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Singapore Firm Claims Patent Breach By Virtually All Websites
An anonymous reader writes "A Singapore firm, VueStar has threatened to sue websites that use pictures or graphics to link to another page, claiming it owns the patent for a technology used by millions around the world. The company is also planning to take on giants like Microsoft and Google. It is a battle that could, at least in theory, upend the Internet. The firm has been sending out invoices to Singapore companies since last week asking them to pay up."
I wonder if US companies will honor this patent.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
If that is the case, I'll patent
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Seriously, patents are fucking stupid. So is IP(intellectual property). Get rid of these, and world peace would happen over night.
Enlightenment is the elimination of that which is unnecessary.
How do you patent something that is written in the HTML spec, that is a logical combination of two tags? This is why software patents need to be permanently banned. In our world today, it does not make the same economic sense to grant patents (or copyright).
Do away with our corrupt tax code. Support the Fair Tax
and microsoft and google (and me) existed before that and *used* their technology.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Geesh. Am I to believe that that w3c never used images to hyperlink pages before the patent was issued?
-- Mean People Suck
Where's the "goodluckwiththat" tag when you need it?
SCO has a patent of judicial extortion that should sink this little problem. Microsoft will unleash them in five minutes.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
The more trouble this causes, the more effective it will be in hastening patent reform.
1. Porn
2. Have an idea and get bought out before you lose too much cash.
3. Porn
4. Make a nuisance of yourself and get bought out before you lose too much cash.
That may be it. Then again, if they piss people off SCO style, they could be in for a rough time.
Now if only someone could "discover" a patent that covers Flash or ColdFusion or any of that other crap, and decide that not only do they want to to enforce it, and not license it, but not market and implementation themselves.
Bonus points if they're in the WTO so that America European states "have to" enforce it.
These days, so much content, so little information...
Really, they own that patent? Well then why in the last 15 years didn't they bother to enforce it? I'm sorry but lack of enforcement of a patent is grounds to dismiss that patent. There's a zillion examples of prior art everywhere in the world and this does NOT belong to that Singapore company.
They own the rights to hyperlinks about as much as SCO owns the right to Linux. And if that's true, I am going to sue everyone because I own a patent (that I just filed five minutes ago) for a "method and apparatus to control the flow of an algorithm based on the logical outcome of a predefined logical test," a.k.a., the "if" statement used in all computer programming. From now on, no program that uses the "if" statement can exist without paying me ten trillion Zimbabwe dollars (that's about five cents) per instance. And the first thing I'm going to do is sue SCO because that program they claim to own contains a bazillion of those "if" statements.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
... I've waited long enough. Now, after years of silence, it's time to reveal that I own the patent:
"Use something to do something"
I think a trivial $.01/use is an acceptable royalty. Start paying up. :)
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
Prior art? As I recall images have been used to introduce information for a long time.
Example: In a newpaper on the front page, a big headline picture with the caption (see story on A1). Isn't this linking by a picture?
I'm glad to see that we've even managed to outsource patent trolls.
Jesus Freaking Christ! I call the patent on bg-music on webpages that autostart and dont show the music player!
A threat like this is the most likely thing to convince $BIG_CORPORATIONS to pressure Congress to enact real patent reform.
Sounds SCO-itis is catching.
My web domain.
How do I know I am using the technology? from http://www.vuestar.biz/technology.php
A web site which has been developed by or for a URL addressee/ owner and uses visual images to hyperlink to other pages in which any first or subsequent page provides the contact details of an Organisation would in Legal terms appear to use the steps and methods outlined in a claim of the Patent .
1. A search request submitted by a user to a server - side application via a terminal
2. The server - side application searching a database in accordance with the search request
3. Identified entries being submitted to the terminal as a search results list ( one entry is sufficient ) each containing a hyperlink to a web page
4. Whereby each entry of the search results list contains visual content related to the web - page for which the entry contains a hyperlink , the user able to view the visual content , and contact information for an organization is provided as a component of the search results list
Quick... someone start making shirts that say:
... its about time those DeCSS shirts got replaced.
<a href="link"><img src="picture"></a>
I don't know about the law in Singapore, but this seems so obviously silly that if I were a lawyer for one of the companies receiving the invoice, I'd ask the attorney general to prosecute for mail fraud (a federal offense which includes knowingly sending someone a bill for goods or services not rendered in hopes of receiving erroneous payment).
AH HA! This must be the "internet money". Pay up buddy!
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
The same company has found a way to patent O2 and is requesting 400 million years of royalties. The company will begin preliminary injunctions against all living things as soon as God has been reached as a witness.
While this may seem ridiculous, the thought of patenting A HREF's is just about as absurd.
Piss Off!!
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
but I quess I won't now.
