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East Texas Judge Throws Out 168 Patent Cases
Earthquake Retrofit writes: Ars Technica is reporting that an East Texas judge has thrown out 168 patent cases in one fell swoop. The judge's order puts the most litigious patent troll of 2014, eDekka LLC, out of business. The ruling comes from a surprising source: U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, the East Texas judge who has been criticized for making life extra-difficult for patent defendants. Gilstrap, who hears more patent cases than any other U.S. judge, will eliminate about 10 percent of his entire patent docket by wiping out the eDekka cases.
All the cases were related to the same patent, which the judge ruled was too vague. Clearly the right decision but there's still a long way to go.
You need to look at the rational for granting patents. The original rational was that by providing a monopoly on an invention for a limited period of time, it would encourage inventors to publish new and useful inventions instead of keeping those inventions as trade secrets. So the original inventor would be guaranteed exclusivity for a period of time, and in exchange everyone would benefit after the exclusivity period had expired.
But now people have started filing for patents which do not describe an invention in a useful manner, and then suing anyone who makes a similar invention. This basically reverses the intended purpose of patents.
Analogy: patents were intended to protect invention prospectors from claim jumpers, but instead are being used by speculators who see an idea railway going a certain direction and buy up all the mindspace in its way.
A patent should not be about an idea that can not be produced. So twist enough words around faster than light travel, lock it in place and then keep extending out the patent, which is what in reality does occur in tech space. Ideas are routinely claimed without any ability to apply them and then decades down the track when the ability occurs they refine the patent and extend it on from that period, effectively hugely extended patent life and simultaneously blocking other companies from developing that technology earlier.
There are many corruptions of patent and copyright law that hugely harm society and whose only purpose is the insane attempt to feed insatiable greed. Your PR stunt of I oppose 'BUT' greed first is pretty lame and disingenuous.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You really think nature meant for a male to have sex with another male? Or a female with a female? Nature designed sex for procreation and without a male and female you don't have that. I'd say that if a man desires a man either he made a choice or maybe it's a kind of birth defect. Given that rampant homosexuality is a recent phenomenon I'd say either we've had a huge rash of birth defects or either a lot of people decided to dabble in perverted sex. It's a common thing in decadent societies. I'm not really against homosexuality just all the foolish attempts to say it's normal. Anyone can see it's not. I don't care who's dick you suck as long as it is not mine.
If by "recent phenomenon" you mean "let's forget all about the ancient Greeks" then yes, okay, it's recent, as long as "recent" means "longer than thousands of years ago". Those beautiful philosophers of Athens et al? Lots of homosexual sex. Ever read Symposium? This isn't some "get your rocks off" stuff. This is real romantic love. Funny how most of Western society is based on such Classical ideals, yet they conveniently gloss over that part.