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Software Patents Not So Abstract When the Lawsuits Hit Home
no_such_user writes "It's easy to ignore the controversy surrounding software patents, especially if you don't have the passion for technology which Slashdot readers do. But as Dana Nieder discovered, it's not all about major corporations and obscure patent trolls. Her daughter uses a comparatively inexpensive assistive communication app on their iPad, which is being threatened by the makers of a multi-thousand-dollar hardware device."
A link to the actual complaint for anyone to read over (legal speak makes my head hurt so don't count on me to read it).
http://news.priorsmart.com/semantic-compaction-systems-v-speak-for-yourself-l5vv/
In our (North American at least) justice system, it is money that wins the day. If you cannot afford to do legal battle, you lose. Very sad, but until we change it, it is the way things are.
My only suggestion is if you need the app, make sure you have it and a backup on your ipad. The company may stop producing and supporting it, but if you already have it and it is working, then keep it. (ps. Don't screw around with that ipad, in case you corrupt something and lose the 'irreplacebale' app.
And here are links to the patents in question:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5748177.PN.&OS=PN/5748177&RS=PN/5748177
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5920303.PN.&OS=PN/5920303&RS=PN/5920303
The patents in question, from USPTO website.
#5748177 Dynamic keyboard and method for dynamically redefining keys on a keyboard
A dynamic keyboard includes a plurality of keys, each with an associated symbol, which are dynamically redefinable to provide access to higher level keyboards. Based on sequenced symbols of keys sequentially activated, certain dynamic categories and subcategories can be accessed and keys corresponding thereto dynamically redefined. Dynamically redefined keys can include embellished symbols and/or newly displayed symbols. These dyanmically redefined keys can then provide the user with the ability to easily access both core and fringe vocabulary words in a speech synthesis system.
#5920303 Dynamic keyboard and method for dynamically redefining keys on a keyboard
pe1 A dynamic keyboard includes a plurality of keys, each with an associated symbol, which are dynamically redefinable to provide access to higher level keyboards. Based on sequenced symbols of keys sequentially activated, certain dynamic categories and subcategories can be accessed and keys corresponding thereto dynamically redefined. Dynamically redefined keys can include embellished symbols and/or newly displayed symbols. These dynamically redefined keys can then provide the user with the ability to easily access both core and fringe vocabulary words in a speech synthesis system.
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Seems a bit broad IMO, allowing such dynamic functionality across key redefining, and then pasting on 'as it applies' to "a speech synthesis system".
For what it's worth, seeing as a few hundred dollar iPad app is allowing a little girl to speak vs. a $9000 piece of hardware from the suing company, I hope this goes viral to the point that the Semantic Corporation (plaintiff) is forced to drop the lawsuit just to save PR face.
The dead obvious clause "readily apparent to one skilled in the art" or somesuch, has been ignored for about 20 years now...
Hunt down an online programmer in another country.
Pay them a few hundred.
They will knock up an app that's better, works on everything, and can be extended and customised later and you'll have the source too.
The problem here is not the app or some "big bad company", but that the legalities mean that your app will always be at risk and specialist support apps are INCREDIBLY expensive and crap (ask Stephen Hawking).
Whether the patent is valid or not, you'll never know. They could really have a legitimate legal claim and the app-maker could have deliberately infringed their patents in order to make a quick buck. You don't know and can't guarantee anything.
I've worked in schools that have paid thousands for a simple flashcard app for hearing-impaired children. It was literally a VB4 app that I could replicate in an afternoon if I sat down with a licensed clipart library. But if I made one, I wouldn't be able to sell it because schools would only ever buy from established, recognised institutions, etc.
Get yourself a programmer. In fact, turn the blog post into a plea for someone to create the programme for you. If they create it in a country that doesn't recognise software patents, there is NOTHING they can do about it and the author can put it on their website and charge what they like and you can tell all your friends to buy it from him. Plus, you'll get EXACTLY what you want.
Don't fight the patents - you don't have the money or inclination, just a single sob-story that has zero real weight. Sidestep the patents instead, and also hit that company where it hurts at the same time. And as your child grows, make the app grow with her and fix the problems she experiences.
If something is crap, expensive, liable to infringement / removal, etc. then you get around this by using SOMETHING ELSE.
If patents were actually reviewed by people who have at least a minuscle idea about just WHAT gets patented there, that's what might happen. Since patent clerks are on one hand overworked due to the flood of trivial, ludicrous patents being pushed at them, patent applications being deliberately vague and convoluted and the average clerk not being an expert in the field at hand, things like this can happen.
Like, say, patenting the wheel. Sure, that patent was retracted nearly instantly, but it gives you an idea just what kind of idiocy goes on in the patent offices of this world. And as long as nobody challenges a patent (and what average person or small company has the means to?), a patent stands.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree, this seems to be an obvious solutions to a simple problem.
There is something about the mix of legalese and techobabble in the patent applications, that renders the most trivial thing
an air of importance.
I once worked for a company, where we discovered that we couldn't let a system redirect an incoming call to another system,
if the customer wan't in the first systems database, since that violated a patent. The digital equivalence of looking in the next
drawer when you are looking for a matching sock. Pretty far from http://www.google.com/patents?vid=1781541
If patent applications were required to include a car-analogy in the summary, the patent system would less annoying.
If Speak for Yourself posts the source code under an open license, and make no money from it, then they are safe, right? And since when does a hardware patent apply to software? And doesn't prior tech void the patent?