Here's the abstract: The present invention provides a web-page (or web-site) search results list which includes images from the actual web-pages or web-sites identified in a user's search, or images associated with the actual organization operating a web-site. This assists a user to locate web-pages of interest or relevance to the user by providing images to assess the relevance of web-pages identified in a search, prior to the user having to hyperlink to the actual web-page itself. The invention also provides a method of assisting a user to be placed in contact with an organization, including the steps of: the user submitting a search request from a terminal, via a computer network, to a database server, the database server containing a database and a server-side application used as database searching software; the database searching software searching the database in accordance with the search request; identified database entries being transmitted to the terminal as a search results list, each entry of the search results list containing contact information for the organization; at least one entry of the search results list additionally containing visual content and/or audio content which relates to the organization. After reading the claims, this patent seems to be more targeting sites that use search engines to return images that relate to a user's query. Although this is a prime example of how the international patent system is broken, it's unlikely they could target "virtually all" web sites with this patent.
My work here is dung.
Hey guys, I've just submitted a patent request for "Any device which uses electricity to perform calculations, render images or display useless news"... Get ready to pay you thieving bastards
Anyone know if this technique/ability was in the Mosaic browser? I know it was the first to show images inline with text and hyperlinks.
If this patent was filed at the same time Mosaic came out - and I wasn't able to confirm when the patent WAS issued - then there might be a slight chance. Anything older and the patent would be expired in the US by now, anything newer and there would be prior art to invalidate it.
=Smidge=
Being that the email record of the development of these features is pretty widely distributed, they'd have a tough time defending that patent if anyone makes them try. Here's the original proposal by Marc Andressen:
http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html
In proposing the IMG tag, he explicitly says that it can be embedded in an anchor, and he describes its action. I have my doubts that these guys have prior art on web pages dating back to before 1993.
New hotness: It's an Asian company this time, not some asshats here in California.
Slashdot: They're competing for Al Gore's crown as "inventor of der interwebs".
*facepalm*
This is GREAT!!!! This company should be supported in all ways possible! I think I am going to set up a VueStar legal defense fund. I know this sounds crazy but think about it... What is the most common use for click images?
This would eliminate almost all banner advertising!!!
Yes this would have a few problems with sites that use thumbnails but a small text link below the picture would fix this problem, a small price to pay for eliminating banner adds.
So I have these divs that I've linked to other pages. They happen to have pictures in them, but I only intend to link the divs.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
From the Vuestar website FAQ:
:-)
"My site has no images only text?
If your site is only text and has no images, icons or other patent methods then no license required."
Sweeeet! Run the images through aalib. Problem solved
a patent should be non-obvious. People who commit murder should be given life, people who pass these types of patents should be hanged, people who try to cash in on these stupid patents should be hanged... by their gonads.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
I wonder if these companies are for or against patents because this is exactly what I would do to demonstrate that patents are absurd.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Filing date: Oct 3, 2001
Issue date: Jun 20, 2006
Wayback machine: http://www.archive.org/
http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/
What's that? An image? Linked?!?! That is what one might call prior art.
echo YOUR_OPINION >
...I seriously had to check the calender twice to make sure this wasn't April 1st.
it's the anchor that links you to a site on a webpage not an image inside the anchor... all the image does is send an event bubble to the anchor and the anchor does the action...
Back in the late 90s I recall Singapore being the wild-west of the internet. It was well known that because Singapore did not care to enforce software piracy protections, that warez were openly available on singapore FTP/WWW servers. I was even told that you could buy CDs loaded with pirated software out of vending machines for a few dollars. ------ And now a firm from Singapore wants their patents and properties protected. How ironic.
So what do they own, 11 patents?
Once again, we have a demonstration that a two-digit IQ is more than adequate to secure a job as a patent examiner.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
a) World peace overnight? Yeah right. We don't have world peace because we have finite resources. IP has little to do with it.
b) Common sense or public domain. Either way they are going to lose.
Patent trolling and frivolous lawsuits should be a crime.
à_à
Argh.
If this singapore company is acting as described in TFA, then they are just a bunch of douchebags who make The Gator or Fish Slap look like first rate intellectuals and gentlemen. Pure simple Assholes, and should pay for everyone's legal fees when they lose this in court.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
There are likely many ways to do the things your novel algorithm is trying to solve. Blocking everyone else from solving the same problem using their own algorithm is ridiculous and counter productive to creating an open market. If you come up with an algorithm to search for widgets on the internet faster than anyone else, then good for you, you will make money at it if people deem it is worth the cost you charge. It should in no way allow you to prevent others to come up with their own fast widget searching algorithm. This is the problem with business/software patents.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
i think everyone in the world who has a website which 'infringes' VueStar's patent should immediately email them and demand that they send them full details by registered post of the patent and it's details and that they also send them a license and then reply by post to quibble about every word and or line of the license. I suspect Singapore itself might sink under the volume of mail. Then one could sue VueStar for exposing them to patent infringement by not reply promptly and dealing with their concerns and putting them at risk of legislation.
From TFA:
Established in August 2004, Like.com also said it owns almost 12 patents in the areas of visual recognition and search.
