Slashdot Mirror
OSI Refers Novell Patent Deal To Authorities
WebMink writes "Worried that the unholy alliance of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC — hardly known for their collaboration — is establishing a patent troll called CPTN to attack open source software, the Open Source Initiative has announced that they have referred the Novell deal over to the German competition authorities."
What can the German court do?
So it begins. OSI is here, and soon Apple, Oracle, etc will merge with many others to form The Guild of Calamitous Intent. So where do I sign up? I wanna arch Richard Stallman!
"...is establishing a patent troll called CPTN to attack open source software..."
As they say in the fact verification industry, [citation needed].
... and then they built the supercollider.
They were afraid of filesharers, so they started suing them, with predictable results.
Clearly "they" are now very afraid of open source--so we must be doing something right.
And I don't think they can win this battle, either. If nothing else, have you noticed how common heterogeneous environments have become in the corporate world? Nice job, my droogies!
expandfairuse.org
IANAL, but seeing as how the CPTN combines the patent portfolios four of the largest and most litigious technology firms and appears to exist to exclude certain competition from the market by using intellectual property, couldn't they be charged with a Section 1 violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act for operating as a cartel?
My Sysadmin Blog
This isn't about open v. closed source. To receive a patent you must publish the 'best method' of your invention. If you choose to include open-source, compilable code as part of your 'best method' then it will still be protected by a patent. Individuals or companies may choose to license or, in this case, cross-license their patents. Is the poster arguing we should eliminate the patent system? Or should we merely encrouch on the property rights of corporations because you've decided it is the benevolent thing to do?
That's adorably naive.
In America, the Sherman Antitrust Act is a legal artifact, like "Common Law" and sodomy legislation. While technically still legal precedent, ever since the second revolutionary war(the invisible one) America has all but stopped enforcing such barbaric refuges of bigotry(anti-corporate discrimination).
I for one welcome our new corporate overlords.
That's adorably naive.
In America, the Sherman Antitrust Act is a legal artifact, like "Common Law" and sodomy legislation. While technically still legal precedent, ever since the second revolutionary war(the invisible one) America has all but stopped enforcing such barbaric refuges of bigotry(anti-corporate discrimination).
I for one welcome our new corporate overlords.
I, for one, do not welcome them. And I think you might not either if you have your wish -- your comment is adorably naive. These corporate overlords do not care about personal loss or gain. They do not care about the environment. They do not care about humanity. They do not care about learning nor innovation. They do not care about you. The only thing they care about is their bottom line, extracting fortune and knowledge from the "commoners", stifling innovation, controlling what you think, and controlling how and where you spend your money. I, for one, eagerly anticipate the downfall of the United States of America not because I hate the people but because the people no long have freedom -- you have given it away to a government that is controlled by your corporate overlords and no longer cares about the people. Fortunately the economy of the USA seems to be supporting freedom indirectly by slowly and agonisingly collapsing. Keep your corporate overlords.
Not with more Republican influence entering the Washington mix.
BTW, I used to consider myself a Republican. Now I refer to myself as an independent conservative. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are owned. They will do whatever their corporate masters tell them to do. That's how the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed and that worked out really well (eg, banks merging with insurance companies and investment houses).
We can forget about any chance of any anti-trust action ever happening again.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Poe's Law for the win.
My Sysadmin Blog
IBM (yes they are a big patent troll) and Google have a large vested interest in open source software.
I can only imagine the deal with Sun and Oracle has already made IBM very nervous. It would bug me if I worked for them.
The second they start suing and filing injunctions to force us to buy their products you can bet they will fight back. Not to mention Mark Shuttleworth has invested hundreds of millions in Ubuntu and other products which would be killed by such an onslaught. He would probably contribute to such a cause and fight as well. It would be a legal war equivalent to World War I to say the least in the industry.
It would be very ineffective for the big boys to wage. Sure they would convince many fortunate 500 companies for an anti-gnu clauses but many would fight back. The extra revenue for those who are fall to the sight of lawyers will be much smaller than the legal costs to fight IBM, Google, Redhat, Rackspace, and whoever else all combined.
http://saveie6.com/
sounds socialist to me
what we need in this country is more jobs and less regulation/encumbrances on corporations
the sherman act sounds quaint and out of touch with the new economic dynamic, I hardly think we should be enforcing such antiquated laws
- JP
The concept of sarcasm is lost on you, isn't it?
You also might want to Google for phrases of the form "I for one welcome our new ___ overlords." That would be a start.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Better yet, make that:
I for one welcome our new site:Slashdot.org
That should really do it ;-0
Kind regards,
Roel
and the other hairy guys. i remember how their witnessing/expert opinion (if i remember a linux trial) was instrumental in turning the case over long ago. they had had talked so down to earth, in so easy understandable terms that, jury had started their verdict with 'the hairy guys are right' and went on to deliver a blow to patent trolls.
Read radical news here
sounds socialist to you. what you need is more 'jobs' (somehow, NEVER come) and 'less regulation/encumberances on corporations', which were there in the last decades.
and now we have a global credit SCAM, from which finance may never recover. there are even 'less jobs', because it is much easier to make money over money and (investment tools). and the top 7% of your society has 72% of everything (including income) whereas bottom 80% has to do with 15%
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
the bullshit you propose, does NOT work. thats that.
Read radical news here
I don't want to criticize on the US, but really, software patents are stupid as they are right now.
What pisses me off the most, is that as with pushing your so call "democracy" your government also tries to influence other countries into accepting this stupid IP laws (Fuck ACTA!), with the corporate giants kicking its ass into it. You have your laws, fine with it, leave other sovereign states handle their own and don't do the dirty job of your industry and for free.
I guess that makes Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC the Guild of Calamitous Intent?
The concept of sarcasm is lost on you, isn't it?
You also might want to Google for phrases of the form "I for one welcome our new ___ overlords." That would be a start.
I've spent the last hour googling "I for one welcome our new ___ overlords" and can say with conviction that the most disturbing are the tentacle photos.
I've brought this up before, and I'll say it again. Our current copyright and patent systems are unconstitutional. According to a strict reading of the constitution, congress only has the power to reserve rights when it promotes science and the useful arts.
I'm not opposed to the idea of copyright and patents for software, but they last way, way too long. They do more harm than good (to science and the useful arts), and that should be measurable.
(I'd post a longer screed, but it's too late at night as it is.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
They worked together so well to kill avoiding per-font royalty payments.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Holy crap. I've heard of "You must be new here," but the GP... must really be new here.
Hey, Psychotria, up there in the comment thread! How do you get your UID to look like that?
Yea, like the Reagan administration said, "Monopolies are a good thing, because they competition alive."
With corps getting the less regulations/encumbrances already, the first thing they did was to bring back slavery in the latest form, overseas labor.
Overseas, they can pollute the air, land and water. They can work the locals 6-7 days a week, 10-12 hour days with no overtime.
When they can get their products built for a 1/10 of what it costs in the US, the jobs are never coming back, get used to it.
If you want the US to be a third world country, keep telling yourself, "We need less regulations/encumbrances on corporations.
IANAL, but seeing as how the CPTN combines the patent portfolios four of the largest and most litigious technology firms and appears to exist to exclude certain competition from the market by using intellectual property, couldn't they be charged with a Section 1 violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act for operating as a cartel?
They can't, because apparently CPTN is a German company. Your idea that this company was set up to hurt Google is at this point pure supposition. At this time it is just as likely that we have here four companies who thought it would be cheaper to pay $450 million for a lot of patents, just $112.5 million each, rather than letting them fall into the hands of a patent troll who immediately runs to their favourite court in texas.
Since Novell was a company that was actually doing business, there is a good chance that say EMC's developers figured out long ago that EMC is infringing on a few of Novell's patents, while Novell is also infringing on a few of EMC's patent, so they had talks on some higher level and decided that between EMC and Novell, the cheapest way to proceed would be to just ignore this infringement. But whatever patent troll would buy the patents would _not_ be infringing on anyone else's patents because patent trolls don't produce anything, so EMC would now have to make sure these patents cannot be used against them. Apple, Oracle, Microsoft might be in the same boat.
Apple uses and contributes to Open Source software regularly. Many major components of Mac OS x and iOS are derived from open source. I seriously doubt that they are going to attack open source development. But, in this age of patent lawsuit, salvaging proprietary patents from defunct companies is just a part of doing business.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
More jobs?? FFS, One (steve) jobs is not enough for you fanbois????
