Slashdot Mirror
The IP Lawyers Strike Back
dashNine writes "The National Law Journal has a hagiographic article on big-money patent lawyers. The article begins with a worshipful (if brief) description of Amazon's patent infringement claim against bn.com, and excoriates Wired for not patenting the concept of a "click-through" banner ad. It then ventures into the territory of patent consultants and counsel, discussing their tactics and methods for finding what they consider to be patentable IP. (Favorite quote: "[O]ne of the most difficult tasks in ... intellectual property asset management is to get the engineers and lawyers talking to one another." " Wow. I think the people who are involved in this article must come from a different Universe than I do.
I think I've been around computers too much. I read that as "internet protocol" lawyers... and thought "hmmm didn't there were specialized lawyers for that..."
Soon lawyers are going to be suing people because IP is their trademark and who ever uses Internet Protocol is violating that.
Warning: If you want to read this article and not fall asleep, you will need a degree in "my english is far better than yours"
kudos victoria (the author).
Thomas Schmid athschmid@gmail.com Skype: athschmid
No kidding from a different world - I actually remember reading a business mag once with this real butt-kissing article regarding a "business's legal rights" regardning the taking down of paradoy sites. Creepy stuff.
This "Gathering" sounds like the nobles getting together to figure out how best to exploit the serfs and to standardize the methods. An interesting view into the management mindset.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you had studied law instead of CS, and you found out you could make big bucks with these patent cases, wouldn't you ? These people aren't evil or anything, they're just interested in making tons of cash. And the current IP system gives them a 'legal' way to do it. It's not the 'stupid lawyers' fault, it's the whole system. The problem is, you need money to change the system, and right now, the lawyers have more of that than us open source geeks, so the system stays in place.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
The article is entitled 'Gold Diggers' which I've always thought of as a rather pejorative phrase suggesting that they're only after the money without actually having earned it (I mean you'd call someone that marries for money a 'gold digger'), but then goes on to say how clever Amazon are and how stupid Wired are for missing out.
Bit of a confusion or contradiction, isn't it?
That article sounds more like a press release for someone selling cheesey $50k software.
Them lawyers sure do have a sense of humor. There was a time when inventions had to be novel and non-obvious. A hyperlinked image that happens to contain an advertisement fits that requirement? Well, at least the rich are getting richer.
No doubt some lawyer folks would call Linus an idiot because he didn't set up a business where a bunch of laywers would be able to make a bunch of cash. It took RedHat to do that.
From the article :
A new breed of prospector has landed in California and every other technology epicenter to help companies discover their hidden treasures. Like their predecessors of the nineteenth century, they come from many walks of life. Many of them are lawyers.
What isn't mentioned in the article is that each time an IP prospector chooses to try a patent, it cost money. The cost of each atempt to lock up the obvious is passed needlessly along to the user .
_____________________________________
Keep in mind that even the title of the article pretty well portrays how these lawyers are seen in the eyes of their own community. I hang out with a lot of lawyers (don't ask) and they rank patent suits right down there with ambulance chasers.
Lawyers are just like CS guys in a way: they want to be involved in important, meaningful projects. Suits like the etoy/Etoys thing are nowhere near important or meaningful. Get a bunch of lawyers in a room and ply them with drinks, and pretty soon you hear that they don't give a rip about things like this.
Now, y2k, on the other hand...that's bad news. They smack their lips greedily at our plight, because it's so incredibly easy to prove that the year 2000 was a foreseeable problem that we should have taken into account...
What's your damage, Heather?
Fox wants to make sure that H-P scientists and engineers tell him about what they are creating, so he can protect it legally and exploit it commercially. Sometimes it's a hard sell, says Fox. Inventors are often so accustomed to working every day on their projects that "it looks obvious to them." Indeed, one of the most difficult tasks in this field of intellectual property asset management is to get the engineers and lawyers talking to one another. To encourage engineers to disclose what they are working on, Fox offers cash payments.
See ? It's all about the money. And indeed, if it looks obvious to a normal person, it might not be obvious to a lawyer.
P.S. : at my company, they offer stock options instead of cash.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
Is that a trademark infringement? Is O'Reilly going to sic their lawyers on me now? Oh no!!!
Seriously, though...
Somehow, patents have got out of hand. (obviously) For reasons of money, companies and lawyer are aggressively searching for anything and everything they 'own' (in some sense of the word) that might possibly be patentable. Patents were supposed to be on things that you truly created, and they were supposed to be so that you could share your ideas with others. Not make money by suing.
The whole thing stinks.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
One of the things that we as a community misunderstand often is that these are not evil Snidelies, twisting their waxed-mushaches and cackling. Most IP lawyers are convinced that they are doing the right thing for a company. They are not at all aware of the damage that they are doing to the industry, and get very boggled when an engineer who is supposed to be working FOR a company does not want to HELP that company.
One of the most valuable things that engineers can do is talk to these lawyers in a calm, reasonable way and explain that the future of the software that created the Internet hinges on the assumption that the current patent mania will be stopped by a popular pressure on the USPTO. Change must come or too many of the inovations that the Open Source community NEEDS to impliment will be closed to us by software patents.
You must make it clear that they are not helping your company by acquiring patents that push the envelope of the USPTO's charter. They are, in fact introducing potential public-relations nightmares (like Amazon is now dealing with, and Unisys has been dealing with for years).
Also, encourage your company to create a "free for open source" licensing strategy for their patents. This will not help the GPL world, as the GPL forbids using patent-restricted processes, but the MIT/X and BSD licenses have no such restrictions and could benifit widely from such licensing. It would also help the company in question, as they could require the source to be commented in such a way as to indicate the owner of the patent, and anyone wanting to create a closed implimentation would know who to go to for a license.
The sad fact of the matter is that patenting a concept or idea is terribly difficult to uphold in court through the entirety of a trial. A "Method For Implementing..." patent was initially granted to companies or small inventors before their product came out. In other words if I had an method for implementing a concept, for instance a computer I may implement "method for data transport via the ISA bus" etc. etc.. These patents are supposed to be nullified or pushed into the background when the product as a whole is released.
In the past if a product was released it was perceived as the only way to do the task that was performedby that product. After the automobile technology and patent laws should have changed -- well technology changed but patent laws never did.
The problem now is that technology is rapidly accelerating, gaining ground on and in every field. Naturally people will take advantage to "cash out" - as in any time period, or society. The problem is that the American Justice System helps and hurts at the same time. It helps break up the monopolys that it helps create. So now it's the governments fault -- which isn't entirely true. Again, we don't live in a Utopian Society but let's not be lazy -- let's change patent law to reflect the times, not the 1890's.
Oh, I liked this bit too:
The "Au" in Aurigin and Aureka stands for the periodic symbol for gold. (And, yes, the company name and product name are puns for origin and eureka. Who said lawyers don't have senses of humor?)
No one ever said that. They just said lawyers don't have a GOOD sense of humor
On, a serious note, I'm not sure what this article means. Obviously it's intended for the law community, but the urging to patent business METHODS?!?! A business method is useless unless you can get a large number of people to adopt/accept it, and who's going to if they have to pay royalties? Is there a patent for a location where you can exchange goods for money, and leave via a door? Sigh. Well, I'm not saying anything we don't all already know. Perhaps I ought to follow up on my patent for exchanging computer knowledge and skills for currency.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
EAT MY SHIT ZEALOTS
This "gold rush" metaphor is very misleading. First of all, can you name a single company that began amidst the original gold rush and still exists? You bet you can: Levi-Strauss. They did well because they were selling to all the prospectors. The big winners from this new "gold rush" won't be the prospectors, it'll be the service industry that supports it: lawyers and so on.
;) Why? Because it allows for others, now or in the future, to build on and improve our efforts now. And that's a pretty good definition of Good.
If the patent system keeps on running amok, it'll have to be reformed - and most of those patents will turn out to be worth the paper they're printed on, if that much. But the lawyers will survive even that fiasco quite well.
Ultimately, the idea that someone can own and control something simply because s/he thought of it is a pretty good definition of evil. The universe of techniques, procedures, and mechanisms that could make the world a better place is a bit like natural resources. Working day and night to use them up as fast as possible is just a way of stealing them from future generations. They won't look very kindly on this period, I think.
Open source, of course, is the solution.
In other words, even the bible of the Internet revolution behaved like so many other technology companies, sitting atop nuggets of gold buried beneath the street of everyday business events
Hmm... well, maybe there's a REASON the 'bible of the Internet' and 'so many other' companies acted this way. Maybe they decided there were more important things to go after-- like, oh say, further innovation rather than legally resting on past accomplishments which have become trivialized by the pace of the Internet.
Rivette estimates that Wired lost at least $20 million a year by not seeking a patent on banner advertising.
And how much would the industry as a whole have lost? How many 'free' sites would not even have existed? A successfully defended patent on this concept may have majorly damaged the development of the web as we know it now.
Would Slashdot exist?
Worldwide patent licensing revenues rose from about $15 billion in 1990 to more than $100 billion in 1998, according to industry estimates. The growth is unlikely to abate.
Revenues to whom? The patent holding companies and lawyers? And what are the nature of the patents? Seems nowadays certain patents are like apples and oranges to each other. One might be a genuinely novel, distinguished invention and the other a nearly obvious idea.
Again, what does the growth of these revenues mean to the growth of the patent holders' industry itself?
There is a Californian, touchy-feely sense to the Gathering
Somehow, I think that this is diametrically opposed to the 'Californian, touchy-feely sense' that might be rephrased as idealism. I see this sense applied to open sharing of ideas, mutual benefit, onward and upward-- not exploitation, greed, and legal entrenchment which slows things in general.
Note that I'm not against one making money, making money for one's efforts-- I'm against doing so by standing in the way of everyone else.
Fox wants to make sure that H-P scientists and engineers tell him about what they are creating, so he can protect it legally and exploit it commercially. Sometimes it's a hard sell, says Fox. Inventors are often so accustomed to working every day on their projects that "it looks obvious to them."
Hmm... maybe that's not because the inventors have been staring at it everday, but because to other engineers and inventors IT REALLY IS OBVIOUS.
Steven Bochner of Palo Alto's Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati gave a speech in 1998 on the potential liabilities of boards of directors who are not minding the intellectual property store. "It is not unreasonable to look to the board and say, "How are you managing these assets?' " he says.
This is about the only thing I agree with in the entire article-- How are you managing these assets? How should you? Are you posting tollbooths in the intellectual stream, or are you truly innovating and moving forward faster than anyone else?
The former makes you immediate money. The latter makes you more money in the longer haul as your company benefits from further innovation and not entrenched battles, as well as the success of the industry as a whole.
I guess the only good thing about this article, at least, is that the lawyers are coming out in the open and being honest about their desires.
That is, they see themselves taking raw material (mountain with gold inside > engineer with ideas) and extracting something valuable with their hard labor. After all, isn't lawyering work, too?
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
I don't see how any sort of legal or patent system can fail to see the goofiness of all of this. How can you patent something like a normal business process. Something so vague as "one-click shopping"...that's like a normal store patenting displaying merchandise in a window. And this article bashing wired for following the "info should be free" line of thought just shows how quickly the internet is being lost to the capitalists. While capitalism is alright in and of itself, its ideals don't really mesh all that nicely with the ideals that helped found the internet. It's interesting how in our current society and economy, information and money can sometimes go hand and hand, yet at the same time, be going head to head. I think it's silly to try and predict how this will turn out even 3 or 4 years from now, but I seriously don't like how things are looking.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I joined it many years ago. Now it's your turn!
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
your phallus must be ever-so-tiny for you to feel the need to rant like this...
sad, really.
All the greedy vultures will do is tick off a lot of major companies. Then Congress will finally get the kind of preasure it will take to get rid of this junk patent mess. Look what is happening with the Y2K windowing patent. Go ahead Lawyers, start some high profile cases in an election year. Make sure all the big companies know that they can and will be facing constant lawsuits for obscure patents. You'll soon be back to chasing ambulances.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I bet everyone complaining doesn't have any patents. I do have some and I think they're great.
NT
This is the most self-indulgent, self-important piece of idiotic material I have ever read. No wonder Shakespeared advocated killing all lawyers.
At least this chick is pretty obvious about her goals and motivations, notably $$$$, not anything having to with upholding law, of course, with paragraphs like:
"A new breed of prospector has landed in California and every other technology epicenter to help companies discover their hidden treasures. Like their predecessors of the nineteenth century, they come from many walks of life. Many of them are lawyers."
and it doesn't just stop there:
" The "Au" in Aurigin and Aureka stands for the periodic symbol for gold. (And, yes, the company name and product name are puns for origin and eureka. Who said lawyers don't have senses of humor?)"
The sad thing is that I think this chick is so clueless, she doesn't even seem to realize what she is doing (or know what she is talking about, for that matter).