Almost 12? What the hell kind of journalism is this? Is 11 too many to count? Does zdnetasia use base 12 (in which case, I could ALMOST see this being appropriate)?
This sort of "mis-turning of a phrase" is rapidly becoming one of my top pet peeves!
I don't know about the USA,Australia and Singapore But in Canada, France and most EU countries, the patent wouldn't be legal since it's based on public knowledge and a process that previously used by an other identity (glad I took those law classes).
If they even try to get this patent here, you would get a few thousand lawyer rushing toward them (mine included).
..how does this work in Singapore? Do offenders get publically caned?
"I think I own this land."
"Really? Well, I think I own this land."
It's all IP.
U.S. Patent 7,065,520 (issued in June 2006) would seem to be the US equivalent.
When you look at the claims, all the independent claims contain some key limitations:
receiving a search request from a user,
searching a database,
(other stuff, ending with)
"wherein the visual content comprises a plurality of mini-images in the form of a conveyor belt slide show."
A conveyor belt slide show? WTF? Gee, that seems fairly narrow to me!
Read the claims -- they define what the patent seeks to protect.
Technically? Depends on how much of the intellectual property is recognized by American courts. WIPO is supposed to be the global venue for patents.
Practically? No chance in hell. Even if they aren't laughed out of court, a little retroactive immunity legislation will fix that.
FYI, the American banking industry kneecaps patent holders that make it through the courts with retroactive immunity clauses with startling frequency. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303731_pf.html
If only americans took an interest in their government. Most of it is too good/bad to be true.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Dear Mr VueStar,
Please be accepting my sincerest apologies for the transgressions of my website "mugupatentlawyers4u.ru". I will send the $5350.00 requested by Western Union wire transfer as soon as I receive the $1500.00 payment processing fee required by my countries banking laws.
Your humble servant,
Dr Steve Mugu,
Attorney at law
Lagos, Nigeria
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
Andreassen and the gang were just assuming that you would, for example, take a picture of an tulip and make it link to a page describing how to tune a carburator.
The innovation in this patent lies in actually having the image have something to do with the linked target!
Those stupid propellerhead geeks never thought of that. This patent embodies the real kind of
innovation that drives the interweb!
Did anybody read the article? This summary is completely and totally wrong. It's about searching for images, not using images as links.
This quote from the cease and desist tipped me off:
All your sites are belong to us.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
This patent has an initial filing date of October 3, 2001. So this should last about 1 second in court.
Come on, theres no way this could be honored. I may as well pattent the letters A and B. From now on, whenever you use the letters A and B in succession, you need to pay me royalties. Say goodbye to the good old days of abalone sandwiches and abrasive acids.
IANAL, but isn't this really like a case of trying to enforce a copywrite long after it's become generic? Like the word aspirin--it was once a trademark of Bayer, but because they didn't virgiously defend it's usage, it because a generic word not associated with only their company.
Likewise, this company has run around and found something that wasn't patented, got a patent and are now trying to enforce something they never even invented. Whomever gave this company a patent should be fired.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Patent troll: Ronald Neville Langford Address: 15 Browning Boulevarde Battery Hill, Queensland 4551
This is a prime example of why we need to watch, not just congress, the courts, and the president, but the trade officials that put to gether trade treaties.
In U.S. law, treaties become the law of the land as if passed by congress and signed by the president. Breaking treaties is harder that repealing bad law.
How this affects the U.S. depends on what treaties are in place with Singapore, maybe even WIPO.
Does anyone have a reference to information as to when the patent was filed and to the text of the patent?
The only thing these trolls are achieving are making a lot of enemies.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Books with pictures and references beside them do not count as a prior art? It is the same concept, applied to a different media.
I think it is rather curiosity. It is amazing that people even try these stunts after so many who has failed. (Remember X10 with pop-unders?)
This is probably why this is going on (WARNING: speculation!):
The SG govt. is extremely business-friendly, to the point of screwing over its own citizens if there's a risk of scaring off investors. As such, they've become singularly enthusiastic about "Intellectual Property" in general - witness them pulling out four riot trucks to suppress a protest by seven people against an anime distributor.
Some smartass has realised this, and decided to play off the govt's policy against itself - the government would hesitate to suppress patent trolls, for fear of scaring off foreign investors. In the meanwhile it rips off thousands of dollars from scared Singaporean small businesses.
A pretty effective scam, I'd say.
I have HTML from 1996 using IMG SRC=" " HTML allowing you to reference external content from an image. I think several thousand other sites have earlier artwork than mine. It is a bogus patent.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
That's the date that sets the priority. The date filed.
Best Slashdot Co
Al Gore already invented it a long time ago, and then continued down his path of creativity with the Internet, Global Warming and Man-Bear-Pig.
we claim a patent on web browsers and hold the world hostage for... ONE MILLIONS DOLLARS!
I knew that I had kept the notes from my old monopoly set for something!
