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Uniloc Patent Case Against Rackspace Tossed for Bogus Patents
netbuzz writes "A federal judge in Texas, presiding over a district notorious for favoring patent trolls, has summarily dismissed all claims relating to a case brought by Uniloc USA against Rackspace for [Linux] allegedly infringing upon [Uniloc's] patents. Red Hat defended Rackspace in the matter and issued a press release saying: 'In dismissing the case, Chief Judge Leonard Davis found that Uniloc's claim was unpatentable under Supreme Court case law that prohibits the patenting of mathematical algorithms. This is the first reported instance in which the Eastern District of Texas has granted an early motion to dismiss finding a patent invalid because it claimed unpatentable subject matter.'"
You can't patent floating point math after all.
You can still patent genes???
You know your patent case is worthless when East Texas courts throw it out. If you can't win your troll case there it's friggin' hopeless.
Perhaps they will realize that computers can only do what you can already do with a pencil and piece of paper. (They just do it all much faster.) Given that, it is all simply algorithms which are unpatentable. (Of course, if you use the computer to control things, then your piece of paper can be replaced with a joystick or whatever.)
If this invention was unpatentable, why did USPTO issue a patent in the first place? So much court time and money would not be wasted if only they did their job right.
Claim 1 might have been novel in 1955 but the patent was issued in 1995. 40 years late must be close enough for Govt work.
1. A method for processing floating-point numbers, each floating-point number having at least a sign portion, an exponent portion and a mantissa portion, comprising the steps of:
converting a floating-point number memory register representation to a floating-point register representation;
rounding the converted floating-point number;
performing an arithmetic computation upon said rounded number resulting in a new floating-point value; and
converting the resulting new floating-point register value to a floating-point memory register representation.
This judge will be held up as an example in all Texas courts. There are a lot of Texas courts, so they will have to cut him up quite small to serve as an example to all Texas courts.
I thought, damn now they have little locks on all the rack servers? Then I thought, wow they can patten that? Then I thought, hey dummie that's the NAME of the company.
Rackspace is headquarterd in San Antonio TX
Uniloc in Europe
Just sayin
This judge will be held up as an example in all Texas courts.
He *should* be, I doubt *will*. This is a state that is still having debates on weather or not to include evolution in school curriculums.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
So, they threw out the case. But, there were likely large costs associated with defending this case, at the very least for Red Hat, but likely also of Rackspace.
So, how much did it cost them to have this patent troll, Uniloc, sue them with a specious claim?
Debates on weather in Texas have *nothing* to do with evolution in school curriculum in Texas. And for the record, clearly the climate change has resulted from natural processes including fluctuations in the sun's heat and ocean currents.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
In other words, you could have the most novel and nonobvious algorithm in the entire world, and the USPTO could literally spend the entire GDP of the United States searching for prior art and interviewing every engineer, mathematician, and programmer in the world, to be told unanimously that this was a literally once-in-a-lifetime idea with not even a hint of relevant prior art out there, and it still would be unpatentable if it were just an algorithm. You could invent the mathematics that allow time travel or teleportation, winning the Nobel prize for your utter genius, and nonetheless, if it's just the math, it's not patent eligible.
So, this has nothing to do with novelty or obviousness, and, since the Bilski decision came out long after this patent was issued, there's nothing unbelievable about the USPTO thinking it was patent eligible. That was the state of the law back then. It's a good thing it's changed, but that doesn't mean that anything done prior to that change is an unbelievable departure from common sense.
Not to mention the changes in our orbit and rotation... Solar days actually are increasing by a couple milliseconds every 100 or so years.
http://www.ucsusa.org/ssi/climate-change/scientific-consensus-on.html
*whoosh*
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Debates on weather in Texas have *nothing* to do with evolution in school curriculum in Texas.
Whether he meant to write about meterorological phenomena is highly unlikely. My guess is his command of English is less than perfect, but he's hardly alone in that boat these days, including among native English speakers. Whether you can weather the storm of yuks related to whether you're a smartass or a dolt (or just trolling; or is that redundant?) is another question altogether.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
And for the record, clearly the climate change has resulted from natural processes including fluctuations in the sun's heat
I find it much more likely that the fluctuations in the sun's heat explain why the Texans randomly behave like crazies.
Ezekiel 23:20
If you can't patent floating point math, I'm pretty sure you can't patent binary constants either. Haven't heard about this case in a while, but I'm sure it's been working its way through the system.
Maybe a bit off topic, but this is what stuck out in my mind:
So if you develop a mathematical algorithm you cannot patent that, even though you had to work to produce it.
BUT you _can_ patent a naturally occuring gene even though all you have to do is isolate it?
( and yes, a patent on a gene isolating technique makes sense)
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
oh ok mr fun police... you must be from the tsa... total slashdot assholes
when they ban teaching of religion in schools is when they should ban evolution
regardless, they're probably teaching the kids that humans evolved from rattlesnakes so i can understand the concern
Guilty as charged.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit