Slashdot Mirror
$400 Million IP Experiment Making Some Nervous
BrianWCarver writes "IP Law & Business shines the spotlight on Intellectual Ventures, the IP start-up founded in 2000 by former Microsoft chief technologist Nathan Myhrvold. According to some estimates, Intellectual Ventures has amassed 3,000-5,000 patents, with the help of a $400 million investment from some of the biggest technology companies, including Nokia, Intel, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft. As the patent stockpile grows, so does the speculation--and the fear. IP lawyers and tech executives worry that Intellectual Ventures is less interested in changing the world with big ideas, and more focused on becoming an über patent troll, wreaking litigation havoc across industries with its patents."
I knew I should have patented the idea of patent-trolling. Dang.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
not in the EU, as software patent are (still) not allowed :)
Some kids want to be doctors when they grow up
Some kids want to be air force pilots
Some kids want to be computer scientists (that's what I told my grade 1 teacher)
And finally,
Some kids want to be "uber patent trolls" I guess
A company of this size and portfolia could litaerally drag the entire economy to a standstill if allowed to patent everything. It's one thing to have a whole bunch of different companies pushing competing patents, but when several large (and supposedly competing?) firms get together and pool their patents into one collossus, then you can be certain noone else will be allowed to enter any market remotly connected. This is not a good thing.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Wow. That's an interesting view on a company receiving that much in funding. I could be worried too. Who can justify that many patents? Is the IP protocol really worth that many patents?
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Think it. They are going to flood the courts with litigation on every infringment on their patents. This could lead to massive reform in the patent arena. Things could get horrible, then correct itself. Maybe.
I couldn't imagine a company that has been partially funded by Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Intel and Nokia would do anything like that! It would be like SCO claiming that Linux infringed on its' patents and IP, oooh wait, errr... nevermind.
Sign me up!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sign an agreement saying you'll never use patents offensively, and you can license all of our patents for $1.
If someone can exploit a niché, they will. It is how it always has been and how it will always be.
It is remarkable though that the big players have invested serious money into this.
Well if only some other company had a patent on patent trolling! Then the problem would solve itself. Of course, chances are good that Intellectual Ventures has the patent on patent trolling - in which case we're all screwed.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
How does patent work internationally?
Imagine in 10-20 years, China becomes the biggest economy in the world, it ignores all the US patents, and just use those patents to roll out their own products.
For example, a patented medicine sold by an US company to Africa at $10 per bill, and the same "Made-In-China" pill cost $0.01, what is to stop Africa from buying from China instead?
Right now US is still powerful enough so that other countries must agree to certain rules/laws made in USA, in exchange for free trade deals, but when that strength faded, so will the leverage.
I draw this opinion from the recent, possible change of international whaling law, where Japan is about to gather enough votes to start commercial whaling again. So what is deemed illegal in the last few decades will soon become acceptable when the power shifted.
Please stop entering code 2,2,7,6,6,4
All your base are belong to us...
In soviet russia, parents patent you.
They are proposing adding a 5th octet as an interim move until v6 is widely adopted.
That doesn't sound far off from what they're trying to do: patent every neat idea they can. "Hey! A fifth octet. IPv5! V5... hey! Patent a 5 cylinder internal combustion engine! {repeat ad infinitum}"
Trolling is a art,
... or maybe it is a proxy set up by Microsoft and others to attack competition (notably Open Source) without getting accused of unfair competition ?
With the sheer volume of patents they hold, the smart move would be to avoid garnering too much attention from Congress and instead sell advantage to competing companies. In other words, their primary source of income wouldn't come from pure patent protection litigation, it would come from companies paying them to tie up their competitors' product lines with injunctions and patent violation suits. The 800 lbs. gorilla would get richer as a hitman than as a tyrant.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Nathan Myhrvold is not a nobody. He has a rich history all saved on google. A little bit of research should show you whether is a nice guy who is trying to make the world a better place or an evil son of a bitch or somewhere in between.