Harry
These people aren't evil or anything, they're just interested in making tons of cash. Sort of damning them with faint praise, isn't it? I wonder how many awful people there are about whom you could say "they aren't evil they're just interested in X". Substitute money, power, status, excitement, etc for X. The problem isn't in their all too human desire for any of these things but in the effect they have on others. As far as changing the system goes (and I agree that the whole thing is a problem and needs to be replaced rather than tinkered with) you only need money if you're trying to play the same game. Aren't people like RMS an example of what you can do if you really are motivated? I heard the "money to change the system line" from ESR in the last communication from him on /. but which of them has made a _huge_ difference? I think RMS has shifted a part of the system and made a much larger difference through his intellectual honesty (and bloody-minded commitment to his views) than he could have if he'd started to try and become some sort of lobbyist.
Nope, sorry guys, this *is* pure evil.
Patenting the obvious is against everything "innovation" stands for. You couldn't patent putting a link around an image, but suddenly a "click-through banner ad" is different? That's evil.
Or, you use cookies to save someone's information (including their credit card number) so that next time, when they come back, you know who they are. (sounds like Slashdot...) But now you call it "one-click shopping", and suddenly it's a new idea.
I know, I'll write up a patent on a system to keep track of people's inventions, but instead of a patent office, I'll call it "pure evil", and sue the USA and all other companies who use my system...
---
pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Why is this poster posting the exact same article he posted 45 minutes ago?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
If you were congress, who would you fix it? I've been playing around with law wordings in my head that would keep companies from accomplishing the monopolization of important ideas and concepts. The problem I'm having is that every bill I come up with in my head would also cause someone who came up with a truly unique service from patenting it (which is, of course, contrary to the whole idea of the patent system).
So, assuming that we're not out to destroy the patent system completely (and I know there are people out there who'd like too, but I think that's unrealistic), how would you legislate to stop abuses while still letting the reasonable patents get through?
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I.e. Amazon couldn't use any patent in the patent pool without allowing free use of the one-click technology or, preferably, giving the patent to the group.
Here are some other related links:
The Economics and Management of Technological
MIT: Technology Strategy/Scott Stern
Advances in Global High Technology
Technological Innovation and International Competitiveness
IMD Discovery Events
Related Misc.Books and Articles
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Shakespeare was right -- kill all the lawyers.
The OSLDF can challenge patent assersions in court showing prior art in the standards and protocols and argue when an obvious implimentation of this prior art is needlesly patented.
The OSLDF can challenge patent prospectors to show there source code in order to show that there particular implementation is indeed unique and worthy of patent protection.
The OSLDF can fight for the small guy who doesn't have the means to launch a legal defence when his rights are violated under the GPL.
The OSLDF could grow as large as the ACLU is today, looking for landmark cases to protect the civil liberties of open source programers.
The OSLDF funding would be drawn (in the form of tax deductable donations) from the many users of open source. As Open source delevopment touches more and more industries and walks of life, the funding will also grow.
_____________________________________
The lawyers make money by representing people in legal matters that are to complex for the client, or when it must enter court. Innovation and the advance of technology is not in their favor. If a lawyer, or their staff, is made more effecient then they have to find more clients to keep the same profit margin. Thus meaning they will want to make things more complicated for legal matters or revoke the right for non lawyers to represent others in certain dealings (like what happened in Real Estate in many states).
So software patents kill both birds with one stone. They get more places where they have to be the representative, and it stifles innovation along with it. Now I know they consider the first all the time, but the second is probably just in the subconcious.
Plus they don't understand or like free software in general. Here is something that my staff can only charge back labor for? That means I can't tack on a handling charge for parts/materials.
They aren't serving society in these cases.
"Being Downsized"=Politicly Corect way of firing somebody.
I would like to offer a new term to the group.
"Getting Blackdowned"=Open Source developers being whiped from the face a project when it reaches a usefull stage.
Perhaps the OSLDF could have been able to help the blackdown group when they 'Got Blackdowned'.
_____________________________________
Do his comments make you so uncomfortable that you have to reach right down and grab your dick to feel safe, or what?
So, software would fall under copyright laws, rather that patent laws? If so, you're opening up a whole new can of worms, since Congress has shown no hesitation whatsoever to extend the lifespans of copyrights. So, not only would some great software idea be unavaliable to you to use now, but it would be unavaliable forever, ala Mickey Mouse.
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
Who is the bigger geek, the geek or the geek who insults the geeks? Or maybe it's the geek who parodies lines from star wars. I find it amusing that you insult all of us for being "losers", as you define it, yet you are the one who seems to get his kicks by insulting people on slashdot. BTW, for a record, I do have a social life, I had a moderately long term girlfriend until recently when I broke up with her, and I am a quite adept skier (is that how you spell it?). Life is short when you constantly insult others and never bother to live your own life.
/. geek.
P.S. Please excuse my spelling or grammar errors. We all know that not being able to spell or speak correctly is a requirement for being a true
-matt
I think the only way we can combat such foolishness is to write open source freeware that employs as many patented concepts as possible, thereby removing the profit in intellectual patents since the techniques will be common in freeware. Luckily, you are not in violation of patent law unless you're selling something. I think. But even if i'm wrong, the code will still be out there, right? :)
(Using Mozilla M12 and loving it.)
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Standardized and specialized tests suggest that I *AM* a genius. Pico doesn't break class structures like VC++. I *AM* a programmer whether I install RPMs on Linux or not. The command line and the options give me more utility than a pull-down menu.
I have no social life to speak of, save teaching, guest-lecturing to professional societies, presentations at meetings, and Cub Scouts... I have a wife and 3 kids. Most of my athletic ability (long-distance cycling, rock climbing) ended 2 years ago with a nasty work-related injury to both legs. But I'm coming back, and hiking's available again.
At least I can identify the difference between an operating system and a kludgy monitor with a badly implemented GUI.
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by tenure.
One of the tests of patentability is that the technology not be obvious to those skilled in the art. "The art" here refers not to patent lawyering, but to the field of the invention. The juxtaposition in the above quote of "obvious" with "talking to lawyers" indicates confusion on this simple fact of law.
A technique being obvious to engineers skilled in the art of the invention in question is not the same as the technique being obvious to patent lawyers.
The problem, of course, is that patent law professionals, be they lawyers, judges or patent office bureaucrats, have an incentive to make everyone in the world go through them to do anything -- and they are in a position to do so if they can, in the guise of legal sophistication, get away with ignoring both law and common sense.
This is yet another example of the abuse of the rule of law by those entrusted to uphold it.
These people don't understand that they are attacking respect for the rule of law, and that respect for the rule of law is all that really stands between them having a nice townhouse in a peaceful society, and ending up as long pig.
Seastead this.
I often see freeware fans being called spongers.
Well, you can't have everything for free, indeed,
but why should one avoid a chance to have something
for gratis? On the other hand, is it necessary to
make money of everything? How big is the piece of
cake one can swallow without any risk? Someone
had a nice idea, moreof, he managed to implement
it, now these parasites come and tell him this is
a gold mine. But it's obvious, because this is a good idea and it works.
Int. Pat. can never stop `infrigment' or `piracy', so keep lawyers away. This world is _ours_.
KuroiNeko
That seems to be their philosophy. Make sure to exploit any possible claim, not make sure that internal R&D funding is sustainable by fair claims and licensing of its results.
I don't think patenting was originally conceived to serve their kind of "prospecting."
Which, in english, means that if you have a patent, but you allow free use of *all* GPL'd software (your release plus any derivative works) that infringes that patent, then the GPL'd software infringing that patent is valid and the GPL is applicable.
At least, that's what it looks like to me. I don't think it disallows the use of patents against proprietary software, only against modifications of the original GPL software. The preamble (which has no legal standing) is much less clear; that's probably the source of confusion.
i finally understand how the american revolutionaries were able to make the decision to free themselves from a restrictive system when they certainly knew that their decision would entail a long and difficult struggle with relatively low chances for success. when a system injures its constituents repeatedly using the very mechanisms that are designed to protect them, when a system promotes the values of monolithic capitalist entities over individuals by disregarding its own set of rules for fairly resolving conflict (as in the etoy/eToys matter), then rational individuals are forced into the position of attempting to correct the flaws in the system that are injuring them. i don't know what corrections might be made to remedy our current situation, but i do know that if the system resists those corrections, that there will inevitably be conflict.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if Wired *had* patented the click through banner ad? Just a thought.
read "than" for "then" in message above please.
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Merry Xmas,
Dave
PS- someone mentioned the inventor of the press as candidate for man of the galaxy. Something to think about. Berners-Lee had no idea, but this became the new press. Strange things afoot no? Don't forget to do whats right, even when it means a little more work. Thats what open source was supposed to be about, until they all got rich on us. RH and VA, etc.. will fight for the community if they know whats right, else they'll go down in flames. But hey.. lets see what happens in Y2K
It has come to my attention that you are using a trademark and two patents of my company. You will cease and desist at once.
