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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Newegg Patent Case
NormalVisual writes "'It's a really tough time to be a patent owner', said Soverain Software, LLC president Katharine Wolanyk, after the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit invalidated three of Soverain's shopping cart patents. Soverain had sued Newegg for allegedly infringing the patents in question, and had won in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Newegg later had the decision overturned on appeal, with the court ruling that the patents in question were obvious, and thus invalid."
for the good of all humanity and the advancement of ideas in general
... to the District Court in Eastern Texas.
"It's a really tough time to be a patent troll."
This kind of thing should never exist in the first place. Why should anyone be given a government-created monopoly on "present a list of what you want and hand over money to get it?" I understand if you invent a tangible contraption, but for a basic function of any website that sells products? No way!
In solidarity with Katharine's plight, I've agreed to grant her a limited, nonexclusive, non-transferable right to the use of 'Apparatus and method for implementation of a dimensionally unique violin and play of the same' and ASCAP is offering a generous discount on the usual rate for public performance of the world's saddest song.
Finally it's a tough time for some bullshit patent holder trying to cash in.
I think monkeys just flew out of my ass.
...Needs to be burned to the ground, the judges impeached, and the earth it sits on SALTED!
Corporatism != Free Market
The patents are invalid. There can be no infringement.
They should be forced to give back all the money they've undoubtedly extorted from other companies in out of court settlements before Newegg stood up to them.
I'm sure piles of shit have kids to feed and bills to pay, but they make it so hard to feel empathy for them.
The next story out of the pipeline involves Google's patent for tangible contraption.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I will keep suggesting:
1. If it's done in the real world, a simulation or work-alike is not patentable per se.
2. If it's done over a hardline network, doing it wirelessly is not patentable.
3. If it's done on a PC, doing it on a tablet or phone or (tbd) is not inherently patentable.
This is not to say clever implementations could not be patented, but merely changing venue (device, network type, or making a simulation of a real-world thing) is in no way innovative in an obvious sense.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
#5715314 - The second most long-winded description of every online store ever.
#5909492 - The most long-winded description of every online store ever, much of it seems to be copied & pasted straight from the top link.
#7272639 - Describes what a session is.
Soverain Software is just another patent troll that never should have had them assigned in the first place.
Software would still be covered by copyright.
I patent useing the letter E on line only $0.002 a use
Try learning the difference between a patent and copyright before opening your mouth.
What's the last piece of software you wrote? Did you get it patented? No, you didn't. Yet you still wrote it.
Have some weak low-quality patents, and try to, through the power of wishful thinking, extend them to cover a much broader set of techniques, then go and sue a big company with deep pockets. (Remember, this used to work, reference the suit against RIM for instance.)
The incentive to create is in the money you make from having written and either sold the service that you're selling, or selling the software itself, or sometimes just from the good feeling you get from having made something that works. The latter item is what inspires most really good folks, honestly.
Patents are horrendously ineffective at their intended purpose of incenting innovation in a world where non-practicing entities (read patent trolls) have a vast number of patents and exist with the *sole purpose* being to get money from those patents, and NOT to actually use them. Often the patent is granted (with the application having been secret) years after others have independently gone and done the thing themselves, thinking it was no big deal, probably because *it was no big deal*!
Even worse, many patent holders wait to sue until the idea (or company implementing such) is successful, maximizing the damage.
Worse, most of the patents these days (and there has been an explosion of patents... why orders of magnitude more patents when we're arguably no smarter than we were 10 or 30 years ago??) are fricking obvious.
And of course there is the fun bit that NO COMPANY CAN DO A PATENT SEARCH BECAUSE THEN IT WILLFULLY INFRINGES AND MUST PAY TRIPLE DAMAGES. So, noone looks at patents who actually might use them.
Patents, especially in the realm of software, do more harm than good today.
Strike that. They're almost purely harmful.
Notice how Katharine Wolanyk characterized her company as a "patent owner"?
Funny that she did not say "online retailor", "online wholesaler", manufacturer, logistics, refiner, service provider, software publisher, etc. Instead they are a "patent owner".
Patents should be viewed the way most businesspeople view lawyers. A necessary evil. Too expensive, wasteful, a time sink. They exist primarily because not having them is worse. However never, never should they be your primary business. Unless you are a legal firm of course.
"Patent owner". You might as well say "shoe wearer" or "food liker"! Where's the value added in that?
That's not a problem for the trolls.
See, I have the patent on doing X using a phone line. Now that the world has moved on, I can enforce my patent on more and more things thanks to the Doctrine of Equivalents. The internet is just like a phone line. Wireless is just like a phone line. It's totally the same thing, so even though I lacked the foresight or imagination or inventiveness to write these options into my patent, I deserve to continue to receive patent protection against these products created by other people using newfangled modern technology that I was just too busy resting on my laurels and years of patent protection to bother to invent.
-- PanIP, the original ecommerce patent troll, which held the internet hostage thanks to a patent on selling real estate (or anything like that) over a phone line (or anything like that) using a data processing terminal associated with the selling institution (or not associated, as the case may be).
Eliminating the Doctrine of Equivalents will go a LOOOONG way towards restoring fairness to the patent process. If my product does not match word for word your patent, then you picked the wrong words.
For reference: http://www.yro.slashdot.org/story/02/05/13/1914221/under-attack-by-panips-patent-lawyers
if newegg stopped trying to be a ghetto amazon so I dont have to waste time filtering down to just newegg. But it doesnt matter, the last 3 orders I have bought from them were screwed up, and it took nearly 3 months to get some VGA cables, so fuck-em anyway I dont have the time or patience for their crap anymore
I have to disagree.
Software patents, for the most part (I'd wager 99% of the time), are used to STOP someone from selling a product.
Do you know why Apple has that stupid "whole screen slides to the side" unlock now? Because someone put a patent on "slide to unlock"
Holy crap, what a dumb patent. Does the world benefit from someone hiring a lawyer and paying thousands of dollars, and spending months drafting a patent, just to make sure that nobody else could have a graphic of a "slide to unlock" widget?
What the fuck?
The world would have been better off if that lawyer was off... you know... affecting real law... and the coder was off... you know... writing code.
Furniture, fashion, and a significant portion of industrial design (such as car bodies) don't even have copyright or design patent protection. Yet those industries thrive. Almost all the furniture and clothes you buy are knock-offs of high-end designs. Yet those high-end designers didn't skulk home with their pen and measuring tape the first time this happened.
People who think copyrights and patents are necessary have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way free markets and capitalism work. If you're worried that somebody will 'steal' your design, that gets factored into the market price of that product or service--including the market price of financing. And it's nearly impossible to devise a more efficient system by using government protections. There are theoretical scenarios you can concoct, but they never pan out empirically.
Only in odd normative economic models (i.e. where we are trying to achieve some policy goal other than maximizing overall wealth) do patents make sense, such as in the pharmaceutical industries.
Other similar examples: labor unions. There you're using contractual policies to protect a labor slot in attempt to combat "race to the bottom" wage competition. (And yet, oddly, in a free market wages would never hit $0.) If you're for copyrights and patents, then it only makes sense to be strongly in favor of labor unions, and a host of other protectionist policies.
After the AIA, the willful infringement aspect is gone - by searching and subsequently infringing you do not run into the willful infringement aspect anymore - you should as a result now always search for patents which you might infringe upon in advance.
Patent - 20 years
Copyright - Forever
Not sure your point.
Good thing that patent is yours, because otherwise you'd have just cost yourself two thousandths of a cent more than you needed to!
...once one sees the surrounding details.
"the patents in question were obvious, and thus invalid"
Try learning the difference between a patent and copyright before opening your mouth.
Who said anything about copyrights? Oh, that would be you, not the parent.
When one develops a patentable software algorithm, one generally executes it in "code", hence the parent comment referencing "writing code".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
of a dollar! d'oh! FOILED
> Software patents, for the most part (I'd wager 99% of the time), are used to STOP someone from selling a product.
Speaking generally, that is all a patent does. ANY kind of patent.
Patent lawyers tell me that a Patent give the right to the holder to prevent others from practicing the covered invention for a limited period of time.
It doesn't give the patent holders the right to practice the invention because the patented material may just be an improvement to technology that somebody else has a patent on.
Dude, try being not such a douche bag.
Then you'll be happy with the SCt. here. In this instance, they stated that you can't patent something so basic and obvious.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/internet-patent-owner-loses-high-court-bid-to-revive-suit.html
"The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed an electronic-commerce patent owner’s effort to revive a $2.5 million verdict against Internet retailer Newegg Inc., in a case with implications for dozens of other companies.
The justices refused to hear closely held Soverain Software LLC’s appeal of a lower court ruling that its technology was too obvious to qualify for patent protection."
The lawyers affecting real law. Sensible outcome. Yeah, America!
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Software would still be covered by copyright.
Huh? Newegg was not sued for stealing their software, they were accused of stealing the CONCEPT of a shopping cart. A concept that has been around for hundreds of years, if not longer (hence the prior art).
At long last a judge who is not impressed with the corporate idea that adding the phrase "on a computer", "on a cell phone", or "on the Internet" to a hundreds year old idea magically makes it a totally new, never thought of before idea.
copyright:
the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.
Patent:
a government authority or licence conferring a right or title for a set period, esp. the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention.
If I find a way to grow orange corn, and add a buttery salt to it, and sell it as "BringsApples Corn (TM)", then no other person can sell corn and call it "BringsApples Corn (TM)", but they can grow orange corn, butter it with salty stuff and call it "Similar_Name Corn (TM)". Since I'd have my own recipe, your corn may not be as good as mine, or it may be better. Look at the similarities on the ingredients of Coke and Pepsi.
But if I patented "orange corn" then no one else can even try to compete. I know that this is a stupid example, and I'm sorry that I couldn't come up one closer to the programing world. But when people start getting patent-happy, they start patenting things like a virtual shopping cart, or a "like" button. It's crazy.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Not in the same fashion:
U.S. Code Title 17 Chapter 1 102 "(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102
So, where Congress extended copyright in 1980 to computer programs, that is different than the underlying method or process.
The Supreme Court held in this case that a payment system was too basic to merit patent protection and declined to hear the appeal.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Software would still be covered by copyright.
Huh? Newegg was not sued for stealing their software, they were accused of stealing the CONCEPT of a shopping cart. A concept that has been around for hundreds of years, if not longer (hence the prior art).
At long last a judge who is not impressed with the corporate idea that adding the phrase "on a computer", "on a cell phone", or "on the Internet" to a hundreds year old idea magically makes it a totally new, never thought of before idea.
It's more than that - think of it this way: Soverain Effectively patented the most obvious way to walk to a store, put things in a cart, take them to the register and pay for them. Imagine some arsehole doing that to every person. Everyone has to find an unpatented means of going to the store, getting things to the "register" (which for the patent avoidance will be something completely unregister like) and paying ("I choose to steal from you, but tip you handsomely for having a nice store") It's beyond absurd - like most software patents.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The same place as the incentive for people to get up and go to work every day.
You do something - make something - you get paid. The government doesn't have to give you special protections so that if you work for one day for a company you will be paid in perpetuity, does it? So why should an inventor or content creator be paid in perpetuity?
There are efforts underway by IP maximalists to extend IP protection forever. We've already seen works be taken OUT of the public domain. Do you know how many works became public domain in 2013?
Firstly, no patent or copyright should outlive the inventor or creator. And no corporation should be allowed to own either. Corporations don't invent anything, people do. And it's people who should be the patent holders, which last, for inventions, for 4 years or until the death of the inventor, whichever comes first. Drug patents should be 2 years, max.
I believe this would have zero impact on innovation except to make innovations more available to everyone, and cheaper.
If you're a patent troll, have no fear because what I just described is completely antithetical to the direction the world is going, which is everything gets licensed, everybody pays, forever, for everything.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But where's the incentive for the creative mind to write the software, bring it to market, support it, etc.? It looks like pretty hard work that isn't certain to pay off.
I understand free as in speech and free as in beer, but there is no free as in groceries. Even coders need to pay rent.
If you want to make the life of the patent shorter or non-renewable, with the goal to not stifle innovation on top of older patents, maybe. But everyone should have a shot at the brass ring.
People with creative minds have been creating things and profiting from those creations for thousands of years. This was going on long before patents of any kind existed. Patents stifle creativity and innovation. Software patents are some of the worst.
Thanks for the clarification, but I think for my point, the legal differences are immaterial.
The germane sections of the US code [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102 ] in general state:
"(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. "
As I noted in an earlier post, specific code [called "an original work of authorship"] can be have protection under the statute, but not the processes executed.
"(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
Patents extend to things, processes, systems and the like.
So, as a lawyer, I think either could apply. And the last piece of software I wrote was a batch file no one would pay for.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Not entirely.