Anybody who has been throught the early years of Microsoft's war on the IT industry knows what kind of a person he is. Suffice it to say he is not a nice guy trying to make the world a better place.
evil is as evil does
What Intellectual Ventures could do is create a patent pool for the present members of the club.
It works like this: Microsoft transfers its patent portfolio to IV in return for a license to IV's patent portfolio. This is no loss to MS because they've already cross-licensed everything with Philips, Cisco, etc. -- all of whom do the same. From the POV of club members, nothing changes, except perhaps that they spend much less money negotiating cross-licensing agreements and pay a bit to IV for the convenience.
On the other hand, now IV has practically all of that throw weight. Anyone not an "Executive Member" of the club will have to pay (dearly!) to use any of the IV portfolio. What's more, Mutually Assured Destruction doesn't work because IV doesn't actually do anything -- they can't be sued for infringing patents when they don't make anything.
The upside to the club (aside from convenience noted above) is that any of the "little people" who get uppity are now facing the combined throw weight of all of the patents in the world -- and the club members don't have to accept the public-relations liabilities.
It's a total win-win situation. For instance, if done right Microsoft could keep Linux tied up in court forever without ever themselves taking a PR hit. Sort of like the BSA except for suppressing potential competition instead of keeping customers in line.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
So far The SCO Group has spend $50 million losing a case against IBM.
With patent auctions all over the place (even online), I'm not surprised about Intellectual Ventures.
If you are in the mood to swallow some Grade A tripe, check out their business plan.
1. Invention Labs.
2. Invention Research & Development.
3. Invention Library (tm).
4. Market Enablement.
5. Profit!
By the way, the "tm" after the Invention Library means trademark. Yes, they've even patented terms in their business plan.
My work here is dung.
We've already seen patent holding companies suing the pants (and shirts and ties & everything else) out of other companies for patent infringement. What's to stop this one. I understand the idea of a company whose only revenue is from patent litigation or royalties, but still! Most companies make money by providing goods and services. This does neither and should be considered nothing more than a parasite.
totally off topic, but Volvo and Audi have had 5 cylinder engines since the mid 80's. Mod me the heck down...
sig sig sig siggy sig
The most valuable IP -- is prior art that can not be patented.
Question Technology -- where are we ultimately heading?
The end is nigh. -- Technological Singularity Timeline
'They can't be screwing around with a bunch of ideas for that long,'
Why not? I've been screwing around with the idea of screwing around with multiple hot chicks since I can remember. Wish I could get a patent on that.
"IP lawyers and tech executives worry that Intellectual Ventures is less interested in changing the world with big ideas, and more focused on becoming an über patent troll, wreaking litigation havoc across industries with its patents."
Well gee, did they hire scientists? Buy factories? Employ Software engineers?
Of course they want to be a patent troll, you can get $600 million a patent these days, even if they only get $50 million a patent thats $150 Billion taken from US companies.
Gould & Fisk tried the same thing with the gold market. At which point, fundamental flaws in the gold standard and the Greenback became rather obvious.
Maybe we'll have the same corrections this time but without the economic collapse. Did I just suggest we've learned anything from the past? Very sorry, I'll stop now.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Let's see, the EU is currently having issues with MS because MS is monopolizing the OS market.
...
Wonder what the reaction would be to a company that tries to monopolize the legal use of implementations (i.e. patents) in the whole IT biz
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here is an idea to protest against software patents.
Create an open source patent organization and start applying for software patents on behalf of open source coders for every little piece of innovation. The idea is to keep the threshold of what qualifies as innovation low to generate a huge list of patent applications.
Anything useless from "emphasizing email addresses containing a numbers in a word processing document" to "a real fancy way of optimizing inner loops in interpreted languages" to "a memory management code for NUMA architecture"
The important goal is not to get a software patent but to demonstrate the weakness of the system.
This will overwhelm the patent office. at best cause a change in thinking of policy makers. at least it will cause a headache for the patent mongers.