You must be very young to believe in the total nonsense of "less corp regulation" in the face of overwhelming evidence that corps are utterly sociopathic. They are sociopathic not only by nature but by legal requirement, because for them profit is king and social responsibility is not.
And on top of that, your post isn't even consistent, since you say the country needs more jobs, while corps are in the business of shedding jobs wherever possible because employing people is expensive and detrimental to profit. And saying that we need more jobs yet using "sociolist" as a term of abuse isn't consistent either. You're really confused.
After a few decades of bitter experience, you'll see. Corps are the enemy, in a very major way.
This would never happen if Oscar Goldman was still in charge.
The statement that OSI sent to the German authorities should also go to the US Justice Department Antitrust Division and to the Federal Trade Commission. The placement of OSS-relevant patents in the hands of OSS opponents creates a serious concern.
Emo boy here, 18, 5'9", 110 pounds, 7-inch uncut cock, shaved balls. No anal.
Authoritarian Governance is totalitarian, which is draconian.
Governance by US, EU, RU, CN citizens is democracy.
Governance of citizens is tyranny in the US, EU, RU, CN.
Governance of the many by the few (aristocracy, politicians, clergy) is plutocratic tyranny.
Governance of the many by institutions (C*Os, congress, RIAA) is oligarchic despotism.
The difference grows ever dimmer between US, EU, RU, CN governance.
Before the time of the next plutocratic or oligarchic dark-ages, one great thing is my old ass will be dead by a decade or more (I hope). I’ve got something positive to look forward too.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You posted the other as AC, this one is not, can we assume this is your "coming out" or this was a big fail and you forgot to click the Post Anonymously button?
Brand new UID of almost 2 million. I'd say the answer is "none of the above"
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Less regulation. Corporations are an artifact OF regulation. They're entirely created by legal fiat. A free market wouldn't have special dispensation given to corporations, nor treat them as legal entities with any special rights.
What? They're sued by a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773? (according to wikipedia)
The company is registered in Germany and every business partner does business there too. So the question then becomes is CPTN or it's principals doing anything illegal there? That I don't know. But after investigating CPTN and this transaction if they decide there is a basis then charges can be filed in court.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Psychotria is a karma whore and repeated the GP but left out the sarcasm to appear original.
And the mods fell for it.
Yea, like the Reagan administration said, "Monopolies are a good thing, because they competition alive."
citation?
I tried to google it and got "no results found"
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Monopolies+are+a+good+thing%2C+because+they+competition+alive.%22
When you start your post with inaccurate information, it really clouds the rest of your post.
Well I would say that Microsoft would disagree with you to a certain extent. They were convicted of being a monopoly but managed to lobby, buy, campaign contributions their way out of a serious punishment but they were indeed convicted of being a monopoly and illegally leveraging that. So I would say the anti-trust act is still used, but some of the teeth may have been removed by the political process.
You're right. It is pure supposition that CPTN would be set up to hurt Google. However, three of the four companies that are behind CPTN are engaged in lawsuits with Google or Google partners over Android.
However, the certain competition I was referring to was Linux and other open-source software like Postgres that competes directly with their product offerings.
My Sysadmin Blog
As others indicated there is a jurisdiction issue with a German company
and the US Sherman AntiTrust Act.
The important bit I see is that these LARGE patent portfolio groups hides
the very real fact that many patents are obvious and should not be
granted a patent.
i.e. if a patent for smearing foo on vitrified pooh was developed independently
by two, three.... twenty companies the idea is most likely not worthy
of a patent. Perhaps more importantly if 90% of the companies involved
in the same business of "bar" encountered the same problem and clean room solved
it in the same way the patent is not valid because it is obvious.
The anti trust issue should not be lost because the massive size of some
companies so dominates an activity that even obvious solutions go
uncontested because the business practices so fully limit the market
that the number of engineering eyes looking at a problem is thus constrained.
An example is the large number of cell phone patent cases. The number
makes it obvious (to me) that when the only N (=small) companies building a
device discover that a patent is at issue -- the fact that near 100% of those in the business
stumbled on the same solution to the same problem define the idea as
an obvious solution and not a unique invention...
It is rare to see a long list of defendants in patent cases but a long list
where many clearly developed the solution independently is "proof"
that the idea is obvious. A long list may have a count of two when
the list of companies in the business is near two.
An interesting corner case is university based research where laws
protect the university while they research and tinker with technology
that would put "companies" in legal trouble.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.