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Lawmakers Debate Patent Immunity For Banks
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Now that a small Texas company has a patent on scanning and archiving checks — something every bank does — that has survived a USPTO challenge, lawmakers feel they have to do something about it. Rather than reform patent law, they seem to think it wiser to protect the banks from having to pay billions in royalties by using eminent domain to buy the patent for an estimated $1 billion in taxpayer money, immunizing the banks. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)."
Can't really say more than that, unfortunately.
Problem is, in this case it might be required as such a distinction in law might not exist.
Charge people for withdrawing their money
They can cashier the USPTO Commissioner, appoint a new one, and order a comprehensive review.
A billion dollars. Talk about misuse of taxpayer funds.
So, I go back in time a few weeks ago, write a letter to my senators and representative about this, and by the time it clears all their anthrax-detectors and security checks, I might get an auto-generated response 3 months after they give my money to this guy (why can't they tell the banks to pay the $1 billion?) thanking me for my input and telling me that they don't care what I think because I didn't attach a large enough check.
And people wonder why nobody participates in this shit anymore.
I mean, it's not like substantive patent reform -- in particular reform that as a side effect fixes this specific case -- is something they can exactly toss together before the term is up. And now that pretty much everyone realizes our economy is treading water before a recession, keeping the banks up seems like a good idea. I mean if we're going to be spending billions in tax payer money to keep banks afloat after the subprime mortgage fiasco, this doesn't seem like that big a deal.
Sometimes a band aid is better than a hastily planned and thus ill-conceived surgery.
The enemies of Democracy are
If you consider that pretty much all money in existence today is backed solely by debt, is anyone really surprised?
Why does anyone entertain the idea that the banks need to be bailed out? I would be inclined to let the economy finally crumble, and rebuild it. Sure, it'll suck, but we'll be better off because of it, if we fix it the right way.
...oooh! Those pesky activist judges!
Towards the Singularity.
Our legal system reminds me of when you write a huge undocumented, uncommented program in C and have other people do additions and debugging.
Weaksauce as they say...
I'd rather get my canceled checks back anyway.
I love my computer -- You make me feel alright (Bad Religion)
Lawnmaker...
WTF?
Patents are supposed to benefit the common good. That's their only purpose. Now that they recognize one case (in many) where patents are crippling productivity, harming the economy, and working against the common good, they do nothing to address the problem of people abusing the patent system. Instead, they take more money from the people, harming the common good further, in order to bail out banks.
That is completely absurd.
To quote the most important person in the universe, I say:
"Fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it... fix it, fix it, fix it!"
Or:
Congress: "We've blown out our patent system."
Citizens: "Fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it... fix it, fix it, fix it!"
Congress: "That makes too much sense, you bastards!"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
let's give them a nice long list of other stupid patents that they ought to pay off from the public purse. They will eventually get the idea that what they are proposing is stupid ... unless they get large 'research grants' from banks and/or patent trolls in which case they will keep their eyes tightly shut.
The US government has consistently demonstrated innovation in this area. I think the ideal course of action would be to bomb the headquarters of the patent troll company. End of bank cheque problem. End of patent troll problem. Zero litigation.
-1 not first post
A more general strategic review is required.
There may be some tragedy involved, of course, but the conclusion at 3:19 in this clip holds true:
"This town needs an enema!"
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Alaska?
AL is Alabama... Alaska is AK
But how many of the patents discussed in /. reveal anything in the patent application that any programmer or engineer couldn't figure out just by hearing the idea of the patent?
For example, are developers of web commerce sites going to look to the Amazon patent to see how to develop a one-click purchase procedure?
My idea is that a patent should not prevent anyone else from developing the same thing, as long as they don't use the detailed implementation described in the patent to do it.
How do you tell that? Keep the patent details a secret.
That is, if someone wants to know the implementation details of a patent (before it expires), they should have to submit an application. The details won't be publicly available.
Of course, this proposal would never be allowed in the real world, because companies want to use patents to prevent other companies from having the same ideas, no matter if they are trivial to implement or not.
Except AL is Alabama. Alaska is AK.
I saw equipment at Recognition Equipment Inc. in 1982 or 1983 ago that did exactly that--scan checks and store the images. How can they have issued a patent on this.
So in effect, the banks are stealing technology, asking Congress to litigate their loses, and now this Senator is front-man for a huge expenditure of _our_ money to bail them out?
Something is amiss here, because I'm still paying for my checks. Let the banks and their huge reservoir of money pay for their technologies. With interest.
I don't care one bit if the banks invested so much of their capital into inflated mortgage loans. That's their problem for not making _sound_ investments. They freaking have _economists_ working in those high-rise offices.
In this case there is only one relevant questions:
1. Is there obvious prior art to this way of scanning cheques?
- If yes, then lawmakers could in this case grant extra speedy judicial review of whether that prior art is valid.
- If no, that means this way of scanning cheques is unique and has never been done before, and hence is patentable.
To discuss in the shithole of slashbash is to discuss whether someone who is perceived to be evil deserves to be in prison for having an evil mindset - you will find a lot of shit and no good or consistent arguments.
I predict that question not being asked in the first 50 comments to the summary, other than this one.
$1,000,000,000 in licensing * = 478,5000,000 in interest over the next x years.
A better use for that money would be to hire people who have demonstrated strong work experience and education in technical fields. When he's up for retirement, a close relative of mine would be a great pick. He has experience in a number of very, very technical areas of Computer Science, and if you gave him a research staff to work under him, and good pay, he could easily rip patents like these to shreds. The problem is, the government would never pay an engineer with the depth of education and work experience that he has a salary commensurate with what he could bring to bear at an agency like the USPTO.
Nothing will change until two things happen: the government conforms to private sector at-will employment, and it stops being stingy with pay for qualified people. Then again, this is the same institution that will try to save money on the military by spending $1B on a stealth bomber, and then haggle over the salary of the pilots.
If I understand correctly, Ballard claims to have developed these techniques and methods in the mid-90's, at a time when physical transfer of checks was required - federal law would not have allowed those methods at that time.
Then, the world turned upside-down - and his invention became a necessity.
DataTreasury has negotiated licencing with some financial institutions, but there are others that seem to feel that they shouldn't have to pay and aren't afraid to try to make the US taxpayer pay instead.
While it may be possible to characterise DataTreasury as a "patent troll" by some readings of the term, Ballard appears to be the first to have come up with and documented those methods and techniques and that's been upheld by the USPTO. DataTreasury claims to have attempted to sell the patent-protected system to the banks, who went ahead and ran with their own implementations. Isn't the patent system supposed to be about providing a limited-term monopoly for those who come up with ideas, whether it's an idea for a better mousetrap or a method of performing financial transfers? Isn't it possible that the banks are trying to use their sheer size and influence to avoid paying for something that they really ought to?
Charge people for depositing their money.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
In Soviet Russia, perl writes legal system.
Was it the Banks' idea? Was it the patent troll's?
It's moronic. Congress can simply act to invalidate the patent to favor public interest or need. They don't need to BUY it! "Eminent Domain" is about actual property, not Intellectual property! The concept of Intellectual Property is about TEMPORARY monopoly or ownership of something that is to be later claimed, owned or otherwise available for public or private use. It's a privilege given to people by the government. When that privilege is misused or otherwise to the detriment of the public interest, that privilege should simply be REVOKED.
The biggest problem is that nobody wants to stop the party.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
... and it's not pretty.
Giving a patent holder a billion dollars to buy their patent will encourage patent trolls to come out in force. The government's giving away billions here, why not give it a go? You can patent something obvious, sue the banks and donate to the political parties. Soon enough someone will buy you out, and you get to retire a very wealthy person!
Sure, it may not work out so easily, but what's to stop anyone from trying?
Why are stupid, greedy people in charge of the world?
Why can't the game assassin's creed be based off a true group?
Patents are good for, what, 17-20 years. I have a hard time believing that banks weren't scanning at least some checks 20+ years ago (or photographing/microfilming them). How is this patent not invalidated by prior art (scanning) or obviousness (photograph/microfilm)?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
way to go though, take a broken system and suggest a worse alternative.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
While I despise patent trolls, if you read the article this guy had a business with 150 people developing and selling this technology. SOME not all banks ripped him off, several of the large banks did license the technology. Others just ripped him off. To stay in business in 2001 he had to lay most of his people off, and sell most of the company.