Alas, they are not safe. Patent infringement applies to all use, whether profitable or no. Current patent policy applies to software, and even business process, as well as hardware. Whether there is legal infringement depends on the details of the claims, which are very hard to evaluate. If there is prior art, that may invalidate the patent. But the relevance of prior art to the specific claims is a fuzzy issue. Also, once a patent has been registered, the burden of proof is on the alleged infringer regarding prior art. OK, IANAL, and I'm writing from memory, so this should all be checked, but I'm pretty sure I've memorized these points correctly.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
We already know that patent laws are fucked up.
We don't need more emotional testimony dumped into our political and legal processes. It's already fucked up enough from this nonsense. "My cute wonderful 3 year old sweetie who is disabled and just found a way to speak and now a company wants to take that away for profit!"
The moment someone says that such and such a law has "hit home" is the moment we need to tune them out.
Because they're now useless as an even remotely objective source of information. Our worst laws are, by and large, the most popular, usually mandates that accomplish the opposite of what they're intended to do or simply fail miserably with terrible side effects. Which then stirs up another emotional mob that tries to fix the new problem!
We think there are cigar smoking villains in back rooms writing our laws when in fact the real authors are nitwit staffers transcribing the rantings of mobs of emotional idiots. We think that rich villains buy politicians, when, by the numbers, it's almost entirely a case of politicians purchasing voters.
We seriously need to take a deep fucking breath, rip out about 90% of our laws, and start over.
When the IBM PC killed the typewriter dead, did Smith Corona sue? No, they adapted, and now sell printer supplies and specialty paper. Before they made typewriters, they made guns. That is one adaptable company. All companies could learn a lesson here. Be flexible. Adapt. The market changes, that's just a fact of life. Litigation to save a dead product is ultimately just pissing money away. Make something new, better, different. Especially in this climate where a claim like this will get you fried in the hot, boiling oil of public opinion.
How is different from people who need and can't afford (or just can't get) certain drugs? TFA's daughter can't talk but millions die because they can't get a $1 vaccine or super-expensive healthcare and cancer treatments.
Any for-profit company delivering healthcare, drugs and and assistive devices is pitting what they think the market will support against their bottom line. The parent in TFA is losing out because they can't find a device that follows the required IP structure that works for them in the market but why is their need [for parent reform] greater than somebody dying because certain drugs aren't available because they'd never be commercially viable? In both cases people lose out and it's morally atrocious that something as transitory and meaningless as money is hindering quality of life.
I'll be honest, I don't know the solution. Nuking all patents from space sounds great if you're allergic to showers and buy into the Occupy Everything movements people in the real world realise that RND costs are real. Destroying patents would have a significant and fairly unpredictable effect on the world.
And you can be sure, whatever the real solution is, whenever it comes along, the companies that own all this IP aren't going to let their patents go without a fight.
The patent system is even worse than that. At least in the story in the article, the plaintiff has actually implemented *some* kind of solution, however ridiculously expensive. The current US patent system rewards trolling: *not* implementing *anything*, just sitting on the patent until some poor bastard actually bothers to think up a viable solution and produces it, then springing out to snatch a share of *their* work.
And this is the system the US is frantically, despertely attempting to foist onto the rest of the world.
We think there are cigar smoking villains in back rooms writing our laws when in fact the real authors are nitwit staffers transcribing the rantings of mobs of emotional idiots. We think that rich villains buy politicians, when, by the numbers, it's almost entirely a case of politicians purchasing voters.
An interesting thought, but one that seems to go against most of modern history, in which the rich have almost all of the power.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
That's not how patents work.
Suppose I (A) have a way of accomplishing a technological miracle. And then I get a patent on it.
Somebody else (B) comes along and patents the improvement of doing that miracle on the internet.
We guess what - neither A nor B can actually practice the miracle itself on the internet. B can't because A has the patent on the miracle. B has the improvement patent which describes doing the miracle on the internet so A can't do it on the internet.
Patents DON'T give you the right to practice your invention, only the right to prevent someone else from doing it.
I would love to be able to crowdsource donations for legal defenses. Many times copyright and patent trolls "lose" but still "win" because they've starved out the defendants with injunctions against sales and put them out of business in a mountain of legal fees.
I wrote, and my company shipped, a free icon/text configurable speech generation system for the Amiga that does essentially what the iPad app in question here does at least two years before the date of the patent in question (the complaint dates the patents 1995 and 1997 -- Talkboard hails from 1993 and before, though I can only document it to 1993 -- that's the copyright date in the archive.) The application is called "Talkboard" and is still available from our company's historical archive.
Talkboard presented a layered interface pretty much just like the one in the iPad app, It used a synthesized voice and provided for unusual phonetic construction so as to obtain the best clarity (the Amiga's text-to-speech could be.... quirky.) You could load and save phrase banks, and one phrase bank could partially replace another or completely replace another. Single words or short phrases or entire complex sentences could be stored for 1-click or multiple click retrieval. The phrase could be represented by any shorthand that was convenient. It came with presets, but was really intended to be customized by the end user - what a kid has to say and an adult has to say tend to not be the same things in most cases. It could also be driven from ARexx, a system-wide scripting facility, and could dynamically change definitions based upon whatever criteria you needed it to.
As far as I can tell, there's nothing unique, new or even interesting in the two patent claims.
Hopefully that's of use to the EFF or the defending party.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hopefully you're not just posting this on Slashdot, which is about three degrees away from the people being sued. I'd suggest using the Contact Us link on the company's home page to tell them. That's information their lawyer might find very useful and help in their defense.