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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."
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=
It was pretty commonly used back well into the 80's for some of the various graphical front-ends and extensions to BBS packages.
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.
If you read their patent claims on their website they aren't quite making that broad of a claim. They believe they have a patent on submitting a search and showing image (of the respective website) links as a result of that search. I agree that was done long before, and they actually state on the website that it was not in "wide use" for "enterprise websites" prior to 2000. So apparently the think they can patent ideas that have prior art, just as long as they aren't being used by the majority of large companies.
If you actually subscribe to their insane claims, or are extremely paranoid, you could get around it very easily by not having the image use a href. Their patent claim specifically mentions hrefs.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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.
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.
Old, but good: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29130
Sure. I wasn't being specific about what is or is not intellectual property in the theoretical or practical sense, only that it is probably a valid concept for the law to tackle, because the sorts of things we think of as intellectual property (a process for making steel stronger, the design of a jet engine, the process for manufacturing a life-saving drug, etc) need to be described and governed by the rule of law, in a manner not entirely different than physical property (this car belongs to me, my land usage rights are blah, etc etc)
If ownership implies control (car owners control who can access their car), then a mechanism similar to copyrights or patents make sense for the ownership of intellectual property. And like our real property (land, cars, etc), the government (unfortuneately, in the opinion of many strong property rights advocates) has a say in exactly how extensive that mechanism can be. The government has curtailed what owning a car means in such a way that by virtue of being a car owner, I cannot drive as fast as I like (technically, this is licensure to use publicly owned roads, and not a restriction of car ownership per-se). Having similar caveats about how intellectual property may be used by the owner would not be new ground for any governoring body.
The summary is that governments define and enforce property rights for physical property. Intellectual property IS an important and valid concept, because what we usually think of as IP is where the majority of the real value in society is and what differentiates us from our mideival ancestors. Banishing intellectual property as a concept is no more feasible than banishing physical property as a concept.
(As an aside, some people think physical property should also be abolished. Any of them who are serious are necessarily willing to kill you to get you to hand over your property, so you should be wary of them. Consult history if you disagree.)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
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
If I had the even choice between a Huawei router and a Cisco router (and if the service and support was the same), I'd take the Huawei, as it is almost always superior. It's not better because it's Chinese or such, but because it's a rip-off of the Cisco that's not just the same, but improved.
One of the "improvements" of the Huawei ripoff version is the probable "feature" of a backdoor under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. Choose your router carefully.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Software already has protection through copyrights. You shouldn't get double protection. That's the first problem. Another problem is that the software invention can exist entirely without the computer at all. It can be written down as a set of steps that a human can follow to obtain a certain result. There are no physical items involved. That's why software patents don't make sense. It's also the same reason business method patents don't work. The other problem is that 98% of software patents aren't novel, aren't non-obvious, and also have extensive prior art.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.