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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."
WARNING above link is to goatse.ru. (thank you, wget)
So you're against - you know - looking at the merits of the individual patent case then?
Get my good friends Sergey and Larry on the phone!"
A hotline has been established between Mountain View and Redmond ever since the Cuba browser crisis.
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.
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.
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.
A transcript of Ballmer's side of the conversation (with apologies to Peter Sellers):
"Hello?... Uh... Hello S- uh hello Sergey? Listen uh uh I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes... Fine, I can hear you now, Sergey... Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha... Now then, Sergey, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Patents... The *Patents*, Sergey... The *software* patents!... Well now, what happened is... ahm... one of those patent trolls, he had a sort of... well, he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... he went and did a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his lawyers... to sue your company... Ah... Well, let me finish, Sergey... Let me finish, Sergey... Well listen, how do you think I feel about it?... Can you *imagine* how I feel about it, Sergey?... Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello?... *Of course* I like to speak to you!... *Of course* I like to say hello!... Not now, but anytime, Sergey. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened... It's a *friendly* call. Of course it's a friendly call... Listen, if it wasn't friendly... you probably wouldn't have even got it..."
I am officially gone from
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.