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Microsoft, Google Sue Troll Who Sued 397 Companies
FlorianMueller writes "Microsoft and Google have teamed up against a company that holds a geotagging patent and sued 397 companies last year in Texas, most of them in mid December. ... Now the two tech giants have entered the fray together and want the patent declared invalid and seek an injunction to prevent further lawsuits over it. Since the patent holder has already filed for an initial public offering, this intervention may come at just the right time to prevent the worst. Google and Microsoft say that there was prior art when the patent on an 'Internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information' was applied for in 1996."
Microsoft and Google working together for good?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
It's called an atlas + gazetteer
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Two things ...
We need the USPTO to stop giving out obvious patents that aren't really anything more than "with a computer".
We need to stop letting everybody start legal proceedings in Texas just because it's a favorable venue. Way too many of these stories by patent trolls seem to be out of that jurisdiction.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You can't use the word 'Troll' or the Tolkien estate will be after you all.
The patent was applied for in 1996? 15 years in internet time is like 5 decades in other fields.
Back then, you were likely running Windows 95 and had to launch Real Player 1.0 to listen to audio online. IE and Netscape were both products you had to pay for (IE came with MS Plus!)
Should a patent from that era really still be valid?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Ballmer: "I'll fucking kill mother fucking Google! Oh, wait, we've got a common enemy??? Get my good friends Sergey and Larry on the phone!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I would agree with this if Google and Microsoft lose all of their patents. Otherwise they should shut the hell up and accept that what goes around comes around.
How many of those defendants were joined to GeoTag's lawsuits solely for the purpose of getting jurisdiction in the Eastern District of Texas? The irony, of course, being that they would end up having to defend their other suit in Delaware anyway because they neglected to sue Google and Microsoft straight away.
WARNING above link is to goatse.ru. (thank you, wget)
Gee, it's nice to be a multi-billion dollar corporation. You can defend yourself against this crap. A small start-up? A free software project? Not so easy.
Being quiet about it for YEARS while people infringe on your patent is not what they should be doing, thats not defending the patent, it is as you said, going on the offensive. Patents are supposed to be defense only. Also, you keep saying legitimate, but it isn't as there is prior art and does not meet a rational judgment of being novel.
It would be "the worst" if a bunch of people put their money in a pit that is about to get their patent revoked.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Microsoft and Google working together for their own self-interest, which incidentally is beneficial to us too.
FTFY.
Yes, Ubuntufan5 has been spending his/her time over the past few days posting pictures to goatse for fun.
You could put the high or a higher standard first, but you would have to fund it
OK: have the applicants pay for the needed experts. After all, the idea of a patent is to let the inventor profit. The inventor cannot afford it? That's what banks are for. If the idea is good, he can get a loan based on his future profit. Or get a venture capitalist to fund him.
The problem is not that a patent was given when there was prior art. Are we supposed to think this would all be fine and dandy if only this abusive patent troll company had filed for this patent a little earlier so that there wouldn't be prior art? The patent system was supposed to be this deal: you tell the world how you did this amazing thing, and the world allows you to control your idea for a limited time. The patent system has instead become a competition to come up with an idea before anyone else does, so that those other people can't use their own idea to compete with you.
The premise that gives the patent system value is that the world just wouldn't have the idea available if the patent holder hadn't come along. In such a case perhaps a patent is called for. If we give patents for 20 years, the standard for giving a patent should be that no one else is likely to come up with that idea for the next 20 years assuming no patent system to motivate them. Then a patent makes sense. I doubt even one patent in a thousand could live up to that standard. The 999 other patents in a thousand are a drain on humanity.
I have tinyurl preview enabled and this links to:
http://gw001.dyndns-blog.com/
view-source:http://gw001.dyndns-blog.com
indeed redirects you to view-source:goatse.ru
The shock image must be hello.jpg because new is commented out in the css. The names of the other links are bizarre as well.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
You can't use the word 'Troll' or the Tolkien estate will be after you all.
Nope, prior art....lol...
troll (n.)