Old, but good: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130
i ended up emailing them:
TO: "internet turds"
i claim prior art on this from 1998 from my geocities website, please pay me.
you'll go down in history as idiots for this one.
HAHAHAHA
Thanks for a laugh
Prof. asshole
Ugh. Wrong word.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I'm just waiting for an American firm to sue VueStar, on the grounds that it holds a patent for "hilariously ridiculous legal abuse".
Actually, the only reason why there ISN'T a patent on legal abuse, is because there's way too much prior art.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Not. Gonna. Happen.
I mean, can you imagine being sued by Google AND Microsoft AND Amazon AND Sun AND... well, you know, Earth. This is a threat to the entire Internet and every business that has a website. That bunch isn't just going to get sued, they're going to be plowed under and the ground where they once were will be salted so nothing ever grows there again.
1. Establish shell company in Singapore holding obvious patent.
2. Sue web pages all over the Internet asking for money.
3. Profit, lah!
This is capitalism at work (in China). If the potential for capital reward outweighs the associated risks (losing the claim) then it's a simple business decision.
Shame (morality) is a social value, and unless it somehow effects your net gain (not likely) then it's consideration should be minimal.
Quack, quack.
Then my references to Google Images dating back to July 2001 should be prior art. If it needs to be at least a year before the filing date, then (taking SCHecklerX's tip), I found some references to Altavista's Image Search dating to Feb 2000. Either way, this company seems to be your typical patent troll. They have a patent that either has overly vague language or specifically applies to commonly used technology. They sat on it (or recently "discovered" that they have it) and now intend on making everyone using that commonly used technology pay them money for the rights to use the commonly used technology. Once a technology was in wide use, a patent holder shouldn't be allowed to just "appear" and claim patent rights over it.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
...because this is part of the HTML 1.0 language specification.
There, that was pretty simple to solve. Now let's find something interesting to discuss.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It this becomes big, I bet everyone at Craigslist will be cracking a smile to themselves.
I have a patent on doing stuff. You should all be receiving a cease and desist letter shortly.
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. -Theodor Adorno
actually it's not - it looks like the US patent is claiming further priority from a patent filed in Australia, so the actual date that sets the priority is Oct 03, 2000.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
In other words, a company claims patent on "". Morons.
That's like me patenting wheels on a road. Sure, you invented wheels and that other guy invented roads, but I'm the first to even consider wheels on a road; ignoring the fact that wheels on a road are obvious uses of both technologies.
Here's a link to US patent #7065520.
It was filed October 3, 2001, by an Australian guy who also holds patents in Oz and NZ.
More info re. their legal claims.
Here's a couple of choice quotes from their FAQ page:
Q: My site is worldwide, will I need licences for other territories?
A: Yes. Vuestar licences territory by territory â" VUESTAR System â.
Q: What happens if I donâ(TM)t pay?
A: You will not be granted the VUESTAR User Licence and will be unable lawfully to use visual images to access the worldwide web. Our collection agencies will recover unpaid fees.
So this is what happened to all those SCO execs...
I'm soooo patenting this: A system that would allow one to register a particular idea in a large database of ideas. Once an idea is registered in the system, one must compensate the original registrant of that idea in order to implement the idea in a product. Failure to comply would result in a lawsuit by the idea's registrant.
A common practice in HTML (including my home website) even before 1998, just back then most of the graphics were animated gifs designed to strain the retina until it bleeds.
Nothing to see here, move along, and with any luck someone will find a way to counter-sue, IANAL but there's got to be some kind of obtaining money by deception type thing going on here.
... do you have a flag?
Domain Name: VUESTAR.BIZ
Sponsoring Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Registrant Name: Ron Langford
Registrant Organization: Goldspirit Investments Pty Lt
Registrant Address1: 8/25
Registrant Address2: Edmonstone Street
Registrant City: South Brisbane
Registrant State/Province: Queensland
- xuanyou
Wasn't there an episode of the old G.I. Joe cartoon where Cobra tried to copyright the alphabet... so they could charge royalties for anyone who used it?
I'm just sayin'.
On their own web site, they admit the existence of prior art? Wow. That leaves only two possibilities:
- They don't understand what "prior art" means, and their lawyer wasn't able to explain it to them, or
- It's a scam, they are admitting it's a scam, and they're looking for people who will pay up to avoid the expense of the court case.
My personal guess would be the scam, but it's just a guess...
For patents a patentable thing has to be 'non-obvious' to someone having ordinary skill in the area of invention.
Since making images into links is part of the ISO standard of the subset of SGML that is HTML, it would think that that would be obvious to anyone having ordinary skill in the area of HTML.
Heck, you could probably learn to do it by reading a 'for dummies' book.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'll take my troll mod now, even though I have a perfectly legitimate, albeit unpopular, point of view.
*(disclaimer: this does not apply to my stuff)
Sorry for the Anonymous post, but I lost the password to my "Prometheus" account and Cowboy won't send me the password.