Now after a proper legal vetting the banks that just ripped him off are crying and asking the government to save them. Piss on them. They knew exactly what they were doing. This is not a submarine patent. What about the companies that did play the license fee?
What will the guy who actually developed this get? 2% of the money, less all the legal fees. Just remember, it could have been yhou that developed this.
I'm all for patent change, but even if they pass it, it won't help this case.
You can't retroactively change the laws. The laws may be lousy, but the fact is that these people got their patent legally under the current system. Now that they've got it, Congress can't all of a sudden decide they don't like the law and tell them, "well, on second thought maybe you can't have this patent." Any change would only apply to new patents. If they tried to apply it retroactively, the courts would shoot it down in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, maybe a billion-dollar bailout will turn some heads and lead to some real reform down the road. This is $1B that our Congress-Critters can't spend on their own pet projects, and that's a language that they can all understand.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Wow. Even if they give the banks immunity, what would happen to those companies that provide cheque processing services to banks?? Or those such as NCR that actually provide the imaging equipment?? For instance, Fiserv Inc. operates over 50 centers worldwide doing item processing and archiving for upwards of 1700 client organisations. I worked for the Australian division which provides item processing and archiving services for 3 of the 4 largest banks here, and for one of those banks before we were outsourced. Banks here have been doing electronic exchange under the auspices of the Australian Payments Clearing Association since before I started in 2002. Trust me, they don't exactly need an increase in costs right now due to a patent troll.
Has anyone checked out whether Sessions has any personal interest in this bill, or whether he might be getting a kickback?
Can't they go to court and say the patent is worth more?
Can't find any mainstream press articles on this yet. If it were publicized heavily maybe could be a lightning rod for patent reform.
Isn't there a "Triviality" clause in patent laws somewhere? This is something no one needs to invent. It's an obvious application of available technology.
If someone has patented "Taking a Photo", but no one's patented "Taking a Photo of a Bicycle" can I?
This CRAZY check scanning idea is a trivial extension of Scanning and Archiving documents,
which is a trivial extension of Scanning and Archiving paper items,
which is a trivial extension of Scanning and Archiving Physical Objects Digitally,
which is a trivial combination of Scanning and Archiving
What does that gray line that defines when something is an actual innovation look like?
Can't we just do the same thing and create a trivial extension to this patent?
Here, if anyone wants to get rich, steal this idea:
Patent Scanning and Archiving a Bank Check While Wearing Pants.
At least then, if you catch someone else using this innovation, you can sue their pants of.
Slashdot, keep us posted on this. I want to see how my Senators vote on this bill. I would also like people to suggest letters to write their Senators that don't include insults. It isn't as easy as you'd think because patent reform can be complex depending on how you look at it.
God spoke to me.
Great. Whatever happened to the party of the free market?
When Democrats spend tax dollars propping up "unsuccessful" citizens its called welfare-state communism.
When Republicans spend tax dollars propping up "unsuccessful" corporations its called...what exactly?
The patent system may be knackered but the answer isn't this absurd gesture of government largesse.
You can email Sessions here: http://sessions.senate.gov/email/contact.cfm
Wow this is awesome! Yet another great idea by the political party that brought you:
Two endless wars, Failed Katrina Recovery (Great Job Brownie!), a bridge to nowhere, and Torture just to name a few.
IBM owns the bank check processing business (I did check payment programming for four years and have a 3lb MICR reader decorating my metallic file cabinet to prove it). I'm pretty sure IBM has a patent that covers this. If an IBM patent won't cover it then check with NCR (Bought by AT&T then released into the wild again as NCR).
That being said,
I believe what has been patented here is the method to process checks directly just like a debit card (Those little merchant machines that scan and process your check directly and/or the debit payment inserted into the network from a check by phone payment). Unlike a check which travels through the FED/ACH system, this transaction goes through the debit network (STAR, PULSE, HONOR) etc. There is no FLOAT time for the purchaser.
This claim isn't exactly a software patent, and its sort of unique. Its not revolutionary (more like evolutionary) the banking industry shouldn't pay a dime for it (neither should congress).
If I could find my notebook from 1995/1996 I could show prior art from designing a system to accept payments via users check routing/account info directly into the debit network via a web browser. And no, my design wasn't secure. Note that with this claim (I have no proof without the notebook) and a dime will still equal a dime.
