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Preliminary Finding Invalidates VoIP Patent
netbuzz writes "After a review, the US Patent Office has issued a preliminary finding that the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls 'an important first step in busting a patent that stifles innovation and the use of VoIP as a free speech tool.' (Here is the EFF's press release.) C2 Communications has used the patent to extract one-time payments from the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest."
Perhaps this will allow the Free VoIP providers to expand without having to worry about Death By Lawyer. Now where's my FIOS?
Lawyers, to be specific. I imagine that if there is any way to tie this up in legal issues, it definitely will be.
C2 Communications has used the patent to extract one-time payments from the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest
So can AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest get refunds? I'd bet lawyers are busy re-reading that contract/license.
When I tell her about she'll be so enthused - I can just imagine her response now.
[ insert response below ]
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
If Americans don't rein in software patents soon, they're eventually going to turn us into a technological backwater.
Can you imagine if mathematicians couldn't use certain types of calculations for 20 years if somebody else happened to use them first? What if fiction authors weren't allowed to use particular combinations of words if another author "registered" them for "protection"?
As a programmer, I'm continually amazed by how backwards, technically-illiterate politicians are tricked (or willingly lead) into outlawing technological advancement. Make no mistake, that's what software patents do. There are a bunch of rationalized lies about "protecting innovators" -- but in the real world, software patents exist solely to profit a few extortionists who use them as an easy way to gain market share without actually inventing anything.
In the real world, software patents do not protect innovations; they protect conceptual monopolists, and hinder actual innovations.
Then maybe I can start charging these patent trolls so much that they will have to stop, breathing that is.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
Claim 1:
1. A method of routing a full duplex telephone call between a first telephone set and a second telephone set using a public computer network as at least part of a communication link connecting said first and second telephone sets, comprising the steps of:
receiving at a first computer network access port a first telephone call from a central office placed from said fist[sic] telephone set initiating said full duplex telephone call, said first telephone call specifying a telephone number of said second telephone set, without specifying additional telephone destinations;
converting data received from the central office to an Intenet protocol;
establishing a communication link over said public computer network between said first computer network access port and a remote second computer network access port;
placing a second telephone call from said second computer network access port to said second telephone set using a PSTN;
converting data received from the public computer network from Intenet protocol to a PSTN protocol; and
connecting said first telephone call, said communication link and said second telephone call to thereby establish a telephone call between said first telephone set and said second telephone set.
A little broad, but then again it was filed in 1995 which is over a year before H.323 was even published. Note the requirement of a PSTN: If you are just making a VoIP call over Skype this patent does not cover that since there is no PSTN. In fact, and Pure VoIP call is outside the scope of this patent. I wonder if the EFF had been around in the 1870's if they would have been accusing Alexander Graham Bell of "stifling free speech" with the original telephone....
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Well, *that's* the last time I click on a NetworkWorld link.
DIAF, NetworkWorld.
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BMO
This is a fine example of why one should support the EFF. https://w2.eff.org/donate/index.php
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
"Why would we offer you a refund? We offered in exchange for your payment a promise that we wouldn't sue under this patent, and we aren't going to!"
What's being announced here is a non-final office action in an ex parte reexamination. Basically, the EFF submitted some prior art that presented a 'substantial new question' of patentability and asked the Patent Office to review it. From there, the Patent Office and the patent owner hash things out; the prior art submitter's role is finished. (Prior art submitters can take a more hands-on role via inter partes reexamination, but that's more expensive and time consuming than ex parte reexam).
Reexamination cases are a little tricky to look up because you have to find the control number for the case. The control number in this case is 90/009637, which you can plug into Public PAIR. Here is the non-final office action that is the subject of the post, since you can't link directly to documents in PAIR.
The patent owner will have an opportunity to respond to this non-final office action. If the examiner is satisfied, then that's that. More likely the examiner will not accept the arguments or will have discovered new ones. Typically there are one or two non-final actions and then a final action. After that, the patent owner can still appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences. From the time of appeal to a decision is, at median, a couple of years. From there the patent owner could still appeal to the Federal Circuit.
So, while this is a preliminary finding, it is very far from definitive.
