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BetaNet Sues Everyone For Remote SW Activation
eldavojohn writes "Not to be out patent trolled by Eolas, a mystery company named 'BetaNet, LLC' is suing: Adobe Systems, Inc, Apple, Inc., Arial Software, LLC, Autodesk, Inc.,, CARBONITE, INC., Corel Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., International Business Machines Corp., Intuit, Inc., Microsoft Corp., McAfee, Inc., Oracle Corp., Rockwell Automation, Inc., Rosetta Stone, Inc., SAP America, Inc., Siemens Corp. and Sony Creative Software, Inc. for infringement of their patent entitled Secure system for activating personal computer software at remote locations. And of course, this was filed in our favoritest of favorite places: Marshall, TX (Texas Eastern District Court)."
Surely at some point the judge/judges in that small corner of Texas should, if they're not idiots or in league with these trolls, realize that the reason they're getting so many patent lawsuits filed in their jurisdiction is because they're considered to be overly in favor of the people who are suing?
But maybe I'm just living in some sort of dreamworld where judges aren't incompetent or evil..
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
(read the fucking patent)
Actually, it's not that straightforward, and I'm not certain there will be much prior art. The patent doesn't just say "call here to verify your registration number".
First, it's from 1991. Remember that year? That's 4 years before win95 came to the market without a TCP/IP stack. A network-based software activation was certainly a couple years ahead.
Two, it isn't your "set a flag in config.ini" type of activation, either. The patent speaks about the construction of a tamperproof overlay program containing core parts of the actual application. In other words, you actually bought a car without a steering wheel and activation not only gives you a wheel, but also in a way that you can't mess around with it and they can take it away again after, say, your subscription period ends.
That's pretty advanced for 1991, "software as a service" didn't become a buzzword until 10 years later.
Disclaimer: Doesn't mean I like software patents. I don't. But some are more obviously trivial nonsense than others.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Just to be difficult, I'd like to point out that you'd see the same correlation of voting records to contributions if the system were working exactly as intended. That is, companies are more likely to support politicians whose views are in line with their business interests. People often assume that the correlation automatically implies causation the other way, that contributions buy votes, but that isn't *necessarily* the case. I'm not saying that it never is the case, just that the correlation can lead to more than one conclusion which are both equally valid. The exception to this argument is when a new issue comes up and companies dump money into campaign funds and the congress-critters suddenly see the other side of the issue. It's that kind of behavior that we should be watching for and it;s shocking to me that it isn't pointed out during the campaigns (probably because 'everyone' does it, so don't rock the boat).
As for your plan of getting rid of corporate and union contributions, they are already significantly limited. These limitations are worked around by setting up Political Action Committees, which employees/members are 'encouraged' to donate money to. And in theory it makes sense, a person often wants to support politicians that will help the company they work for succeed, but in reality it ends up being the same old system that was in place before they had limitations on corporate contributions.