ANYWAY, I invented fire, patented it, just ask Zeus, and gave it to you humans, but there was a EULA attached to that... If you watch the pattern of the flames when something first ignites, you can see it. So I want my money now. U.S. funds please... that'll be one/thousandth of one penny per second you have been using fire... since I gave it to you. Cash or check only, no Credit Cards please.
this is the biggest load of bull i have ever heard. In the spirit of web 2.0 companies like this should be fried. I mean seeing as they have not enforced it for so long it makes their claim irrelevant. if they cared so much about it why didnt they do something sooner. On a more happy note, even if they try to take things over one just makes the pic in the background and a clickable box above it. screw them.
Combining a parent's Google News search idea with SCHecklerX's mention below of AltaVista (hey, can I patent that process?) leads me to a PC World article about "AV Photo Finder" from October 14, 1998!
Beat that!
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
You, and others like you fail to comprehend that presenting and successfully de-certifying a patent on "prior art" is:
1. Looong process that the USPTO is unwilling to process in most cases. Their "business model" is as a certification factory.
2. Expensive process. Who's going to take up this cause? You and I?
The scale at which junk patents are being issued is mind boggling. Remember, this is the new and improved government that measures productivity! In this case it's the number of patents, per reviewer, per year.
This story reinforces the urgent need of abolishing software patents. That's something few are willing to pay enough attention to see this critical mission through. Instead, off the cuff "prior art" posts fly.
end-rant
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
the patent trolls, that keep their demands low. Ask for a trillion dollars and you're going to be laughed at. Ask for $5k and.. well enough people will cough up to prevent them having to phone their lawyer and start the lawyer-clock ticking. Added to the effect that as soon as you get a few to cough up, then suddenly the rest decide maybe it wouldn't be so bad to reach into their pocket (it's not extortion, it's merely the price of doing business). Personally if I was on the end of the email, it'd be straight into the spam bin. It's equivalent of spam, where you know they're just gunning for the fraction of a % that respond.
Somebody just needs to patent patent trolling.
I would be really really happy if they could enforce this patent and people stopped using images for navigation. It is one of the most annoying habbits in webdesign, I cannot just type the first two or three letters of a link to select it and have to rely on the mouse.
You can stare at their office space in Google Maps (doesn't look to shabby from above).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This was just a case of bad journalism. If you read the patent there is NO WAY that an image hyperlinked could be covered. Maybe they have crappy lawyers, maybe they are just trolling and trying to scare people. But if you read the patent it is clear they have a patent on images that are attached to the results of web searches. How many websites do that? .1%? How many website have to do this? .00001%?
Still a lot but not something to have a heart attack over.
It seemed a little late for this to be given to them but even if it holds the only impact will be stuff like google news where the image with the news story is next the search result. Google image searching wouldn't trigger this patent. It just returns images.
I wonder if anyone had experience building these search systems. Is it that different to have references to images integrated into your search database? It seems like web search results were returning the product of the html anyway. There shouldnâ(TM)t be any technical difference between returning a chuck on HTML without an image and a chuck of HTML with an image. Maybe the difference is on how you have to set the page up to display the information, the patent says they are showing the images in a particular way if I remember correctly.
That's because the rest of us don't care if he has 10 sockpuppets or not. What's disturbing is why you care enough to point it out constantly.
What is missing here is a link to a patent... I can only come to one of two conclusions:
1. This is a hoax and there is no truth to it
or
2. They don't actually have said patent, but are committing fraud by sending out letters requesting payment
Not sure what to choose... I don't believe for a second there is an actual patent.
There used to be a client-server report writer product called 'Forest & Trees' back in the mid 1990's which could search databases and spreadsheets for data and present a graphical image, such as a map, or pie chart, which you could click on sub-regions of the image to drill down and see results or execute further subqueries.
More importantly, taking cheap shots at Microsoft is a sport here on Slashdot.
should come first. At least in California all non-denyable service sites requre ADA Compliancy in HTML coding.. meaning it easily works with speech or vision aids for handicapped people.
if you get injured and are handicapped and your pleas to make a site usable to you are IGNORED... I would say sure enforce all the patents on the web, but do you know who would own the web then and where HTML started?
"Us" must be you and your three Xbox buddies. I care about Slashdot enough to know that what this loser is doing is wrong and should be stopped. Failing that, I'd like to know if he's using three accounts to gang up on me because I don't hate MIKKRO$HAFT with enough zeal.
More to the point, if "everybody" knows about then, then that says a lot about the collective IQ around here. Do you need to pretend you're eight different people to have a normal discussion? Anyone who thinks that's OK should get themselves over to a shrink pronto.
Not to mention the fact that he must be modding himself up and other people down with all those accounts. I guess if you're one of his groupies you're safe, but I gather that's a really small subset of Slashdot.
-JC (posting anon because as usual, anyone who mentions twitter's sockpuppets gets the axe, probably from twitter himself)
If VueStar is smart, they'll send out invoices, take payment from who will pay, and avoid pursuit of those who won't.