The phrase "EAT MY SHIT ZEALOTS" is a tradmark of my company, and we have patents on insulting people on the internet, and typing in all caps to annoy people.
--Have a Johsonville brat.
If I go out and mug somebody in a land with no laws against such things, does that make it right? The fact that "the system" allows it does not wash it of immorality. Slavery used to be legal. It still is in some countries.
Patents should protect implementations, not ideas, and in intellectual property (particularly source code), copyrights are usually a more effective means to the same end. The source code to a particular banner ad serving program can be copyrighted (legally protected) if its creator so chooses. The general idea of banner ads should not be. Legally freezing implementations doesn't stop progress; freezing ideas does.
The creation of patents was meant to protect real innovation, the type recognized as having a scientific or engineering character. Whether or not we agree with the patent concept at all, the avaricious lawyers and greedy business interests have hijacked the process for their own benefit.
The courts have failed to spot the "innovation" impostors and are largely responsible for the abuse of the intent of the patent laws. The Amazon "One Click" innovation is so obvious as to be laughable, but the notion that business model innovation is protectable under patent law is the big problem. The constitutionality of business model patents needs to be challenged.
Defeating the notion of software patents is a harder proposition. I suggest that the open source community start a web site devoted to finding prior art for claimed software patents. Using the Internet we could probably sink a lot of claims and make the notion of software patents so absurd as to make it vulnerable to a formal legal challenge. This is going to be a long struggle, I am afraid.
rm -rf microsoft*
So, for the most part only the USA is screwing itself out of technological lead in any area. Then so what, open source just moves 'abroad' and watch the fur fly if Americans are forbidden to 'import it'. I can see a reverse of the whole crypto mess that anyone, anywhere can easily circumvent. In the final analysis; BFD!
Patents aren't evil in their own right. I have a few, but they are for real inventions and not simply applied mathematical formulae, something a copyright could best take care of.
Ok so I made some stupid comments which I apologize for. I should not have made those comments to everyone in general. I also did not mean to post under this story. I do have a life, although making such posts would indicate otherwise. Windows users do not start these debates about which OS is better. It's almost always the linux users. It wouldn't be so annoying if linux was actually a decent OS. It is not. When 95 came out you heard people talk about how it copied the Mac. Nobody seems to mind that linux copied UNIX. I am a CS major and at my University we have a row of linux boxes. Several CS students do all there programming on these boxes and look down on those who do not. I happen to make better grades than they do and my programs work just fine on Windows using VC++. Why they open their mouths, like many linux geeks, is beyond me. Comparing Linux to Windows is like comparing a college team to the pros. Windows 2000 is about to hit the shelves. They have added too many features to mention. I have used it and can say that it is stable, easy to use, easy to setup, and works with almost all hardware. Linux is gonna release a new kernel someday and if we're lucky we may see USB support in there. WOW. Welcome to the 90's linux.
They aren't human.
I'm only half-joking. How can I say this? Well, consider: a very large part of what makes human beings what they are is the fact that humans have a complex ability to exchange ideas. This was first accomplished through language, and is not being spread to computers. Think about it: humans are individuals, but at the same time you could also say there's a collective consciousness as well in the various groups and cultures.
My point? Software is, at its heart, nothing but ideas. Ideas have never been intended to be patentable; even the US Patent Office doesn't allow for the patenting of ideas (they just need to get my previous point into their heads). There's a difference between source code and software; source code can be copyrighted, providing adequate protection for the work a company has done (not to mention the fact that copyrights are cheaper than patents and last longer too). It does this without stifling the flow of ideas which makes humanity what it is. Software patents do stifle this flow, and it's done without any real need (unless percieved from the point of a profiteering glutton, to borrow a phrase from The Mentor). It's more than possible to make money without patents; in fact I would be willing to bet that if all software patents were abolished right now, the revenues of the various software companies (those which actually write software instead of hoarding patents, at least) wouldn't change significantly.
Basically, to stifle the free flow of information is to stifle our humanity in a very real way. It's a shame that there are people who will do this just to make a buck. But they do exist, having forgotten that there are things more important than making ridiculous amounts of wealth (which is certainly nice and all, and I wouldn't mind doing it myself, but it's not the most important thing).
I used to work for Aurigin. Since the company is very small, they can probably figure out who I am (hi guys). I respect their aggressiveness and their knowledge of the law enough to post anonymously, avoid revealing company secrets, and saying anything too defamatory. This doesn't mean I agree with their opinions. (If they and their product were more public I would be posting something much different.) What I can do for you guys is distill their rather confusing public information.
Aurigin Systems' main product is a IP management and tracking system called Aureka. Aureka is a very expensive client-server system for companies in industries that have so many patents that the industry players have trouble keeping track of them all. How expensive? In the past this system has been sold in-person (aka "direct sales"). If you've read "Crossing the Chasm", you'll know "direct sales" means the product is worth at least $50,000 because supporting a sales staff that flies around the world to sell your stuff is expensive.
I emphasize the "at least". The Aureka "value proposition" (why it's worth your time, money, and effort) gives you another hint at how much this system might cost. Patent lawsuits have averaged in the millions. Each patent costs around $100,000 in lawyer's and patent office fees to prosecute (that is, to push though the patent office). If you're a company with hundreds of patents, and patent-savvy competitors, you could save millions just by not going for useless or redundant patents. An avoided lawsuit could save you an entire business market. A successful lawsuit could make you hundreds of millions. It doesn't take a genius to see that spending a chunk of cash to make you smarter about your industry's patents will pay off in the millions. This system will make you smarter about your industry's patents. So it's pretty safe to deduce that this system is a little more than $50,000.
How do you get someone to shell out this kind of cash? Who would shell out this kind of cash? I'm beginning to skate on thinner ice because this is getting into Aurigin strategy, but let's see if we can work through this based on what everyone knows.
The "who would buy this" part is kinda obvious: executives who are interested in making their bottom lines prettier and their shareholders happy. The "how to sell this" part is a little trickier. How do you convince these executives to buy? You convince them of the "value proposition," that it'll pay off. How do you do that?
Well, you can tell how Aurigin's doing it by what you've seen on /.. You write articles in magazines that these executives read like Upside and law journals (BTW I sincerely doubt this article was written by anyone but the Aurigin marketting department, or Kevin Rivette himself.), you write a book ("Rembrandts in the Attic"), and you throw conferences, all with the same message: if you're dumb about patents you will waste time and money on useless patents and get sued. If you're smart, you make millions on lawsuits and save operational costs. And oh by the way, here's a software package that helps you be smart about patents.
So now you see why all these articles seem like they're coming from a different world. They are. These articles are trying to convince Fortune 500 executives that they'll get reamed by their competition unless they get smart about how they wield their patents.
PS I lived with patents for years (it was my job to understand them), so here's my two cents about the /. debates on patents: There's no point arguing about patents if you don't understand patent history, patent theory, and patent law. You just sound stupid when you do. Patents are monopolies. They're supposed to be. I think a lot of people have a problem with that but have trouble admitting it. And this business environment is nothing new. In the early part of the century, there were patent wars over automobiles. There has been a lot of ugly wars over telecom patents. Any time there are patents and new lucrative technologies they'll be companies trying to patent everything in sight because patents help the bottom line, and that's all companies care about.
Arguing about patent theory and efficacy, however...
"The love of money is the root of all evil."
Ok so I made some stupid comments which I will never apologize for. I should have made more comments to everyone in general. I also did not mean to post under this story. I don't have a life, and making such posts would prove it. Linux users do not start these debates about which OS is better. It's almost always the windows users. It wouldn't be so annoying if windows was actually a decent OS. It is not. When MS-Bob came out you heard people talk about how it copied the Mac. Nobody seems to mind that Windows copied Linux. I am a CS major and at my University we have a row of windows boxes. Several CS students do all there programming on these boxes and look down on those who do not. I happen to make better grades than they do and my programs work just fine on Linux using GCC. Why they open their mouths, like many windows geeks, is beyond me. Comparing windows to Linux is like comparing a college team to the pros. Windows 2000 has yet to hit the shelves, so they're kinda still in college. They have added too many features to mention. I have used Linux and can say that it is stable, easy to use, easy to setup, and works with almost all hardware. Windows is gonna release a new service pack everyday and if we're lucky we may see Windows catch up with Linux and offer a journaling file system. WOW. Welcome to the 90's Windows.
_____________________________________
I work for a large company, and when it came turn for me to place a patent, I wanted it to be open source. The company lawyer I talked to seemed very intelligent about the technical aspect of the patent utility. But he told me he is under special orders for the powers above, and can't do much of what I wanted. This of course made me not try so hard in making my stuff patentable. So it ended that the company actually suffered from this. For me to patent something, they will take a look at it, then after it goes off to the patent office, they will then decide what the rules shall be. By then, what I think doesn't matter any more.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Moderators: moderate this up ! !
