software patents.

They do this for the simple reason that they may need to one day play the same game.

"If you really want to follow the slashdot paradigm, then mod me down for my pro-ish MS remarks."

LOL, is that the new way of saying "I know I'll get modded down for saying this, but..." That was a sure fire way to get modded up six months ago?

Guess it worked.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to follow the slashdot paradigm, then mod me down for my pro-ish MS remarks.

An otherwise excellent post, but why did you have to ruin it with a wheedling, childish statement like this? It just makes you look like a twat.

Re:Just because it is MS

[MemoryDragon]

Actually Microsoft was one of the big parties, lobbying for the patent system as is, and it still does in Europe together with a bunch of others. What they currently do here, is to eat their own dogfood as is. And they did not do that out of not knowing, Bill Gates ca 1990 gave a good analysis on the problems of patent law, but only with his usual greed in mind, his grade basically let him overlook that what he wanted could rip his company apart as well. I wonder if all this will affect the Microsoft pro swpat patent lobbying on EU level.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you comparing frivilous lawsuits like the 'heriarchical displays' or 'Apple + music' compared to suing someone for breaking an NDA?

The little bloggers being sued by big Apple did not sign the NDA. Frivilous.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Anonymous Coward]

suing someone for breaking an NDA?

Which Apple never did. As far as I know they don't know who broke the NDA. So they are suing someone else just for kicks. Very mature.

Re:Just because it is MS

[LnxAddct]

My original thinking was along those same lines, but perhaps in this case the patent is valid. I mean in 1993 an MPEG 2 decoder probably was non-obvious, and certainly advanced the field, assuming Lucent was the first company to do it. It doesn't mean I like the patent system, and I wish it'd be done away with, but this case isn't necessarily as bad as some of the abuses we've seen. It certainly is not "one-click shopping".
Regards,
Steve

Re:Just because it is MS

[ArsenneLupin]

just like criticizing Linux is dangerous on /.

I really wonder where that canard comes from. If you actually examine Slashdot closely, you'll see that it is just as dangerous to point out that Micro$oft Windows crashes frequently, is not user friendly, does still offer no real multitasking, is a security nightmare, is way too expensive for what is has to offer, does not respect established standards and is unintuitive and badly documented.

If you don't believe me, just come back to this post in 2 hours, and observe that it is now -1 Troll or -1 Flamebait.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Antique Geekmeister]

You have *got* to be kidding.

Microsoft's history of violating patent law and copyright law. Famous incidents like the Microsoft Mouse and the theft of VMS code for the creation of NT are the tiniest tip of the iceberg: Microsoft, wisely, prefers to keep these cases quiet, overwhelm the plaintiffs with court expenses if necessary, and settle out of court when they have to.

As they developed, they regularly hired away developers from other companies and stole the copyrighted or patented work those developers did elsewhere: it's why they're so sensitive to the risk of their own employes(TM)eaving.

Re:Just because it is MS

[ArsenneLupin]

If you don't believe me, just come back to this post in 2 hours, and observe that it is now -1 Troll or -1 Flamebait.

The fish are somewhat slow to take the bait today, but this is not too surprising given how obvious I was.

So, in order to show my point, I made another anti-Microsoft post to another thread, without any warning flags this time.

And lookie, within a quarter of an hour, it already caught a Troll moderation!

Btw, as this one post that you are reading now does not hide the fact that it mocks the moderators, it will certainly garner some negative points. Those however will be unrelated to any anti-Microsoft bias, but will have more to do with the moderators' self-esteem.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Britz]

The system is flawed. The more these flaws get abused, the higher the chance that the system gets changed. Especially when small companies hold large companies like Microsoft hostage. Because these large companies are the ones that put the system in place and keep it there.

No evil here. Just some clever guys abusing the system and helping the greater good. We need more!

Re:Just because it is MS

[Haeleth]

So, in order to show my point, I made another anti-Microsoft post to another thread, without any warning flags this time.
And lookie, within a quarter of an hour, it already caught a Troll moderation!

Well, yes - that's because it was a troll post. That is to say, anyone reading it would be perfectly reasonable to draw the conclusion that it was solely intended to provoke.

Sorry, but I fail to see how troll posts being moderated Troll proves that moderators are biased.

A valid test would be to post a statistically significant number of genuinely insightful posts that actually discuss Microsoft's failings in an intelligent and unbiased way, and see what proportion of those get modded down quickly. (A single-post test, even one where the post in question was not one that deserved modding down in and of itself, would prove only that a single moderator was biased.)

Re:Just because it is MS

[ArsenneLupin]

A valid test would be to post a statistically significant number

There are enough naturally occurring anti-MS posts to verify this trend. Ironically enough, anti-Linux post are not so often modded down as anti-MS posts. My posts were done more in jest (like "look at this, soon sth cute will happen"), rather than to prove a scientific theory.

A true study would indeed be to classify each naturally occurring post as "pro-MS", "pro-Linux", "pro-other-non-MS-OS", "neutral/unrelated/differentSubject" and check how they fared.

Posting a large number of pro-MS or pro-Linux posts for the express purpose of a study would raise suspicions of crapflood (... and rightfully so...), and would end up with all these posts modded down.

Re:Just because it is MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Famous incidents like the Microsoft Mouse and the theft of VMS code for the creation of NT are the tiniest tip of the iceberg

Funny how nobody ever mentions anything else, isn't it?

(BTW, the Microsoft Mouse was in no way controversial. You're thinking of the Intellimouse, which was developed using technology that Microsoft acquired in good faith from a third party which Microsoft had no way of knowing was not actually authorised to divulge it. The third party was sued and lost. Microsoft was never even threatened with a lawsuit.)

(BTOW, Windows NT contains no VMS code whatsoever, so it's hard to see how any could have been "stolen". You're thinking of the fact that many of the NT programmers had previously worked on VMS, and NT's design is very similar in many ways. I suppose you're also going to accuse Henry Ford of "stealing" the design for the Model T, because it is a very similar design to other early automobiles?)

Re:Just because it is MS

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you really want to follow the slashdot paradigm, then mod me down for my pro-ish MS remarks."

The reverse psychology is unnecessary, you had a good point, it would have been stronger without the appeal to martyrdom.

Re:Just because it is MS

[spitzak]

I'm going to patent the idea of writing "mod me down because I said something good about Microsoft or Windows, or because I said something bad about Linux / Apple" in a Slashdot post as a way of raising mod points. I think at least half the posters here will own me patent license fees.

Sorry for the pun

[cflannagan]

I wonder if Microsoft would pull a 360 here.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, turn around completely facing the same way as before?

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Funkmaster_G]

If they pulled a 360, they would be facing in the same direction as they started.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Anonymous Coward]

If they pulled a 360, they would be facing in the same direction as they started.

But they'd be dizzier.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[jasontheking]

it would just be a poor copy of a revolution, in name only.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[siwelwerd]

And end up... right where they are right now.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Bueller_007]

You mean a 180, right?

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Jugalator]

*looks at 180 comments above*

So many Slashdotters without an ounce of humor. :-(

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Anonymous Coward]

But they'd be dizzier.

Now imagine them pulling all of the 360s ... I'd say they could make a decently-sized hole in Redmond from all the spinning.

Still, I think I'll stick with the pull a 360 == spin (as in PR spin) definition, it's funnier in this context.

Spin this one, MSFT!

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not if he's referring to a quote by a certian basketball player.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[eugene_roux]

Hey, could be worse.

They could pull a 720...

Re:Sorry for the pun

[RobbieGee]

Uh oh, now Benedict will shoot you.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[DavidD_CA]

Especially if they pulled all 100,000 360s.

Re:Sorry for the pun

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless MS is a spin 1/2 particle.. in which case it would need to 'pull a 720' to have the desired effect of being similarly oriented.

The question, of course is...

[voice_of_all_reason]

Could god make a chair so heavy that he himself could not throw it across the room and smite lesser companies?

Re:The question, of course is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I dealt with that in "I believe..." (ten page minimum) one of the two courses required across the board in college (Philosophy and Christian Thought, and Freshman Composition, although I managed to find a way out of the former). Anyway, one grade based upon one exercise: ten pages of your personal beliefs, regardless of how religious or worldly they happened to be along with some type of foundation as to why (beyond fiat or ukase).

My answer? "Can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?" or "Can God commit suicide?" are signs of our woeful ability to conceive of such questions. Sort of like people who are color blind trying to perceive color (no grey scales - all black or all white), etc. (but exponentially more complex) Our attempt to assign qualities to God is our refusal to perceive things which are completely beyond our scope. We look at the universe and our science experiments attempt to assign numbers to everything, big or small. We find a small object and we have to dig to the next level below. We see a universe "forever expanding" but still have to define how fast it's expanding. (and let's not forget "Inside each of us is a God-sized vacuum which only God can fill.")

On top of that, people are so bound to a posteriori they refuse to accept a priori in any shape, form, color, or taste. Talk about religion and the first thing people ask is, "got any proof?". It's called faith people. You don't need evidence for faith. Does it matter of there's a box-like object in Ararat which looks like the Biblical Ark? Will finding it finally convince you there is a God? What about the Shroud of Turin? Does it matter if it's real or not? If it's proven to not be "real", does that mean God doesn't exist? If something were to physically exist which would prove God exists, you'd still have nay-sayers, believing it's a trick. And if you took it as gospel, you wouldn't need faith, which is the general underpinning. What's funny is people will accept the psychics sitting on Montel once a week and listen to her talk about someone's new companion which rattles the bells while you're drifting off to sleep, etc. Talk about a lack of evidence. And she's made a ton of money by using a bigger shovel for subsequent books (paid for by the most recent book).

Faith: Not seeing is believing.

(I had some time to kill while waiting for the /. backups to finish.)

Re:The question, of course is...

[voice_of_all_reason]

Does it matter of there's a box-like object in Ararat which looks like the Biblical Ark?

Why, actually, yes!

I gather there would be quite a few parties interested in a big ol' box of god that can shoot frikkin laser beams out of it.

//oh wait, wrong ark...

Re:The question, of course is...

[gbobeck]

Yes, but why would the FSM be bothered to do so in the first place?

Re:The question, of course is...

[Bega]

The question, of course, is;

God created a chair so heavy no man could lift it, but Ballmer could still throw it across the room

Re:The question, of course is...

[KDR_11k]

God can create a stone he can't lift, God can commit suicide, God can have tea and not have tea at the same time. He can do everything. Just because it's contradictory doesn't mean it's impossible for an omnipotent being. However, performing any of these in front of a human audience would make their mortal heads explode.

Re:The question, of course is...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called faith people. You don't need evidence for faith. Does it matter of there's a box-like object in Ararat which looks like the Biblical Ark? Will finding it finally convince you there is a God? What about the Shroud of Turin? Does it matter if it's real or not? If it's proven to not be "real", does that mean God doesn't exist?

Erm ... if you had evidence, then it wouldn't be faith - it would be reasoning from evidence. Unless you want to swing in the other direction and say faith is also a name for trusting one's senses and filling in the gaps they leave. This way lies a really hairy argument, although an interesting one.

No, a box on Ararat would not have any bearing on the existence of God - unless God is the box. A telltale 'connection' between them is not logically sound.

With the Torino shroud you're right. It makes no difference either way. Besides, you need to define clearly what you mean by 'real' and how do you test for it. Otherwise it's pretty much the same thing as the images of Jesus people find upon splitting wood, for instance.

The problem lies in mixing faith and reason (or, in this case taking scholastics too seriously)

Re:The question, of course is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could god make a chair so heavy that he himself could not throw it across the room? Yes, that's why he created Chuck Norris to do it for him.

Re:The question, of course is...

[Anonymous Coward]

is God not able to present himself to mortal man? Is this something he is not able to do?

Why is this?

This message brought to you by the image word "proofs" .. ironically...

Re:The question, of course is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I gather there would be quite a few parties interested in a big ol' box of god that can shoot frikkin laser beams out of it.

Would those lasers be the arc of the covenant?

Re:The question, of course is...

[voice_of_all_reason]

+1 clever.

Once again, anonymous, you've stolen my heart

Re:The question, of course is...

[CFrankBernard]

No, the arc of the rainbow of Oz.

In other words: No, Oz arc.

C'mon

[ucaledek]

Times are tight. Like Microsoft could afford to make a deal for these things. I mean, with the whole replacement fiasco(I love pulley systems to keep my $400 console alive--to buying failed game studios like Lionhead, do you really think Bill could have spent that kind of bank? He wouldn't have gotten a whiteboard for at least another week with that kind of dough.

Re:C'mon

[Cheapy]

There was a replacement fiasco?

Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[Entropy]

Wow. Suppose this were to happen with other electronics ..

I mean, how exactly are they supposed to really enforce such a thing? Would owning an XBOX 360 then be illegal? If that becomes precedent, that frankly scares the shit out of me. Ten years down the line, having some of my electronics retroactively made illegal to possess?

I'm no MS fanboy by the stretch of anyone's imagination - frankly I loathe them.

But given the wider implications here, I hope they get a partial victory out of this - such that people who allready have this equipment can keep it.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[dtdns]

Ten years down the line, having some of my electronics retroactively made illegal to possess?

The RIAA and MPAA are pretty much already working on that with analog audio/video devices, and anything digital that doesn't conform to their DRM standards.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[R3d M3rcury]

"Would owning an XBOX 360 then be illegal?"

No.

If it went that far, Microsoft would have to recall the boxes. They would ship them back to Redmond, remove the infringing code, and return them to consumers, or ship new ones to consumers, or give you your money back.

I rashly assume the offending code is used to play DVD movies. Thus, you might get an Xbox 360 which would not play movies out of the deal. Or your money back.

Of course, if you didn't return your Xbox 360, there is little that Microsoft or Lucent could do about it. It's not like they'd send the police to your house to find out what happened to it.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[SirSlud]

If you owned a piece of patented technology made by a company that violated the patent, you could not be in violation for owning it. No society, at any point in time in the history of patents has come anywhere near trying to persecute people who own patented technology they did not manufacture themselves.

There are no wider implications here. Welcome to slashdot, where many articles will make you want to crap your pants if you're not well informed in patent and copyright law.

Lots of terrible things are happening these days, but being locked up or being fined for owning a 360 is never gunna happen.

If MS violated a patent, well, they should be fined or punished. If not, well, they shouldn't. Note that billions of people have taken drugs or used products that were later deemed in violation of a patent, never have I heard of a consumer being charged for purchasing or owning those products, only the governments or companies that produce them. Not that I support patent law in its current form to begin with ...

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[servoled]

I reccomend paying attention to the eBay v. MercExchange case which is currently before the Supreme Court. Basically they are deciding whehter it is proper for trial court judges to automatically issue an injunction if a party is found to be infringing a patent.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[ShawnDoc]

Actually you are wrong. Patent holders can go after not just the makers of an infringing product, but also the users. This recently (last 1-2 years) came up with a company claiming to have a patent on the idea of redirecting hotspot users to a log-in page. The patent was rather dubious, so rather than sue the makers (who have money to defend themselves) they decided to target small hotel chains who used gateways with redirection built-in, demanding a "liscense fee" based on location size. In most cases the quarterly liscense fee was higher than the price of the hardware in the first place. All rather silly, but until the patent gets invalidated, perfectly in line with the law.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[Jace of Fuse!]

Lots of terrible things are happening these days, but being locked up or being fined for owning a 360 is never gunna happen.

Well, let's see. In the US people have been arrested for buying a gun and not returning it when a few months later laws were passed making them illegal.

Since the RIAA and MPAA want us all to believe Copyright Violation kills more people every year (and kittens, too) than Accidental Gun Deaths, yes, I can see us soon being arrested for having bought any hardware that has an analog hole in the DRM.

The Copyright Violation Enforcement Task Force will come door to door, asking people if they own anything which can be used to violate copyrights, including ink pens, fax machines, camera phones and autistic children with photographic memories. If people don't immediately submit to search and seisure the CVETF will return with their Analog Hole Sniffing Hellhounds (aka Lawyers).

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[personman21]

If you didn't return your Xbox 360, MS could probably disable their Xbox Live service.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[zcat_NZ]

If you own a patent-violating xbox and decide to keep using it (because, for example, the replacement from Microsoft can't play DVD's any more) then you are personally responsible for continuing to violate whatever patents apply.

And should you be personally sued for using infringing technology, the following paragraph gives you a fairly clear idea of what help you can expect from Microsoft;

17; exclusion of incidental, consequential and certain other damages. to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall microsoft or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, punitive, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits or confidential or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, for loss of privacy, for failure to meet any duty including of good faith or of reasonable care, for negligence, and for any other pecuniary or other loss whatsoever) arising out of or in any way related to the use of or inability to use the software, the provision of or failure to provide support or other services, informaton, software, and related content through the software or otherwise arising out of the use of the software, or otherwise under or in connection with any provision of this eula, even in the event of the fault, tort (including negligence), misrepresentation, strict liability, breach of contract or breach of warranty of microsoft or any supplier, and even if microsoft or any supplier has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[KDR_11k]

Yes but why would they want to?

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, in Canada people who obtained a copy of Harry Potter +(B/2)P early were ordered by the court not to read it or talk about what they had already read. Maybe there could be an order not to plug in your Xbox.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[Umrick]

California's been making owning certain types of guns illegal retroactively. If they get away with it, it's only a matter of time before some yutz at RIAA or MPAA goes, hey... Let's make any DVD player without our blessed DRM illegal.

We need a way out of this mess before our legal system pulls us back into the dark ages. Ah well, I suppose my children have to look forward to the day the world's sole super power (China) comes to our rescue.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents have never applied to personal use. This is explicit in UK and (as far as I know) US patent law. Regardless of the outcome of the case you can continue to use your XBox and Lucent can't do a damn thing about it.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[eserteric]

I mean, how exactly are they supposed to really enforce such a thing? Would owning an XBOX 360 then be illegal? If that becomes precedent, that frankly scares the shit out of me. Ten years down the line, having some of my electronics retroactively made illegal to possess?

What? Illegal? Where did you get that idea from? Microsoft wouldn't be allowed to make anymore, and any 360s that were left on the shelves would be returned and probably destroyed. This has nothing to do with the consumer that has already purchased one.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[mausmalone]

But given the wider implications here, I hope they get a partial victory out of this - such that people who allready have this equipment can keep it.

I hope they get a full and complete victory. If you look at the patent, what they've claimed isn't just that they own MPEG2, what they've claimed is rights over interlace bits, motion compensation, quantization adjustments, etc ... to the point where it pretty much claims ownership over every single video encoding standard on the market.

I hope that when MS is done with them, their company is a smoldering hole in the ground. It isn't right for anybody to write a patent, then wait for other people to do the work making the product, and then come forward decades later and claim their profits as your own.

Re:Not at all comfortable with the implications ..

[jizmonkey]

Patents have never applied to personal use. This is explicit in UK and (as far as I know) US patent law. Regardless of the outcome of the case you can continue to use your XBox and Lucent can't do a damn thing about it.

There is no "personal use" exception in US patent law - the closest you get is the common law experimental use exception which was nearly squished out of existence in the case against Duke University.

Lucent, winmodems?

[phorm]

Is this the same company that makes Lucent winmodems (often found in older laptops) etc, or a different Lucent?

Re:Lucent, winmodems?

[DigiShaman]

Lucent made chips that get stamped on PCBs by OEMs to make winmodems. I don't think Lucent actually has their own brand either.

Re:Lucent, winmodems?

[stockpicker_dude_78]

Lucent did OEM their electronics, but also had a microelectronics division that spun off into Agere (http://www.agere.com./ During the downfall over the past several years, the modem business was one of many that Lucent exited.

Boost those sales!!!

[pablo_max]

Sounds like a good way to get some folks off the sofa to me. They may think it's their last chance to own one and maybe Microsoft will have to buy it back from them for more!
Things like this are so silly. It will be a nice thing if they ever get around to changing patent law in the us.

woah!

[CRC'99]

If this pans out, it's one huge way to give MS the finger...

Does anyone have a link to the patent? This could be very interesting - especially given the wide-spread distribution of the Xbox 360...

Re:woah!

[jlarocco]

If this pans out, it's one huge way to give MS the finger...

It's also one way to really piss Microsoft off...

Lucent better have a really water tight case, because Microsoft has tons of patents, tons of cash and tons of lawyers. Until now they haven't done much with the patents, but now they're going to have legions of lawyers combing through every feature of every Lucent app they can get their hands on, looking for anything that even remotely resembles something MS has patented. I don't think half a dozen counter suits over stuff like the "IsNot" operator would be too surprising.

If it's a really blatant case of infringement, MS might settle. Otherwise they're going to pull out all the stops, throw their whole legal department at it, and send a powerful message to everyone else who considers suing them over patents.

I'd love to see Lucent win this, but it's not going to be easy.

Re:woah!

[MSZ]

Lucent better have a really water tight case, because Microsoft has tons of patents, tons of cash and tons of lawyers.

And Lucent has probably 10x more patents, some quite nasty lawyers and hellish thirst for cash. Lucent still has some quite fundamental stuff from Bell Labs and old AT&T - I wouldn't be suprised it they had prior art for most of MS patents.

So Microsoft better be forthcoming with some offers.

Re:woah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably closer to 100x more patents.

There is an MPEG-2 pool also, you're either a member or your violating about 30 patents.

All 10,000 Frosty Pisters

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your lame first post attempts. Your IPs have been logged for our "database update."

The Patent

[Mike deVice]

For those who like to read such things, the patent is right here.

It is long. Very, very long.

Re:The Patent

[servoled]

Seeing as how the article mentions a decoder, I'd assume this is the claim they're talking about:

13. An apparatus for decoding a compressed digital video signal, comprising:

a means for receiving a compressed digital video bit stream; and

a means responsive to a motion compensation type signal for selectively and adaptively performing motion compensated decoding of frames of the compressed video bit stream.

Claims that include "means for" fall under the provisions of 35 USC 112, 6th paragraph which states:

An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.

So, if you want to figure out what this is actually claiming, you have to read the entire specification to determine what the claimed "means" actually correspond to. However, I'm guessing the vast majority out there will condemn the claim, patent and lawsuit without bothering to take the time to find out what the actual issue is.

Re:The Patent

[taniwha]

As you said you have to read it:

• claim 1: looks like a box that does frame or field based decode video decode (definitely prior art in 1991)
• claim 2: claim 1 with interlace (prior art)
• claims 3-12: looks like motion jpeg (prior art - pretty sure we were selling hardware at that point) - but this describes ENCODING so it doesn't apply to an xbox doing playback
• claim 13: a decoding claim - motion comp - (i'm pretty sure there was prior art pre-1991)
• claim 14: 13 plus arbitrary readout of the coefficients (might not be prior art here)
• claim 15: 13 just explaining motioncomp in a decoder a bit more (some patent lawyers are paid by the claim)
• claim 16: really just more motion jpeg decode
• claim 17: adding the DC component (anyone remember is it in jpeg too?)
• claims 18-end: more encoder claims

so hopefully that makes it easier to understand - I suspect prior art in the literature of the time (I was involved in building hardware to do this sort of stuff back then, so were some of MS's current staff) - or maybe a Rambus-like case of someone in the standards meeting patenting in the background - much as I want to see MS crash and burn letting crap patents out hurst everyone

Re:The Patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha. You made my day. That patent has 33 claims total. That's chickenfeed. Here's one with 341 claims. Yeah, more than 10 times as many as in that other patent. BTW, this is one of the infamous NTP patents. Welcome to patent litigation hell.

Re:The Patent

[Antique Geekmeister]

Please, God. Let Microsoft succeed in invalidating the MPEG patents! Please!

Is MS at fault or the graphic chip maker?

[t0qer]

See above. So which is it? Nvidia makes thier graphics chip right? So wouldn't the blame chain trickle down to them?

PS, typin live at my karaoke show right now. Follow the link in my sig, say hi, if you like streamin video of drunk girls singin.

Re:Is MS at fault or the graphic chip maker?

[OmegaBlac]

Nvidia makes thier graphics chip right?

Not anymore. Nvidia was the graphic chip maker for the Xbox 1. ATI developed the graphic chip for the current Xbox 360.

As I understand things...

[Aardpig]

...the patented stuff is "a device or devices designed to accept optical media containing binary representation of entertainment software and render said media inoperable due to the physical inscription of randomly-situated groves.". I'm not sure what that could mean.

Re:As I understand things...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Obviously, it's a patent for making scratches on a CD or DVD. Instead of just being unable to use a damaged disk, you'll get sued as well.

Publicity stunt?

[nickgrieve]

Publicity stunt of not, I am sure MS would be just as vicious if another company used their IP without paying royalties.

Live by the sword...

Re:Publicity stunt?

[OmegaBlac]

Publicity stunt of not, I am sure MS would be just as vicious if another company used their IP without paying royalties. Live by the sword...

That would be correct. This explains why they are currently applying for any patent they can get their hands on. Defensive-patent my ass.

Re:Publicity stunt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has how many patents? And they've had vague ones for how long? Gee. It's almost like they have a defensive portfolio...

Re:Publicity stunt?

[70Bang]

Not to mention, "Bill Calling the Shot" - someone needs to make that into a graphic for all to enjoy.

Was it 2004 for 2005 or 2005 for 2006? WHG III said, "We will receive 3'500 patents this year."

They've either got a big tub 'o grease to apply to the skids or he's prescient.

Re:Publicity stunt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Defensive-patent my ass.

What an interesting idea. I should take out a patent on fucking people in the ass, then I could use it defensively to prevent anyone else from fucking me in the ass!

Re:Publicity stunt?

[typical]

Things are financially good for MS right now. Right now, their PR with partners is worth more than the money that patent lawsuits could bring in. But do you really expect that this situation will hold forever?

Look at SCO. They did the most rational thing for their shareholders, which is trying to use their IP portfolio in every way possible. SCO didn't have a portfolio anywhere *near* as large as Microsoft does.

So, we joke about putting Microsoft out of business, but can you imagine the amount of damage that Microsoft will cause if that actually happened?

The Tweedle Brothers Will Love It

[70Bang]

While it's unlikely console will be pulled from shelves, it's one way to generate some publicity.

Microsoft's most powerful offspring, the twin brothers known as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, um, Marketing and PR, certainly are not going to look away from this pissing match - a clear opportunity for them to get the cameras turned upon them. Barring, of course, the next plane crash, or something like that. They'd (Microsoft) be forced to find another patsy to throw a bag of flaming dog poo on their front porch.

All 360s?

[JoeShmoe]

So that's like, what, ten or twelve tops? It's still on preorder everywhere I've visited.

In all seriousness...how can this even be possible as a lawsuit. I think someone didn't refresh their browser and saw a joke news story from April 1st.

MPEG2 and all MPEG related standards are "owned" by MPEG LA, who licenses the technology. It would be one thing if Microsoft deployed a product with MPEG2 playback capabilities without paying the license, but then where is Lucent in all this? Is this some crappy dredge up of a vague compression scheme like Unisys pulled?

If so, why Microsoft? There's about a billion DVD players out in the market right now that would be infringing on this patent. Maybe the patent is only related to MPEG2 and networks? Whoops...a billion PCs out there that would be targets. Isn't Lucent in the middle of being bought by some French company? Does it make any sense to begin some protracted NTP vs Blackberry type war in the middle of that?
ite
The whole article amounts to two lines on some website I've never heard of so...I'm calling it a belated April Fool's...the April Fool being CowboyNeal.

-JoeShmoe
.

Re:All 360s?

[gabebear]

"MPEG2 and all MPEG related standards are "owned" by MPEG LA, who licenses the technology. It would be one thing if Microsoft deployed a product with MPEG2 playback capabilities without paying the license, but then where is Lucent in all this? Is this some crappy dredge up of a vague compression scheme like Unisys pulled?"

The patent covers one implemntation of encoding/decoding MPEG2 video, not the actual formating of the data in the file like the UNISYS case. The lawsuit is definately real and it looks like Microsoft is going to be handing a wad-o-cash to Lucent for this.

Think what would have happened if Jack Bresenham had patented all of his work...

Re:All 360s?

[akuma(x86)]

Reuters is a very reputable news source and they are reporting the same thing.

http://yahoo.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsAr ticle.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20060405 :MTFH84939_2006-04-05_22-17-54_N05357049&symbol=MS FT.O&rpc=44

Re:All 360s?

[Intocabile]

Lucent tried the same stunt with the original Xbox but the case was thrown out. It would be braindead for Microsoft to use the same decoder in the 360. Infact they are using Intervideo technology in the 360 now. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Xbox+360+ InterVideo+DVD&btnG=Search

Re:All 360s?

[OldManAndTheC]

Think what would have happened if Jack Bresenham had patented all of his work...

Well said. From the Wikipedia article:

Programs in those days were freely exchanged among corporations

"Those days" referring to 1962. Quite a different landscape from today ...

Re:All 360s?

[Knackered]

Think what would have happened if Jack Bresenham had patented all of his work...

We'd all have started using DDAs (digital differential analysers) sooner.

Re:All 360s?

[Skuto]

In all seriousness...how can this even be possible as a lawsuit. I think someone didn't refresh their browser and saw a joke news story from April 1st.

MPEG2 and all MPEG related standards are "owned" by MPEG LA, who licenses the technology. It would be one thing if Microsoft deployed a product with MPEG2 playback capabilities without paying the license, but then where is Lucent in all this? Is this some crappy dredge up of a vague compression scheme like Unisys pulled?

*Nowhere* does the MPEG LA guarantee that if you license from them that you will get _all_ patents related to the standard. In fact, you can be sure there are big disclaimers in their contracts that it's not necessarily true. The MPEG LA can't avoid more than anyone else the risk of submarine patents.

AT&T pulled a similar one a while ago with the MPEG4 video standard.

Re:All 360s?

[sam1am]

*Nowhere* does the MPEG LA guarantee that if you license from them that you will get _all_ patents related to the standard. In fact, you can be sure there are big disclaimers in their contracts that it's not necessarily true. The MPEG LA can't avoid more than anyone else the risk of submarine patents.

AT&T pulled a similar one a while ago with the MPEG4 video standard.

How true. And these issues are having a serious chilling effect in the Broadcast equipment world.

Re:All 360s?

[Anonymous Coward]

MPEG LA licenses a patent portfolio covering a number of MPEG related patents. They "do not own" the patents, neither do they offer any assurance that their license includes every essential patent. (See FAQ: the http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-faq.cfm)

Re:All 360s?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think what would have happened if Jack Bresenham had patented all of his work...

That one's simple: we wouldn't use straight lines on out raster screens, everything would be rounded, beveled or just plain irregular.

Re:All 360s?

[Ark]

So all our raster screens would look like all the paper and viewscreens on Battlestar Galactica? Cool.

Re:All 360s?

[infiniter]

Yeah... wouldn't there have to be 360s ON the shelves in order for them to be pulled FROM the shelves?

Re:All 360s?

[Anonymous Coward]

Claim 2 from the Lucent patent:

2. The encoding apparatus of claim 1, in which the fields comprise alternating horizontal scan lines of the frames.

They could just turn off 1080i and force everyone to use 720p and 480p and suddenly they're back in business.

Re:All 360s?

[gabebear]

I doubt that this is the claim which MS is infringing on. MS only has to infringe every point of a single claim to lose.

Re:All 360s?

[gabebear]

I can't find anything about Lucent ever trying to sue over the original XBox, but Lucent has tried to sue Gateway/Dell before over the same patent, and Microsoft was forced to step in and defend them. It seems that Windows Media Player itself is infringing which means that the XBox1 possibly never infringed on this patent.

Re:All 360s?

[sh00z]

So all our raster screens would look like all the paper and viewscreens on Battlestar Galactica? Cool.

Not so fast, cowboy. I just filed a patent for paper with the corners removed.

The Typo

[neoshroom]

The lawsuit, which was previously filed by Lucent against Microsoft, was ruled in favor of Microsoft, not on legal grounds, but because of a typographical error in Lucent's patent papers.

The typographical error in question was the use of an unusual symbol by Lucent in place of the more standard 's' in the word 'Microsoft.'

The judge ruled that since there is no true legal entity called 'Micro$oft' to be the defendant the case must necessarily be dismissed.

__

Write My Essay

What a reliable source...

[MustardMan]

So instead of reuters or the washington post or, shit, even cnet, we get a nobody gamer site with an article that has no links to anybody credible. Brilliand reporting from slashdot, as usual.

Re:What a reliable source...

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant use of english from slashdot, as usual.

Re:What a reliable source...

[Anonymous Coward]

My Google News search 5 seconds ago showed 76 links to articles containing "lucent 360 mpeg*" - all about the lawsuit.

Re:What a reliable source...

[caluml]

I think the clue here is "robyannetta writes"....

You do know that the Slashdot team don't submit the articles? It's people like you and me. So quit whining, and submit it first, with better links.

Who holds the patent(s)?

[thesuperbigfrog]

I don't think that Lucent is holding all the cards here. There are many other groups that could have a say in this lawsuit:

Approximately 640 patents world wide make up the "essential" intellectual property surrounding MPEG-2. These are held by over 20 corporations and one university:

* Alcatel
* Canon Inc.
* Columbia University
* France Télécom (CNET)
* Fujitsu
* General Electric Capital Corporation
* General Instrument Corp. (now the broadband division of Motorola)
* GE Technology Development, Inc.
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* KDDI Corporation (KDDI)
* Lucent Technologies
* LG Electronics Inc.
* Matsushita
* Mitsubishi
* Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT)
* Philips
* Robert Bosch GmbH
* Samsung
* Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.
* Scientific Atlanta
* Sharp
* Sony
* Thomson Licensing S.A.
* Toshiba
* Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC).

-- from the Wikipedia

Solution

[eclectro]

The money to license this patent is under Bill Gate's seat cushion.

Re:Solution

[MadUndergrad]

The money is Bill Gates' seat cushion.

Wow

[Sinryc]

Another patent that might hurt Microsoft. If this was patented back in 93, and Lucent has just now filed suit, you would think that the courts might throw this case out, maybe.

Sony's reaction

[this great guy]

Lucent (to MS): Microsoft, you violated our MPEG2 patent. We demand you recall all 360s. Now.
Microsoft: What !? We are afraid it's not going to be possible.
Lucent (angrily): Do it now ! Or we will sue you !
Sony (pointing his finger toward MS): LOLLLL Huhuhuhu Huhu !
Lucent (to Sony): You too !
Sony: Bastards...

Re:Sony's reaction

[gameforge]

Nintendo: (in millhouse voice) hah hah!

Re:Sony's reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... wouldn't that be a Nelson voice?

Re:Sony's reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean Nelson! :)

Re:Sony's reaction

[Big Nothing]

Yep, definately a Nelson voice.

Re:Sony's reaction

[gameforge]

DOH! (uh, Homer, right?)

Never was good with names... :-)

Re:Sony's reaction

[Physician]

According to wikipedia, Sony owns some of the mpeg2 patents.

Re:Sony's reaction

[geoff43230]

Apparently someone set them up the bomb!
They now have no choice but to yes well, etc.

Re:Sony's reaction

[SimonH_1978]

I think it's Nelson ;)

Re:Sony's reaction

[sharkey]

Well, in Sony's favor, they've likely already rooted any number of music-lover's computers at the Lucent offices.

Portfolio of 14,000 patents

[UR30]

In related news from 2004: "Lucent Technologies names Jan M.K. Jaferian as Intellectual Property Business President ... protecting, enhancing and generating value from Lucent's Intellectual Property assets, which includes Lucent's extensive portfolio of nearly 14,000 active patents worldwide."

I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[mark-t]

Not because I want them to stick it to Microsoft, but because Microsoft has the dollars behind it to be able to make a difference in the future, and would be motivated to do so when they personally feel the impact that software patents are having on software development.

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I ever saw the need for a mod option entitled "Retarted", that was it. Thanks man, I seriously hope you're not in a place in this world to be making major decisions with that fuzzy logic of yours.

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[Crimsane]

If you're going to say shit like that to the guy, I would have hoped you had the guts to do it under a real name.

He didn't present his case all too well, but at the core he's absolutely right.

If Microsoft suffers at the hands of the patent system long enough, they might damn well have the motivation to stand up and fight against it.

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[mark-t]

I think perhaps you, like the person that modded my post as troll misunderstood the point of my post (judging it by the topic I selected, no doubt).

Software patents are an abomination. They should be abolished, entirely.

And quite frankly, if it took an upcoming new technology being scrapped when it was just about ready to go to make a company with the financial pull to start the ball rolling towards making it happen, I'd be 100% for it.

Because it wouldn't happen again. To anyone. Ever.

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[mark-t]

He didn't present his case all too well...

I guess that might be an understatement... consider how it got moderated.

If Microsoft suffers at the hands of the patent system long enough, they might damn well have the motivation to stand up and fight against it.

But I'm glad that at least SOMEBODY gets me.

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[Grishnakh]

Because it wouldn't happen again. To anyone. Ever.

I agree entirely. But like the RIM case, I'd like the fix to the patent system to come too late to save Microsoft...

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[donaldm]

If Lucent wins then Microsoft will have to shell out some big cash and with their deep pockets they can afford it. Unfortunately this set precedence and some other party (think Sony, Nintendo.. ) are also going to be sued as well. It does no one any good (except Lucent of course).

There is a dilemma here. If Microsoft fights this and wins, the US patent system will be given quite a serious shake and with enough shaking maybe it will be reformed. For us (the little people) this may seem like a victory but for big business it would be a disaster. Given this I think Microsoft will make a deal and it will mostly go over like this 'Ok you hit us with this patent but we will hit you with ours "eventually" so we we will cross license and fork over a little slush money so you can now go after those other people who are infringing your "god given IP" (hands list of competitors)'. In other words Big business wins and the small inventor is shafted again.

PS. Sony is not exactly small and they also have patents so a deal could be reached with them as well - oh to be a patent lawyer!

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[JoeSavage]

Heh. "Retarted" [sic]. Insert Pot/Kettle comment here.

Re:I hope Lucent wins and the 360 is scrapped.

[micromuncher]

C'mon, some of us want to know what a retart is. If I had my brothers, for all intensive purposes, I'd mod ;-)

(For those retards out there, its druthers and intents and porpoises).

Proof reading, please!

[QuantumG]

While it's unlikely console will be pulled from shelves, it's one way to generate some publicity.

Jesus dude.

Use license!

[thinkliberty]

Lucent should go SCO style... They should sell a license for Using their Mpeg decoder patient tech for the low cost of $699.00 and then threaten to sue the end users, if they fail to buy. They could call it a lucoder license.

If Lucent likes my idea and you have a xbox you might be sued!

Do you think Microsoft would offer to support the end users being sued by Lucent?

See. FUD can be a 2 way street ;)

Target

[ozmanjusri]

While it's unlikely console will be pulled from shelves, it's one way to generate some publicity.

Good way to make a target out of yourself too. How well will Lucent hardware run on Vista, I wonder...

Might As Well Recall Them

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is really treading on thin ice with the 360.

They already have on class action suit in the works with the 360. And the massive number, and variety, of hardware defects with the system are certainly going to lead to more suits down the road.

With how bad the 360 is doing in Japan and Europe, and selling at half the rate of the first Xbox in the US, Microsoft might best just forget about the 360 and the console market and focus completely on Vista gaming. They tried to distance themselves from the PC market with the first Xbox but after that failed in the market they have been increasingly turning to Vista and PC game developers as the base of support in the games market.

As anyone who has a 360 or spends time around people who have 360s, the hardware defect/crashing problems do not seem to be getting any better. It is not uncommon for people to be on their second or third 360.

There has to be a point where the defects, low sales, patent lawsuit, class action lawsuits all lead Microsoft to say f-it and turn their attention completely to Vista where they don't have to deal with any of this mess.

Re:Might As Well Recall Them

[DrMrLordX]

Considering how many people have been pulled out of the Xbox 360 division to work on Vista, they may well be taking your advice already. Personally, I hope they do halt sales of the 360, recall the units, and send out refunds. Then when the PS3 comes out, it will bomb when everyone finds out that it'll cost around $700 retail just to get one(more when the inevitably supply shortages emerge). Then Nintendo swaggers along with the Revolution and wows everyone with a cool console that costs $200.

If Nintendo can't deliver, the entire console market will go up in flames. So much for PC gaming being dead, eh?

Re:Might As Well Recall Them

[metrunecs]

Wow. Just wow. Sometimes the level of dumb on this site never ceases to amaze me.

Re:Might As Well Recall Them

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're a bitter 360 owner, right? Don't feel bad. We all make dumb purchasing decisions some time or another. Just move on, man. The 360 is finished.

Re:Might As Well Recall Them

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, Nintendo swaggers up with their "cool" console that I can play Nintendogs Dress-Up Slumber Party, Mario Donkey Diddy Kart 8, Sonic Shadow Flying Legends 3, and Barbie Goes to the Library, and Link and Zelda's Sexy Disco Karaoke Dance Party on, all controlled by an input device that looks like the remote from my Tomy toy robot from the early '80s.

Seriously though, the GameCube is a great console value for grade/middle school kids, but unless they expand their library of games for the Revolution to include a few more adult friendly titles and offer an actual gamepad bundled, it will never get a second glance from me.

Re:Might As Well Recall Them

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has already started the process of winding down the Xbox project. Bill Gates has stated that he wants Xbox Live to eventually morph into Windows Live.

That's, uh, pretty wierd.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't there an awful lot of MPEG2 decoders out there? Couldn't Microsoft just replace every single XBox 360 MPEG2 decoder with a different, non-patented one, with a simple software update?

Re:That's, uh, pretty wierd.

[gabebear]

it sure looks like MS could just patch around this patent, but MS would likely be liable for damages on all 360s already sold and all unsold 360s would have to be pulled from the shelves.

Re:That's, uh, pretty wierd.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the use of the words "just" and "simple" there.

Microsoft trampling small companies?!?

[Avillia]

Impossible!

That patent HAS to be fraudulent.

Re:Microsoft trampling small companies?!?

[Shohat]

Lucent is far from being a small company , and if not some really bad hardware in the 1999-2001 , could have taken Cisco's place . Lucent is actually huge , and has merged with Alcatel . The annual income is over 25 billion $

Great....

[Not The Real Me]

I'm glad Lucent is suing Microsoft.

Thank God I use DivX. It's alot better than Microsoft's horifically crappy Windows Media Video format. The codecs for WMV 7, 8 and 9 truly masterful works of insideous garbage.

Re:Great....

[Zonnald]

Ok, you got my attention - what exactly makes them Garbage? Please qualify and quantify.

Looks Like

[Camel Pilot]

They will have to change the name from Xbox 360 to Xbox 180

Lucent to pee...

[gameforge]

...in MS' Cheerios?

I wonder, in the event that MS did have to pull all of their consoles, if any already-released games would need to be pulled and revised to use a different kind of technology, or if they can still use the same MPEG2 encoding, just with different technology than what Lucent has patented. If the court actually ordered them to pull all 360's, that could be a thorn in MS' side... but if they had to recall a bunch of games that were now totally unusable because of this missing MPEG2 technology - that would be a pretty big loss for MS, and would certainly mean fortune in the future of Sony and Nintendo.

At first I thought MS could swallow Lucent whole, but it turns out Lucent earns in a fiscal quarter about what MS does in a year (Lucent posted ~ $9 billion in revenue for FY05, MS posted around that for Q3 FY04). That means that a few million dollars in go-away money probably won't persuade Lucent to buzz off. This is actually the second suit; according to TFA, the first one was thrown out due to typographical errors in Lucent's patent papers. It seems that MS would have already made an out-of-court move if they thought they could...

I'm sure glad the 360 costs so damn much... otherwise, I might have actually bought one already. :)

Re:Lucent to pee...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder, in the event that MS did have to pull all of their consoles, if any already-released games would need to be pulled and revised to use a different kind of technology, or if they can still use the same MPEG2 encoding, just with different technology than what Lucent has patented.

The specific part is probably the DVD decoder chip. If that is all that the chip does, they could theoretically recall the units that have and swap out the part for a non-infringing one. Of course that would be expensive: figure $200+ per unit not including the cost of the part itself. If the replacement part isn't pin compatible, you can add a month or so of R&D to design an adaptor. Lucent is probably hoping to use this as a starting point for negotiations ("We're such nice guys we'll settle for the regular royalty + $150 for each shipped unit").

Does it make me a bad person?

[Alcimedes]

Does it make me bad that I laughed when I read this?

Oh well, on topic. It seems kind of stupid to toss out a lawsuit because of a typo. If everyone knows it was a typo, couldn't they just correct the mistake and continue? Why make Lucent refile?

Seems like a GIANT waste of everyone's time and money.

Re:Does it make me a bad person?

[Jarlsberg]

Heh. Strike one for the grammar police. :)

Wonder what that typo was, tho'.

Use it or loose it

[drspliff]

The whole 'Use it or Loose it' thing really should be taken into account here, sure it'll probably be thrown out of court and (if they honestly haven't been actively defending the patent) have the patent revoked.

On the other hand why didn't Microsoft already know about this patent? With a major divisions earnings based almost entirely on the Xbox 360 you'd have thought they would've atleast hired a few people to do patent research.

I say again, the patent system needs reform! It's near-impossible for average people to aquire a patent unless they invest a considerable amount of money into keeping lawyers alive (a bad thing.. obviously), while at the end of the day there are always huge grey areas they may have infringed on.

Free Decoders

[Aqws]

It is stupid that anyone can sue over decoders! They are only used to get to content that has already been compressed. It is necessary to use them in order to get the the video/audio that some idiot used to encode/compress them. When someone pays Lucent to distribute a decoder, they are not paying for the technical superiority of the algorithm, they are paying so it can get to the content. What incompetence in the government there must be for this to happen. Somebody needs to get kicked out of office. Stupid politicions.

    I hope Microsoft has the legal might to hit Lucent hard upside the head. Probably not, that would mean us open source users would not be as fucked on the issue of legal decoders. Just like how Microsoft won't incorperate an ogg vorbis decoder into their bundled media player.

    Just a little sidenote, if you intent to distribute content please use the Ogg Vorbis codec, so people like me can get to it.

To think...

[jonfields]

The 18 years war is finally coming to an end... It started with Genesis vs Super Nintendo, It ends with Nintendo the victor with PS3 being too big for its own good, and Xbox 360 dying.

Why big companies still like patents

[cyberjessy]

Its come to a stage where the biggies are using patents just to create an entry barrier for smaller companies and individuals. There can be no other reason why Microsoft would still want patents in place, considering that they have gotten hit over and over again, and again by patents which atleast violate the principle of common sense. Surely, MS (and most other companies which refuse to come out against patents) would have some game plan there.

I hope you Americans will use your vote to fix the broken patent system. I live in India, but if I want to build something I have to worry whether some jerk has patented the most obvious part of it, thanks to USPTO. I cant even imagine how they would judge the merits of a technical patent. Fuck.

Re:Why big companies still like patents

[zcat_NZ]

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. I feel certain that some large
company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation,
algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this
company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take
as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges
with large companies and patenting as much as we can.



Challenges and Strategy, Bill Gates, May 16, 1991

Microsoft's original reason was defensive. The patent FUD against Open Source is more recent, and trying to actually use those patents may be a very bad move;

  Open Source Developers are very often individuals, non-profit organisations, or a loose collection of interested parties. There may be no clearly defined target, or nobody with deep pockets worth sueing.

  Open Source Development is too agile; A court case could take years, the infringing parts may be rewritten in weeks or even days.

  The patent itself may well be overturned. If the patent is at all questionable sites like Groklaw will rapidly uncover prior art or any other grounds to dispute the patent's validity.

Re:Why big companies still like patents

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I hope you Americans will use your vote to fix the broken patent system.

If you were American, you would realize how we can't use our vote to fix this. The problem is that in the 1990s, the Patent Office was made to be self-supporting. This made it in their best interests to approve every patent they can. The more patents they approve, the more people will apply for other patents and the more money they make. The more money they make, the more employees they can have. The more employees they have, the more managers it takes along with management salaries. They have every incentive in the world to approve every patent application they get now because they make money from it. To change the system would decrease the amount of money they make and they will never do that on their own.

No one running for office seems to care about this. It's not a hot issue. Most Americans have no idea what is going on with patents. In fact, patents seem to work well for the pharmaceutical industry and perhaps for people who actually make devices. They make our lives worse when business methods and software can be patented. Nothing will change because the only way to change the system is to put the Patent Office back on the federal payroll where they get paid to do their job and have no financial incentive to approve as many patents as possible. This will never happen because no one in Congress wants to start supporting an organization that is now self supporting.

Re:Why big companies still like patents

[frinkster]

Its come to a stage where the biggies are using patents just to create an entry barrier for smaller companies and individuals. There can be no other reason why Microsoft would still want patents in place, considering that they have gotten hit over and over again, and again by patents which atleast violate the principle of common sense. Surely, MS (and most other companies which refuse to come out against patents) would have some game plan there.

To tell the truth, the biggies absolutely hate suing the little guy for patent infringement. All the little guy has to do is ask for a jury trial and the odds of the large corporation winning go way down. In fact, as far as anyone is concerned, the outcome of a large corporation vs. a little guy in a jury trial is about as certain as a coin flip unless it's an extremely egregious patent infringement case.

The big guys duke it out with the big guys all the time, but when it comes to dealing with the little guys, the big guys really just hope for a quick settlement.

The real problem is the patent trolls and the submarine patents, which are little guys going against both small and large corporations. The Patent Office is trying to address this (and have probably eliminated the ability for any new submarine patents), but are really at the behest of Congress, since it's Congress that sets their high-level rules. And it's Congress that raids their bank account year after year, effectively preventing the Patent Office from hiring as many patent examiners as they need (and otherwise could afford).

Re:Why big companies still like patents

[cpghost]

The problem is that in the 1990s, the Patent Office was made to be self-supporting. This made it in their best interests to approve every patent they can.

Eww, that's flawed indeed. From there, it's just a matter of time until the USPTO would have to accept sponsorships from the very same companies they're accepting patents from: This patent was brought to you, courtesy of our generous sponsor insert your favorite sponsor here. For example:

This IBM Linux filesystem patent was brought to you, courtesy of our generous exclusive sponsor SCO. -- The USPTO.

What a scary thought!

Re:Why big companies still like patents

[ccp]

Open Source Developers are very often individuals, non-profit organisations, or a loose collection of interested parties. There may be no clearly defined target, or nobody with deep pockets worth sueing.

Yes, but in an hypothetical "MSFT suing $OSSdeveloper" lawsuit, the reason would be not extorting his lunch money for mucho $$$, but intimidating OSS developers.

You see, most people are justifiably afraid of being pulled in court, even if they have law and right on their side, because they cannot afford the expense, time, stress, and general disruption of life that a lawsuit implies.

So, if MSFT, or $evil_corporation can actually get away with filing nuisance suits against individual developers, they'd have a powerful weapon for slowing the OSS juggernaut.

Doesn't look very probable right now, but in a few years, when they're really desperate...

Cheers,

CC

More info

[Kangburra]

The full document can be got here in PDF format.

picking fights

[overbaud]

There are two things that happen when a little guy walks up to a monster in a crowded bar and spits in his face.

1. The big guys looks at him, picks him up and throws him through a window.

2. The little guy has some super secret kung foo up his sleave and to everyones amazment wipes the floor with him, pulls out his beating heart and shows it to him before he dies.

I think we are going to need a new window.

Re:picking fights

[gameforge]

A company that revenues a quarter as much as Microsoft isn't really "the little guy", since we're talking on the order of tens of billions of dollars. MS does $35 - $40 billion a year in gross revenue; Lucent does slightly less than $10 billion a year.

Plus, you have to consider MS in pragmatic terms; they're not being sued over Windows (the heart of their organization), they're being sued over an auxilary market that they've gotten themselves into. Their investors who count on Windows profitability aren't going to be happy if they're losing money because of their "video game" ventures.

Ultimately, if MS truly did infringe a patent of Lucent's, this is going to be a pretty good fight; certainly not comparable to a David vs. Goliath type battle.

Unlikely to matter

[EndlessNameless]

Microsoft will pay Lucent a pittance or a pretty penny depending on how the details are worked out, and life will move on.

Given the complexity of the XBox 360 and the (probably) limited uses of the decoder by Microsoft itself, will a court really issue an injunction? Not to mention that MPEG-2 has been around for about an eon or so. It's not like MS cribbed someone's hot new trade secret... not this time around anyway.

I'll still be able to buy a 360 next week if I want, assuming they're not sold out again. This is interesting news to some, but I don't see more than a ripple for the 360.

Microsoft buying LU

[Anonymous Coward]

MS can buy LU for $15billions in spare change - they should

Patent Wars MMPORG ...

[rewinn]

... go around, blasting any tech you see, using the Injunction Blaster and Patent Traps!

M.A.D. Software Patents

[Phat_Tony]

I thought that, among huge companies, the current insane state of the patent system functioned the way the superpowers did in the cold war- under the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. Since they all have thousands of patents covering every inane and obvious aspect of doing anything from writing software to building jets to flipping a hamburger to taking a piss, I thought they couldn't afford to start suing one another, because any suit would be met with a dozen counter-suits, and both companies would be assuring the annihilation of their profits into a bloody cataclysm of endless legal fees.

I understand how little extortion, er, "Property Management" firms can sue the likes of RIM, because they don't make or do anything but leech off anyone successful, so you can't threaten them with anything. Or a company on its last legs can make a crazy last-ditch effort to sue themselves into profitability, like SCO. But what's Lucent really doing here? Isn't Microsoft going to turn around and use it's double-click patent to try to make Lucent stop selling everything they make that involves a GUI at any point? Among thousands of other similar suits they could doubtlessly file covering every aspect of everything Lucent does.

Basically, what's Lucent thinking, and why doesn't MAD work here?

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[Vo0k]

M.A.D. assumed no rogue states, terrorist organizations and criminals put their hands on the nukes. Only superpowers have them.
Doesn't work with patents.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[MichaelSmith]

Basically, what's Lucent thinking, and why doesn't MAD work here?

Because, like SCO, they are going down. In six months time the name won't exist. Alcatel will do more business in the states, but because of the way big business and Government in the USA operate, this will never work in the long run.

Lucent's main assets are their patents and other IP. Alcatel will proceed to exploit this.

SCO, as I understand it, isn't really SCO. Its caldera using the SCO name. If they had kept their name it would be a better match for what is happening with Lucent.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[slavemowgli]

What, pray tell, is the difference between a rogue state and a superpower, apart from the fact that the latter may have nuclear weapons (or otherwise more killing power/weapons/money/...)?

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[Vo0k]

Rogue state won't mind suicidal attack resulting in total extinction of its whole population.

Superpower is a country big enough that it can dictate rules to others by threat.

These two are orthogonal qualities, there's no reason why a superpower can't be a rogue state and vice versa. Thing is in the current political landscape no superpowers are rogue states, although the border between the two is getting thinner recently.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[sketchman]

Sounds like what MS has been doing for years. Stealing things and passing them off as their own. Maybe the practice is finally going to bite them in the butt.
Personally, I hope this does happen. I have nothing against the MPEG people or the 360. All I'm saying is, MS should get their software right before they delve into the world of soldering. So, maybe a few lawsuits will get into MS's head that they don't own the world. They just own 90% of what they call software that runs it.
Please don't take this as an insult to the 360. I like the system, and I think it has some of the best graphics I've ever seen. Just take a moment to think this over, though. When MS created the 360, they didn't even have the courtisy to make it backward compatible out of the box. Remind you of anything? Windows, perhaps? So, if MS has to release all new 360's, what's to prevent them from doing the same thing to current owners of the system?
If MS doesn't stop burning bridges, they are going to get their tales scorched. Wake up people!
I'll probably get flamed for this, but I don't care. You all know it's the truth.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[Churla]

Windows not backwards compatible out of the box? You realize that some of the biggest performance hindrances to windows are all that old legacy code and the desire to support every backwater old piece of hardware possible? Right?

MS doesn't make a bad gaming box, and backwards compatibility is never guaranteed in that field... just hoped for. I personally feel that no matter how evil MS is that doesn't mean they should be subjected to the same abuses that we scream are unjust to everybody else, and I do hope that MS unleashes a torrent of suits on Lucent as a "Oh you wanna play that way?" measure.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[sketchman]

Nope, I didn't realize that. I stand corrected on the matter.
Forgive me. It was early, and I was mad. Windows had just crashed before my posting. Perhaps I should have attacked Windows instability instead. Oh, well. There's always next time, I suppose.
What I meant was that, MS wasn't backwards compatiblbe. Once they make a new Windows version, they expect everyone to just stop using the old one and buy it. And they're willing to do a lot to make that happen, like not being backwards compatible with their new software. For instance, they'll make themselves look really good by giving away a free anti-spyware program. But, you can only get it if you have a new version of Windows, so you have to shell out big bucks to get XP. And since XP loves system resources, unless you have a moderately fast computer, you've got to buy a new one or upgrade your's. You see where I'm going, right.
I guess I should have made that more clear, before. Sorry.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

"Property Management" firms ... don't make or do anything but leech off anyone successful

On this, I'd have to disagree. I'll admit that they don't produce the product for the end user, but in reality, the inventor almost never does. What "Property Management" firms do is create a market for ideas, particularly for smaller inventors. If I, as an individual or small R&D firm, come up with an idea, I have to find somebody to buy the rights to it in order to profit from it, or manufacture it myself. If the latter is impractical--as it frequently is, given the complexity of many modern inventions--then I'm left with only the former. To do that, I have to know who to contact at all of the companies that might be interested, convince them of the value of my product, and convince them to manufacture it--while at the same time not giving away so much information that they're able to create the thing themselves. Even if I have the contacts--a big if--making the sales pitches is a huge time investment, and I'd probably rather be doing more research.

Enter the IP firm. Essentially, they're a marketing organization and a venture capital firm rolled into one. I can sell them my ideas, my patent rights, and walk away, my job complete. I get compensated, and I don't have to deal with the mess. Furthermore, if somebody does misappropriate the idea, I don't have to worry about it: A) I've already made my money, and B) the patent is held by somebody who's likely to have far greater legal resources than I do. While you may not like that, it at least evens up the odds when dealing with the big corporation that is likely the one who is abusing the patent.

So yes, as a consumer, it's easy to think that IP holding firms are harmful, but in reality, they do provide a useful service. As a general rule, if they didn't, they wouln't exist.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You just keep posting more and more bullshit because you hate Microsoft, regardless of whether or not you have an actual legitimate case against them.

Clue for you, skippy: Think. Use that brain in your head, and Think For Yourself. Don't just swallow someone else's load of BS. And some time in the future, check your fucking facts.

God you're clueless.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[justins]

Basically, what's Lucent thinking, and why doesn't MAD work here?

A MAD analogy to patents isn't very good. MAD involves two parties that are held to a desireable state of inaction by a mutual threat of annihilation, with all the other players in the game on the margins.

The patent situation isn't like that at all. Losing a patent lawsuit isn't always going to have an annihilation-like effect, though it can be expensive. The smaller players aren't on the margins - they're meaningful players.

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[wilec]

"Or a company on its last legs can make a crazy last-ditch effort to sue themselves into profitability, like SCO. But what's Lucent really doing here?"

Isn't Lucent in the middle of a takeover or buyout attempt by a French firm? Maybe this relates to that deal. Possibly a shot at making it seem more of a player via it's IP rights and thus add to it's value. Maybe its a way to complicate or delay the takeover process. Maybe this is a move by both parties in the takeover to drag the issue into French courtrooms as well, or make an implied threat of such apparent to Microsoft.

"Isn't Microsoft going to turn around and use it's double-click patent to try to make Lucent stop selling everything they make that involves a GUI at any point?"

Apple or the folks they got the idea from http://www.parc.xerox.com/ PARC might have something to say about the GUI issue. From the PARC history page.

In 1973 the PARC "Alto personal computer becomes operational. As it evolves, the Alto will feature the world's first What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor, a commercial mouse for input, a graphical user interface (GUI), and bit-mapped display, and will offer menus and icons, link to a local area network and store files simultaneously."

In 1975 PARC "Engineers demonstrate a graphical user interface for a personal computer, including icons and the first use of pop-up menus. This interface will be incorporated in future Xerox workstations and greatly influence the development of Windows and Macintosh interfaces."

Matthew

Re:M.A.D. Software Patents

[slashdotjunker]

MAD is working. If you recall, there were several "little" wars during the Cold War. A lawsuit like this is the Transnat Megacorp equivalent of the US of A and USSR duking it out in some south east asian country. Don't worry, we're not at Global Thermonuclear Patent War yet ... (Geez, I'm re-reading my post and that last sentence scares the shit out of me.)

South Park Factor

[Kenshin]

I think I've finally figured out "Stage 2" in

1) Collect Underpants
2) ???
3) Profit

Stage 2 is "Sue over Patent".

Re:South Park Factor

[ROBOKATZ]

Ha! That is so original!

Re:South Park Factor

[Kenshin]

So? There's no joke under the sun that's original anymore.

They're just dressed-up in silly costumes and presented as "new".

Re:South Park Factor

[ROBOKATZ]

Nothing personal, but after the 100th time seeing the same joke I had to say something.

In related news my patent was finally granted today, I'm going to demand payment from all prior and future infringers:

Claim 1: A slashdot post, comprising a series of enumerated "steps", including a step of "???" and concluding in a final step of "profit".
Claim 2: The slashdot post of claim 1 wherein it also stated or implied that the step of "???" is to be replaced with or should be substituted for a statement implying patent litigation.

Re:South Park Factor

[rlp]

With apologies to South Park, the pattern for Lucent (and many other tech firms) is:

1) Start with prestigious tech company
2) Mismanage it into a death spiral
3) ???
4) Profit!!!

You don't sue MS, MS sues you!

[Vrejakti]

You know, considering MS has filled thousands of patents these past couple of years. And also considering the shear number of ideas, people, companies, etc, that they've bought out... I wouldn't be too surprised if MS does pull a 360 and sues Lucent for infringing on some patent MS holds on a part of MPEG2 technology.

Further, like come on, MS has many lawyers looking into every possible legal issue that could come about from each product they release. If they didn't deal with this patent issue before releasing the XBox 360, then what ever research they did on it must have shown there was no point or these guys were no threat.

A typo?!?

[onlynameicanget]

"The lawsuit, which was previously filed by Lucent against Microsoft, was ruled in favor of Microsoft, not on legal grounds, but because of a typographical error in Lucent's patent papers."

Wow. You'd think if you were going to try and win a case against one of the biggest companies on the planet, you'd at least spellcheck your papers. In Microsoft Word.

Heyyy...wait a sec...

Don't they have this licensed?

[d_jedi]

I mean, couldn't Lucent sue over the original XBox, too? Or is the 360 using mpeg2 in a way the original didn't?

OK, this is dumb

[JPriest]

First, it was dumb of MS if they used MPEG2 with licensing it first. Second, how much can a license to play back MPEG2 possibly cost per console? Should Lucent not just request the necessary fees instead?

Can god write a post so banal he can't read it?

[Anonymous Coward]

(I had some time to kill while waiting for the /. backups to finish.)

Maybe you should have just had a real wank, instead of a metaphysical one.

Can I sue Lucent?

[mrshowtime]

Can I sue Lucent for emotional distress because they made a typo and were the reason my xbox 360 was recalled, because of their incompetence and subsequent retrial rules in favor of Lucent after the fact?

Would it be interesting if some retard judge actually makes Microsoft pull the 360 off of the shelves. Regardless of the monetary gains possible by settling, forcing M$ to actually be punished for it's misdeeds would be a first. That is if the patent claims are not your typical "Process for transimitting data between things that process data" patently absurd patents. :)

As much as I hate microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I hate microsoft, I think software patents are just a slight touch *more evil*. When I describe one compared to the other, Dante would have set both in multi-digit levels of hell, with software patents just one level below microsoft (again, a multi digit level down in the bowels). The RIM CXO said that software patents are evil (and I agree). Too bad too many in the US think otherwise, and are cheerful to have technology killed off because of them. Patents slow technological advancement, they don't promote it. There are no huge startup costs to software development. Insisting that we apply brick/mortar laws where they clearly don't apply is stupid.

Re:I don't think that Lucent is holding all cards

[RedLaggedTeut]

They need to hold just one card in order to be able to sue successfully for patent infringement.

Pull them from shelves? No way!

[nilbog]

They won't be pulling 360's from shelves because they haven't made it to shelves yet, at least not around here.

Someone should sue M$ over their major supply chain problem.

Re:Yes, this does exist...

[jnadke]

It's called honesty.

Not necessiarly

[Sycraft-fu]

MPEG-2 is controlled and licensed by MPEG LA (licensing authority). The idea is that everyone who holds the patents got together and agreed they could be used for this technology, and license woudl be paid through this central authority, which would then distribute the money. Has to be done that way or the technology is going nowhere, nobody is going to get hundreds of licenses.

Well I gaurentee that part of that was giving MPEG LA discresion over licensing, that if they grant a license you have to agree it's valid. So not sure what Lucent thinks they have here, but if it's something covered by the MPEG-2 umbrella, they probably don't have much case since MS paid the license for that.

Why isn't this patent on the MPEG LA list?

[ghostgum]

MPEG Licensing Authority maintains a patent pool and issues licences for MPEG-2 encoders and decoders. If you have a patent that is essential for MPEG-2, then what *most* companies do is to contribute it to the patent pool in return for a share of the licensing fees. The Lucent (was AT&T Bell Laboratories) patent 5,227,878 is not one of those on the list. In fact neither Lucent nor AT&T have any licences in the patent pool. Why is Lucent being obnoxious?

Geez

[panic911]

How could Microsoft miss something like this? Isn't it somebodies job to make sure things like this don't happen?

But I though Alcatel and MS were friends ?!

[droopycom]

At least they are both principal partners of ATT/SBC IPTV project.
- MS is providing the software for the settop box.
- Alcatel is providing the network infrastructure.

Thats funny, could they be using the same decoder in their MS boxes?

Actually the box itself is probably not made by MSFT, but this still make for some interesting business strategies...

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole 'Use it or Loose it' thing really should be taken into account here

"Use it or lose it" is a feature of trademark law. It unfortunately has no bearing on patents.

Nevah~!

[KajiCo]

You'll have to pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Fight Patents with Patents

[Galactic Dominator]

I am herby submitting a patent on a process I call "thinking". Thinking consists of mentally analysing facts and then forming opinions with these facts. Any new posts that contain original "thinking" or "thoughts" shall face stiff legal penalties and will be pursued with the utmost vigor. You may avoid these penalties by paying me enormous royalties before engaging brain or by using only thoughts I have released to the public domain. Your compliance is anticipated. Resistance is futile.

shelves?

[fishbowl]

Pulled from *what* shelves? It's April 2006, and while I don't really look for this stuff, it does occur to me that I have never once seen an XBox 360 in stock in any retail store. I haven't been actively looking for one, but I happen to have done a lot of shopping this year, in six different states, and this is the kind of thing I notice. I assume this means they are sold as fast as they come in,

Re:shelves?

[Forbman]

...or that they just aren't coming in at all.

Re:shelves?

[fishbowl]

> ...or that they just aren't coming in at all.

I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I buy game consoles on an impulse, long after they are old news, when I stumble on one at a cheap price point. That's why I have an X-Box. I didn't care about X-Box until I saw them on sale for less than $100, which was also after my local used bookstore (literally my next-door neighbor :-) had a whole shelf full of titles. A no-brainer. To me, it did not seem like it had been all that long since people (e.g., co-workers) were paying $500 and up.

Oh well, xbox360 will be next year I guess.

Re:shelves?

[Ekarderif]

Import one from Japan.

Lawyers are like nuclear weapons ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Danny DeVito's character in Other People's Money:
          "Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. I have mine, they have theirs. But once you use them, they fuck everything up."

Doesn't seem like the Microsoft we all know...

[OwlWhacker]

Wasn't Microsoft claiming that it would protect all users of its software from intellectual property threats? Wasn't Microsoft suggesting that Linux/Open Source software was unable to provide indemnification in this way, and using this in its fight to bring down Linux/Open Soruce?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /topics/policy.mspx

So why isn't Microsoft offering the same protection for Xbox users? Is it because it doesn't have enough power behind it to fight back against these issues in the console market?

Re:Doesn't seem like the Microsoft we all know...

[zcat_NZ]

Microsoft was claiming it will indemnify _some_ of it's most valuable corporate customers.

Home and small businesses users were never included, and anyone who wanted this protection had to be prepared to immediately upgrade/downgrade to whatever non-infringing alternative Microsoft offers, which may include the removal of functionality your business has come to rely on.

All very reassuring, as long as you don't read the fine print!

Last Action Hero strikes back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tony Vivaldi: What is this, Benedict? First you're my friend; now you turn a... 360 on me!

Benedict: 180, you stupid, spaghetti-slurping cretin - *180*! If I did a 360, I'd go completely around and end up back where I started!

Tony Vivaldi: What?

Benedict: Trust me!
[shoots him]

Re:Last Action Hero strikes back!

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd mod you up but i don't have any points. i do, however, love that scene.

i have a plan: obvious patent online bounty

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, so this is a naive plan, but if it worked it would be great:

1. get a bunch of people who know about patents
2. think of obvious things to patent
3. find ones that arent already patented
4. patent!
5. threaten suits against lots of big corps
6. make lots of publicity
7. patents system crumbles

to make it work:

1. the neccesary funds provided through a killtheuspto.org paypal donation button.
2. people actually donating said funds.

If lawyers were like nuclear weapons...

[meringuoid]

... we'd keep them in deep bunkers in the desert, or submarines in the middle of the ocean, and not let them out until Doomsday.

I think that's quite a good idea, personally.

It's a perfect candidate for Trade Secrets

[NigelJohnstone]

If it's so difficult to understand from the patent, imagine you have big chunk of binary and are trying to figure out how it works from the binary.

This is a perfect candidate for trade secrets.

Re:It's a perfect candidate for Trade Secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's so difficult to understand from the patent, imagine you have big chunk of binary and are trying to figure out how it works from the binary.

Well, legally, the patent application must disclose the invention such that one having "ordinary skill in the art" could make it.

Of course that doesn't stop companies from being somewhat vague and pushing the boundaries of that requirement.

Re:It's a perfect candidate for Trade Secrets

[NigelJohnstone]

Yeh, but my point was stuff like this is better done via trade secrets (imagine that they hadn't gone down the route of patents, or couldn't go down the route of patents).

Its just not the same as the steam engine where selling the invention reveals how it works to the world.

Not the first time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucent tried something similar a few years ago with Dolby. Lucent lost.

http://www.fbm.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.detai l/object_id/015DEF12-BEF3-45E6-B57C-046A5B5FD946/D olbyWinsMotionforSummaryJudgmentofNoninfringementi nPatentDisputewithLucent.cfm

Since a court ruled that their audio coding patents were worthless, now they're trying to enforce their video coding patent instead. Lucent is becoming a regular patent troll.

Not really

[Bizzeh]

they dont actualy want the xbox360 pulled, they want microsoft to cave and just give them a load of money to keep quiet. all the money grabbers come out when someone makes it big.

Interview

[Jungleland]

I guess I had better not mention playing my 360 as a hobby when I go for my interview at Lucent :-)

Just sad....

[Anonymous Coward]

First it didn't sell in Japan... now they have to take it back...

I have your copyright solution: Open DRM

[theantix]

I know I know, DRM is a dirty word for slashbots, but hear me out:

If the DRM process was an open spec that anyone could implement, and the creators could dictate the terms of use for their creation, this satisfies your 3 criteria that you laid out in your comment. 1, it allows compensation for creators, a legal player would not be able to display/play content without a key if the creators desire this. 2, the public is not hindered to use their creations, because anyone can create a legal player so long as it respects the DRM. 3, you can design the technology to backup your files and share files as you please -- but they will only function if the player has the correct unique legal key.

Patents and trademarks are other issues and should be dealt with seperately.

Re:I have your copyright solution: Open DRM

[Antique Geekmeister]

For a lot of copyrighted material, DRM could have some use. Trusted Computing, for example, could be used to manage DVD's and CD's in a sane way rather than the current and fundamentally insane approach used by RIAA.

However, for patents, it's not reasonable. A patent, even a software patent, is easily implemented in a different way that DRM has no way to detect. Simply write the software in a different computer language and DRM will little or no hope of detecting the violation.

Re:I have your copyright solution: Open DRM

[Haeleth]

If the DRM process was an open spec that anyone could implement, and the creators could dictate the terms of use for their creation, [...] the public is not hindered to use their creations, because anyone can create a legal player so long as it respects the DRM.

Sorry, but no. If the creators are given the freedom to say "this work may be watched precisely once and once only", then the public is hindered in its use of this creation, because they can only watch it once.

That's why the GP proposed getting rid of all systems that allow content creators to dictate terms of use, and replacing them with a system that ensures content creators are compensated for the use that people choose to make.

Re:I have your copyright solution: Open DRM

[Phisbut]

Sorry, but no. If the creators are given the freedom to say "this work may be watched precisely once and once only", then the public is hindered in its use of this creation, because they can only watch it once.

Last time I went to the movies and bought a ticket to watch a movie, I was shown the movie precisely once and once only. When I tried to go back in to see it again, they told me I needed to buy another ticket even though I had paid to see the movie before... I was totally hindered in the use of someone else's creation... I guess I should sue the movie theater or something.

Re:I have your copyright solution: Open DRM

[syousef]

Don't be so obtuse on purpose. People go to the movies to use the large screen, and make a night out of it. They may also see a film before it becomes available to watch on DVD/Video in their own home on their own equipment. You're basically paying rental on the theatre, which is why most movie tickets cost about the same price. Even this is an artificial system set up in a day and age where owning a large screen that could fill your field of vision was beyond the reach of the man on the street. It's still a luxury but well within reach for many to have their own home theatre now.

My patent pending...

[Karem Lore]

I am in the process of pantenting (in brief) a circular object, attached to a body, used to move said body between two locations. I hope this will cover cars, trolleys, cots, push-chairs...Hell even wheelchairs. Said circular object can be made using any material, including, but not limited to, rubber, stone, wood, metal etc.

what do you think, will it work?

This idea is copy protected 2006 to Karem Lore.

Karem

Trademarks are broken, too

[john-da-luthrun]

The trade mark system (I'm British, so "trade mark" is two words) is pretty broken in many respects, precisely because it has moved beyond the common-sense "guarantee of origin" for which trade marks were originally intended.

Two key problems with the trade mark system:

1. Excessive breadth of coverage: people obtain trade mark registrations covering a wide range of goods and services, which locks other people out of using a similar name even where there's no real risk of confusion. As with spurious patents, an excessively wide trade mark can be challenged, but (also as with spurious patents) that's an expensive and time-consuming process.

2. Excessive breadth of enforceability: sure, we don't want any Pepsi selling something called "Coca Cola" (parent's example given of "Coke" actually begs the question - I'm not sure Coca Cola would risk enforcing that against Pepsi because of the risk of revocation as a "generic" name). But trade mark infringement increasingly covers more nebulous concepts of "brand dilution" and so on. So for example, the infamous 90s cases involving websites like "AOLsucks.com", and the UK case in which Arsenal Football Club prevented a guy from selling unofficial Arsenal scarves from his front garden - using trade marks to force fans to pay for the overpriced official merchandise.

So trade marks, like patents, add risk and expense to start-ups and smaller businesses (who may find it hard to choose a compelling name that has not already been registered, however spuriously), can be exploited for anti-competitive ends, and can be used to stifle free expression. And it all comes down to the same issue: an originally-sensible means of protecting legitimate interests, that gradually gets pushed further and further by the lobbying of vested interests until it ends up threatening the very interests it was originally intended to protect.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Ambassador Kosh]

1) Okay that does seem like a good reason. They are too broad and scope and so need to be limited.

2) Hmm I did not know that Coke is a generic term or Coca Cola. At least where I live (Colorado,USA and where I used to live (Seattle, Washington). If you asked for a Coke they did not just give you any cola product. If they did not actually have Coke they would tell you they did not have it and would offer pepsi or something else instead. So at least in some areas it certainly seems to be treated as a proper name and not as a generic one. However that football example is one of the things I don't really want. Unless what he was selling was VERY clearly marked as non official so there is no way to confuse it with official merchandise I don't think it should be sold. Since if you sell something with someone elses logo on it you can damage their reputation if your product is defective in some way. If there is no doubt that it is not official in any way then I would not have a problem with it.

Basically what I want of them of trademarks is that they are a way of guarateeing who made the product. If it breaks, works well etc I want to know who actually made it so I can find/avoid it in the future. I certainly don't want to end up with an american dvd player when I am looking for a panasonic for obvious reasons. ;)

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Anonymous Coward]

In Texas, "coke" is generally used as a generic term for all soda. Must be the same elsewhere.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[ajs]

Absolutely disagree with the football example.

There needs to be equal protection. Just because you're a giant corporation and I'm one person, you should get no special treatment, be it positive or negative. You don't get to stomp on my rights, and I don't get to stomp on yours (yes, we gave corporations rights in the US in the late 1800s, and in the rest of the world in the mid-20th century... get over it, it's not going to change).

Trademarks on backwards "R"s need to be stopped, but overall trademark works fine.

Copyright works pretty well, but really needs to be limited. My theory on this one would be to make copyright 20 years with an automatic (but explicit, so that it could be looked up) extension for any work which continued to be published for up to 100 years. This means Steamboat Willie gets 100 years of protection, but folk music published in the 1980s and then never re-published would be coming into the public domain now.

Patents are a bear. I agree that the core idea makes sense. A physical widget like a new kind of wiper blade needs to be protectable, but I don't like:

• the way patent ownership is handled
  
• the difficulty in knowning if something is covered
  
• the shift of burden from the applicant to the courts in terms of defending a patent
  
• the variable duration of patents because of international agreements
  
• coverage of business models, math and algorithms, etc.

Much of this could be fixed by making patents associate only with an individual, with no transferability and placing a public peer-review process into the end of the approval timeline.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Anonymous Coward]

see here http://www.popvssoda.com/

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[ansible]

... and the UK case in which Arsenal Football Club prevented a guy from selling unofficial Arsenal scarves from his front garden - using trade marks to force fans to pay for the overpriced official merchandise.

Forcing fans? No. They chose to purchase overpriced merchandise. If it ever becomes required to purchase a football t-shirt to work in a bakery, or go down to the pub and lift a pint, let me know. Then we can make a case for economic coercion.

Selling overpriced t-shirts is pure capitalism. And unless there is something else wrong (like an unusually high tendancy to catch fire compaired to other shirts) nothing should be done about the situation.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Ethidium]

1. Excessive breadth of coverage: people obtain trade mark registrations covering a wide range of goods and services, which locks other people out of using a similar name even where there's no real risk of confusion. As with spurious patents, an excessively wide trade mark can be challenged, but (also as with spurious patents) that's an expensive and time-consuming process.

I think this is just a mis-statement of the law, at least as it exists in the US. Now, I am not a lawyer nor a trademark law expert, but my understanding is that trademarks are limited in scope by geography and type of business. So for instance, the United Parcel Service has a trademark on the color brown, but only in the context of being a worldwide delivery service. If you wanted to use brown trucks for your plumbing service, you go right ahead. Likewise, Sew Fast, Sew Easy probably (hopefully!) loses any trademark claims that they actually file against ad hoc knitting groups, because their trademark is on a shop in NYC and an online presence for a knitting store.

Frivolous litigation is not a problem unique to the so-called "intellectual property" rights. You see it in tort, contract, real estate, and every other area of the law. No amount of IP reform will eliminate the problem of frivolous and oppresive litigation.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Rydia]

If I hadn't posted here already, you'd get my mod points. Parent hit the nail right on the head: lots of hatred aimed at IP law is based on sensationalist headlines, moralistic pontificating and a shallow understanding of how the system works.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Acer500]

It is my understanding that trademarks are divided by classes (broad categories of similar goods/services), 45 different ones internationally, so it could be said that they can be divided by "types of service".

I thought there was no limitation on scope geographically, but I just learned otherwise (at least in the US) http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/common.html. However, trademarks can be register federally as well as by state (as opposed to only nationwide in other countries), and if one company registers its trademark and others don't contest, once 5 years pass then it becomes "incontestable".

the United Parcel Service has a trademark on the color brown,but only in the context of being a worldwide delivery service

(emphasis mine)

That is certainly not the case.
UPS probably has a "composite trademark" on the logo on a brown background for their particular class. Any other company using a brown background and a non-sufficiently-distinguishable logo will probably infringe UPS's trademark. I would have to look up if plumbing services fall under the same class as delivery. If so, your hypothetical plumbing service would not be able to use the colour brown
More interesting info in the US Patent & Trademark Office FAQ http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/tmfaq.htm

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[syousef]

Gee I wonder why there are so many sensationalist headlines to choose from? Could it be because companies have stooped as low as threating disproportionate fines and jail for people copying a song off the internet? Could it be because we're bombarded with images that equate copying something to stealing? No must be irrational hatred.

I'd like to shake you and scream "wake up" in your face.

Re:Trademarks are broken, too

[Ethidium]

That is certainly not the case.
UPS probably has a "composite trademark" on the logo on a brown background for their particular class

From Federal Trademark, serial #76-408109:

"The mark consists of the color chocolate brown, which is the approximate equivalent of Pantone Matching System 462C, as applied to the entire surface of vehicles and uniforms. The mark consists of the color brown alone." (emphasis mine)

As to classification, in the U.S. they are class 105, transportation services. My hypothetical plumbing service would be class 037, plumbing services. See http://tess2.uspto.gov/netahtml/tidm.html

And I just heard from CompUSA...

[Warlock7]

That they have them in stock and I can order one online... :(

Damn Lucent! You just want to rain on my parade, don't you?

DVD / MPEG2 decoding

[gweg]

So is this why MS does not bundle a DVD / MP2 player with windoz? (with WinXP you need to download the DVD player / codec from a 3rd party). It is not clear if this patent covers a particular decoding scheme (in which case, MS could simply change their software to a different scheme), or does it cover ALL DVD players?

public domain != open source

[Comboman]

Software is especially precarious in this way. I don't need the master recording of a song to be able to distribute and change that song, but if I don't have the source to a program, all I can do is distribute a binary. I think this is a very important and fundamental issue with copyright law that Congress has not fully thought through.

Even if copyright terms for software were made shorter (a good idea BTW) that still wouldn't require the creator to release the source code. It wouldn't even require the creator to unlock the copy protection/DRM. It just means that anyone can legally copy and redistribute (even for profit) the original release. Forcing the creator to cough up the source code for something they're no longer going to make money on would be difficult, assuming the source is even still available (I know I'd be hard pressed to find source code for stuff I wrote only 10 years ago).

But wait, it gets even better. What if an old piece of software (lets say King's Quest I) contains music? If the copyright limits for software and music are different, then the one with the longest term will apply (unless the music can be removed from game). This happens even now. I bought a cheapy DVD of the Beverly Hillbillies (poke fun if you must) and the theme song (best part of the show) was removed and replaced with some generic bluegrass fiddle music. I'm guessing DVD distributor paid for the distribution rights for the show but not the music.

Duke Nukem Forever

[saboola]

Using this argument, Duke Nukem Forever would need three five-year extensions, and its not even out yet ;P

Tactical reaction

[Winterblink]

This is where Microsoft turns around and initiates a full audit of Lucent's licenses for Microsoft products.

MS

[certel]

This is going to be another RIM in the making. MS will be throwing some money at them, tell you that.

I don't think so, not in this case.

[TheNoxx]

Now, I'm completely against how run-amok the patent industry has become, and how it blatently shows that the patent office is either completely corrupt or there are key people being bribed. But this is not one of those cases. Lucent invested countless man-hours of work into developing the MPEG2 video codec, and have every right to patent it and enforce that patent. This isn't like their going after every little inventor or website for using it as a good means of video compression, but when somebody like Microsoft is using it in one of their biggest product lines and not paying a dime to Lucent, it's time to get mean. I looked through the patent, and it seems very specific as to their own product, not one of those more recent patents of "double-clicking" or somesuch.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever get the feeling that Microsoft is some people's white whale?

I definately agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless things have changed MASSIVELY at Lucent within the past 3-4 years since a family member who worked in their intellectual property division retired, it is highly unlikely that Lucent is actually suing Microsoft, unless they have been in negotiations for a long time and have failed.

I know for a fact that (at least in the past), lawsuits were considered an absolute last resort at Lucent.

That said, it could be that Lucent has reached that last resort at this point. I am positive that the MPEG2 patents are part of a multi-company patent pool (Just like with MPEG4), so if MS has not licensed those patents from the MPEG-2 licensing authority, then there is the potential that they are open to lawsuits from other companies also.

From what I know in the past, the licensing terms for MPEG-2 are incredibly reasonable, and Lucent has typically been very reasonable in terms of licensing non-pooled patents, so I'm pretty surprised that this has reached lawsuit status.

Posting anonymously since I'm referring to a family member...

Re:I definately agree

[DrSkwid]

> Unless things have changed MASSIVELY at Lucent within the past 3-4 years

Does this count ? :

On April 2, 2006, Alcatel and Lucent announced that they entered into a definitive merger agreement to create the first truly global communications solutions provider with the broadest wireless, wireline and services portfolio in the industry.

http://www.lucent.com/news_events/merg.html

Not yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Alcatel merger (really a buyout, while Lucent is dominant domestically, Alcatel is larger globally) is still pending.

Alcatel has government customers who don't like the idea of a large American company becoming involved in Alcatel's business.

Same goes for Lucent's government customers and a French-owned company.

There's also apparently the issue of Lucent's retiree associations, they want guarantees from Alcatel that their benefits won't be touched.

In short, there are two entities with a huge amount of clout and one with a decent amount pushing against this merger, so it could fall through.

It all boils down to our government and France's government not liking each other, and hence not liking the idea of a major French telecom company with government customers merging with a major U.S. telecom company with government customers.

Documentation

[Andy Dodd]

People who expect to be involved with patent work at a company that understands the patent system well are expected to keep pretty thorough records of their work (notebooks signed and dated daily, for example), as a way of proving when something was actually invented.

Re:Documentation

[ArsenneLupin]

notebooks signed and dated daily

As those records are purely internal, what's to stop the company from backdating them?

Ok, so a company might risk big trying to cheat here, if they are getting caught due to a disgruntled coworker spilling the beans. But what about private inventors who really have no witnesses either way??

Oh, and what about the ridicule of bringing signed and dated Denny's napkins to a patent trial ("Your honor, I had the first idea of this marvelous invention during lunch while holidaying, and didn't have access to our official company notebooks there") Or even more embarrassing: "Your honor, we were vacationing in Egypt, and I must have been careless eating salad which had probably been washed with their bad water. Well anyways, the predictable thing happened, and you know, I then spent lots of time you-know-where. Of course during these long periods alone, I had time to think. And it was there that I had the idea for this investion. And unfortunately, the only kind of paper that was available was ..."

Re:Documentation

[honkycat]

You'll probably need additional corroboration of the dates in those notebooks. A single dated piece of paper won't be worth anything. If, however, you've got years and years of notebooks that are kept in a consistent fashion, in pen, etc, then you have some credibility. It helps if it's widely known that you keep a notebook of your work. But, generally, your notebook may help support other evidence, but you're not going to overturn a patent on a notebook entry alone.

Slight Problem...

[eosp]

Ok, where are the 360s now?

Typo

[plopez]

While it's unlikely console will be pulled from shelves, it's one way to generate some publicity.

The poster misspelled 'revenue'. So I predict what will happen is that both corps. will throw legions of lawyers at each other for a while before developing cross licensing agreements. Lucent gets a new revenue stream, some 'goodwill' (if that is possible from a company like MS) from MS, MS gets to keep the XBox and possibly open another channel by opening a cross license channel for some of their software.

It is all a very ritualized dance. Though I could be wrong.

When does it expire

[Midnight Thunder]

Does anyone know offhand when the MPEG2 patent is due for expiration?

Doesn't this strike you a lot like warfare?

[hey!]

Remember how the Soviets and the US used to take turns skirting each other's air defenses to activate them (apparently we still do this with China)? That's what a lot of these patent maneuverings remind me of: superpowers throwing their weight around. It keeps the little guys in line and gives you a map of what the big threats are likely to do.

1993 + 17 == 2010 ?

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

robyannetta: Lucent claims that Microsoft has violated their MPEG2 patents which they claim they patented in 1993.

TubeSteak: Licensing is like mana from heaven for companies. It represents a long term income stream that can only add to the value of the company and the value of their patent.

In this case, "long term" would be about four more years?

Re:1993 + 17 == 2010 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's about the life of the console anyway. plus, if they win, they would probably get fees for all the current ones sold. it could be quite a tidy sum.

This would be good news if . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . Microsoft couldn't just buy all of Lucent, fire everyone and part the company out to the highest bidder.

Don't mess with people who have enough money to buy you and all of your competition . . . There is no job security in that.

Only 14k?

[Andy Dodd]

Well, Lucent has done quite a lot of splitting, so I guess the number could be down to 14k by now.

Back in the AT&T pre-trivestiture days, it was in the 35-40k+ count. Post AT&T-trivestiture, post-Avaya, and post-Agere, it could now be down to 14k.

For a long time, Bell Labs averaged 2-3 patents per DAY. And these were good, sensible, technical patents, not patents on double-clicking or junk like that.

patent the patent

[na641]

Patent craziness. Someone should just patent the idea of patenting and get it over with.

Excellent Point...

[Gr8Apes]

... on the non-obligation to release source code.

(Of course, the issue of criminal laws that prohibit bypassing DRM in order to get at public domain content is entirely another matter, and one that needs to be fixed.)


I thought breaking DRM was against the law only for copyrighted materials? Once the material is no longer under copyright, there's no issue with breaking it?

Re:Excellent Point...

[debest]

thought breaking DRM was against the law only for copyrighted materials? Once the material is no longer under copyright, there's no issue with breaking it?

Ah, the wonderful DMCA! Here's how it works.

The act of bypassing DRM in order to access content is expressly permitted in the DMCA for fair use purposes, and naturally (as you say) copyright law does not have a problem with you taking actions to get at public domain works either. The key is that the DMCA criminalizes the distribution of tools that are used to break DRM schemes. In other words, you are fully within your rights to break DRM, but you are prohibited from ever telling anyone else how you did it. This is why the DMCA has been called a weapon against free speech.

So if your purchased copyrighted copy of music/movie/whatever falls into the public domain, you still are technically prohibited from being able to do anything new with the content unless you are an engineer and are able to break the DRM yourself, since no one is legally allowed to assist you.

Hell, someone can sell a DRM'ed disc of completely public domain content right now, and you still aren't allowed to use anyone else's help to get at it. Sick, isn't it?

Why just the big fish always...?

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to make patents like trademarks - you have to actively defend against any and all comers, otherwise you lose it.

Doesn't seem fair that they can lie in wait, waiting for the big fish to swim by, only to sue them hoping for a huge settlement....Only to let the little guys get by without having to worry.

Make them sue the small software companies. Make them sue the free, open source authors. And if they don't, they lose the patent.

Re:Yes, this does exist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful. You might get nailed to a tree for talking that kind of sense.

How would Lucent know

[Anonymous Coward]

How would they know without violating the DMCA?

Settlement Details!

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be that every Lucent employee gets a free X-box 360!

-LU employee hoping

Mutually assured destruction

[GoatMonkey2112]

Software patents are mutually assured destruction. All companies need to be disarmed.

patent machine

[ripcrd]

1. Have vague idea of how to do something simple.
2. Write it up and send to patent office.
3. Lie in wait for idea to be needed by industry.
4. Pounce on company that discovered idea and solution on their own.
5. Profit!!! On the back of the consumer.

I thought these tards had to produce a working model of the idea, maybe even attempt to mass-produce. In my opinion, if they don't, they are holding back industry, not helping it or spurring it along.

Bring in some muscle

[ripcrd]

"While it is highly unlikely for all 360s to be pulled from shelves, Lucent is using this threat to gain leverage to win their case -- in court or out of court."

Sounds like they are gonna break some legs if they don't get their money.

northerners know the diff

[BitterAndDrunk]

But Coke is often used as a generic in lots of parts of the South. Order a Coke and they'll sometimes ask "what flavor?" and they don't mean vanilla or reg'lar. They mean Coca Cola, or Pepsi, or Mug Root Beer.

-1 redundant, an AC already brought this up.

Stifling Progress...

[Beefslaya]

There are 2 sides to this story.

Lucent has been in financial trouble for years. Maybe they are looking for a bone to get them out.

Lucent has had a working relationship with Microsoft for years (remember Lucent Winmodems?)

Microsoft has had a history of "borrowing" technology in order to better their products (ala Java VM, Roxio, the list goes on..) Then they always pay out later.

Lucent will get their money on this, simply because its rediculous to recall all 360's, but then Microsoft will simply change the format they use and move on. Lucent will lose out in the end.

On the other hand, there are several posts on patent squatting (not the technical term). Create a simple idea and wait to cash in because you don't have the ingenuity (or the resources in the case of Lucent) to utilize it or put it in to practice.

Acts like this stifle the growth of technology as a whole. Especially when you can't create new stuff because someone else thought of this stuff 10 years ago. Maybe Microsoft should be more careful of the toes they step on. Maybe they don't care because they have the money.

It's like if I had a patent on the 5 legged chair, I thought it would be more stable. Then 5 years later, LazyBoy comes out with a 5 legged chair that sells like hot cakes.

That's my Intellectual property according to the law, and I own that idea. I am entitled to some royalties. Maybe if it didn't sell so well, would I throw a fit?

Greed and Priciples don't mix too well, even though they often get put together in the same jar.

What do you expect from CowboyNeil?

[Anonymous Coward]

CowboyNeil always posts crap articles low on content.

Large companies

[typical]

No.