"ugly dwarf or giant," 1610s, from O.N. troll "giant, fiend, demon." Some speculate that it originally meant "creature that walks clumsily," and derives from P.Gmc. *truzlan, from *truzlanan (see troll (v.)). But it seems to have been a general supernatural word, cf. Swed. trolla "to charm, bewitch;" O.N. trolldomr "witchcraft." The old sagas tell of the troll-bull, a supernatural being in the form of a bull, as well as boar-trolls. There were troll-maidens, troll-wives, and troll-women; the trollman, a magician or wizard, and the troll-drum, used in Lappish magic rites. The word was popularized in English by 19c. antiquarians, but it has been current in the Shetlands and Orkneys since Viking times. The first record of it is from a court document from the Shetlands, regarding a certain Catherine, who, among other things, was accused of "airt and pairt of witchcraft and sorcerie, in hanting and seeing the Trollis ryse out of the kyrk yeard of Hildiswick." Originally conceived as a race of giants, they have suffered the same fate as the Celtic Danann and are now regarded in Denmark and Sweden as dwarfs and imps supposed to live in caves or under the ground.
I am pretty sure, without looking...I know very very brave of me - not to look..., that Tolkien (oops violated that one...Good one LordEd) was born sometime after 1610. Either that or he lived to over 300 years old...or there abouts.
On a more serious note, yes hard to believe that any of us would get serious about this topic..., if you enjoyed Tolkien's Trilogy, "Lord of the Rings". I know I did back in the day, you need to visit your nearest book source and read:
Good luck putting them down, assuming of course you enjoyed Lord of the Rings.
And if they make those into movies, I sincerely hope they do them justice! How about 6 movies from 3 books, hint, hint...
'./' also means here, so either work.
I mean really, what the heck is this patent for? They're suing McDonald's, Levi's, Hospitals, Lowe's, Auto parts stores, grocery stores, heavy machinery companies, and even Build A Bear...Oh! The humanity!!!....What the heck?
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
The general feeling around here is that many software patents that are legitimately handed out by the USPTO should not have been handed out in the first place. Patents are handed out for things that are "obvious" to experts in the field, and patents are handed out where prior art exists. And if there is prior art to this patent, then Google and Microsoft **SHOULD** sue to invalidate it.
Isn't there a general firefox addon that expands short urls?
Meanwhile, trivia of the day is that the prior copy of "real goatse" was the French .fr copy. However someone apparently got to it to take it down, so the new one is the .ru Russian one.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I RTFA and Google and Microsoft claim the patent is invalid because there is prior art. Although they also apparently claim their users aren't infringing on the patent. BUT what is the prior art? I also RTFP and I'm not exactly sure what it is for. I THINK it is supposed to do something similar to what Google does when you do a search and it returns places nearby. That is you want to know all of the restaurants in your neighborhood. It appears the patent is saying you can give every item a geotag, and then do a search based on geo for all items with a geotag near the geo. I think. I'm not sure what prior art existed before 1996. BUT this wasn't a novel issue. I worked for a company that discussed stuff like this in 1993. Maybe not directly related to the internet. But just throwing "internet" in the patent should not make it a patent.
There wasn't a SINGLE race/species that Tolkien invented himself.
Orcs? Beowulf.
Hobbits? The name is listed on an early 19th century list of folk tale creatures without description, the creature itself comes from early 20th century children books, including "Babbit".
Elves, dwarves, trolls? Norse mythology.
Tolkien did a great job digging those creatures out of obscurity. It is so much better to not have to learn what "qwerts" or "asdfaks" are in every single book, which is what copyright (*spit*) requires these days.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Google and Microsoft say that there was prior art when the patent on...
And I'm SURE there was no prior art regarding any technology relating to the numerous patents that Google and Microsoft hold. Maybe they're right in the case (I don't know), but they must also be held to a fair standard.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Having read lately about the attempts to change the US patent system to a "first-to-file", would mean that the result would go a different way here. So does this not highlight the flaw in the "first-to-file" system ?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/long-url-please-mod/
According to the description it supports 182 short URL services.
(Works with Firefox 4 beta it he compatibility checking is disabled.)
We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
America, Home of the Brave.
Good try, though the pity is that it does't work for the Firefox 4 Betas.
For now I made a fast and dirty note of the tinyurl to the goatse. I'm pretty sure there's more than tinyurl, but there can't be that many.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine