Slashdot Mirror
Google, Yahoo, Others Sued Over Solitaire Patent
An anonymous reader writes "Back in 2004, Slashdot posted about computer solitaire being patented. It was a ridiculous patent and made it onto the EFF's list of worst patents. However, not much had been heard about that patent until now. It turns out that the patent holder, Sheldon Goldberg, is now using that patent to sue a bunch of different online publications, including Digg, eBaum's World, the NY Times, Cnet and the Washington Post. He's also suing Google, Yahoo and AOL (why not?)."
Why don't they go after microsoft too? They've been distributing a computer solitaire game for many years in clear violation of this patent, and they have plenty of money to sue them for!
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
We have a fly-by-night organisation, suing at least eight major companies, with a patent that is clearly a joke.
Our legal system works as much by precedent as by legislation.
When the NYT, CNet and Google fight this as hard as they are going to, this will set that precedent, and it will set it hard. It will make it that bit harder for frivolous patents to ever reach court, and might, just might, prompt a re-evaluation of the entire system.
One of the patents is for a method for playing games on a network. Network gaming systems have been around for as long as networks. For example, in 1977 there was a little game called MUD.
Obviousness in to the US patent office is of course different than the rest of humanity.
My little Linux and tech blog
My Clubs. Let me show you them.
that's the brilliant part of their invention i assume. adding a network part to a game you can only play alone. it's pure genius!
I don't like the idea of owning ideas and other things that do not exist, but if we have to have a patent system, then I think there should be a "use it or lose it" element to the patent system. If you can prove that you are trying to make a product out of it, or have licensed it to someone who is trying to make a product out it, then you are allowed to approach the courts to try to have your patents enforced. Otherwise, all bets are off.
70% of patent actions are by people who stockpile patents but produce no products. These patent trolls are just leeches are should not be allowed to hinder real companies who actually make things.
My little Linux and tech blog
To patent chess or checkers? How about tick tac toe? Yes it's a new use for it but you might as well say printing on ePaper requires a separate copyright since it was never copyrighted specifically for that purpose. There has to be a limit set on persuing these claims as well. You shouldn't be able to wait until lots of deep pockets are involved for multiple years to sue so you know the damages will be high. The absolute maxium should be 12 months since a product was released but they should be required to give notice the moment they are aware of the infringement. Solitare is like traditional folk music which can't be copyrighted. It's been around too long and simply doing a computer version isn't changing it enough to warrant a patent. The code would be patentable but not the game. If they were all stealing code then that's a different issue.
As dumb as it seems, I cannot really be mad at anyone who actually gets to sue ebaums. I've never been a fan of the way he treats IP rights-holders.
As unlikely as it may seem, Microsoft could be a saviour in this case. If I remember correctly, its (rather good) implementation of patience solitaire has been in Windows since 1990. Far before the patent was issued. So there.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
The term is limited, to a period of 20 years. As an incentive not to keep the patent in force for any longer than necessary (and to pay for the patent system and bring in some tax money), there is a renewal fee to be paid every year or in odd cases (US) every couple of years. The fee gets higher the longer you want to keep the patent in force.
Patent terms are way more reasonable than copyright terms. And for a patent you have to meet high standards (OK, in some countries they sometimes make a joke out of that) and it is quite costly. Now, compare that to copyright. It doesn't cost anything, doesn't require registration and lasts for all practical purposes forever.
As to the HIV issue you mention. Just about any patent law has an article allowing the government to step in and end the monopoly prematurely. This is not done for trivial reasons, but in case of say - a bird flue epidemic - a patentee cannot hold a country at ransom. Brazil did it recently when some drug company insisted on charging too much.
Bert
Traditional patents does most damage when the patent holder release some poor and overpriced product only few can and will afford, basically holding back the benefits of the invention for the duration of the patent.
I believe induction cooking was delayed that way, because the holder of a key patent only used it in its own very exclusive brand, and refused to license it to cheaper brands with better distribution channels.
It is much better if the patent holder has no products of its own, and instead offers patents to everyone on RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.
Even better, of course, would be to do away with the patents.
The patent office pooped big time when this patent was granted. As long as there are patents, that problem will never be solved, but there are other ways it might be dealt with.
...
In some jurisdictions, "loser pays costs" is a way of inhibiting frivolous lawsuits. I'm not inclined to favor this, because one may too easily lose a case that has real merit, but
How about a provision where, if the case is duly found to be unusually frivolous, or glaringly without merit, loser pays triple the costs of the defendant and court?
