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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.
Someone's bribe check bounced
He figured out that the parasite school of economics wasn't going to work in the long run.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Imagine how long it would take to reign in Intellectual Ventures, owned by the biggest patent troll of all (Nathan Myhrvold)? Intellectual Ventures holds 30,000 patents. Revoking at a rate of two per day would take five lifetimes.
The only solution is shocking the patent system to its core, disallowing *all* software patents and financially penalizing examiners that let "swinging on a swing" type patents get through (http://www.google.com/patents/US6368227).
Not holding my breath.
"Yes, terrible!
1) The large, non-innovative company simply steals the work of another company expending neither effort, nor time, nor money, nor creativity.
2) Other startups refuse wasting time and money building new products.
3) Customer lives with the same crap product for decades."
Sensible rationale. It makes sense.
But real world seems to probe it doesn't work that way: software development, for instance, has flourished without the need of a strong patent chest. Neither Microsoft, nor Oracle, nor Google, nor Facebook, nor Twitter, nor SAP, nor Red Hat, etc. made their way into big companies thanks to strong patent protection for their innovations, but by being innovative, fast to implement and with good business acumen. It's arguable, though, that they acquired a strong patent portfolio once they were big as a war chest against other big companies also with large patent portfolios and to increase the entry barrier for new competitors.
Sorry but customers are fickle. Look at the industries without IP like restaurants and fashion. Lots of innovation and competition. What will happen is instead of taking a long time and lots of resources to get a patent companies will push every upgrade to market as fast as possible to get the first movers advantage.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Nature doesn't intend for anything. It's not an intelligent agent.
There are several models based in genetic evolution which support the emergence of homosexual behavior. For example, a trait which promotes excessively promiscuous behavior in females might have unintended consequences in males. The trait would be stable if the increase in fecundity of the effected females offset any decrease in effected males. And don't forget that it was quite common for gay men and gay women to have children through sex, especially in the days when they were forced by society to into marriage. The evolutionary pressures suppressing homosexual behaviors would be much less than you might think.
There's no evidence that homosexual proclivity is a recent phenomenon. Quite the contrary, actually. The social identity of being homosexual, not to mention the whole notion of sexuality, is certainly recent, but that's a distinct phenomena.
LIkewise, what the heck does "normal" have to do with anything? Is it evolutionarily "normal" to drive around in cars? To step on the moon? I'm pretty sure that notions of shame and moral culpability doesn't exist in the animal kingdom, at least not to any appreciable degree. Humanity is _distinguished_ by it's ability to divorce itself, at least in part, from the natural processes which govern all other forms of life. The very notion of "free will" which you use to affix moral blame on homosexuals undermines your implied notion that there's a "normal" that homosexuals are violating, where "normal" is something objective and immutable. Instead, we exist in a much more complex world, subject to far more complex phenomena by dint of our incredible capacity for self-reflection and rational thought.
Thus the question of the genetic origins of homosexuality is actually quite irrelevant in terms of its "correctness". I simply couldn't care whether homosexuality is inherent or not. Personally I think it's quite obvious that there's a significant degree of so-called "free choice" in homosexual identity and behavior, more so for some than others. But LGBT advocacy unfortunately internalized the fallacious premise (a naturalistic fallacy) in conservative arguments.
Unless you can show objective reasons why homosexuality, per se, causes you or other harms (and that harm cannot simply be disgust, physical or moral), then you have no reasonable basis to judge homosexuals or their behavior. The past decade has shown quite persuasively that such reasons simply do not exist, despite considered efforts on the part of large parts of global society. Instead, your arguments and points simply prove yourself a judgmental idiot out of touch with your own personal moral failings and unaware of your diminished capacity for rational thinking. If I were you I'd start my education from scratch, reading Socrates and Plato to learn how to question myself and identify my own assumptions before wasting time judging others.
And at this point, who gives a shit about gays beside closeted people?
Well, some of the most creepy, objectifying straight men worry intensely about gay men. They think the gay men are looking at them the way they look at women. That's probably very frightening.