My two cents,
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
After scanning through the claims in both patents, this is about routing scanned images onto hierarchical storage. Even back in 1997 this shouldn't have passed the obviousness test.
Not some Republican plot.
We are getting older. And the new deal depends on current workers to pay in to fund benefits. The ponzi scheme is falling apart.
And the nonsense of taking our excess SS receipts and crediting them against the general fund Enron-style started under LBJ. Another one of those temporary budgetary tricks is time of war.
Banking provides a decent amount of money to Sessions campaign coffers, but not an overwhelming amount. See http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?CID=N00003062&cycle=2008
And that includes 1-click, etc. BofA has a patent on "Keep the Change," an admittedly clever idea,
and so Wachovia has to opt for the less user-friendly: take a dollar on every transaction. (Actually,
they could presumably go for the "X% of the transaction value")
Were that I say, pancakes?
Banks have been bilking customers on "fees" for years to the tune of billions. A legitimate claim comes around and they get to lobby their way out of it. Bah, I'd say turn about is fair play if they weren't gonna just use it as an excuse to raise fees for their customers. Any time a big money patent is mentioned it seems a knee jerk reaction to scream "Patent Troll!". As was mentioned the inventor has been battling for his fair shake in saving banks and (if they ever bothered to pass on the savings) their customers time and money. He's the little guy in this scenario. Seems if the patent system was actually set up to protect innovation this guy would get his due.
and looked at the re-exam history, and looked to see if there is any obvious payola going into the good senator's pockets, I have to support the earlier conclusion.
That is just fucking retarded.
Seriously retarded. A billion taxpayer dollars on the line after the banks have spent, by my estimate, around 30k. I guess it's cheaper to send a teenage male hooker to the senate chambers than to fight this thing. More seriously, there are good reasons to fight this thing in court. Write your senator. Here's a few points:
KSR v. Teleflex modified the definition of obvious. Making the banks fight will pull in that case law.
eBay v. MercExchange will make it harder for the patent holder to enjoin the banks from scanning and transmitting check data. so, there's no real danger of banking being shut down as the case is tried.
It's doubtful that this technology saves the banks a billion dollars. They can always turn to low tech fax machines if they don't want to ship pallets of checks. You can fax an awful lot of checks for a billion dollars.
If the senate wants to pass a law, pass one that legalizes something else that the banks can do without infringement.
The banks can easily afford a billion dollars. Bankers award themselves more than that each year as annual bonuses. Furthermore, it gives the banks a legitimate excuse (for a change) to raise fees. The reason will only last a year or two and after that they can use the money to fund reelection campaigns.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
Loan people $9 for every $1 you actually have!
/. member's sig!).
I'm really not kidding. This practice is pretty friggin' scary (to me at least!) once you even begin to understand it. There is a nice animated documentary below ("Money as Debt") that walks you through the basic concepts (which I actually found thanks to another
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Also, sidenote: I don't see how the current mortgage crisis is such a bad thing, since all these banks have "lost" potentially a trillion dollars.. but really, they didn't LOSE anything.. if i understand correctly, they created LOANS using fractional lending; meaning they invented a trillion dollars of debt to them (by printing a trillion dollars worth of loan checks, or depositing a trillion dollars worth of 1s and 0s into bank accounts). So, if i understand correctly, they haven't LOST a trillion dollars, so much as they won't be PAID a trillion dollars-- but the reciprocal part of the loan (the "money" they loan) was invented. Someone with an econ degree plz explain to me haha.. kthxbye.
"I'll patent a technology employing 'computers' to 'scan' checks, thereby holding the whole banking industry hostage... for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"
Number 2, "uh, one Billion, sir."
"Thanks, Number Two.... ahem... for ONE BILLION DOLLARS!"
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
So, let's see... a patent troll company (they have to be... there was prior art and there seems to be little question about the "obviousness") gets a patent on a lucrative process somehow -- apparently against the normal rules of the PTO -- and a short while later some Senator from a nearby state offers a billion dollar buyout?
Yeah right. It's all coincidence. Sure it is. Must be. Uh-huh.
See, if you had seen that CNN clip of Mike Huckabee campaigning in Alabama joking that his wife was campaigning in Alaska due to getting lost from confusing the AK and AL postal codes, you would have known that.
It's okay, though. Nobody laughed. His wife didn't die face-down in the snow as was implied, either.
There must be something special about the check 21 aspect of this. We have been scanning and indexing checks in an imaging system and mentioned in the patents, since 1991. We've used ASCII and EBCDIC, Optical Jukeboxes, etc as described by the patent. Some of the checks use overlays so we can save disk space by storing the ASCII text separate from the check image. All of this since 1991.
So what is so special about the Check 21 (check truncation) that warrants a patent?
Another Session of blind-dogmatists leading clueless-idolaters to super-secret wisdom.
....
...) it is a daily fact we accept as Shakespearian sick-comedy or a Euripides tragedy of hubris and profligacy that gods/rulers are less-than mere mortals and far less-than heroic warriors. Our gods/rulers are cruel, petty, spiteful, meaningless and silly, why meaningless and silly, because Citizens do not consider them to be a threat, boon, or any historical/personal value (no WWIII or GME yet). The meaningless and silly gods/rulers are out in Neverland ... the new pseudo-Olympia/Asgard for the vain, vapid, vacant cult-vultures of spin-values, faux-truths, easy-honors .... My commentary on the pitiful majority of evil plutocrat dogma cults seeking and selecting the best to rule slaves, but never to serve humanity.
Political-Poops while Public-scoops and scoot as the masters of US toot on root-flutes for loot.
The above line is jaundiced entertainment as in no longer news worthy, but still a valued joke
In the USA/EU (... from Vatican to Moscow/Peking
A Geia GME Zeitgeist, "Global Mass Extinction" is just a crash and reboot. In this analogy humanity is like Microsoft Windows/Vista. I sure Geia will remove the *problem and install GNU-Linux or BSD.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Debt-backed money is still money. What is difference is that there is no corresponding creation of value which leads to inflation. The impact of inflation can be pushed out by further debt, but eventually it must bite. Basically this means spending now and leaving future generations with the bills.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So now the banks have decided that patents only hinder human progress (at least in the industry that rapes people of there money), so hopefully now the full extent of patent bondage can be realized by a large majority. But who the f*** are we kidding the only reason this is going to fly for banks is because they have a hell of a lot of power in the US political(aka fight for domination) structure. Drug patents, Water purification or desalinization patents, Medical device patents, and a whole lot more are really just a why to slow down progress of humanity so that money can be sucked out of a populace. Wait extraction of wealth is the whole idea behind the structure of capitalism, were f***ed!
I would recommend a little reading about the period 1929 thru 1940.
See if it sounds like fun.
Suits get to uphold two abuse-prone causes for action in one fell swoop. Well done, ol' pal, well done. See you at Davos.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The Commerce Department has objected to the amendment, including in a letter last week to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Judiciary Committee chairman. "Limiting patent holders' rights and remedies in this instance could reduce innovation in this technology area," wrote Assistant Secretary Nathaniel F. Wienecke. "The Administration does not support exceptions to patent protection based on a particular technology."
This just continues a pattern we have come to expect from the Bush administration. Needless to say, a costly pattern for US society, except for a select few who have befriended Bush's inner circle.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Congress must pass legislature to allow the federal government to revoke patents or "eminent domain" patents for free (as in free beer) if the enforcement of patent deems a threat to national security, as in this case.
I assume for a patent on scanning and reading info off checks, one would own the patent for the scanner and for OCR technology. Otherwise, who the hell gives someone a patent based on putting two completely related technologies together.
Patent trolls attack open source, no problem. Patent trolls attack banks, SHIT!! PASS A LAW!
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
If the banks have to pay, then the cost will be passed down to consumers.
I actually looked up the actual patent and did a very brief skimming over it
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=DataTreasury&OS=DataTreasury&RS=DataTreasury
Now IANAL but it seems like the patent is either incredibly overarching or limited solely to their products. Im more leaning their specific products because a lot of the systems described sound alot like things already done with atms. From what i read he basically patented an atm'esque check processing. Banks probably could already do that kind of thing long before his patent but weren't legally allowed and thusly probably figured whats the point of patenting something illegal.
... Where do they want me to mail that rebate check they're sending me to pay for this damn thing?
One of these days I'm going to visit Washington again. When I get to Washington I'll walk over to where the government does its business and the only thing I'd find there is a deep pit where all the money went. And a large sucking sound will draw me in and I'll never see my friends or family again because of the black hole thats government spending.
Don't tell me it's a drop in the bucket either. All these little drops can add up to a big splash eventually.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
You still use what to pay with? If I went to any store here in northern Europe and handed the cashier a check, that person would look at me as if I were some neanderthal, and probably refuse it outright. Actually I have no idea if any store around here would accept a check anymore, and it has been more than ten years since I last saw a check.
For all its modern technology and massive research budgets, the US of A is really backwards in some areas, and especially in banking and mobile phones.
For the US to get over its ridiculous fetish with the "check"?
Has always pissed me off, what place do they really have these days?
Germany phased out checks about 5 years ago. Reduced fraud, and increased security.
Give them the patent for 1c per check, and phase out checks as fast as you can.
Fuck you and your silly propaganda, dumbocrap!
Oh yes, they do. Have a look into the regulations, it is explicit there.
Wrong again, there is more milk. If the society doesn't want that extra milk, for any price, it will add no extra value. If society wants the extra milk, the sum of money paid to the milk producers will increase, just not linearly.
At some time the bank (or its owner) will want some kind of real good. When that happens, the bank will create debit within itself and give it to you. That is the debit you'll use to pay the interest on your loan.
Rethinking email
Of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation.
That's the mission statement of every conservative in office today, and especially the "fiscal conservatives". Brought to you by the same people fighting against national healthcare, public education, and at the same time gleefully proclaiming how "deficits dont matter!!!".
"Mistakes were made", "Lessons were learned", etc etc etc.
This is an example of the No true Scottsman fallacy, a type of equivocation and begging the question. Someone says, "Conservatives do such and so," and the defenders of conservatism retort with, "Well, no true conservative would do that! They aren't conservatives!" Sorry, no. This is what conservatives do. You don't get to redefine conservatism as, "That part of conservatism I happen to agree with." Liberals do a hell of a lot of things I don't agree with, but I try not to say things like "Hillary and Obama are no true liberals." Sadly, this is what liberalism and conservatism have come to. Maybe we need to drop political labels altogether and look at what candidates actually stand for.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They're sure to abuse that power somehow. Would you really want the feds "free beer eminent domaining" any patent they felt like? You seem to forget the domestic wiretapping program, so, with the current trend of noting almost anything as "a threat to national security", this "free beer eminent domaining" would amount to nothing more than defacto arbitrary seizure and forfeiture.
Better to put some competent people in the USPTO and give all the asshats there the boot.
I think you should have a PhD in engineering to work at the USPTO. It would probably help cut down the number of bad patents. And if bad patents cease (or at least slow down), then we won't have problems like this in the first place.
we're fucked
Do you really want to live in a world where all new discoveries are held as trade secrets, where companies rip off one another's designs, and there is a race to the bottom? Who is going to spend money to invest in R&D, even in large companies, if someone can reverse engineer it and sell it cheaply not having to recoup the cost to initially develop the product?
Sure it helps the consumer in the short term, but I think such a world would stagnate technological development, outside of the realm of tinkers and guilds.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
qwerty
Honestly, do YOU want to pay for the health care of someone who lives an unhealthy lifestyle?
We don't even know if obesity IS unhealthy. So far all we have is correlation, which isn't enough to me to take state action. For example, an obesity tax will catch most athletes. How's that right?
Martin Luther King apparently lived an unhealthy lifestyle, as he got shot for his behavior. So's being President and being in the Armed Forces. I'm happy to pay for all their healthcare.
Like state-provided education, the state has extra responsibilities to support the freedom of its society.
After reading the news story on how this came about, I'm more upset with the idea of the bailout than the patent. The plaintif got a patent under the rules provided, showed it to people who might license it, and in spite of non-disclosure they just implemented the system. The patent was attacked on terms of prior art and revalidated.
The original inventor has now lost 98% of his company, and while I think that the patent is obvious and that business method patents should run for only a short time (five years?) from first implementation, the inventor played by the rules, and is entitled to collect under them.
Patent law should be changed, but one patent at a time isn't the way to do it.