They were granted a monopoly, because it was in the public interest to have only one, monolithic telephone system, but they had to submit to regulation as a Common Carrier. I'm one who argues that this should have been the case with the US cellular system. There has been a tremendous duplication of equipment by the various carriers (some of whom are defunct). There's no reason we need three different, incompatible air protocols (except to lock in customers). Every time I pass a cell tower with a half dozen antenna sets on it, I wonder what would have happened if we had one, standard specification (like GSM in Europe), and one, regulated provider. The downside is that the price would probably be higher :-(
"Why would we offer you a refund? We offered in exchange for your payment a promise that we wouldn't sue under this patent, and we aren't going to!"
While that may be a perfectly acceptable argument to make how often does a perfectly acceptable argument prevent a lawsuit? Again, I'd have more faith in terms specified in the contract/license.
What you (and, apparently, the moderators) don't seem to recognize is, it is not a perfectly acceptable argument. (I was aiming for "funny", not "insightful", with that particular post. I kind of worry how far we've slid if that isn't obvious.)
What it is, is a satire of the sort of corporate weasle-speak that I would expect in that situation. Calling that argument "acceptable" sets up a form of legalized racketeering.
Patent licenses shouldn't be treated as protection money / promise not to sue. They should be treated as the purchasing of a right, which it turns out the seller had no authority to sell.
What's the sound of a disappearing patent on carrying voice over Internet?
VOIP!!
What you (and, apparently, the moderators) don't seem to recognize is, it is not a perfectly acceptable argument. (I was aiming for "funny", not "insightful", with that particular post.
Actually the attempt at humor (double entendre "we aren't going to") was recognized but it is overshadowed by the fact that the statement is perfectly acceptable in a legal sense. Your comic intent is less important than the legal wrangling, I addressed the later not the former.
Patent licenses shouldn't be treated as protection money / promise not to sue. They should be treated as the purchasing of a right ...
Promise not to sue vs purchasing a right, the two are essentially equivalent. if one fails to purchase the right the reasonable outcome is a lawsuit. The later phrase is just the lipstick on the pig, the pig being the ugly truth that it is the threat of a lawsuit that underlies any patent or copyright system.
... a right, which it turns out the seller had no authority to sell.
Actually at the time of the sale they did have the right, the patent was valid. Hence the plausibility of that statement you previously offered. It was not the best argument but you throw up a bunch and see if the judge bites on any of them.
Because what was offered was a license, but it turns out that you never actually owned what you licensed.
Good then you of course will produce all those wonderful references showing the state of technology in the mid 1990's.
Voice was transmitted over the internet since much earlier, certainly before the 1990s. Do you disagree?
Translating analog audio to digital and vice versa was done much, much earlier. Do you disagree?
Mathematical algorithms to do this efficiently and effectively have been around even longer.
Analog and digital audio were transmitted over various other networks long before the 1990s.
Many protocols for routing data in many different manners were in widespread use before the 1990s. In fact, they even constituted a thing you might have heard about existing: an internet.
Translating between digital protocols is a manner of implementation; the difficult parts are related to fundamental mathematical differences between protocols -- but the rest is usually trivial in concept, with technical complexity arising from arbitrary design differences, but nothing that really qualifies as inventive.
Translating between an external system and two endpoints on the internet is the very thing the internet was made to do.
Do you dispute that any of these things existed prior to 1990? If so, please tell me which, and I will construct a bibliography.
not the arrogant assertions Slashdot posters
The arrogance is in believing that these straightforward applications of protocols and algorithms constitute "invention" or "innovation."
Get over yourself. The difficult work underlying these patents is unpatentable, and the people who did that work generally aren't the ones making the money.
The difficult work is done by researchers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and experimenters -- none of whom get patents (nor can get patents) on these fundamental improvements of human understanding.
Businessmen (including some technically literate ones who strike it rich by grabbing and monopolizing the inventions of others) take these concepts, apply them trivially, and legally prevent anyone else from applying them in the same manner.
"AT&T has used the patent to extract one-time payments from the likes of C2 Communications."
Do you think the patent would be invalidated then?
the patent was valid.
You are confusing the law with reality. In reality, that patent was not valid and that's the point the GP was making. The fact that lawyers and the PTO are fond of redefining reality is a major problem in itself.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
Fixed.
the patent was valid.
You are confusing the law with reality. In reality, that patent was not valid and that's the point the GP was making. The fact that lawyers and the PTO are fond of redefining reality is a major problem in itself.
Given that the law decides who gets fined, who goes to jail, etc the law is reality. You are confusing "what should be" with reality, unfortunately "what should be" is often fantasy.