You have industries with a small number of players where it is difficult or impossible for anyone new to enter the industry because the existing players have hundreds or thousands of patents covering the product. Even if a lot of those patents are complete nonsense, it is expensive to fight them -- and it only takes a single injunction to kill a challenger. As a result, the number of players in the arena slowly shrinks, and all players cross-license their patents (so producing a patent produces no competitive advantage).

See CPUs (Intel/AMD). See GPUs (Nvidia/ATI/Matrox/S3). See hard drives (couple more players here, but same idea).

Any time all the existing players in an industry are cross-licensing patents to each other, you know that something is horribly broken, because the patent system *isn't* doing what it is supposed to do.

Re:Large companies

[ccp]

You have industries with a small number of players where it is difficult or impossible for anyone new to enter the industry because the existing players have hundreds or thousands of patents covering the product. Even if a lot of those patents are complete nonsense, it is expensive to fight them -- and it only takes a single injunction to kill a challenger. As a result, the number of players in the arena slowly shrinks, and all players cross-license their patents (so producing a patent produces no competitive advantage).

So, the patent system has degenerated into just a way to enforce cartels?

Didn't see it before, but actually makes perfect sense.
Thanks for the insight.

Cheers,
CC

Just Once...

[Greyfox]

I'd like to see some company say "Ok!" and then go on the news and announce that they really liked their product but since they were infringing on a patent, everyone who bought one would have to return it. Could you see that happening with the XBox 360? After the rioters got done burning down Lucent, the patent laws would change like 14 minutes later. It's hard to get Joe Average Public's attention on anything, but threaten to take away his shiny new game console and there'd be mass chaos.

Patents and damage

[typical]

It's not that we think that IBM is going to suddenly rip off its clothes, put flowers in its hair, and run amok, pointing at everyone and singing "I'm gonna sue you for everything you've got! I've got tons of patents!"

It's that we wonder what happens to these patents. IBM filed for them, so they clearly expect a return on them. Do they sell their IP portfolio down the line to companies with less to lose, as many failing companies have? What if they get into financial trouble and are looking at collapse? Then they have every incentive to become an SCO and use every bit of their IP as a wedge.

MAD worked (and it was damned scary there at points, even so) because there were rational people running things, things were going pretty well for all parties involved, there weren't many parties involved, and so forth.

We were *really* worried when the USSR started to collapse, because the transition time was where someone might get desperate and start lobbing nuclear weapons.

The problem is that companies go under all the time, and those are put in the position of it being in their benefit to lob patent suits everywhere. In addition, there are a *lot* of patent holders -- it's not just "seven countries with nukes" or anything like that. If IBM really got into trouble and they gave free reign to their lawyers to exploit every patent, they could probably shut down US industry (barring Congressional action to rule all their patents invalid or something along those lines).

Game theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as an evolution and game theory. Patents are an answer to an original problem. But over the years, it's broken down for one reason or another. The answer is not to fix the current system or remove it altogether. Instead, the answer may be to cheapen the cost of the current system, thereby allowing everyone to patent everything, then create another tighter controlled patent system on top of the current one.

All this hub-bub over MPEG-2....

[Khyber]

When motion JPEG is far more efficient (from what I've noticed and experimented with - not by actual mathematical algorithms and such, just personal experience based on image quality and file size, I may be wrong or encoding things different from others, as always, YMMV..)

Honestly, I'm looking forward to Motion PNG. .PNG, for the most part, *SEEMS* to be a better compression algorithm, albeit at the expense of more computer power.

All I want now is a good audio compression algorithm that's not MP3/OGG/AAC related. Actually, having SOME experience in this area, I beg to differ. MP3 is adequate, from a few tests I've run. The main test for audio quality runs as such:

Encode a pure .WAV file at two different levels. First one (high-quality) at 44.1KHZ, 160Kbit. Second one (same file, mind you,) at 22.050KHz, 64-80Kbit. I've got some damned-sensitive ears, and honestly, I can't tell that much of a difference in audio quality, nor can most of my friends - they swear it's as good as the raw .WAV copy off of the actual album. (Don't talk to me about loss coming from conversion, I'm well aware of that, the thing we're talking about is perceptible audio quality)

My personal opinion is that once we make headway in further compression schemes for audio/video, things like MPEG-2 will become a thing of the past. Witness DivX or XVid or 3Vix. They still use the same audio format for the most part (of course you can embed an MPEG-2 with OGG Sound, and it will play as long as you've got the appropriate codecs for support) but there is a rather small, yet VAST difference in the codecs themselves. Efficiency, speed, accuracy, etc., all play a part. Right now, this patent BS is just that - BS. This technology will be LONG GONE in as short a time period as a decade, replaced by some new compression scheme, perhaps multi-layer compression? (I'll explain my ideas on that later on if anyone's interested.)

As always, this patent-enforcement nonsense only serves to do one thign for us right now - uselessly waste our tax dollars in the court system, and I'm sick and tired of this. When are we going to wake up, march to each big company, and give them a forceful ultimatum, stating, "Either you listen to us, and treat us right, or you die a horrible business death, the likes of which you've never seen, as we sabotage your supply lines, factories, and your headquarters, all in the name of EARNED JUSTICE?" After all, most of these large corporations continue to treat us as if we're mere SLAVES to them. I think it's time for the slaves to rebel.

ugh

[nomadic]

While it's unlikely console will be pulled from shelves, it's one way to generate some publicity.

Alright that statement is meaningless and confusing even by Slashdot standards. Why exactly does Lucent want this "publicity"? Can we get something other than cryptic comments like this at the end of slashdot stories?

IP synopsis

[typical]

Trademarks have been abused (e.g. Disney trademarking tons of views of the Mouse, with the view of keeping him permanently locked up). However, I would say that the benefits of trademark law far outweigh the drawbacks.

The idea of a trademark is that it is possible for a vendor to have a distinctive mark. It is important for reputation accrual ("Oh, right, Apple produces nice computers") and to keep competitors from trying to confuse consumers ("I bought an Aple computer, but it's not as nice as you said that it would be!").

The main irritating thing I see with trademarks is that today, marketers treat a trademark as something that one tries to associate intangible "good feeling" with, and don't want the trademark to ever be used with something negative. This is not at all the intention behind the creation of trademarks -- however, I don't believe that the cost to society is very high.

In the arena of copyright, my largest complaint is that copyright lasts too long. Also, I wish that copyright did not cover certain elements that it does.

I'd like to see copyright law changed to not cover elements like characters or settings. Currently, if someone writes a series of books, it is possible for them to sue anyone that writes a "compatible" book set in the same universe and with the same characters (unless the book is parody, etc). This is, I think, an undesireable effect. While I can understand requiring that a work be clearly labelled as not coming from the original author and not being official, it is silly that our content creators cannot explore their *own* branches for what they'd like to see happen. How many times have you read a book or watched a movie and wondered "What if, instead of character X surviving, he died? What would happen to the world afterwards?" I'd like to see this made legal.

There are people who would oppose this -- there are currently people whose entire career is based around nothing but creation of characters. They've adapted to the current legal environment, and it's difficult to tell them "no, you don't have this protection any more." It's still something that I'd like to see.

Copyright lasts far, far too long. The purpose of copyright -- a state-granted and enforced monopoly -- is to encourage the production of useful works and move them into the public domain. However, copyright has been repeatedly extended -- originally it lasted fourteen years, with an extension for another fourteen years if the copyright holder applied for it. Since copyright is designed to encourage the funding of content creation, this is more than enough time to encourage a company to fund that creation. Few companies look more than four or five years into the future -- looking more than twenty-eight into the future when deciding whether or not to fund the creation of a new work is simply not done.

However, new and very lucrative industries appeared (such as the recording industry and Hollywood) and suddenly companies could buy and hang onto rights that lasted a long time. These companies paid legislators to basically siphon value out of the public domain, where the Framers had intended it to arrive, and reserve it for them, in the form of incredibly long-lived copyright laws. Currently, copyright is life of author plus seventy years, or 95 years for works created by a company.

For many works, such as software, the useful lifetime of the work is *far* shorter than the copyright, which means that no useful work has been or will be placed into the public domain in these fields. Software was not around at the time that copyright law was being created -- if it was, copyright would undoubtedly be shorter in some areas. In addition, traditionally, the Library of Congress served as a mechanism to "open source" copyrighted content. Unless one registered their work with the Library of Congress (which involved storing tw

Engineers, how do you deal with this?

[carn1fex]

How do other engineers deal with these patent problems at the design phase? When you first sit down with your notebook and pencil and start laying out a design, are you conscious at all that some portion of your design is patented? Do you do a system layout then have a patent guy check it? I'm really curious. I'm an EE and I never check this stuff out when im doing a design... I just build it and off it goes.

Has Lucent Ever Used MPEG-2?

[kyousum]

*Nowhere* does the MPEG LA guarantee that if you license from them that you will get _all_ patents related to the standard. In fact, you can be sure there are big disclaimers in their contracts that it's not necessarily true. The MPEG LA can't avoid more than anyone else the risk of submarine patents.

You are correct. There are big disclamers in the license. (I've read the whole thing at my job.) Since Lucent is not one of the licenser of the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License, the fact that Microsoft received a license from MPEGLA (which I'm sure they have) will not help them in this case.

But there is a small catch. In the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License, it is written that all licensees have to license any MPEG-2 Essencial Patents that they own. So, if Lucent has signed the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License as a licensee, they cannot sue Microsoft (since thay have received a license from MPEGLA, which would have received a license from Lucent). All they could do is get a cut from the money MPEGLA is collecting from licensee around the world.

So, has Lucent signed the MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License as a licensee? If they haven't, have they ever used MPEG-2 commercially? If the answer to the first question is NO, and the answer to the second questions is YES, there are going to get a phone call from MPEGLA.

Its probally isnt microsoft's fault

[GruntboyX]

This is just the hardware designer in me, but.... I doubt seriously microsoft is to blame if this patent infringement is legitament. They proball purchased a driver or uprocessor, or some dsp chip that has the mpeg decoding capability. Or they paid IBM to integrate it into the die. The point is, Microsoft probally didnt violate the patent, probally IBM, Analog devices, TI or however supplied the part. This is assuming that MPEG2 decoding is done in hardware. Which i assume is correct because this patent was filed in 1991. I doubt they were decoding MPEG2 in software then. This goes to show that you shouldnt be able to patent ideas, but root implementations. I shouldnt be able to patent the right click or x in the corner. But things like ASCII, MPEG2, and the way i implement the right click.

Weee- the string of copyright this suits continues

[mmalove]

I'm glad they are taking Microsoft to court. Because in all likelihood, Microsoft is going to hire the best lawyers there are, and kick the crapola out of Lucent. And then we'll have one more strike against companies generating these bogusly broad patents on technology.

No it doesn't.

[Andy Dodd]

The merger is nowhere close to final for a multitude of reasons, and may not even happen. The two companies have agreed to merge, but they cannot until the FTC (and the French equivalent), plus possible other government entities, agree to the merger.

Given that the French and U.S. governments don't get along and both companies do a lot of government business, it is a very distinct possibility that the merger will not happen.

In short, the two companies are still independent of each other.

Solution to The continuing problem of patents...

[HiThere]

Have patents only bind the government.

Then it would be like the jams that advertise that they are "Sole supplier of Lemon Curd to the Royal Family", an honor, and an economic plus, not not a death blow to any possible competition.

Now governments are a bit more extensive than the Royal Family, so perhaps it should, perhaps, only bind the federal government and those it directly grants money to (as opposed to indirect grants). So, e.g., if the DARPA gives you a grant, then you couldn't violate anyone else's patent when you did your histone detection research, but if the college did, you could, even if the college got some (but less than half) of it's money from the feds. And states wouldn't be bound at all...unless some states chose to set up their own patent offices, and be bound by their own patents.

This strikes me as fair and equitable.

Chairs

[Spy der Mann]

If they pulled a 360, they would be facing in the same direction as they started.

Yeah, problem is if they pull a 360 AND a chair at the same time!

If Lucent is lucid, and ms is in violation...

[davidsyes]

then ms "will be ass-immolated"...

It would be quite interesting if ms IS in violation. Lucent could take a SEER-ious and SERE-ious (and maybe even a serous chunk out of ms' butt.

I suppose 360 in this case isn't VISION or clarity but rather the roasting ms is probably going to face...

Re:Too little too late? And Alcatel is...

[davidsyes]

French, right? Hehehe... maybe they waited for the opportune time to express their inalienable right to the freedom to FRY microshaft!

(Disclaimer, I have some French blood in me, so I'm not stabbing at the French. In fact, I have 5 or more lines of blood in me, so, if I DO attack any of the countries whose blood is in me, then I'm an equal opportunity expoloiter... Reminds me of some of my ESL friends who say, "I like everybody.. I'm an equal "opportunist", heheh.... I then correct them to say they really mean to say they believe in equal opportunity...)

BTW, years ago, alcatel -after buying a small company-- went after unixguru... when his current and new employer wanted to reap his mind of knowledge (he had not yet put to paper) unrelated to his employers' field of interest. Anybody still remembering him?

See, I AM an equal opportunist... "The equation MUST be balanced", as an Alien said in a newer "Outer Limits" episode.

Re:Too little too late? So, if Alcatel/Lucent

[davidsyes]

Prevails, then would that literally make the x-box a "Hexed-Box"?

This has got to be the most pathetic thing I have

[dunnthetown]

This has got to be the most pathetic thing I have ever seen. Personally I don't think Lawsuits solve any problem, and quite frankly it only makes one person happy and the other miserable. Usually if the issue resolves they shake hands and go on with their lives. In our American democracy this is a problem.

Cash settlement? Lucent?

[Tanamo]

Sweet Jesus, this might actually be Lucent's road to their first profit in 5 years ;)