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US Gov't Sides Against Microsoft In i4i Patent Case
Julie188 writes "In the ongoing patent infringement case between i4i and Microsoft, i4i has won a powerful ally: the US government itself. The US solicitor general, which represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, on Friday filed an amicus brief in support of i4i, saying that the US Patent and Trademark Office should not be second-guessed by a jury. i4i, which won a $290 million patent judgment against Microsoft, has now accrued 22 amicus briefs in its corner, representing more than 100 companies, organizations and individuals, including venture capitalists, individuals from the military and now, the government. Meanwhile, Microsoft has so far lined up 20 amicus briefs, representing about 60 companies and individuals, including Google, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Red Hat, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 37 law and economics professors. At issue is how much evidence is required to invalidate a patent."
is Electronic Frontier Foundation. Actually, i think u.s. patent office should not be second guessing EFF, since their competence and understanding of these issues far surpass patent offices', leave aside any corporations'.
Read radical news here
saying that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should not be second-guessed by a jury.
Why not? If 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of Jury Duty can see the obviousness of some patents why not let them have their shot? Here on /. we almost always second-guess the USPTO.
There's no agency in government that should be accorded the singular privilege of not having to be second-guessed by a jury.
Excuse me, they have "Foundation" in their name. They are damn well respectable.
the lawyers.
An i 4 an i... as they say
EFF is a private organization. Right now you respect them. By morning they could be a wholly-owned subsidiary of a holding company owned by Microsoft. And I'm not saying which morning.
You were probably trying to be funny, but the EFF is not a private organization the way you are thinking. You cannot just buy out a 501(c)(3) and start controlling it. It's run by a board of directors and a set of bylaws that must be followed. Unless the directors end up disillusioned with the organization or its mission, there's really not much an outside party can do to influence it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The patent is essentially over a mapping of architecture and content of a document in XML. It describes using a mapping scheme to map the two together thus separating them from being stored solely in the document. It's essentially a patent that describes nothing whatsoever beyond storing information about a document performing a particular form of hashing. Shouldn't be a patent.
In theory, you're right. In practice, not so much. Lots of money can (and often does) fundamentally alter the practices of many non-profits. Sure, they're nominally non-profit, with bylaws and directors. All of which/whom can be altered or replaced. If pallet loads of cash start flowing from the general direction of a Borg cube, enabling the construction of fancy new offices and much better compensation for the officers... well, you can see how that could happen. Many a nonprofit has been subverted by lots of money and infiltration by unscrupulous individuals.
Meh. You could be right in theory. Certainly there have been some neophyte political organizations set up by well-meaning but naive activists that were able to get subverted by establishment types because they were not careful in structuring their by-laws and board.
None of that really applies to an established organization like the EFF. They are pretty well protected and have a source of revenue that would be difficult to overcome. If you know of any similar organizations of the type that were able to be subverted by the interests they were opposing I would love to hear about it - I actually doubt you can come up with any.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Tell you what: it won't be hard to figure it out if the EFF ever sells out. But until then, until we see one single shred of evidence that the EFF is anything but what we all know them to be, which is a highly-reputable organization dedicated to keeping technology and culture as free as possible (free in more than one sense) who has looked out for the best interests of every single one of us here on Slashdot (except maybe a few of those people who have just registered here as part of New Media Strategies' (and other companies of that type) ongoing attack on online communities) - until we get the merest hint that they're not doing a great job and are not exactly what they say they are, then we should assume that any comment here trying to spread FUD about the EFF is probably part of one of those corporate astroturfing outfits (like New Media Strategies and Reputation Defender and others like them).
I'm glad I read this. It's a reminder to send a little chunk of my income tax refund to the EFF for the great work that they continue to do.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hey look! It's one a them New Media Strategies types. He's here to make it seem like EFF is the one doing something wrong.
Now I wonder, who would benefit from spreading FUD about the Electronic Freedom Foundation? Anybody care to start a little list?
I think it's time that we got real familiar with New Media Strategies and Reputation Defender and other online astroturfing units. Because if we don't figure out a way to thwart their dirty business, which is basically a much uglier and much more insidious version of spam, except with the intent to harm, the internet is going to become completely worthless as a place to get even the most basic information. I mean, we know not to believe everything we read at Wikipedia, but this is raising the stakes to a whole new level of bullshit. Everyone who runs a social media site has a responsibility to figure out how to keep these new mil-spec astroturfers out of the pool if they hope to exist into the future. And every one of us has a responsibility to out and thwart these new blastroturfers because there is value in the variety of online communities, including Slashdot. If you didn't think so, you wouldn't be reading this.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's a great questions. I've seen a fair number of comments lately and a few topics that seem completely overrun by loud overbearing folks whose beliefs make me wonder if they're professional astroturfers.
20. A method for producing form a document made up of metacodes and content, a map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content of the document and stored in distinct map storage means, the method comprising:
(a)reading the content of the document until a metacode is found;
(b)copying the content and storing the copied content in a mapped content storage;
(c)noting in the map the found metacode and its position in the content; (d)repeating the process of (a)-(c) until the entire document has been processed; and then (e)providing the document as the content of the document separately from the metacode map of the document.
It seems pretty clear that this applies to Microsoft word, and essentially anything else that stores documents as XML. Note that the patent actually uses xml shaped tags in its example section (not sure how they thought they were being original, since they clearly copied it from SGML).
In any case, this is important because it is a clear issue of patents stifling innovation, which means it will take longer to invent cool stuff. If you like cool stuff to be invented, you want this patent to be invalidated (and really, it doesn't hurt Microsoft all that much, they just have to remove the XML from Word).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The law should be the law whether it's M$ or RMS on the stand. If we could stop all this post-modern relativistic crap of punishing the power holders and balancing market forces and just ask the simple question what is the "right way to do things" we could find our way out of this mess we are in.
Ah, but if you look at the new breed of astroturfer, it's not about "opinion", it's about misinformation. The comment to which I was responding did not just say "I don't like the EFF" which is an opinion, it was that "the EFF spreads so much FUD" which is simply a lie. You can say a lot of things about the EFF, but "spreading FUD" is not one of them.
And you say "It is something we are seeing around here more and more these days". But besides "playing the man not the ball" how would you suggest addressing it? We are seeing entire stories and comments threads made unreadable by a first section of over 100 comments alternating anonymous cowards cutting and pasting and newly-minted UIDs dropping in to keep the thread expanded. And there is a marked similarity to the stories that attact these trollbombs. If you go to other sites where technology is discussed, you will see the same attacks in the same manner often on the same stories. I used to believe as you do, that claiming "astroturf" was just a way to marginalize disagreement. But as the companies that are engaged in this organized astroturfing grow, they are hiring people who are less skilled (who are probably making minimum wage) and they're starting to get a little obvious about it.
I understand what you're saying, but I'm getting a little worried that by the time we come up with a response, it's going to be way too late.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually the people in the EFF probably understand I.P. law in it's current form and it's consequences better than those nine in the supreme court. Donning a black rob doesn't make a person omnipotent. Sure what they say is THE LAW(TM) but it's not always THE RIGHT THING(TM).
As sad as it is, I would rather the govenment just pump huge amounts of money into patent office so that they can hire lots of good lawyers to stop bad patents before they exist. I mean we have to pay for all these lawyers anyway everytime we buy a product, as well as receiving less competitve products. We might as well just simplify the system by moving all the lawyers into the patent offices, then at least products don't suffer.
If 12 people "of virtues true" are good enough to decide over life and death of a person, they are more than capable to decide over some insignificant patents.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, it has gotten quite bad lately - almost precisely at the 2mil-uid mark here.
Slashdot tries to hold fast to the no-censor policy, so they're rather under fire.
The only system I can think of is some kind of turbo personal comment-blocker like adblock where the comment doesn't come back when you reload the page.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
these new mil-spec astroturfers
You may be more right than you intended.
...For a defense contractor with ties to the federal government, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA - whose enemies are labor unions, progressive organizations, journalists, and progressive bloggers, a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet. According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HBGary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED:-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All
Correction: Microsoft's enemies are not always right.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.