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More Oracle Patents Declared Invalid
sfcrazy writes "The validity of another Oracle patent has become doubtful in the dispute with Google about the infringement of Java patents and copyrights on Android devices. The US Patent Office and Trademark Office (USPTO) has provisionally declared all 24 claims of patent number 6,125,447 as being invalid. The USPTO based its decision on a patent that had been used in another case. This patent was granted in 1994 – three years before Sun filed its Java patent application. The US patent office also considered two publications released in 1996 as evidence that Sun's described method for protecting applications via 'protection domains' was anticipated by 'prior art.'"
So in light of a lawsuit, the USPTO finds out that a granted patent should not have been granted. Or many. Everyone is focusing on the impact this may have on the case, but no question asked about the USPTO? (besides Slashdotters?)
Nevermind screw Oracle. This is another win for Screw Software Patents!
I believe that the USPTO should be fined when patents are declared invalid. Who those fines should be paid to is another matter. I also believe that the examiner who reviewed the patent should, at the very least, get a mark on his or her record to indicate any patters within the organization with regard to issuing poor patents.
I do not believe in software patents. They are, fundamentally, wrong and indefensible. Every other country in the world has rejected them except for the United States. What I mentioned above, however, would remove the cavalier attitude of the USPTO with respect to issuing patents of poor quality. It would make them think twice about the novelty of an idea and would make them be VERY sure that the patent covers something worthy of patentability.
Software patents need to be struck down in general.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
So far - they aren't. At least according to the Courts...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As far as I know there were only testing classes that were decompiled and the decompiled Java code was stored in the test folders of the Android code repository with an Apache license wrongly auto-pasted at the head of them all. They were never shipped with Android OS, but may have been downloaded and used by Android developers. There may be some liability on Google but it is not directly on any shipping Android OS and is not likely to be a big enough infringement problem to deal a blow to Google. The patents are key to Oracle's case.
The waste collection department in my town works and I suppose you could call that a "government agency." They pick up my trash every Tuesday and Friday. But yeah...that's about as complicated a job as any government agency can handle.
None of these Oracle patents are "promoting science or the useful arts". They're obviously just ways for Oracle to compete without doing anything for anyone, by buying a monopoly impeding the progress of others who are investing in doing something with invention.
A corporate repeat offender should be prohibited from getting any new "temporary" government monopolies like patents when proving they are a serial abuser. That might make their corporate boards think twice before trolling, and costing the people and the markets so much in lost time and expensive government mediation.
--
make install -not war
I would call it a win, but not just to screw Oracle.
Patents and copyright need to be limited to narrow and specific terms and need to be lost over time. Otherwise big companies like Oracle simply gather IP and rest on their laurels giving more work to their legal than their research department. The point of IP law is to encourage research. Thus the guaranteeing of unique opportunity to profit from invention and creation is a good idea. Though of note that the guarantee is a monopoly on the opportunity to profit only not the profit itself.
The FCC does a pretty good job, and they are entirely fee and fine based.
-- BMO
Actually, given the constraints laid upon them, a number of Federal departments and agencies do a 'pretty good' job. That doesn't mean that nobody is pissed at them (which would happen no matter how 'good' they were). Doesn't mean that we shouldn't be screaming for reform when needed. But in the grand scheme of things we muddle along reasonably well.
I think a lot of people have this idea that we can have a 'government' that is set up so we push a button and it just works. That isn't ever going to happen. There will be competing interests, greed, dishonesty and just plain error that has to be corrected. The only department that I think just should be abolished outright is Homeland Security. That was just a giant hastily conceived cluster fuck which does nothing useful and helps no one with the exception of a few companies who have got rich on the various 'save America from the turbans' schemes.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You'd have a good idea, except the courts continue to reinterpret the laws used to determine whether inventions are patentable. Some patents that were valid become invalid, and sometimes the other way around. So, your idea of penalizing examiners is actually quite unfair. Also, it's not the examiner's fault that he only has X number of hours to search and read hundreds of pages of prior art, apply them to dozens of claims, and issue a written action. The fault lies at least partially with the point system devised by the patent office that is used to track examiner workload.
One answer to ease the workload burden is to hire more examiners. This has been tried for the past several years, with limited success given the steep learning curve and high turnover rate. Another answer is to raise the fees for filing and prosecuting patents to cut the number of new applications. However, PTO fees are a huge political football right now, and in any event the patent office can't raise them too much without backlash from the big players in the industry. Another answer is to change the "count" system used to track examiners. This could result in higher quality patents issuing, if longer is taken with each application. Doing so would of course increase the backlog of applications, another political mess.
The USPTO does not have a cavalier attitude, based on my personal experience having spoken with many examiners and supervisors over the course of several years of patent practice. They're doing the best with what they have, and what they have isn't good enough.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Please. I doubt Sun would have ever filed any of these lawsuits. They actually wanted people to use Java. I don't think it should matter that Oracle bought them or not: when Google implemented Java into Android Oracle didn't own Sun and Sun apparently didn't have a problem with what Google was doing. They were probably happy about it. By not suing, Sun set a precedent on the matter which Oracle shouldn't be able to change because of the purchase.
Also, all these silly patents Oracle acquired along with Sun were probably defensive-minded. It's no surprise that some of them are becoming invalidated with the scrutiny that comes with using them offensively to sue.
Expect to see the use of Java decline. If Sun had been this litigious about Java it probably would never have become as popular as it has. No one wants to worry about paying a tax to Oracle just for using a language for which many non-taxed alternatives exist.
I'm not a lawyer. Maybe the law is actually on Oracle's side, but that doesn't make it right.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
"They shouldn't be breaking the law"
What you are implying is that no tech company should exist. Well, none that use modern technology anyway. I say this because no high tech product can be produced without infringing on *some* patent somewhere. And any company that produces a high tech product knows this, so by your sentiment, none of them should produce any products. Now, to keep us all in the stone age while companies produce products not infringing on any patent (i.e. exclusively 20 year old tech) companies would have to furiously patent any and everything they can think of. This would allow us to perpetually consume 20 year old tech and avoid any new idea in an actual consumer product....
All so that *nobody* breaks the law.
What a GREAT idea!
This (the hoarding of patents, not just software, but large swaths of patent "property") is disgustingly similar to lords owning the land, and the serfs paying rent to farm it. I believe in copyright and software patents for your average citizen to enrich themselves due to their innovation and ingeunity, but I don't believe large corporations should be able to hold us hostage with patent portfolios.
Patents should be like stock, with multiple classes. You're the original inventor who registeredt he patent? Class A patent. Longer duration, more protections.
You're a business who owns the patent? Class B patent. Shorter duration, less protections.
You're a "patent portfolio" company? Class C patent. Shortest duration, fewest protections.
This is not perfect, but please tweak it. Maybe we'll get something more sane than what we already have.
The patents in question were filed nearly 15 years ago. It's possible that the examiner is still working at the USPTO, but more than likely he's moved on to another job or just left the organization.
The problem with most of these patents is that they were examined during the 1990s, when anyone with an ounce of technical skill could command a huge salary from a .com business. So the people who took government salaries at the USPTO at that time were, to a disproportionate extent, drooling morons. The USPTO has somewhat rectified the hiring situation, but the patents are still around.
Absolutely true. But the very same applies to any technology. The steam engine wasn't invented in one go either, and patents hindered its development also as different "inventors" did not want to pay for each other's patents.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Patents on anything but actual hardware are fundamentally broken.
I disagree. There *are* some algorithms out there which are truly creative and non-obvious. They have as much right to be patented as any hardware.
When the USPTO needs is a bunch of in-house hackers and when somebody applies for a patent the test should be whether they can come up with a flowchart for the process in less than a couple of hours (using google is necessary).
At the moment they're accepting stuff which any decent programmer could have coded up and fully debugged in less than twenty minutes, eg. this. How these patents pass the 'non-obvious' test is a complete mystery. The people involved should be sacked.
No sig today...
That would only work up until your employment contract is cancelled, if you leave your job or get fired, the contract is no longer valid and you take your patent with you to their competitors. It's a nice idea but there is no way it would ever be implemented like that.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
"other than giving it a name that doesn't sound like Java it is the SAME SHIT that MSFT pulled in the 90s. I guess if old Bill would have called it a Capuchin it would have been cool?"
Yes, it would have been cool. The MS case was about trademark, not software patents.
A real company builds a real product. Patents were not intended to protect companies. They were intended to protect inventors from companies, and specifically, from having their ideas stolen by a company.
The assumption is that by the time you're big enough to be a corporate inventor of anything of consequence, you're also big enough to build products in a timely manner, and thus you don't need patents to protect you from other companies. You should be able to make back your investment before your competitors can copy you. If you can't, it means that either your patent is trivial or it fails the novelty or obviousness tests and your competitors were already working on something similar in parallel with you. Either way, you don't deserve a patent for it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.