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Webvention Demanding $80k For Rollover Images
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Webvention is demanding that websites with rollover images pay $80,000 or face a patent lawsuit based on US patent 5,251,294, which it bought from Intellectual Ventures. Webvention claims to already have licensing deals with Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony and Orbitz. Right now, they're suing Abercrombie and Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dell, Gamestop, E*Trade, Neiman Marcus, Visa and ten others in a court in east Texas."
Could this be an end to mystery-meat navigation? :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Of course many inventions do after they're invented...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Eat their bones
Help me out...
An interactive information environment for accessing, controlling, and using information. Using a computer, available sources of information are accessed, and components are extracted, labeled, and formed into discrete units called contexts. A user selects and rearranges context labels and their associated contents. Contexts are selected and combined into new information structures called alternates, which are combinable with contexts into preferred situations. The preferred situations in turn are combinable with the foregoing components into meta-situations. All components have labels; labels and their associated contents are interchangeably movable and copyable at the levels of these information structures, whether they are located locally or remotely, and the information structures are combinable. While a label is invoked and manipulated, its contents or description is simultaneously displayed. Each information structure can be rearranged into one or more models which can be displayed by user selection, and models can be displayed at varying levels of detail. With built-in copyright accounting, commercial control remains with information owners, while operational use is centralized in each user.
WTF does this mean, and WTF does it have to do with rollovers?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This is a perfect example why software patents need to be invalidated across the board. They do nothing to help consumers or innovation...they're just a tool used by companies to extort money from legitimate businesses.
Do they also plan to sue the U.S. Air Force?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
If all hell were to break loose and start Patents World War I, perhaps it would provoke some serious questioning over the rationale of patents. Or at least the current system. I myself would favor an abolition of all private property, other than the 3sq ft you are standing on and objects you carry on your person.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I think we should change the system to have different levels of patents. Patents would be on a scale. Some patents would be granted for only 12 months with a small level of fees. Others would be granted for 18 years with exclusive rights.
Isn't image rollover part of the HTML standard? I recall seeing this type of functionality in early web sites when browsers were first being used. I really hope that somebody with deep pockets decides to fight this and get the patent invalidated.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
They must be suing for past damages, as unless there is some adjustment/extension for delays at the PTO, that patent is now expired.
Since the patent was issued on Oct. 5, 1993 didn't it just expire?
Problem is, reviewing wrongly-granted patents takes years - 5 years for the 1-click patent and it wasn't even invalidated, just narrowed.
In other fields, this isn't a huge problem. In pharma, or the automobile industry, a threat is met with a legal team and a counter-suit. For software, when it's small businesses or even individuals that get threatened, they don't have the time and resources to play the game. It's the old joke about the manager phoning his lawyer "Some company wants me to pay them $5K for a liccnece, do I have to pay that?" "Give me $40k and I'll review it". (That number is the cost estimate that Dan Ravicher gave for giving a client a certificate of non-infringement.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Reading things like this makes me realize what a complete joke America has become.
Just saw a pto lecture on this exact case. Smart business model. It costs more than $80k to litigate, so they get lots of settlements. Earlier settlers get to pay less and then their name can get added to the list of "already settled". Once this has funded all your legal fees, maybe carry through with a couple suits against deep pockets defendants for essentially zero legal fees with the chance of a hundred million dollar payout. Time to get on the bandwagon...
First, the application was filed in 1990, so prior art is going to be harder to come by than you might think.
Second, the patent was already thrown into reexamination a month ago. Check reexam 90/011,229 on PAIR for the details. The law firm that filed the reexam request is Townsend, Townsend & Crew, which is a major IP firm. The request cites multiple pieces of prior art and looks pretty well put together. One of the first things the examiner did was try to call the patent owner for an interview. The examiner couldn't get ahold of them. That's a bad sign for the patent owner.
Some of the prior art citations include HyperCard and HyperText.
Third, courts have tended to temporarily halt litigation (a procedure called a stay) while they wait for the results of a reexamination. It's quite possible that this patent is about to die in the Patent Office without the lawsuits moving forward.
Sure glad we didn't have software patents back when addition, subtraction, division, geometry, and calculus was invented.
We might have been set back centuries in advancement.
What is in the water in east texas that everyone who has a claim can win a suit there. Is unemployment insurance paying poorly and jury duty a much better gig? This is just one more reason why software patents are absurd. For lawyers, east texas is a gold mine (no matter which side you are on). For everyone else, its insane.
An interactive information environment for accessing, controlling, and using information.
Patent legalese for "Using a computer"
Using a computer, available sources of information are accessed, and components are extracted, labeled, and formed into discrete units called contexts.
I prefer to call them directories. But some folks like "folders".
A user selects and rearranges context labels and their associated contents. Contexts are selected and combined into new information structures called alternates, which are combinable (sic) with contexts into preferred situations.
Hmm.... View->Details. Custom Folder views....
The preferred situations in turn are combinable with the foregoing components into meta-situations. All components have labels; labels and their associated contents are interchangeably movable and copyable at the levels of these information structures, whether they are located locally or remotely, and the information structures are combinable (sic). While a label is invoked and manipulated, its contents or description is simultaneously displayed. Each information structure can be rearranged into one or more models which can be displayed by user selection, and models can be displayed at varying levels of detail. With built-in copyright accounting, commercial control remains with information owners, while operational use is centralized in each user.
Am I the only one that reads this as a file system? This has basically just described viewing & renaming multiple folders with properties and permissions. Just because one adds "meta" or "abstract" on a level of a system doesn't mean they've invented something new. As a matter of fact, it means the exact opposite. It means the designer doesn't know what the user will need, so they're trying to keep the options open. As a developer I understand this can mean a lot of work in coding, but it's nothing new. Customization != Invention, and I hope the patent office can take on this 1 rule: If your patent says "meta" or "abstract", you lose, you fail, no patent for you.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
Forgive my ignorance, but how can somebody patent an idea that Adobe delivers with their developer's toolkit?
I would rather invest $80,000 in a work around than to pay that extortion fee. Heck I would invest $160,000 in a work around! Then sell it for a one time fee of $2,000 to everyone who was being harassed.
There is no way Rollover images are worth that much.
Hell I would remove all rollover images before paying anything!
Patents today run for 20 years from time of application, or 17 years from date of grant (whichever is later, although the 17 year rule only applies to patents filed quite some time ago.) Those dates would be Feb 7, 2010 or Oct 5, 2010 respectively. This patent is expired.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Big pharma companies like Novartis live and die by patents. They're not afraid to duke it out with a patent troll, as it would give their army of patent lawyers something to do. Perhaps they can do some good in this case if they can persuade the court that this practice should be curtailed.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Just skimming made my head spin with how it was so very vague, yet so very detailed...
Issued in 1993 + 17 years from issue means the patent is or is almost expired.
Even if this was a valid patent the websites are all just sending html/text to whatever agent the user is running. It's the browser that is actually doing the rendering. So does that not mean that the browser is the one that needs to get the license?
Shouldn't this patent have expired last week? It was filed in Feb. 1990, and issued October 5th 1993. 17 years from issuance or 20 from filing, whichever is greater, would be October 5th 2010.
Small-time software patent holders should get together and sue Webvention, citing that they are seeking to destroy the ability to patent software by ANYONE through their overly-aggressive and overly-ambitious campaigns. I, personally, think that innovative ideas should be rewarded. But just as the pdf went public, there are some things that are too useful or too common to make claiming them reasonable. Companies like Webvention are going to be responsible for the death of software patents.
Patents today run for 20 years from time of application, or 17 years from date of grant (whichever is later, although the 17 year rule only applies to patents filed quite some time ago.)
The application in this case was filed before June 8, 1995, meaning that its term is 17 years from the date of issue.
This patent is expired.
Just because a patent is expired doesn't mean one can't sue for past infringement. The statute of limitations on patent infringement is six years. 35 USC 286. So, the owner of this patent can sue for infringements that occurred as far back as October 5, 2004.
However, the equitable doctrine of laches may limit an infringement suit to more recent instances of infringement.
Aren't patent holders required to defend their patents or risk losing them? In which case, haven't there been myriad examples of infringement which have gone unquestioned for too long and have therefore invalidated the IP? Or is that only for trademarks?
This is just plain silly and should not be allowed to continue! If it is allowed to continue I think I will file a patten for the letter 'a' in both lower and upper-case forms. Then I will sue everyone in the entire world because everyone has used the letter a in some way shape or form at some point in their life! NICE TRY JERK-OFFS! NOT GOING TO HAPPEN
Hopefully webvention hasn't patented the anonymous mailing of dogshit -- or the burning bag of dogshit on the front porch -- because this is the obvious response to such a shenanigan.
Ok, read a good bit of the patent and having spent a great deal of time with a patent attorney over the years I can say that this has nothing to do with rollovers at all. If they are stretching the "point to a token and simultaneously displaying a segment of information from a larger body of information" portion of the claim to be *THE CLAIM* they're gonna get hosed. The rest of the patent document clearly states that this invention is...
The present invention is specifically a system for users to rapidly collect and rearrange a wide variety of specific Contexts into flexible, imagination driven patterns and then to access them rapidly for guidance when needed to improve performance or to transform situations.
It has NOTHING to do with rollovers, whatsoever, other than referencing them as a means of displaying information. Not as part of the patent claim. The system described is basically a self-generating body of knowledge that is populated by an end user from a larger body of knowledge based on rules set forth by an "Editor". To claim a patent on rollovers from this "invention" is ludicrous at best. We'll see how it plays out. They better hope for a REALLY dumb judge.
Was this patent application written by the schwa corporation or what?
http://www.google.com/patents?id=P4MpAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=5251294&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q&f=false
or else!
This is the patent equivalent of Nostradamus. Basically you patent a bunch of nonsense, and every once in a while something is bound to hit.
or else!
Surely this "idea" was invented by the people who created the part of javascript that allowed img src to be changed at will and re-rendered instantly? Just because Random Person was the first to deploy the technique, that does't mean Random Person invented it.
Regardless, this is a patent holder that is looking to squeeze the last drop of money that this patent is worth. I suspect the guy can milk this for a fair bit more going after past infringement.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
One thing I have wondered about with so many patents like this is that ideas are not supposed to be patentable. Forgetting for a moment the actual incomprehensible wording of this patent. Lets assume it simply said, the image changes when a mouse rolls over it. This is an idea. How you actually make the image change when the mouse rolls over it is the invention. However, the implementation is trivial.
In reality, the ideas are valuable, but should not be patentable. However, once you have the idea, the implementation is often trivial.
Now if you take an idea like wouldn't it be great to get the frequencies in this audio segment. Now this would be a hard problem(pre FFT discovery). However, what is hard is the math and math is not patentable. Once the math is known, the implementation is trivial. I suppose an FFT taking optimal advantage of specific hardware is not exactly trivial, but I don't think it is an invention either.
When I said ideas are valuable, I simply mean that since a great many sites use image rollovers they have value. Not that the idea should receive any monetary compensation.
Then this would rejected and their mothers would be sued.
1. Import Al-Qaeda terrorists.
2. Provide them materials indicating that Webvention called their prophet a pig-dog who wears ladies underwear.
3. Turn'm loose.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Smith&Wesson probably would be evil if they weren't doing such a great job killing off all the gun nuts, but Exxon-Mobil? By what comparison are Exxon-Mobil not evil? Start the list in Alaska, and work your way south.
of the patent are hilarious:
As a global transformation is already developing, a growing number of companies and industries face new needs to leapfrog their current operating limits and become effective competitors on a global level, reshaping their performance, productivity, adaptation and innovation capabilities. Ultimately, this invention's goal is to help stimulate a potential Situation Shift to greater imagination-driven learning, responsiveness, and creativity, and help fill critical needs for economic growth, humanitarian progress, rapid performance, and survival. Continuous learning may be fostered at the point when better situations are imagined or even desired, with the best ideas captured in information systems, then spread rapidly to others in useful forms so they can, in turn, rapidly improve and produce and then spread their new capabilities to others.