Any court action would likely vacate this patent. Even if no prior art is found, it fails the tests of novelty and obviousness.
There is nothing novel about these claims, as the solution to the problem of attaching clickable images to search results is no different than having dynamic clickable image buttons. It is an obvious invention because anyone skilled in the art of basic web scripting could come up with this "invention" independently in less than a work day.
There will be people who pay the invoice -- any business in the process of being acquired or funded may find it worth the $5k to not have the risk of a patent infringement suit floating around out there. This is what VueStar is counting on, and this will be a decent windfall for them, as blatantly as they're trolling.
Given what they do to you if you spit on the ground or lose a chewing gum (which is, admittedly, a nasty thing on the pavement) I wonder what they do to you for fraud..
Insert
... you insensitive clods!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I hereby patent the displaying of content to web pages (or web-sites) contained between an opening html tag and a closing html tag. All your bases, I mean monies, are belong to us.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
But you quoted me $0.000000005 cents!
of patenting it.
None?
Well, it must be a non-obvious idea!
(at least that's the schtick that patent lawyers use to defend daft patents)
I didn't realize there was one.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Taking this argument to the extreme, any biochemical, chemical, physical etc entities, and the relationships between them, can be described in mathematical terms. Therefore everything in this world is just equivalent to a set of mathematical algorithms and therefore all patents should be disqualified.
You can also advance the counter argument. Software is often just an abstraction of real-world (physical) entities and thus it is difficult to justify allowing physical patents, but not software patents.
What this pretty much boils down to is either get rid of patents entirely or allow software patents. It is difficult to justify only half measures.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You don't need to pretend you're 10 different people to do that.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
I first used images in links in 1993 and it was possible to use those links in the Mosaic, Netscape and, IIRC, some AOL browsers at the time, as well as customized/proprietary versions/rip-offs of Mosaic. In 1994, a lot of businesses started using the same method and imagemaps as well.
This appears to be yet another sco type fud & fright campaign, trying to rake in some very undeserved revenue.
May they go as sco.
me. --a by-product of public education
or at least ask for a payment. As the body who give out the patent, they must honour the patent itself
Both in the patent and performance arenas, people talk about "owning" an idea, or a song, or a movie, and poster above equates this with owning a car. There is a huge difference - if someone takes my car, I am deprived of it, so it really hurts me. If someone takes my idea, I still have the idea, and can exploit it as well as I am able. The only thing I'm deprived of is the opportunity to exclusively exploit it.
I think we need a more nuanced concept of control for IP, rather than this easy equation with ownership.
Do as you would be done to.
And while I'm strongly against the way the country is known to quiet unpopular views and yet the rest of the world let's it do so because of economic status... Just this once. Just this once I think I can let my principles slide just a tad bit if the perpetrators of this scam would get a nice, thick, cane whipping in the ass as punishment.
Seriously, I'm glad I browse at -1.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I was figured a good thing to do was to patent selfish, idiotic, corrupt, lying politicians so that we could stop the republicans. I figured that I could get around the prior art by bribing a republican appointed examiner and judge. But you had to go and point out the whole problem with this.
A world without patents would look a lot like the FOSS world. Hardware/drugs/machinery would be ripped apart with immunity played with, improved, and refactored for different needs and roles. Hardware would rapidly evolve to niche markets, new hardware service companies and R&D houses would cater for not only maintenance and service contracts but for R&D and specialization tasks. The pace of development seen in the computing/software/FOSS world would transfer to the bulk of manufactured goods. Survival for manufacturers in this world means being the fastest and fittest. This also plays into the development of rapid prototyping tools into small scale manufacturing plants. Power/profit would go to the people who could innovate best/fastest. So the question is how do we go from this stupid situation ( of inane patents and patent trolling ) to my dream world?
1. come up with lame ass patent 2. post to slashdot 3. ??? 4. profit
I verified the interweb today, and lynx says that no sites infringe on this patent. Go about your business.
Hence, almost 12.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Hypocrisy indeed.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Did the search on ipaustralia.gov.au....
patent looks dead to me, and rightly so. Some prior art patents already listed.
Even if it isn't I do applaud their optimism and willingness to gain the ire of the entire internet and somehow think its a sane business model...
who knows if this link will work
http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/ols/auspat/applicationDetails.do?applicationNo=2001093479
This is awesome - time to dig out the old Lynx browser and start crafting websites in vi again!!
To avoid corruption, one must remain dishonest.
