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20+ Companies Sued Over OS Permissions Patent
freemywrld writes "According to the article on Ars Technica, Microsoft, Symantec and 20 other companies are being sued over patents covering 'systems for governing application and data permissions, as well as ensuring application integrity.' The patents were granted in the 90's to the Information Protection and Authentication of Texas (IPAT). From the article: 'A response from any of the defendants is still forthcoming, and it is unclear whether the authentication and permissions systems that IPAT's patent describes are precluded by prior art. Even if IPAT has a leg to stand on in court, however, it certainly didn't take the easy route to recovering any damages by suing 22 companies.'"
Let me guess -- this was filed in the Eastern Texas District, right?
It's about time some higher authority arrested the patent troll friendly "judges" for contempt of justice. Or Eastern Texas seceding, as is their right according to their terms for joining the union. Either would work fine with me.
I just entered "chmod 755" on a directory so other users could not modify my data. When can I expect the cease and desist order?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The lawsuit details are at
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=43183
In particular, the 22 defendants are
Symantec Corp.
Microsoft Corp.
AVG Technologies USA, Inc.
CA, Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies, Inc.
Comodo Group, Inc.
ESET, LLC
F-Secure, Inc.
iolo technologies, LLC
Kaspersky Lab, Inc.
McAfee, Inc.
MicroWorld Technologies, Inc.
NetVeda, LLC
Norman Data Defense Systems, Inc.
Novell Inc.
PC Tools, Inc.
PWI, Inc.
Sophos, Inc.
Sunbelt Software, Inc.
Trend Micro Incorporated
Velocity Micro, Inc.
Webroot Software, Inc.
What the hell are you babling about?
Apparently, a six year delay negates patent protection (the patentee has "unreasonably and inexcusably" delayed prosecution) under the same laches idea as made above.
Patent Law Blog (Patently-O): Laches and Equitable Estoppel.
I could make a bot/spider that scanned the whole internet for phrases that could be construed as ideas. Then have a bot copy that idea into a patent form and send it in. I figure it will cost me about 5million dollars or so to get a sizable chunk of ideas in the world. Then in 5years or i can sue every for several billion dollars.
So who wants to invest in my company, Trolls R Us (NASDAQ: FUCK).
Yah, wealth is created by making stuff , and not by just pulling ideas out of one's arse. If the ideas can be used to make something, then they might be worth a bit, but an idea alone is worth exactly bupkus.
Cheers,
Software is real. The US exports more software than any other country on the planet. The shitty econemy is completley unrelated. We're in tough economic times because: A- Credit card companies / banks take control of the people's assets by making it very easy for them to spend more money than they have (the rich get richer) B- The stock market is controlled by a collective of (rich) morons who buy and sell at the drop of a hat, based on no evidence. (money gets wasted on bullshit companies who dont use it for anything useful) C- Because we have a wasteful government that will spend billions on wars. (if we spent as much on education as on warfare, we would be number 1 in the world, but we dont, so we're somewhere around number 40 in quality of education) conclusion: We raise a bunch of morons who go out and spend money they dont have on crap that does not make sense, which bankrupts them. Then, we send to to go kill people for no apparent reason.
The US (and EU for that matter) spend huge amounts of money on farm subsidies much to the disgust of Aussie farmers who get very few subsidies, not to mention the third world farmers who are pushed out of the market alltogether. Protectionisim (in all it's forms) stiffles trade, kills competition and creates mountains of unwanted food in one place while others starve in another place.
It may sound tempting and may even have the potential to make a nation self sufficient, but in practice what happens is that wealthy countries mirror each other tarrifs "tit for tat" style. The consumer and the third world farmer are the biggest losers, in effect the taxpayer is paying the government to kill the competition (quite literally in some cases). There is however a more subtle loss of efficientcy in the country weathy enough to provide the subsidy.
"when we engaged in mild protectionism this wasn't an issue. We used to charge tariffs on imports from nations without proper human and labor rights."
I would call that a sanction, it's a different and more legitimate practice but it's open to abuse and still triggers tit for tat reactions.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's interesting to see that bullshit like this is taken seriously by the /. community.
Of course, you can say that "intellectual property" is just a "social construct". It is - just like any other property. But you should not forget that all that stuff (software, entertainment, etc) are stuff that people find useful - and they are even useful in the sense that they enable us to make more (or more advanced) stuff. If you go down this 'ony real stuff counts' path, soon you will arrive to the point that only work that actually produces "real stuff" counts - so management, engineering, R&D etc is absolutely unneeded. I don't know if it's necessary to point out that if the world would be really so focused on "producing real stuff" it would itself real soon in the stone age.
If you need actual evidence, take a look at the socialist countries of the second half of the 20. century: the prevailing idea was there that farmers and blue-collars are the ones that really do something - the "intellectuel" class was considered suspicious and kept as small as possible. Well, needless to say, it didn't do any good to the economy.
Real life is overrated.