And nothing of value was lost.
Dude if there's anything on this planet that qualifies for prior art it's suing for patent infringement. They're the ambulance chasers of the tech world.
...this patent troll's trolling?
Seriously, I see no way that anyone would do something like this to do anything besides prove a point. It would be like someone being sued over the 'circular transportation facilitation device' patent from a few years ago.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
The U. S. Congress has added an additional term of up to 5 years to the normal 20-year patent term for pharmaceutical patents. This is designed to prevent financial losses from the additional time it takes a pharmaceutical manufacturer to get a new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration eating up a substantial portion of overall patent life.
Overall, this may be fair. Concerns include whether the variable additional term awarded is sometimes not a close match for the time actually taken in a given case, what happens if the FDA takes over 5 years, and whether there are other industries deserving similar adjustments and not getting them.
Who is John Cabal?
According to EFF, the date to beat to show prior art is January 19, 1996. In 1994 Microgaming Software Systems released the first online casino in 1994.
http://www.gov.im/ebusiness/microgaming.xml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgaming
Any other cited examples of prior art? Help shut down this asshat and contribute your prior art info to: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/contribute.php?p=sheldon
Or perhaps we just need to put a bounty on lawyers.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Despite the oxymoronic name, there does exist a fun multiplayer variant of Klondike solitaire. Each person plays their own deck and columns, but the stacks where you put cards in A-2-3-...-J-Q-K order are shared. Each ace starts a new stack, so there can be multiple partially complete stacks for each suit. The first player to get all of their cards out of their columns and onto any of the stacks wins. It's fast-paced and competitive.
Emulate them, get ridiculous patents and then sue everyone you can. Eventually you'll make patents worthless enough and be enough of a pain in the ass that there will be a change in the law.
The other thing is to file as many patents as possible with as little money as possible to gag the patent office.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The only way I see the BS in software patents (and unbalanced copyright) coming to light is by the people who know the system doing the hard work of moving things along and educating the judiciary and public. The EFF is doing this. We can never contribute enough to compare to what the bad guys' lawyers have, but we don't have to. Just enough to knock some sense into people.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
"Use it or lose it" doesn't mean "make it or lose it", it can also mean "actively promote or license it" as well.
This is an outrage! Tell the King! Tell the Queen!
Let me get this straight... Rushing for diamonds? That's no way to win hearts and minds. That takes patience.
In fact, if they carry on like this, some hot-headed ./er is gonna club them to death with a spade.
I really hope that a court loss is on the cards for them. And if they whine, I say 'Deal with it'.
It's more difficult than that.
... but it doesn't need to be as bad as the current law.
1) The current patent system is broken in ALL industries, but some sort of patent system is probably desirable.
2) For inventions that require a lot of up-front investment, a longer patent is more justifiable.
3) For industries that don't require the patent to reveal sufficient information to allow others to reproduce the invention easily, patents should be invalid.
4) When the system requires a patent lawyer to understand what the patent means, individuals who are not patent lawyers should not be affected.
5) There are a lot of undefined terms in the area of patents. These should be removed. Examples are "obvious", "skilled in the art". These need to either be made more precise, or removed from patent law...and if they are only well-defined to lawyers or patent-lawyers, then the laws containing those terms should only apply to lawyers or patent-lawyers.
A lot of these problems stem from the problem that nobody can define what a patentable invention is. As long as this is true, you're going to have either bad patent law or none
But remember, some things are cheap to copy, but expensive to invent. It's for the protection of these that patent law is reasonable. And it's unfair to second-guess how expensive it *should* have been to invent after the fact.
Sometimes I think a patent should be not a license to manufacture, but a prize, rather like the X-prise. Each year in January congress should appropriate a certain amount of money, during the next January the "Patent Prize Commission" should allot that money among those filing for inventions during that year. It would be necessary to reveal sufficient information to allow others to copy the invention cheaply (i.e., without going through either the process of invention or of reverse engineering). If you don't win, your process remains your secret. You can file as often as you desire until you have won, but there's a fee for each filing that is estimated to cover twice the cost of handling and evaluation. If two or more entries in the same year are essentially identical (in the judgment of the judges), and it is still deemed a worthy invention, then the prize is split. All winning entries become public domain.
I'm not really sure that the prize would be better than the current system, but it's hard to see how it could be worse.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
too bad Gambit from the X-Men is a fictional character...