It's just a question of maybe 5 years or less until there will be software patents in the EU. Software patent supporters like Microsoft or SAP have way too much influence on EU politicians.
Those EU suckers give a fuck about what EU citizens think or want.
Sigs suck!
Alright patent bashing aside ...
As I understand IV from some people working with them (with the caveat that my understanding is not based on a direct relationship with them, but lunch conversations/rumor):
1) The $400M is NOT an investment. It is blackmail, like protection money. Company X pays IV for the costs of a patent portfolio with the understanding that IV will not sue Company X based on those patents (i.e. they get a license). So, Company X pays protection money to IV and IV gets new patents paid for to go sue others on.
2) There is no "speculation" that IV is a troll. As I understand it, that is their purpose.
3) IV doesn't invent anything. They buy blocks of patents on the cheap (especially if they get other firms to pay) from some other company's firesale. Usually these patents are an unusable mess and require massive clean-up. But, if you buy thousands of patents you'll hit gold eventually.
4) As a troll, if you don't have deep pockets, IV doesn't care about you (unless you have something to sell). This is cincontrast with real companies that often use their patents to prevent a second company from making a product. IV just wants money.
The stink of the NTP/RIM debacle is still fresh. Legislators are starting to pay attention.p e=politicsNews&storyid=2006-04-05T234837Z_01_N0534 4856_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-PATENTS.xml&rpc=22
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?ty
Imagine that Intel, AMD and IBM not only patented everything imaginable in the uProcessor space, but that they got together and cross-licensed all that tech.
On the face of it, this sounds advantageous. It allows more cool features in processors and alleviates those three companies from having to worry about getting involved in frivolous lawsuits with their main competitors.
Now perhaps Intel patented the XOR operation. Sure the patent is blatantly unfair, but since IBM and AMD can already use it then they have no need to fight intel's patent. THe only person who would want to fight it would be some new player in that space, but who'd have the resources?
If large corporations start broadly cross-licensing technologies then it'll effectively kill the little guy and sew up the market.
The US Constitution recognized only individuals with respect to copyrights, patents, etc.. At the point where corporations were given equal status with individuals then all of the rights that had been held by individuals then became rights that corporations could also hold. Corporations can, with this accession, do things that no individual could possibly do. Therein lies many a disaster, many of which lie immediately ahead in the future. Every time a corporation petitions a legislator for a law that gives it more power, the rights of the individuals are the currency paid in this transaction. The eventual outcome of this, it should be clear to all by now, is that a few corporations will hold all the power and no individuals will have any rights except those that the corporations see fit to allow them to have to the extent that it fulfils the plan of the corporations to manipulate the people. As Ralph Nader has often explained, unless and until we people put an end to this individuals will find themselves with fewer and fewer rights, and corporations will grab more and more power over individuals. This is a war, folks. If you don't think so you are condemning your progeny to virtual slavery.
90% of IP lawyers are patent trolls. They just don't like being out-trolled.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
There's still hope for SCO to spend $60 million .... after all, they haven't actually LOST the case yet.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
http://lwn.net/Articles/179597/
.NET implementation into the Fedora distribution. A set of Mono applications (Tomboy, Banshee, F-spot) also went in at that time. The move was generally welcomed, but a number of observers wondered what had changed to make the addition of Mono possible. The sticking point had been a set of patents on .NET held by Microsoft; presumably those patents were no longer seen as a threat. But no information on why that might be was released at that time.
Back in January, Red Hat reversed a longstanding policy and allowed the Mono
We missed it at the time, but Fedora hacker Greg DeKoenigsberg posted an explanation in late March. The answer, as it turns out, may offer some clues of how the software patent battle might play out.
Back in November, the Open Invention Network (OIN) announced its existence. OIN is a corporation which has been set up for one express purpose: to acquire patents and use them to promote and defend free software. The OIN patent policy is this:
Patents owned by Open Invention Network will be available on a royalty-free basis to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux operating system or certain Linux-related applications.
The list of "certain Linux-related applications" is said to exist, though it has not, yet, been posted publicly. But Mono is apparently on that list. So anybody who files patent infringement suits against Mono users, and who is, in turn, making use of technology covered by OIN's patents is setting himself up for a countersuit. Depending on the value of the patents held by OIN, that threat could raise the risk of attacking Mono considerably.
tasty electronic music vittles
I for one welcome our new patent holding overlords
Don't forget that the US is experiencing another crisis, when it comes to producing new scientists and engineers.
A visit to any American university will show the truth about the future. In many institutions, the number of foreign students in undergraduate science and engineering programs far exceeds the number of American students. When you consider graduate studies in such fields, the proportion of American students drops even further.
What we have is a situation where the US has trained some of the best Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern minds. It many cases, they'll head back to their native lands, offering the benefit of the training they have received in America. That is why we are now seeing nations like China and India becoming such big players on the technology front.
I'm not just talking about manufacturing, either. They're having far bigger roles in R&D. When one considers that China and India each have over three times the population of the US, one soon realizes that China and India will become the hub of technological developments in the future.
Without a solid base of engineers, scientists and researchers, the US economy will stagnate. You are correct, patent laws will become irrelevant. That will mainly be because foreign firms will be able to produce even highly-technical goods far cheaper than in the US, and the US just won't have the technological know-how to make use of foreign developments.
ODSL announces Patent Commons Project
Wednesday August 10, @07:51PM
Rejected
The powers that be rejected this story. Funny thing is AFAIK ODSL operates slashdot. I guess they just didn't want you to know.
"Intellectual Ventures has amassed 3,000-5,000 patents, with the help of a $400 million investment from some of the biggest technology companies, including Nokia, Intel, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft."
Gee, I wonder if Intellectual Ventures can be hired to wield their arsenal against helpless victims? Gee, I also wonder which corporations would be run by low life slimeballs who have no morals when it comes to violating the law when they feel they can get away with it and gaming the system at every chance, will be willing to pipe millions of dollars directly or through venture capital connection to fund harassment lawsuits against their competitors.
I'm not sure but I think one of corprorations has the initials of: MICROSOFT!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"Suffice it to say he is not a nice guy trying to make the world a better place."
When you look at what he did to MS technology-wise, its a wonder he got the job. It's my contention that all the crappy stuff coming out of MS is result of the fine "work" he did there.
One assumes he was a paid operative of Oracle or Novell or something.
"IP lawyers and tech executives worry that Intellectual Ventures is less interested in changing the world with big ideas, and more focused on becoming an über patent troll"
first pass i read that as vultures and thought slashdot was getting quite flamey in its article summaries. not to say its not a correct play on words, but a wee bit flamey nevertheless.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Shouldn't it read "Intellectual Vultures?"
Surely they're not going to sue their investors, mainly big businesses. It seems that the 'patent trolls' are using small companies who like to sue big businesses. I wouldn't be surprised if this company was formed as a defense against patent trolls, rather than as an übertroll.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Mod me down, too, but GM currently sells the Colorado and Canyon midsized pickups with 5-bangers.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
The only way the big guys will come over to our side on Patent reform is if they
get reamed by an "uber patent troll".
Get teh popcorn!
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
On the contrary; maybe having the economy dragged to a standstill is the only way to let the politicians realize the folly of the 'everything's patentable' world. If it would lead to change, the temporary stagnation might be worth it.
Just like skyrocketting oil prices have convinced politicians on the need for alternative energy sources. Sure an economic standstill works, but it's horribly painful for everybody (except for those who are profiting short-term).
What is really needed is an education effort on IP reform. Not just for the politicians, but for the public at large, so they can elect forward thinking leaders.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Now of course big corporations are not interested in a free market but society in general is/should be.
With free I mean a market in which companies can compete, not a completely unregulated market. IMHO, collections of patent should be subject to anti-trust scrutiny.