Ultimately the idea of patentable, copyrightable, trademarkable 'ideas' 'business methods', programs, etc. is the purest of poisons to our ability as a society to adapt to changing conditions. Whenever one seeks to fence off such an abstraction, concommittant with this is the attempt to also do the same with competing abstractions as well. It then becomes that all ideas are somebodies are possibly someone's so called property if some obscure law is twisted enough, somewhere, and progress is measured in depositions and affidavits and decade and generation long protracted court battles on increasingly smaller and smaller issues of minutae, This means that any society subscribing to this will soon have armies of paper shufflers eating out its substance, but little or nothing to show for its works except for vast sums of money accumulating in fewer and fewer hands as the 'industry of trading in ideas' consolidates just like any other monopoly that had ever gone before. Continued support for concepts of any form of idea ownership draws a line, a barrier to progress akin to quicksand that will stifle, stultify, and otherwise render impotent any democratic society that foolishly seeks to implement it, not matter what tools of twisted logic and/or coercion was used to get a people to initially adopt it. This concept is a killer of democracy, for only a democratic regime would invent such a pernicious intellectual poison to itself. The rise of 'intellectual
property' concepts actually give the lie to the durable premise of possibility of democratic governmental forms in a non centrally planned society. This is because in a capitalist society, businesses are free to predate on others to the end of the ultimate evolution of an autocratic state given unrestricted merger and consolidation and coercion, a kind of fascist corporate state as envisioned by Benito Mussolini. It should be also said that 'intellectual property' presents a business version of the Communist principle of Democratic Centralism in a distributed form, as Communist economists would probably agree privately. In any case it can moreover be stated that it is akin to a computer virus that slowly and inexorably brings its host to a halt, unable to move.
Tell me; how many
Official Abu Ghraib Interrogators' Model
Chemical Light Sticks of GOP Enlightenment ®
need be properly inserted deep up where the sun don't shine by an accredited Bush Man Date each day to keep your mind's eye so sharp?
You did not even visit the proffered link, did you? It was a video in which the first part is Senator Levin questioning Lieutenant General Michael D. Maples, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, February 27, 2008:
It's obvious that you're a Card Carrying Member from The Party of The Public Potty-Peepers, whose closeted name for the interrogatory methodology of forceful sodomy with a blunt instrument is: "Compassionate Conservatism".
Equivocating coward, bloated up full of hot-air like a rutting slime-toad, and croaking false bravado. Even in the exceedingly unlikely event that you could stand to have water forced into your lungs repeatedly; We Have Ways To Deal With Tough-Boys. We'll just switch over to the Bybee Torture Memo protocols, that narrowly define torture as; "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function". Now bring me a dull hand ax, I do believe that the loss of a pinkie finger's first digit is allowed; it won't kill you; it's not an organ, and you can teach yourself new methods of manual dexterity, so no permanent loss either. If that fails, we'll switch over to the Yoo Catch 22, that defines torture as a violation of the 8th Amendment's "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" clause, and then disavows the detainees' possession of their 8th Amendment right; therefore they can not be tortured. Now bring me the tin snips, and we'll go for the family jewels.
Waterboarding is torture. It is inhumane and Un-American. The bar against cruel and unusual punishment is a Human Natural right, not bounded by citizenry, and these detainees are being held by the U.S. Government as criminal actors, without having been tried and convicted in a legitimate tribunal that adheres to due process of law. They are being held by only the word of The Connecticut cowboy, in his 38qt hat, Inbred Spawn of a Carpet-Bagging Family, whose ancestral home is Kennwefukdapoor, Maine. The man who was tasked with America's defense, and asleep at the wheel on September 11, 2001. The man who listened to his repressed Oedipal desires, and turned America's military away from the righteous fight, against our real enemy at Tora Bora in December 2001, when we had the bastards dead in our sights, and could have taken them to ground then and there as the rabid dogs that they are. A man who, all the while falsely preaching his devotion to democratic processes world-wide, played pocket Pool with the Pakistani Military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, slept with Uzbekistan's kleptocrat, Islam "Butcher of Andijon" Karimov, and let a Saudi Prince slip him the tongue deep in the heart of Middling, Texas, at his Crawford ranch.
So c'mon on back, boy; I'm anxious to hear just what the Is_Lamo_Fashionists' "I wannabe a Bauery Boy Too" excuse of the Week is.
Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
Ronald Neville Langford is the Patent holder and he has asked Vuestar to follow things up The patent in australia is from 2001. and his address on this date was across the road from where i lived... should i go over there and ask him personally?
I live in Malaysia. Two years ago I bought a PC from a busy computer store here, my wife said she wanted Windows XP on it, so I went back to the shop and asked. They went out the back, and a few minutes later gave me a still-warm CDR with an XP serial number scrawled on it. I asked them "how much?" and they said "nothing - we don't sell software".
Surely if someone can patent frivolous patents, then they can sue these idiots every time they try and patent something they shouldn't be trying to patent.
IANAL, but if you read the specifications as indicated in http://www.epatents.gov.sg/GTemp/2005038815.zip, you will see that it is about an encrypted signed image/video/logo/trademark/whatever for which you need a browser plugin and a server-side code to make the whole thing work. If you are not doing any of those things, there should not be any issue. Wasted a couple of hours reading the specs.
I have blogged about this as well at http://harishpillay.livejournal.com./ Again, IANAL.
Unless referring to something that doesn't use html or http, this is pretty far fetched. I thought an abstract idea cannot be patented.
Regardless of whether this patent can be considered valid in other countries or whatever, how did it ever get issued with regards to the little annoying "prior art" clause?!
Since this has been in the HTML specification for long before that company exists I suspect they may have a tough time when it goes to court. But, I'm not a lawyer, so who knows.
http://www.brudirect.com/DailyInfo/News/Archive/Apr07/170407/nite16.htm
:p
April last year this guy was in Brunei.
He's married to a Bruneian girl called Koh Bee Lian.
Too bad I don't have pix, otherwise you could see what kind of guy it is we're up against
their site is so Boastful. its like a gay scene queen, all colored and look at me look at me, I am fantastic.
This company dont stand a chance. they must think they can pull a fast one on the entire WORLD! I call that delusional.
VueStar is a JOKE! ha ha ha.
It's a shame most of us haven't been alive long enough to remember when government was about quality, not quantity.
Here in Holland it's basically the same: the performance target for the police is a certain of amount of parking tickets, instead of reducing the number of parking violations.
Who's the idiot working in the patent office?
that was used years befor u try to patent it?
I remember i was surfing websites before 2003 and already could click "visual images" (what else than visual) that linked to other sites.
Does this mean i have to patent even known things to protect them being exploited by others.
Is this still "imaginary property" if you just handel to describe a common practice in a way it sounds new?
So may i patent oral communcation by articulated sounds (speaking) and than sue every politician (those guys talk the most bullshit) to pay my licence fee for using my patented technique of communictae???????
Who granted this f***ing patent - it wasn't a discovery or new thing to use images as a link - HTML supported this 1998 and it was imho documented even earlier...
seems as if some departments for patent do not investigate properly...
A patent cannot be awarded for a process which is obvious to one ordinarily skilled in the art. A trained chimpanzee with a text editor and a web browser should know that an/> tag could be nested inside an <a> ..... </a> container. This patent is invalid by virtue of obviety and whoever is trying to use it in court should be branded a vexatious litigant.
Actually, just branding them would satisfy me!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I have it on good authority that the invoices are printed on recycled SCO Linux Invoices. It saves paper and has the same basic value. In fact it is probably Daryl that owns the company. This smells like him.
Funny, I'm sure that I remember using images to hyperlink back in 1993, and that this was a feature of the Mosaic browser. I guess that I must have been hallucinating if this Singaporean corporation is correct...
Actually in this case, one side makes the claim that the ownership of the land was granted to them by the original owner in perpetuity. You know, by God (root@universe.org).
The people who invented the mouse were clicking on things first. I seem to remember they could click on text or video overlays. Remember the demo in SF?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
We are looking at this as if we are talking about people and patents.
Most patents are used by multi-national corps posing as humans.
They are not humans and should be treated as the artificial humans that they are.
All corporations work as a privilege, not an inherent right.
Patents should be for a short duration in order to regain money spent developing.
As it is multi-national corps bribe, donate to, and otherwise procure the vote of politicos to extend patents for scores of years, effectively locking up innovation.
Intellectual property is far more valuable than physical property, at least to humanity as a whole.
That is far too important commodity to be controlled for infinity by corps.
USA has a one trillion dollar trade deficit.
Enlightenment is the elimination of that which is unnecessary.
The net has been around for a while - surely there is some "prior art" on this.
This reminds me of the Compuserve debacle over the GIF format; remember how they attacked every company under the sun, for "license fees." And they got it.
I suspect the motivation for both of these is money. Compuserve wasn't doing to well back then, as I recall, and they needed the cash.
Then, there was lawsuit against RIM over their apparent infringement on a patent by (I forget whom) PULLing messages down from an email server. They solved it by having the email servers PUSH instead. Or something like that.
I don't know how VueStar hopes to enforce this. I find it utterly laughable, and rather petty.
for searching records in a database that was returning a list with pictures that linked to webpages with actual content. Given how broad they pretend to cover with their patent, it should be prior art...
I remember we were testing our system against Mosaic web browser and Netscape 1.1 I think...
What is to be blamed is this fecking patenting system and those lame examiners, once again!
maybe they did file another claim for that too :-)
"First, Senator Sessions (R-MS)"
I am sad to say that he if from my current state of residence Alabama.
Prodigy had links to other places via images-- that would have been 1990-91 ish... Lots of BBS's had similar features in the late 80's. And I think (not sure) that Apple had technology like this with the early Mac in the form of "Hypercard" and Xerox did stuff like this in the GEM Operating System. I think there are lots of examples of prior art. Tell that company in Singapore to go pound sand.
Interesting quotes: My response: By year 2000, the dot-com bubble was already at it's climax. Pornography as far as can be recalled, existed as images. Image features were obviously capable of being supported *facepalm*. His method claim of preceeding the image hyperlinks with a filtering medium (search engine) is not novel.
My response: There is no display of his products using the "patented technology", period.