Copyright protects software as a particular implementation whereas patents protect software as an innovative or inventive approach (that's the idea anyway). Anyone who copies a piece of software verbatim without authorization is going to fall afoul of copyright law. However, anyone who performs clean-room reverse engineering on that piece of software and reimplements it from an abstract level will not. In the latter case, the party performing the reverse engineering may still infringe on one or more patents in the process even if they successfully avoid any breach of copyright.
The real problem this patent should never have been granted.Thats the process that MUST be looked at with a microscope i have no proff but im betting someone getting paid off.
Jack of all trades,master of none
That wouldn't by any chance be, well, Apple.. would it?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/25/apple_unlock_patent/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/10/3479550/apple-expands-patent-coverage-on-slide-to-unlock-feature
Though their effort to put it to legal use in Europe fizzled.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/04/apples-slide-to-unlock-patent-invalidated-in-german-litigation
Sure, maybe somebody else popped up with some prior art (like, say, http://www.dailytech.com/Analysis+Neonode+Patented+SwipetoUnlock+3+Years+Before+Apple/article24046.htm ) - but forcing Apple to change theirs just as dozens of others were forced to abandon or pre-emptively stay away from the slide-to-unlock slider button type deal entirely for years seems like just deserts.
Of course it's a stupid patent no matter who 'owns' it, or any variant of it.
Ummm... maybe because no one has a patent let alone a monopoly that's for "present a list of what you want and hand over money to get it"?
Seriously, if you can't step up to the task of discussing real patents that are actually upheld by the courts then maybe you should shut the fuck up and do some more listening instead of talking out your ass?
You pretty much got modded up for saying the same shit that's been said around here for over a decade while not actually bringing anything new to the table. You certainly didn't bother to put it in an honest, informative format that would show some real insight.
So easy to get modded up around here. A little herp, a little fanboi ass sucking. You certainly don't have to say anything new that hasn't been modded up about 600 times in the past 3 months.
I understand free as in speech and free as in beer, but there is no free as in groceries.
Obviously you don't understand "free as in beer" since it's a descriptor for "free" as in gratis. "free as in groceries" would be gratis, thus the same as "free as in beer". And if you're trying to be literal, gratis groceries are far more common than gratis beer. Food stamps, government cheese, etc.
What's crazy about patents is that they're supposed to be for an implementation, like if I ask you to transport some goods one might invent a backpack, one a trolley, one a cart, one a bicycle, one a zip line and so on. Instead we have software patents that just describe a result and just says "However you implement this, it's patented". Often you don't even need to do the hard part, you just need to wait for someone else to figure out how then sue them. However for all the talk of patent trolls, most big enterprises like their own patents because big players use them to squeeze small players. The rest is just a cost of doing business.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Do you know why Apple has that stupid "whole screen slides to the side" unlock now?
All I know is that more than half the time, the screen stops halfway during the slide and it wastes my time and makes the iPhone look and feel shoddy.
The goal of the patent system was to get people to disclose how they did something in return for a limited monopoly (as opposed to keeping it a trade secret and possibly losing the ability to do that thing if all the people that knew how to do it died).
I'd suggest that given the above stated goal, as soon as someone provably duplicates a patented process without foreknowledge of the process, then the patent no longer serves any purpose and should be declared null and void due to the fact that it's obvious.
In this paradign the high-level description of the patent would be public, but the details held in escrow. Then if someone wanted to do something similar they could either directly pay the patent owner or else come up with their own method of doing it. If their method is different they could patent it, if it's the same then the patent is invalidated. Win-win all around....
Show us some 20+ year old software that still works, is still used, is compatible with today's hardware, and meets stringent security standards today. Almost everything has been rewritten, forked, cloned, or whatever. Copyright doesn't cover concepts and ideas either. Copyright only covers a specific work. Tables and graphs for instance can be copyrighted, but that doesn't prevent someone creating a very similar table or graph to essentially convey the same and/or similar information.
Linux and Gnu are filled with re-ported software. Credit is given where credit is due, but ported software seldom runs afoul of copyright. Patents are an entirely different ballgame. Every dick weed in thirty countries claims to have a patent on a shopping cart concept, and they all want a piece of the pie from anyone who uses any concept that vaguely resembles a shopping cart.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Boo fucking hoo, you damned troll.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The point of the patent system (as I understand it at least) is to ensure that information doesn't get lost. Thus, rather than keeping things as trade secrets (where information could get lost if the wrong people died) they make the information public in return for a limited monopoly.
Given the above, if I independently (without seeing the patent) invent something, how is it at all rational or logical that I should pay someone else because they happened to have done it first? That doesn't serve the above goal at all.
If it can be shown that I duplicated a patented invention without ever knowing about the patent (admittedly, this could be tricky in some cases), then that should result in the patent being voided as too obvious to be protected.
The one clear-cut case is if someone files for a patent on something and before the patent is granted an unrelated person files for what is judged to be the same patent--in this case nobody should get the patent because it's too obvious.
Never had a problem...
"It's a really tough time to be a patent owner"
And the world's smallest violin plays Katharine a little tune.
Patents are not intended to incite innovation. They are intended to protect already successful and wealthy businesses from start ups that can deliver essentially the same service for a lower cost. Only large and wealthy businesses can afford the litigation costs that come with defending a patent, which makes it valueless to start ups.
The notion that they incite innovation is just a way of winning hearts and minds, and it works amazingly well. Once in an extremely rare while a small start up will successfully defend a patent (with enough financial backing from somewhere), and those cases are always cited as examples of inciting innovation. But they are the exception. Usually the wealthy businesses use their extremely broad and vague patents to litigate the start ups into financial oblivion, and then either buy the start ups or win the case and leave the start ups to rot.
One cannot foster innovation by making it this legally dangerous to innovate, and this fact is obvious to congress. They don't support the current state of patent law out of a loyalty to the American public, but rather, out of loyalty to their rich corporate masters.
Yeah, I know, trite and hackneyed slashdot groupthink etc. But still true.
DNA, protein and nanotech type drugs are so hard to make that from discovery it often takes about 10 years to put them into production. We are at a point right now where we have figured out a way to make something in a lab but not how to make it at an industrial scale. If you lowered patents to 2 years for this stuff you would stop all work on it.
We have also just started using stuff like CRISPR-CAS to do DNA editing on humans. It is likely to take at least 10 years just to get something approved and that does not cover figure out how to actually make it at scale.
I used to think that drugs should have much shorter protections but since actually taking classes in how to make them, how to get them approved etc and how hard they are to make my views have changed. Sure the short molecule drugs that most traditional pharmaceuticals are may be almost trivially easy to make but the newer biotech types ones are HARD. I mean insanely mind mindbogglingly hard. Many of the protein based drugs start with a 10,000L vat and end up at the end with 4 kg of product. Overall to make that 4 kg takes many millions of dollars for each batch and it does not help many people. However if you ever want that technology to improve then the patents on it have to last long enough to justify what it takes to make it.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
And not just an implementation; the work must be somehow transformative, as in transforming one set of assembled items or parts to create a whole new invention, machine, gadget that mankind hasn't seen before. This idea that we're somehow transforming a general PC into a new invention every time some overly litigitious asshole programmer thinks some new software he wrote somehow transforms the PC into a new device; it can't continue to work and not keep a healthy, competitive business environment going, where lots of companies write software that might function in similar manner, but also where the competition is based on the merits of the program itself, how well it performs the job the end user wants to perform, and not who owns the patents to some silly, obvious algorithm that's been included in a work, something so fucking obvious that you wonder how in the hell anyone got a patent on it, other than the idiots in the patent office don't know what the hell they're doing. Please, someone bury the idea of software patents, let's all go back to copyrights to handle that set of business ideas, and let's move forward to really competing and making money off software, not stifling competition.
Well there are a lot of big players that have patents for purely defensive reasons. They can say, no, we didn't copy your crap, we have our own patent. The troll is automatically put on notice that they not only have to fight big-corp but also the US Patent office. It stops a lot of trolls dead in their tracks.
A lot of the time, big players who hold a boat load of patents don't go looking for trouble, because it will cost them more to look, and enforce patents they they will make in revenue. Worst case, is they might write you a letter asking for a small license fee, engineered to be something you can easily pay, if for no other reason to enforce their patent and also earn a small income from it.
But if you step on their core business with some of their IP, you got to know they will want to talk serious money.
This is not the same as a troll, since they are actively using their patents.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
But where's the incentive
You've surely heard this before, but let's go over it again. Patents are only one means of maybe making money off an invention. They don't work very well. Indeed, many companies choose to keep crucial insights secret, rather than trust to the patent system. That's one reason why so many patents are for trivial and obvious things. They know there's no use keeping the trivial and obvious secret. Instead, they rush to file patents on the trivial and obvious, before someone else does. Most of all, there are many other ways to profit from invention. There is the first mover advantage. There is making the world a better place, which benefits all, including the inventors. The mercenary view of human nature, that no one does anything for free, and that it is of no possible benefit to give and get nothing in return and therefore irrational to be "nice", is not only harsh and shallow, but not at all realistic and quite wrong. Nice guys don't finish last, and can and often do reap benefits from being nice. Then there are many forms of patronage. There are awards, grants, and prizes. There is advertising and endorsements. If patents were abolished, people would keep right on inventing, and profiting from their inventions. If we feel more incentive is needed, we can easily expand public patronage. Doesn't have to be government run either, such organizations can be private. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are private.
Patents are suppose to encourage progress, but they have far too often had the opposite effect. They are deliberately used to lock technology away, out of fear and greed. They provoke our worst impulses, leading inventors to think they own ideas that are the work of many, and get to control everything related to it out of a nutty notion that they deserve a cut of every way in which an invention increases profit or savings, and this control is the best way to insure they get what they deserve no matter how much that impacts 3rd parties who have nothing to do with any agreements made or disputes that may arise.
Remember that the courts actually proposed shutting the Blackberry network down, to make up for the supposed harm a patent troll suffered, failing to appreciate the harm this would cause the innocent customers who used it. And remember that SCO actually demanded that Linux users pay them licensing fees, when any such fees, if owed at all, should have come from the actual-- actual, not "theoretical"-- profits of the creators and distributors of Linux, not the users. What the actions of the likes of SCO were saying is not only that patents were wanted, they weren't good enough and needed to be stronger! A remedy like that is like proposing to tow every car in the neighborhood because one of the residents was accused of speeding. Also remember how patents have been abused to cover up problems, as in the case of Dmitry Sklyarov and many others, and to squelch honest compeition as in many cases including one about garage door openers. It's incredible that DRM is still as lively as it is, since it plain does not work, and it's the fault of bad lawmaking including patent law that DRM hangs on to life. It's time patents were ended. They do a lot of bad things, and what little good they do is doubtful at best. They cost us a great deal of money to enforce and argue about in court. If not abolished, then they should at least not come with monopoly grants enforced at great taxpayer expense. Reform would help, but the better direction to take is abolishment. We'll never be free of legal harassment and interference in genuinely new research for so long as these tools exist.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Back in the day, software was not patentable as it was treated akin to a mathematical formula. The one patent I was aware of was a patent Atari snuck through by designing a circuit that XOR'ed a bit pattern to change the color a TV was displaying to avoid burn in. They patented the circuit and tucked a sentence into the patent that said they also claimed any implementation in software as well but the primary patent was for the circuit. We relied on copyright protection and pretty much ignored patents. Then the Supreme Court made a few rulings that opened the door to the possibility of patenting software.
Following up on the rulings, the Patent Office embarked on a series of "hearings" held around the country ostensibly to see whether it was a good idea to patent software or not. This was sometime in the early 90's. Towards the end of their tour, they finally brought their dog and pony show to San Jose.
Literally, almost *EVERY* developer testified that it was a really bad idea. The one exception that I recall was some idiot with a beauty salon app that would show you what you would look like with various hair styles. The rest of the developers said "No. We don't want this - it's a really, really, bad idea." Several developers made the point that we weren't constrained by a paucity of ideas as much as choosing which ideas to implement well.
The other group that was there in some numbers were attorneys - I recall Borland sent their corporate attorney. To a man, the attorneys all testified in favor of the idea.
Towards the end of the testimony, one of the developers pointed out the fact that the only people who seemed to like the idea were the attorneys. At which point, the Patent Office person (can't remember his name but iirc he headed the department at the time.) grinned and said something to the effect that the attorneys tended to get their way.
And they did. The people whom patents ostensibly protected were ignored in favor of the attorneys.
There is no such thing as "patent owner". You could be "patent holder" - in that you hold it at the pleasure of the public which allows you to do so for the public good. Nice term substitution there.
There is no proof that copyright/patents are beneficial.
And even if they were beneficial, infringing upon people's rights--such as freedom of speech and the right to control one's own real private property--is unacceptable, no matter the gains.
Software is covered by copyright. The patents in question were obvious to anybody with half a brain and should never have been awarded. We can thank the blind ignorance of the USPTO for this.
There are serious doubts as to whether software patents in general should be allowed. Technically, software is algorithms which can be expressed as mathematics, and therefore not patentable. Practically, software patents are used almost exclusively by patent trolls and large companies in a way that inhibits creativity, new applications, and product development. This is precisely the opposite the intentions of the original patent law.
New Zealand has recently prohibited software patents. Maybe the U.S. and the rest of the world will come to their senses and follow suit.
"Show us some 20+ year old software that still works, is still used..."
The sad part of what your asking up until that point... is many of us COULD show you 20+ year old software used in production environments of industries they absolutely should not be.
All I know is that more than half the time, the screen stops halfway during the slide and it wastes my time and makes the iPhone look and feel shoddy.
"Here at Apple, we care about security. We care so much about security, in fact, that we refuse access to not only thieves and hackers but to our Valued Customers too!"
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Oh good, a very simple sounding solution that uses weasel words like "per se" and a followup weasel statement.
You have to realize, surely, that if you can't quantify the "per se" and "clever" parts in less than a thousand words, it would be impossible to write such limits into law in less than that number of words.
The simple act of defining patent trolls, while avoiding being unfair to entities such as universities and individual investors who have no time nor desire to go into production just to have protection, should demonstrate how simple it is to have a concept, but difficult to define it.
In fact, patents that run several hundred pages (my name is on at least one and it weighed measurably by kilos) that describe "shopping but on the internet" or a similarly "obvious" concept, should demonstrate that it is not so simple as re-defining the venue, since there are frequently new challenges - just the sort of thing you describe as obvious.
Simple, but it won't work without so much defining that it's no longer simple.
I write some code that adds a new button to all windows on your computer that when clicked, makes the window do a virtual somersault. Extremely useful, right? With a patent, everybody has to pay me to put that button in their OS (or I can stop them from having that button at all so everybody has to buy my OS). With a copyright, nobody can copy my code and use it as is, but they can write their own code to implement the same button. See the difference?
Unfortunately the RIAA has a patent on small violins.
See you in court.
That will never happen. Why? It makes too much sense, and it prevents those on top from staying on top.
Why shouldn't it be used? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Funny thing is that this so called Doctrine of Equivalents should also bring in a shitload of prior art if someone tries to tack on "on the internet" or "on a computer" to a previously patented invention.
...Needs to be burned to the ground, the judges impeached, and the earth it sits on SALTED!
Turns out that the Romans have a patent on that.
It's getting harder and harder to live off the work of others by abusing patents as blackmail devices?
Let's hope so.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It looks like pretty hard work that isn't certain to pay off.
Oh no, it's just like damn near everything else in life! Why would anyone ever code, paint, direct, write, etc. if they're not guaranteed success and lots of money?
Not 20 years yet, but I'm still using a timeseal binary (for compensating for network time on internet chess servers) that was compiled in the late 90s. We're getting close!
I can still run old copies of XTree Gold in a DOS emulator. Lots of old software is still run just for entertainment purposes, not to mention all the COBOL much older than that that is still running.
These days you don't really have to upgrade your old mini you've been running since the 70s. You can also just emulate it on modern hardware and keep running your old apps. This is done... a lot. It isn't really the sort of thing most people want to brag about working on, though. It is generally quiet work.
The difference in term just isn't that important to this problem. The difference is that one protects a specific implementation, and the other creates a monopoly across a whole problem space. I'd rather an implementation be protected for 100 years than the whole problem space protected for 20. Even if both numbers are too high.
I feel like I'm constantly fighting my tablet to let me keep using apps for 1 month without updating.
No, android, you can't have any cheesy-poofs. No, android! My cheesy-poofs!
well...think of the starving lawyers?
There's no proof that they aren't. And legally they are enshrined in the Constitution.
Modern information theory addresses finally why wage deflation doesn't happen, and the wages just flatten and hiring goes down; because if employers lower your wages, a lot of people will quit. And the employer has no way of measuring how bad the economy is, how much pain the employees would tolerate, without investing in that information; either from a consultant, or doing a trial run and screwing a few employees and seeing what happens. Which can hurt morale in the whole company. Companies don't invest in information in that situation; they make the safe decision, wages stay flat, hiring goes down, and they probably push employees to increase "efficiency" (work harder)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz#Shapiro-Stiglitz_model
There's no proof that they aren't.
That's not how you decide policy. If you're going to create laws and limit people's freedoms, the least you could do is make sure that your claims are actually valid. I say that giving me a million taxpayer dollars will improve society, and you can't prove that it won't, so why not do it? It doesn't work like that.
If you can't prove that your garbage is beneficial, then don't bother with legislation.
And legally they are enshrined in the Constitution.
The constitution merely gives the government the power to have copyright and patent laws; it doesn't force them to. Giving the government such a power was a mistake on the part of the founding fathers to begin with. Freedom must reign.
Not on the violins themselves, simply the method required to play one. You can have it sit on your table all you want, but if it plays a tune ...
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Wait... you mean to tell us that it isn't a shoddy piece of hardware with no real innovative features?
TFTFY
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I personaly do not see the problem with patent trolls, they basically do not do shit and try to steal what you worked on for years and try to gain money out of that. They will bring lots of lawyers to take you down and make money out of your invention, well that just makes you a man without anything else to lose if you life time work is being stolen openly by the law, basically that makes the law a failure, why not kill the lawyers and the patent troll and get jailed and give your kid the business to run. Atleast you've taught patent trolls "don't fuck with hard working people". The law is here only if we want to "keep up" with the pretense of doing things the right way, when we all know we want things to be done the selfish way, to some extent you will accept certain things, but someone stealing your work and getting away from it is just where the law fails, grow some balls and do what needs to be done. Pfft having free access to weapons, and yet having to live an entire life in pretense isn't that hypocrisy? Life is too short to fall in this game of society, either you do things right, and when people screws you up you eliminate that genes that will be a problem to mankind in the long run (since probably they are not producers but leechers) or you just simply die in shame for having lived as a puppet to words :s
Software would still be covered by copyright.
Huh? Newegg was not sued for stealing their software, they were accused of stealing the CONCEPT of a shopping cart. A concept that has been around for hundreds of years, if not longer (hence the prior art).
At long last a judge who is not impressed with the corporate idea that adding the phrase "on a computer", "on a cell phone", or "on the Internet" to a hundreds year old idea magically makes it a totally new, never thought of before idea.
It's more than that - think of it this way: Soverain Effectively patented the most obvious way to walk to a store, put things in a cart, take them to the register and pay for them. Imagine some arsehole doing that to every person. Everyone has to find an unpatented means of going to the store, getting things to the "register" (which for the patent avoidance will be something completely unregister like) and paying ("I choose to steal from you, but tip you handsomely for having a nice store") It's beyond absurd - like most software patents.
Some assholes are certainly trying - see the way that patent trolls for wi-fi were target hotels and resorts, rather then manufacturers.
Except at this point, what does it matter if they took away the willful infringement aspect? Either you do:
A) Search the database, find the patent and pay the patent troll. (Which no one does)
B) Search the database, find the patent, ignore it and POSSIBLY be dragged into court where you (attempt to) smack down the patent troll. (Which would incur extra legal fees from doing a patent database search in the first place)
C) Don't search the database and POSSIBLY be dragged into court where you (attempt to) smack down the patent troll. (Which is what everyone does currently)
Show us some 20+ year old software that still works, is still used, is compatible with today's hardware, and meets stringent security standards today.
I can still run old copies of XTree Gold in a DOS emulator
your using an emulator, without it, his or her point is still valid, can you run it without an emulator on today's hardware/software? can you trust it using an old/er machine running old software when it comes security online? You would dare to use it do online banking or purchases?
[dumb questions to ask since you can't really trust today's hardware/software either]
will some one please patent patent trolling?
So the patent office was forced to be self supporting. Their income is from patent applications. They get more applications if people have more reason to believe a patent will be granted. Therefore, they have every reason to define "novel" as "gee, I didn't think of that! gosh!" and grant a patent. This encourages the next hundred applications to come pouring in. We could fix most of the problems by making sure an invention had to be actually novel, before granting the patent. Shopping cart? Not so much. Quantum cryptography? Maybe so. Real work should be rewarded. Ancient ideas shouldn't become novel just because you find a way to do it on a computer.
"This is a door bolt. On a Computer":
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/patents-on-bronze-age-technology/
(So far the oldest thing I could find some people got a patent on. It's at least 3200 years old).
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Oh, I just mentionned it: http://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/patents-on-bronze-age-technology/ There's more than 3000 years old prior art on that.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
"It's a really tough time to be a patent owner"
And the world's smallest violin plays Katharine a little tune.
I was going to ask if anyone has yet filed for a patent for a means and technique for summoning a wambulance online, but the tiny violin is better. Actually, you should have posted "here's a link to a high quality mp3 of the world's tiniest violin...
"What's crazy about patents is that they're supposed to be for an implementation"
Uh-huh: Business method patent
Patents are not intended to stimulate others to innovate - only to protect those who have already innovated.
If I innovate then I have the knowledge that if I patent it I can protect my creation from being stolen by others while I have the ability to exclusively benefit from it.
Unfortunately in these days patents do not protect those who innovate, only those who legislate.
Show us some 20+ year old software that still works, is still used, is compatible with today's hardware, and meets stringent security standards today.
And I'll show you public transit switching systems.
That's an ignorant and idiotic statement. Products ideas cannot be protected by copyright if a competitor re-implements the ideas using different source code.
I absolutely disagree.
What you're saying is, without the protection and direct subsidy of the government, those technologies could not compete or succeed. That sounds like an argument to make such research and development publicly funded.
Plus, the profits they could make in a few years could easily pay for the 10 years it takes to produce.
Even if those certain cases did deserve some additional protection and subsidy, the max should be five years and the profits should be heavily taxed, considering they only exist thanks to government.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If I find a way to grow orange corn, and add a buttery salt to it, and sell it as "BringsApples Corn (TM)", then no other person can sell corn and call it "BringsApples Corn (TM)", but they can grow orange corn, butter it with salty stuff and call it "Similar_Name Corn (TM)". Since I'd have my own recipe, your corn may not be as good as mine, or it may be better. Look at the similarities on the ingredients of Coke and Pepsi.
You are confusing patent & copyright with trademark - http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/basics/ - when you want to trademark (TM) on the name you want to use for your product and others cannot, and trade secret - http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/ip_business/trade_secrets/trade_secrets.htm - your process/ingredient of your product that is not supposed to be disclosed to anyone but your own! Of course, they all are intellectual properties, but they are not the same.
Then you may need to elaborate about patenting "orange corn" because there are multiple ways of doing so -- patent how to grow/process to get the "orange" feature, genetic (which is controversial), etc.
Also the GP talked about "copyright is forever" is somewhat true in the sense but not exactly. You may look at http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html for more information.
for the good of all humanity and the advancement of ideas in general
Sigh.
IANAPL but there is nothing wrong with software patents per se. They are not really any different to computer hardware patents, especially since hardware is generally designed in a software-like language such as Verilog or VHDL. Futhermore, choosing just what is done in hardware vs software can just be a matter of cost/performance engineering.
No, IMHO, the problems include:
a) Patents for "obvious" ideas/implementations being granted. Of course, "obvious" is a matter of opinion but some have been ridiculously obvious.
b) Insufficient prior art searches being conducted.
c) Granting patents that claim a desirable result, rather than claiming a way to achieve that result.
d) Overworked or inexperienced patent examiners.
Oh, if it plays a tune ASCAP will be there asking for their live performance fee. Run. Just run.
Why shouldn't it be used? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Because it tends to keep getting creakier and creakier, and when it finally does break you're up the creek without a paddle because the parts and skills to fix it don't exist anymore.
I don't read AC A human right
Where's the incentive for the creative mind to write the software when commercial exploitation of his own work runs a real risk of falling foul of one of a huge number of patents he knew nothing about. When mutual dependency of ideas is such as happens once software becomes possible, what you have is not an incentive but a minefield.
John_Chalisque
You are confusing patent & copyright with trademark
No, I just gave a horrible example, in order talk about how Coke and Pepsi are very closely related. Patents relating to food items and computer-related items are vastly different, but I'm not near as knowledgeable about computer-related items as I am food-related items. I really should have just said nothing, but when the article is about patents, and someone brings up how copyright will still be in place, it makes me think that they are confusing the two, because they are not similar at all.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Yes, copyright would prevent the outright 'copying' of code to do something. The basic premise of the code, as a means to do a thing, would be unprotected, as it should be.
A 386 has a built in 8086 emulator (esp when running in '386 enhanced mode' or whatever the proper name for that is). An i3 or other x64 chip has a built in x86 emulator (emulation of old instruction sets is built into the new one). Their implementations of old technology (like the 8086) are about as similar as a software emulator running on an i3 is to the original code running on a real 8086. (Compare an 8086 and an i3 die in an electon microscope and play spot-the-similarity...) Working code is a sequence of numbers designed to be interpreted according to certain well defined rules. It matters little whether those rules are implemented directly in the logic of a chip, or via software on a different chip (excepting performance implications).
John_Chalisque
There is also prior-art for the electronic/online shopping cart concept. I first used it in the mid 1980s on Prestel (1200/75bps!). Someone had already coded it for me to use, so the cart concept of the cart "on a computer" was done and dusted before I came along and used the service.
I wonder how long before there will be DRM on musical instruments to prevent people from playing copyrighted music on them. Technologically we're basically there...
There is nothing for them to compete with. These are the first medicines of their type EVER. The problem is that it is so expensive to develop and make these drugs that if the patent only lasted 2 years it would be 8 years before you where even ready to make it that the patent expired and your competitors would be able to work on making it also but at a tiny fraction of the cost.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Yes, copyrights aren't patents.
But that doesn't mean copyrights don't exist.
Software would still be covered by copyright.
And? How many computer software are new ideas, I can think of none...Taking 2 existaing things and putting them together is not a new idea, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/09/15/1958239/the-man-who-created-the-pencil-eraser-and-how-patents-have-changed
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Algorithms are maths, maths cannot be patented.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Here is the relevant article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy-Smith_America_Invents_Act
One part I found troubling is the mention that we went from a 'first to invent' to 'first to file'...does this mean that prior art no longer matters?
There is also prior-art for the electronic/online shopping cart concept. I first used it in the mid 1980s on Prestel (1200/75bps!). Someone had already coded it for me to use, so the cart concept of the cart "on a computer" was done and dusted before I came along and used the service.
I had to do this stuff as an exercise in a programming class in the 1980's, too. Including performing a hash of an entered credit card number to prove it was a valid number. The exercise never went beyond our college computer, but the ideas were already there. It updated inventory and such.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think the problem is that you come up with a new patent-able idea it takes more than 2 years to get it to market due to the FDA and the like, meaning that they get no protection at all in the market.. They are things that probably should be done by the government, but we are in a free market thing.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
touché
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Federal judges are almost always from that state/area.
The difference is that the Patent covers the method, while the Copyright covers the implementation of the method. Ten minutes of Google searches could have shown you exactly that difference as well as why it matters.
Copyright prevents me from stealing your work. Just like I can't steal Steven King's work for my own horror novel. Patents ensure that Steven King is the only person that can write horror novels or control who does. Yes, that analogy is correct and yes you could have figured it out rather easily.
BPP (Business Process Patents) simply needs to be repealed. It was an overreach to ensure that the lordlings took back all the serfs land.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Bad example, but close. The better example would be "show me a company that can sell 20 year old unmodified code."
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in December that would encourage judges to award fees to the winner of an infringement lawsuit if the judge deems the lawsuit unfounded.
This alone solves the problem. Yea I know, big corporation versus small inventor...but if you have a bona fida invention you will prevail.
So correct me if I'm wrong but what you're saying is that someone should patent "browsing" a "store" full of various products and placing items in a container or "shopping cart" and once all the items they wish to purchase and the correct amounts of said items are in this "shopping cart" go to another location to "check out" and "pay" at which point they will have completed a "transaction" with the "store owner"... ... In real life.
Worst part of that is that with how USPTO is working these days it would probably be approved.
Copyright is not supposed to be forever, and not supposed to be overtly long in duration either. This debate in court goes back to the 1700s and is well documented. Interestingly it is always people with money that argue to extend them, while authors and inventors normally argue that they should be limited. The practice of selling copyrights to businesses goes back longer than the debate.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Furniture, fashion, and a significant portion of industrial design (such as car bodies) don't even have copyright or design patent protection. Yet those industries thrive.
I have no idea why this myth keeps getting spread. Of course, furniture, fashion, and car bodies have patent protection. Ten seconds on Google refutes your post, and yet this myth keeps getting spread over and over.
Why shouldn't it be used? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
IE6--only 13 years old this August 27.
I think we would be better if we could do this at a societal level instead of private companies but the system we have is private companies. Many of these ideas actually take close to 10 years to get to market and the FDA is only a small part of that. These new DNA and protein based medications are HARD to make. I don't think the average person has any clue how hard it is to make. If you had an entire swimming pool filled with your raw materials the amount of drug you can get out of that is about the size of a marble.
Worse just getting it is not enough, you also have to purify it, remove all contaminants etc. 2 years is just not enough time to do that.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
There are efforts underway by IP maximalists to extend IP protection forever. We've already seen works be taken OUT of the public domain. Do you know how many works became public domain in 2013?
Firstly, no patent or copyright should outlive the inventor or creator.
There are no efforts to extend patent protection, nor have there been. Patent term has only been extended once, back in the 1850s (the more recent change from 17 years from issue to 20 years from filing is not a change in term since there was and is an average of three years of backlog and prosecution between filing and issue). This is because, unlike copyright, there's equal interest by wealthy lobbyists in shortening term: basically, all of the copyright owners (and their well-backed industry organizations like the RIAA and MPAA) want longer protection while the public and pirates want shorter protection... but all of the money going to Congress is from the former group, so copyright term gets lengthened. With patents, every patent owner wants their own patents to have a longer term, but their competitors' patents to have a shorter term. It doesn't benefit Apple if, for example, Microsoft gets a 50 year patent term, and vice versa. Accordingly, there's no coalition sending large amounts of money to Congress to demand longer patent terms.
Why shouldn't it be used? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
IE6--only 13 years old this August 27.
Difference being that IE6 is broken as fuck and has been for a long, long time.
Thing is, the profits from the drugs that work out has to cover the research for the ones that don't, or pharmaceutical companies stop doing massive and expensive research.
We could publicly fund such R&D, of course, but that doesn't look like the best idea to me. I'd much rather go with market incentives than government decision-making, including things like what happens when R&D funds get sequestered, or earmarked by Congress, or cut unexpectedly - as long as market incentives will work (they don't in theoretical physics, for example). Right now, market incentives are getting companies to develop drugs, and I see no need for the government to step in.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There's a difference between creating and developing. Coming up with new ideas on how to do something is usually fun. Making it actually work, making it reliable and not too expensive to produce, is usually hard work. Patents at least theoretically ignore the first and concentrate on the second, although in particular many software patents are not of something the inventor implemented, and this is very bad.
Creative people have also been ripped off for thousands of years, coming up with an idea, figuring out how to make it work, and watching other people latch onto it and take all the profit. This isn't really fair, and it discourages individuals from doing the hard work. In today's business climate, it would mean that creativity and invention would often be controlled by large corporations. Theoretically, patents are supposed to protect the little guy, and in practice little else will.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
One of the best examples were steam engine patents. One man patented using a crank and flywheel (on a steam engine) and used lawsuits to prevent anyone else from using one. Steam propulsion innovation was hamstrung for decades because of this and a few other critical patents.
When I said it is somewhat true, it is simply in the sense of what currently happened and is sarcastic (an easy example is Walt Disney which in turn updated/changed the copyright laws). I am not talking or thinking about that it is supposed to be forever.
How can you have "market incentives" when the market is so corrupted by government providing protection and subsidies to companies?
You want "market incentives"? Make the biggest companies have to start earning their money.
And what do "market incentives" even mean when you've allowed corporate consolidation to this level? When you're down to just two national air carriers, for instance, what is a "market incentive"? What is a "market incentive" when you've allowed the only two satellite radio companies to become one satellite radio company?
If there was such a thing as a "free market" in nature, it would be one thing. But once you've created a situation where winners have already been picked, there's no such thing as "market incentives".
You are welcome on my lawn.
So what you're saying is, unless government protects pharmaceutical companies and allows them to be immune to market forces, there will never be new drugs? You want government to guarantee that the prices of a product will stay high so a company can make its profit. I didn't think that was supposed to be the way things worked.
So, in order to have a free market you have to make sure the market isn't free. I guess I'm just not smart enough to understand how that works.
Some of the same people who are outraged at the notion of government protection of labor are insistent that government should protect capital. I think that may be how we got into this mess.
How well would John Galt have done if government wasn't protecting his patents?
You are welcome on my lawn.
You and I both agree that it is "broken as fuck," but it is still being used by many companies under the idea that it "ain't broke."
They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play...
They continued to laugh, all the way to the bank, as their tone-deaf lawyers slapped me with suit after suit, while bought-and-paid-for government stooges confiscated all my equipment and hijacked my webpage. This is how IP law "promotes the arts" in 21st century America, and no, it isn't funny at all.
Doctrine of Equivalents does not apply to prior art. Prior art has to be exact. If they were as persnickety about finding infringement as they were about finding prior art, the problem would be much less. If they were as expansive about ruling something non-novel or non-obvious based on prior art as they are about finding infringement, the problem would be much, much less.
But instead it's novel and non-obvious if no one has described the exact same thing using the exact same words. But contrariwise, something infringes if it's "close enough".
And "on the internet" patents are "exhausted combination" patents, which the Supreme Court has ruled against but the patent office and lower courts keep accepting, because the system isn't working.
Those costs are already deductible as a business expense and their are very generous R&D credits.
I believe that if patents were to go away tomorrow there would still be new drugs coming to market.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thanks for the clarification, sometimes sarcasm is not obvious.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Not so.
Strong patent protection is a characteristic of the steepest technology jump in human history. The 20th century saw technological innovation increase exponentially, frequently driven by well-funded R&D departments at large corporations. They would not have developed these things without patent protection because it would put them out of business. I have never heard a plausible explanation of how a company that spends a billion dollars developing a technology can compete if their competitors can undersell them simply because they don't have to recoup the R&D budget.
And while the Constitution does not mandate copyright and patent laws, it does legitimize it, removing the argument that implementing them is violative of free speech.
Strong patent protection is a characteristic of the steepest technology jump in human history. The 20th century saw technological innovation increase exponentially, frequently driven by well-funded R&D departments at large corporations. They would not have developed these things without patent protection because it would put them out of business.
Awful logic. Since we didn't live in a world without patents, you can't possibly think that such claims constitute as "proof." I think you'll find that there is no proof. All you're doing is speculating what an alternate world that didn't have patents was like, and that is most certainly not "proof."
removing the argument that implementing them is violative of free speech.
Incorrect. The right known as "free speech" is separate from the first amendment. Copyright violates free speech even if it does not violate the first amendment.
Second of all, the first amendment comes after the copyright clause to begin with.
A *lot* of funky SCADA software. In 2012 built another MS-DOS 6.22-based data acquisition server (which is still in use, along with the others) using incredibly overpriced (albeit reliable) bits from Advantech, 16-bit ISA cards and all. The application's last update was 1996, not quite 20 years but getting there. Slightly less ancient data acquisition software runs in parallel with nicer looking reports and modern export formats, but isn't as reliable. The DOS machine, as clunky and ugly as it is, just absolutely refuses to ever fail. And I can't say that disaster recovery in an environment without any internet connectivity (drivers? activation? updates? etc.) is any worse with MS-DOS: transplanting the windows software from one installation to the next is actually quite traumatic compared to "let's just dd this image to a new CF-Card and boot from that"...
Also, did some work last year on an impressively large website with many millions of hits per month whose codebase began circa 1997. I should tell them perl 5.19 has dropped CGI.pm from the core distribution, heh
The Doctrine of Equivalents is a reasonable notion. The flaw is not that the Internet is considered equivalent to a phone line (it is for many purposes) but that it should apply both ways. You can't go around claiming that it is equivalent because your old patent is on doing X by telephone (or even telegram) and the new guys are doing it on the Internet but turning around and claiming that the phone method is not prior art when applying for the same patent but on a mobile device. Equivalence cuts both ways.
"At long last a judge who is not impressed with the corporate idea that adding the phrase "on a computer", "on a cell phone", or "on the Internet" to a hundreds year old idea magically makes it a totally new, never thought of before idea." That's the best comment I've read on the subject of patentable work that I've read in years. The patent system is totally out of control. Thanks.
Are you serious, you ignorant fuck? YOU FAIL.
Whenever there's competition, there's market incentives. There's several pharmaceutical companies in the world*, and if one is better at picking drugs to develop it will do a lot better than the others. I fail to see the reasoning that, unless there's a totally free market, there are no market incentives and we might as well give up.
Also, how do the drug companies earn their money if they don't have sort of framework to make back their R&D costs?
*Some fields just have big barriers to entry, regardless of any government interference. A drug company that does its own R&D has to be big, just to support the large amount of work required.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Copyright covers only a specific implementation of an idea.
Patent covers the idea itself.
The length of copyright terms is not relevant if I write my own implementation from scratch.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.