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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."
Doesn't change much. If you ban software patents then no-one gives a shit whatever it was obvious or not :D
Imho the world would had sucked if all ideas from the beginning of time was protected by some mechanism.
Want to use numbers? Write things? Associate images with real objects? Use a tooth brush? Drink juice? ...
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.
Help me out...WTF does this mean, and WTF does it have to do with rollovers?
"Give me money. "
It's in legalese. You wouldn't understand, it's a lawyer thing.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Honestly, I think almost all patents should be invalid because they're completely incomprehensible to someone skilled in the art. Sadly it seems that patent law doesn't work like that.
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.
I actually fully agree. If a web developer themself has no clue at all what this patent is talking about, then who is it referring to? Shouldn't experts in the field understand the patent itself? If experts in the field have no clue what they are saying, then are they really saying anything?
Questions which make me fully agree that if a person in the field has no clue what it is saying, that it should be counted as not really saying anything. If it doesn't say anything, it is not really a patent, and we can get rid of it
The world is how you make it
it really doesn't matter because with enough lawyers to keep it in court for years, the large companies crush all the others and squeeze them out of existence. Didn't I just read how the inventor a graphene was told this kind of thing directly and it is why he did not patent it and why he was not able to collect any royalties for his invention?
This kind of thing is destroying innovation because it becomes futile to try and create something new when you'll just end up in court and eventually the lawyers get all your money and the other side gets all your IP.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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!
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?