The patent system will not be changed until it wreaks havoc across the land. It will be a painful process, but isn't change always such? Right now we're stuck water torture mode, and it's hard to convince people that patents are a net loss for society. I know they are because the company I work for is dealing with frivolous patent issues regularly now. It's just crazy how abused the whole thing is.
So I'm hoping this company goes after all the big boys and wins. I want to see IBM, NCR, and any other company with a patent litigation strategy to get nailed. And everyone else and their little dogs, too: Apple, Microsoft, etc. When they've all had their hands tied and/or had billions in revenue funnelled off to these trolls, when jobs start getting lost, when markets start crashing, maybe just maybe the issue will get the treatment it deserves.
Cheers.
"Nice application you've got there... wouldn't want anything bad to happen to it, would you?"
For the low price of $100k/year you can be covered in case you've accidentally violated one of our patents.
Few of the main investors there are famous for levelling the playing field.
One of the fundamentals of economics is the unintended consequences of grand plans. If such an organization is allow to exist, others will follow suit creating a type of oligopoly of intellectual property within the US. The unfortunate outcome, is that this may serve as a catalyst for IP innovation moving out of the US. A country such as India has very weak IP laws and may be the less of two evils. The US based arguement, of course, is that it is the center of the commerce, innovation and the Universe. However the US has small share of the Earth's population. Many of the third and second world countries are emerging into the consumption of IP rich goods, thus decreasing the marketing impact of US consumers.
...with the help of a $400 million investment from some of the biggest technology companies, including Nokia, Intel, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft.
IP lawyers and tech executives worry that Intellectual Ventures is less interested in changing the world with big ideas, and more focused on becoming an über patent troll...
Wouldn't Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and Nokia be the companies most targeted by a patent troll? Everytime some company we've never heard of pops up with submarine patent to try and rake in millions on an existing product, it's one of these four companies who's on the other end of the infringement suit.
Unless they have some sort of ironclad immunity clause in their investment contracts, it sounds like they are helping their own worst enemy.
"We demand a settlement from you for infringing on our patents X, Y, and Z which we own -- we demand monetary compensation and cease and desist distributing your product and to hand over ownership of your source code to us."
The next day, "accidentally" leak your source code to the public, citing "hackers" as the reason.
The UKPTO is one of EU member offices known to actively *reject* attempted software and business method patents even if it has to go all the way to the high court.
In fact, they were recently held as a 'good example' by the FFII.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Yeah I'm sure IP lawyers are worried about the possibility of years of patent litigation coming down the pipe.
"How ever am I going to choose between the red or black Ferrari?"
Why should you say so when they have spoken for themselves? "we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy" says Steve Ballmer. The SCO case speaks louder than words about intent.
Nokia might not like seeing its patent troll baby being used to quash one of its own business partners. So what happens when this sort of conflict of interest arises?
Do you think Nokia would care about Slashdot if they were offered ownership of Linux? Make no mistake, the ultimate intent of patent legislation is to own, "IP", the market and your very hide.
I find it hard to believe this troll group will be used for the evil people seem to be claiming.
You might as well tell me that the BSA does not sue public school systems for copying word processors. Same people, same principles, the same actions.
the group exists to allow for a collective means to *defend* from REAL patent trolls.
If amassing $400,000,000 worth of business method and fat line patents is not a troll, what is? You and your real invention?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's like the RIAA, but for patents! Yaaay!!
Here's a video interview with him on CNET: http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=2185 46b58b244f4f&cat=52079c37c3706e15
Basically, his rationale is that because companies don't permit engineers to check patent portfolios and many companies don't actively check patents against their own products a lot of companies are in trouble.
Personally, though I'm not quite convinced. I believe it is a way to squeeze out the small players in the market. There's something about this guy that after seeing the video demonstrates one thing: not trustworthy. His body language and voice show through right away.
I wonder how much it costs to join the "club" and I wonder what kind of contract you have to sign to get in.
1. Produce no product
2. Provide no service
3. Possess no skills
4. ???
5. Profit
At the end of the day, people like RIM and such can only rely on trying to steal others ideas, run to market, and then scream "troll!" Startups, universities, and real IP creators (not just open source weenies who dupe a feature that was created 20 years ago in BSD and think they are creative) rely on the patent systems and its weak protection of owners rights to keep big lumbering companies and mindless wannabees in line.
Cool. Maybe they will break things so badly that the other patent gorillas will get hit hard enough to order their minions (a.k.a. the congress critters and presidunce they buy every 4 years) to actually do something sane about patent reform.
the first time I heard of this company, it was on a business card stuck to the wall in a famous okonomiyaki place in osaka. true story
The way to win the software patent undoing is to make programminhg so damn easy that its hard to find novel.
. php/Tagging_Prototype
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_physics Yeah, its up for deletion but that doesn't invalidate it. But its really not original research either.
http://developer.osdl.org/dev/priorart/wiki/index
NB:
-If the invention is, e.g. "one-click shopping" the public will reply "who gives a fuck?! duh!" Hence the non-obviousness requirement.
This is why patent-trolling is not just name-calling. Many companies (and here it seems we have the epitome) have, as their business model, making-it-impossible-for-others-to-do-their-work-w ithout-paying-us-a-fee.
Patents are supposed to be about collecting-a-fee-for-helping-others-do-their-work- better. In particular: helping them do it better in a way they might never have imagined.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Back in the late 80's, I was contacted by the lawyers for Commodore Computer. They were looking for potential witnesses in a lawsuit someone had brought against the company. It seems someone had patented the XOR instruction as it was applied to on screen graphics, and claimed that an enhanced BASIC program for the C-64 violated that patent. At the time, I was a C-64 software developer with some friends in West Chester (C='s HQ).I was never called, more's the pity since it would have involved a trip to San Francisco, all expenses paid. I think the lawsuit was dropped eventually, but still, that sort of thing really sucks. The lawyer told me that Apple had already settled with the guy to avoid their own lawsuit.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
It does beg the question of how these people must have been raised to end up as patent trolls. What kind of enviornment is required to make someone so self-centered, unscrupulous and unethical?
Do you have to spoil the child? Beat it? Ignore it? Lead by example? What circumstances can create a creature so base as a patent troll? To they have even a shread of scruple left?
May the Maths Be with you!
If you are technically smart and invent something but you try to create a patent your self for low cost you are likely to be screwed by lack of knowledge of legal drafting. So you have high upfront cost to pay for that language or figure it out yourself.
If you are an IP lawyer with not much technical skill, its ok if your idea isnt really new. It does not cost you much to submit more than one application, and the wording on some makes it new. But that is determined later. You have low upfront cost.
the problem with this idea is that if they abuse it, they will either destroy the patent as a concept or be dismantled by the/a government as it was with other overly abusive megacorps.
> In soviet russia, parents patent you.
Ummm, given all the gene patents they're allowing these days, that might not be such a bad idea, lest some idiot allow them to sue us for infringement merely for existing.
Oh sure, the actual case would be something convoluted like "child inhereted the experimental genome from gene therapy from the patient and agreed to the license because they were going to die if the gene therapy didn't work so they had no choice but the court unreasonably refused to void the contract due to this duress" but it'd still amount to a person's mere existence infringing upon a patent due to stupid laws...
Then again, at some point, hopefully we'll see reform when these laws are proven utterly unworkable and unenforcable, but I'm not holding my breath.
With the sheer volume of patents they hold, the smart move would be to avoid garnering too much attention from Congress and instead sell advantage to competing companies. In other words, their primary source of income wouldn't come from pure patent protection litigation, it would come from companies paying them to tie up their competitors' product lines with injunctions and patent violation suits. The 800 lbs. gorilla would get richer as a hitman than as a tyrant.
Or maybe they would get their income from a protection money scheme "Pay us a fee and we won't come after you." I seem to recall SCO trying that with Linux users, so it's not too far fetched. Just because they weren't successful at it (mainly because they didn't have legal grounds to enforce anything), doesn't mean this company wouldn't succeed.
One word: psychopathy.
Now, if you could figure out how to turn other people into robo-zombies who you could direct over IRC to pay the $75 for you, you might actually be able to work things out. Or you could do an algorithmic complexity attack: figure out how the patent office sends claims to examiners, target an examiner in particular, and pre-calculate your patents to just overwhelm him. Of course, thats not likely to be nearly as effective in real life, because the Patent Office (unlike most hash algorithm) can probably load-balance without appreciably affecting the speed of their systems (it helps that hash algorithms are assumed to be fast, and the Patent Office... ha, ha, ha).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I believe IPValue controls 8000 patents(Not positive on the number).
So that in effect makes lawyers into an driving force behind a business model. To hell with customers, we'll just use lawyers to drive the economic engines of the future, its such a beautiful idea when you think about it.
Now if only lawyers could be used in an otto cycle to power my car, we'd have it all set!
"You need to respect US patents if you intend to sell in the US. "
Pretty much everything infringes some patent in some interpretation, its not the goodwill of people checking the patents that stops them selling in the US, its lawsuits and the only lawsuits happening are against the big guys with cash to take.
The best that happens is, that in clear cut cases, the US company gets customs to block the product arriving at the port.
For software, even that's not possible because port 80 is shared.
For business processes, well, how do you stop a vague idea for a business process from entering the country? Search everyones minds?
Those guys seem to be pretty desperate for loosing the leadership in technology. They try to line up against foreign enemies (China, Russia, ...) while they are killing their own little players. Just wait 'till the rest of the world will just simply ignore the whole american patenting horseshit and this move will be seen as the first step to suicide!
I would rather like to see a public database/wiki where I could easily and at no cost file ideas or inventions, thereby turning them officially into prior art.
So if you think of something obvious, you just file it. I'm of course thinking sort of public domain here.
Some practical problems:
-A published idea would have to have enough details to establish prior-art. Yet simple, otherwise people won't bother to file.
-Disclaimers needed to make clear that the idea might already be published, patented or even implemented. Normal people can't be expected to hunt for this.
-A working filing system to be able to find ideas within categories.
-The database would probably have to become a recognized source of prior-arts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art links to one db, but that one costs money and felt quite stiffer than what I'm proposing)
-Printed publication may be a requirement for prior art.
-Editors probably needed in practice.
-Should others be allowed or improve upon ideas?
It is a twisting of the original ideas of what patents are about.
There are always entrepreneurs who figure out and take advantage of things in this sort of way - or at least so it seems to me.
If you'd like some humor on the subject, Google Patent Trolls Got No Souls.
A Passionate Independent Musician
The parent post is nothing but a straw man argument. He obviously didn't even bother to read RTFA.
Clever signature text goes here.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Unlike copyrights, patents in the US are only good for 20 years. Therefore randomly patenting a bunch of ideas that have no use now may not be too great of an idea. If They can't be used for another 10 years in an application and then that may take 5 years to implement, then you only have to wait another 5 before the patent is a non-issue.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Beacuse this new company appears to be set up for the purpose of using patents offensively, in order to destroy Free Software. In fact, it seems to me that it is designed as a direct counter to OIN.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The plan, he says, is to "invent across the spectrum."
t roll.gif
What they are trying to achieve is to put up a fence which noone can cross. They will "block across the spectrum."
The UE has a brain storming process which is called Foresight, where scientists are asked what they believe will be future inventions or the public's needs in their area of expertise. This helps to designate areas for priority public funding. This IV project is the same, but done for private greed, not for the public benefit.
Imagine an array of patents, which are placed at strategic points on the innovation fronteer/space. Patents, which you can't work around; which go across the spectrum and don't leave any area of technology untouched. Like the lense in optics, the engine in cars, a gene modification tool in medicine.
IV wants to be the Troll that guards the safe passage across that mine field.
http://www.embassyofheaven.com/newslett/news9805/
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!