With this invention, new and productive uses for the emerging infrastructure of information systems may be developed. This is not only a new paradigm for computing, it is potentially a systematic new way to help organizations, groups, and individuals manage and develop the increasingly complex world in which we live.
In pharma, or the automobile industry, a threat is met with a legal team and a counter-suit. For software, when it's small businesses or even individuals that get threatened, they don't have the time and resources to play the game.
A reexamination request only costs $2,520. One was filed in this case a month ago, actually. And for your talk of small business and individuals, note that this company isn't going after small businesses or individuals. It's going after companies that range from large to huge: Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony, Orbitz, Abercrombie and Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dell, Gamestop, E*Trade, Neiman Marcus, Visa. These are some of the largest companies in the world.
Furthermore, yes, it may be costly for an individual business or developer, but they can band together to each chip in a small amount to pay for reexamination or a declaratory judgment suit for a patent that threatens all of them.
You also seem to be assuming that there are no small businesses in pharma or the automobile industry. In fact there are many small drug companies, and most biotech companies are quite small. There are also many small companies in the automobile industry that make replacement parts, aftermarket accessories, etc. There are very few industries wholly made up of large companies.
The solution to this kind of thing is to tighten the written description and enablement requirements and reduce the presumption of validity. There is no need to blindly focus on software patents. They aren't special.
It's the old joke about the manager phoning his lawyer "Some company wants me to pay them $5K for a license, do I have to pay that?" "Give me $40k and I'll review it". (That number is the cost estimate that Dan Ravicher gave for giving a client a certificate of non-infringement.)
I wonder where Ravicher got his numbers. They're completely out of line with the AIPLA Economic Survey (a survey of practitioners), which found that the average cost of an infringement opinion is more like $13,000. And bear in mind that's the average; many attorneys are going to charge less for less complex cases or offer a sliding fee scale to small businesses and individuals. Just because a large law firm might charge 5 figures for an opinion does not mean that there aren't competent, technically trained IP attorneys that would do the same work for a fraction of that. I know because I'm one of them.
Not the shoelace, or the specific pattern of holes and shoelace, but the actual process by which one ties a shoe. Since so many methods can be employed to produce a rollover image, patenting the effect of an onMouseOver is really, really unfair.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Isn't it true that the judge these cases often comes to has a son that works for a law firm that often represents the patent trolls
Also, IIRC, there's patent term extension time that got the term on this patent out to some time this year.
Don't count your avoided set backs before they've been avoided...
Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes
Imagine if calculus had been patented for 20 years in the seventeenth century! We would be centuries behind where we are now...
1.) Patent was filed in 1993; meaning the fraudster waited till the last possible second.
2.) Patent covers a basic part of the HTML/JS spec, which is kind of like patenting a "for" loop.
3.) Lawsuit was filed in East fucking Texas.
The patent literately is patenting Hypercard. It could also apply to tabbed browsing and any piece of software where there is a "next" button that swaps the content of one part of the page with another. They may as well have patented "the web"
It is time for us (Canada) to enact our world domination plan starting by politely asking the US to surrender as they have proven incapable of governing themselves.
For full information on our plan go here:
http://www.standingonguard.com/index2.html
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Sure glad we didn't have software patents back when addition, subtraction, division, geometry, and calculus was invented.
We might have been set back centuries in advancement.
"Iurare in verba magistri"
I think, despite the problems inherent in the patent system, we are lucky to exist in a time of information dissemination.
Back when "Geometry" was invented, you had to swear in to a secret brotherhood, and any advancements you made were property of the brotherhood. Nothing personal, but had you been born back when a lot of this stuff was discovered... odds are you'd have not been one of the minority privileged to this information.
Patents suck. They slow down innovation so people can capitalize on their ideas for 20 years. Greed is the root of all problems.
A day where no company will wish to host a site, or register a company in the US. When extortion becomes acceptable under the guise of business people will look elsewhere.
sig loading.......
The good news is, the patent is so broad, and it is now expired, and it is prior art to prevent similar lawsuits, so put in those rollover images. :-) Of course, that doesn't do any good for anyone who is sued under the statute of limitations for an overly broad patent that probably should never have been granted.
You would think all the overly broad zany patents should each be a defense in the future, right? So, will a lot of the software patent nonsense resolve itself in a decade or two regardless?
As Douglas Crockford said to a programming audience (and I pretty much agree with :-):
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-yuiconf2009-state
"So one of the lessons is that patents and open systems are not compatible. I think the solution to that incompatibility is to close the Patent Office. [applause]"
Disclaimer: my name is on a software patent related to work I did as a contractor at IBM Research. :-(
By the way, a common way to get a patent invalidated is to find someone who should have been on the patent but was not (which invalidates the patent).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Webvention" sounds a bit too nice & friendly for these scumbags - can I suggest they are forced to change their names to either "Wankvention" or "Webcunts"?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yes they are (see the economic literature e.g. http://researchoninnovation.org/) and what we should not be doing is blindly assuming that patents are beneficial.
Besides, we've been doing menu highlighting since before dBASE. Anyone with a copy of telix or quickedit can show prior art well before this "invention".
Can you imagine spending your day reading nonsense like:
I mean, it sounds like the output of an unholy mind-meld between a scientist and a marketing manager.
-S
And, by no means, am I officially competent to make judgements on these matters, even though I have several patents and have been hired to advise people on technical patents such as or in similar fields, (lengthy disclaimer over) to me is seems overly broad. Very much so. BBS systems that expanded their ascii menus (likely in vogue when this was filed in 1990) violated the primary claim, and dozens of ancillary ones. Amateur packet radio software, likewise, would be covered by these claims. That is just two casual pieces, and the menu system used on Apple Macintoshes from 1984 on as well as the prior ASCII menu system of Digital Equipment Corporations POS operating system on the DEC350 series of PDP-11 architecture desktops. WANG word processors would also fit into these claims. This is a bad patent, and I can see why Intellectual Ventures sold it. There is a TON of prior art. And I even used real graphics rollover menus in a space flight simulator for Apollo computers. When this patent was filed, the world wide web was just a thought. It wasn't until after this was filed any actual web communication took place. The net was essentially all ascii all the time before that. So while the owners at the time could have had the forethought to create specific world wide web patents that relied on this patent subsequently, hopefully the didn't, this particular patent is being misapplied. And since it runs for only 3 more years they are just getting settlements from folks that they sue that are less than the anticipated litigation costs most likely.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
The part being quoted (description), while pretty clearly talking vague nonsense, actually has zero bearing on the patent itself. When determining whether or not a patent is infringed, the Claims section is the only part worth even looking at. Pretty much the only time the description can have any effect on a patent is if an undefined or loosely-defined term is used in the claims; the examiners/court/whomever is then generally allowed to use the definition, if any, present in the description.
The 2nd independent claim is:
2. A computer-based method for aiding a user in assembling a customized body of information from a larger body of available information segments, the method comprising
displaying a set of labels, each label providing an abbreviated indication of information content of a corresponding one of said available information segments in said larger body, enabling a user to point to individual labels in said set using an electronic pointing technique, for each label to which said user points, displaying to the user, for previewing, information content of the corresponding segment, simultaneously while displaying said information content of a segment corresponding to a label to which the user is pointing, displaying information content for a segment corresponding to a label to which the user had previously pointed.
I can't even parse that, but it seems to come closer to describing a rollover for a suitably creative interpretation, IFF the rollover shows an abbreviated label/category normally and switches to a more detailed subset of what that category contains (auto-popping-out submenu, pictures of multiple products in a category). Still, it's a pretty big stretch. (OTOH, there are 76 more claims I didn't bother to read...)
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
The prolific invetor and expert on website usability, ease-of-use and assured user performance sure does have a pretty website. In fact it's Todd Schmidts website, the third fish to gobble up this patent for money extortion. No where on his site, or the actual INVENTORs website do they use the 'technology'.
*DrugCheese rants*
With all this patent trouble, why does it seem its localized in the US? Does any other country have similar problems. I've worked in the software industry for 20 years and though I admit my experience on the legal size is not broad, the only close-to-home experience was when a US competitor decided that having a feature that increasing the size of a wall caused the price of that wall to increase violated their patent. This is the kind of foolishness that eventually starts wars between nations.
By the way, a common way to get a patent invalidated is to find someone who should have been on the patent but was not (which invalidates the patent).
This is not true. Inventorship can often be corrected after issuance through reissue or a certificate of correction. MPEP 1412.04.
Seriously, let's pretend that in this patent obsessed sue happy country we live in will allow lawsuits against image rollovers, I'm glad that all the website I make that has that feature uses either flash or jQuery / mootools. Technically I am protected by their license agreement and they are not strictly html standard rollover scripts so that shouldn't violate any patents. I can't believe they are trying to sue companies for this at the last minute hahaaha!
a patent should require a functional prototype or implementable plans / schematics to create a functional prototype.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I didn't put rollover images on my site! My websites are to only be read in raw text or binary! Sue the browser makers for allowing this rollover-rendering to occur, or the users for distributing this process of downloading rollover-image viewers!
I has noting to do with "rollovers", they just want YOU to rollover and hand them all your money. Seriously, using Google patent search there is no term/word "rollover" anywhere in that patent! The patent to me seems to be a orangutan-in-the-closet style cut and paste of many unrelated topics. I have read a lot of patents in my day, but someone must have spent some serious time trying to figure out how to make the claims totally incomprehensible and meaningless.
Thanks for the link. That's at odds with what I have been told in other settings by people with experience in patents, so I can wonder if it depends on the nature of the situation? Notice that it says: "and that such error arose without any deceptive intention on the part of the applicant...". So, it may depend on how "disgruntled" the person you find who should have been on the patent is. :-) So, in the case of this patent, if you can find someone who should have been on that patent, and they say they were left off of it intentionally through broken internal social processes (for whatever reason), then the patent could not be amended in such a way? Also, that cites decisions in the last couple of decades, so it is possible that precedents have changed?
Anyway, glad to be corrected on that if I am wrong.
Still, a quick Google search turned up this from 2002 which connects with what I've been told: ... The key issue is one of intent: While true oversights in naming inventors can be corrected under various circumstances, if a deliberate decision is made to omit naming a true inventor in a patent application, the patent that later issues is fatally invalid and cannot be corrected by any means. ..."
http://www.invention-protection.com/ip/publications/docs/Improper_Identification_of_Inventors_May_Invalidate_Patents.html
"The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) recently held that a patent was unenforceable because it incorrectly identified the inventors. In Frank's Casing Crew & Rental Tools, Inc. v. PMR Techs. Ltd. the inequitable conduct of two named inventors in failing to properly name a co-inventor resulted in the unenforceability of the patent. Therefore, even the innocent unnamed co-inventor lost all rights in the invention.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"There is no need to blindly focus on software patents. They aren't special."
They are special in some ways.
I can't patent a piece of music... but I can copyright it.
I can't copyright a way to build a better mousetrap.... but I can patent it.
the software operating the better mouse trap on the other hand?
I can both patent and copyright that.
Plus a lot of stuff about it being math at heart and the patenting of algorithms and mathematics being absurd.
And it being an extremely distributed industry rather than a centralized one making patents nothing but a burden to it.
Laches is an equitable doctrine. You can't use it if the plaintiff is only seeking money damages. Because the patent is expired, the plaintiff in these cases will only be seeking money damages (you obviously can't get an injunction for an expired patent).
$13,000 is still a lot more than $5,000, so the point is still valid.
You laugh, but if every new mathematical advancement were patented we would be centuries behind where we are now.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Does this mean that wen sites will no longer have rollover images?
Thank you God.
Consider the case of the morons who "own" Liverpool Football Club.
How rational are some of these judges?
Should there be some sort of common-sense test before they're loosed to make judgment?
and without patents those same threats would have to be countered with innovation provided by engineers
Up to about claim 30, where I got bored and stopped reading, it sounded just like a news reader, but with a GUI interface so you could click on articles to select them.
With corporate greed (anyone remember the "financial crisis"? It was more a crisis of dishonesty and fraud) and patents like this one, the US is destroying itself from within. All it's enemies have to do is wait.
Is it the same Texan court that doesn't know which side of the Atlantic Liverpool is on?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
While his estimates might be off - or not - this is not relevant. Small developers banding together to pay the protection money - either to the claimant or to a lawyer - perpetuates this racket from which both the patentees as well as the lawyers feed.
Abolish these misguided patents once and for all, don't be a part in keeping up this illegal scheme.
--frank[at]unternet.org
I'm pretty sure if I searched all the pre 1990 Amiga games I could find some that have the equivalent to mouse roll-overs in them.
[old joke -- $50K to review]
"I wonder where Ravicher got his numbers. They're completely out of line with the AIPLA Economic Survey (a survey of practitioners), which found that the average cost of an infringement opinion is more like $13,000."
It's like the old joke about the manager phoning his lawyer "Some company wants me to pay them $5K for a license, do I have to pay that?" "Give me $13K and I'll review it."
It's still a good joke :-)
Calculus was "patented" for much longer than 20 years (the period was called the "Dark Ages") and we ARE centuries behind, actually. Please refer to http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/8974/title/A_Prayer_for_Archimedes
1. File a patent for existing tech 2. Wait for your investment to be approved by USPO 3a. Make threats 3b. Profit 4a. File lawsuit in East Texas court 4b. Profit
If the patent holder knew that an ongoing infringement was happening but sat on the claim anyway to let damages build up, claims for back damages may be estopped by laches.
But... but without patents nobody would have had an incentive to invent anything! So it's a good thing we did have software patents back then.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
If I'm reading their Venn diagrams correctly, their invention allows imagination to intersect with "computerized knowledge". These guys are suing the wrong people; they need to retroactively sue anyone who took an existing business plan, tacked on the words "on the internet", and launched a dot-bomb IPO. If the previous rights holder had done due diligence we could have saved so much trouble over the past couple of decades...
Sounds like a patent for contextual menus, not "rollover images".
As I said, inventorship can often be corrected. You are correct that errors made with deceptive intent cannot be corrected and can lead to the patent being held unenforceable due to inequitable conduct. However, most errors of inventorship are accidental, and in most cases everyone involved is under an obligation to assign the patent rights to their employer anyway, so people don't normally care all that much about whose name is on the piece of paper.
Note that unenforceability is separate from invalidity. Unenforceability applies to the entire patent, whereas invalidity is usually decided on a claim-by-claim basis.
In cases without deceptive intent, the courts and the Patent Office are usually pretty easy-going when it comes to correcting inventorship.
Another note about inventorship: in the US, patents go to inventors, not companies, although an inventor can sign a contract obligating him or her to assign his or her rights to a company. If an inventor is not under an obligation of assignment but is accidentally left off of a patent application and then added back later, the company that owns the patent may have some trouble convincing the inventor to sign over his or her rights, especially if the patent has become valuable in the meanwhile. Thus, companies have an incentive to get inventorship correct from the beginning rather than risk having to pay off an inventor after the fact.
http://www.5251294.com/
For your viewing pleasure.