_____________________________________
That's actually quite funny. I give ya an A+ for creativity.
That's actually quite funny. I give ya an A+ for creativity Thank you :)
_____________________________________
In my opinion, patent law is intended to strike a balance between providing financial rewards and financial incentives to innovators (or the people who foot the bill for the innovators) and the common good (general availability of inventions and further innovation built on top of earlier innovations). The attitude expressed by the "Gold Diggers" article is excessive, because it holds that the rewards for the innovator should always outweigh the needs of the common good. While I do believe inventors should be entitled to some financial gains (should they want them), the balance between these interests should not be allowed to tip to far towards the rewards side as this will result in a destructive obstruction to innovation. On the other hand, if patent protection is done away with, some forms of innovation will not be pursued because the money needed is so large, and no dollar payback can be expected without some period of exclusive rights. For example, assuming the Blacklight (see http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/22/109245.shtml ) thing is not a hoax, if you read some parts of http://www.blacklightpower.com/bpsummary.html the only way they expect to be able to make money is to be able to bring inventions based on their patents to market and have exclusive rights to it for a number of years. Without this potential for big dollar returns, it is unlikely that Blacklight would have been able to raise the cash to continue operating. Currently, the balance seem to be to far towards the "rewards" side of the balance. I believe to many obvious ideas are being granted patents. The one click shopping cart appears to be one of those ideas.
Sorry if this is slightly offtopic but I couldn't resist. It is not intended to try and invalidate the point that you were making. The tragedy of the commons is often assumed to be a factual/historical description of how a common resource (the mediaeval commons) was shared in a free-for-all manner which eventually led to its own destruction. Not true. The term was introduced in a 1968 Science article (Science 162:1243-8) about population growth. He concluded that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all". This assumption of his, that the commons was a free-for-all, is untrue. In fact the commons and the different rights of grazing, pasturing, turfcutting etc were administered by the lord of the manor who enforced a strict set of rules. The commons - and here's the interesting bit for OSS - were eventually destroyed when the aristocracy took over large parts of them (the land enclosures). See any parallel?
sorry I forgot to mention the author!
In fact, that's kind of the point. Many people (probably including Linus Torvalds) consider UNIX to be very close to the Right Way to do an operating system. An important part of this system is to break problems down into their component parts and solve each part in a modular, reusable way. Thus we can attack similar problems by reusing or adapting the tools that we have already built. We who use Linux are reusing and adapting the tools that have been built throughout the thirty-some-year history of UNIX, and the rest of the UNIX community can benefit from the additions made by the Linux community. The two communities overlap.
You say that Linux is not a "decent OS". We disagree. Our criteria for a "decent OS" are probably quite different from your own. We like the ability to rebuild any part of our system that we don't like in a manner more suitable to our own needs. With a Microsoft operating system, this is impossible.
You say that comparing Linux to Windows is like comparing a college team to the pros. I feel it is more like comparing a scientific treatise to a marketing brochure.
No, it couldn't have done anything for blackdown, since the license they agreed to pretty much lets Sun do anything except kill their family. Down with the SCSL and other fake open source licenses. (Note to zealots: This does not mean mailbomb sun, or blow up their headquarters. This means do not contribute to code under this license. This does mean send a polite, rational mail explaining why you choose not to participate).
And here's why: if any of you had read the original link to this story you would see that there is NO NEW INFORMATION in this long piece! My assumption reading this particular "anonymous posting" is that it is someone that read the original article and is trying to spice up his perspective by being a "horse's mouth". Moderator, please justify why this score? Did you read the original article - if so tell me exactly what new information there is in this dubious posting.
That incentive is fairly common, it appears; the company
I work for does the same thing. Indeed, we had a "patent ceremony"
the other week, giving people rewards. In total, I'd guess they generated about 60-70
patents.
The following is presented as representative of the author's personal opinions only. If a patent clerk ("patent examiner") considers an applicant's invention to be obvious, it is the patent examiner's burden of proof to present a cogent, reasoned argument to that effect. I will not bore you with the significant details of how that task may be accomplished, but perhaps it suffices here to say that a patent examiner is properly in no position to merely pass down an edict along the lines of "The idea is obvious because I say so." For a patent examiner's first action on the merits of an application, a first production "count" (credit) is earned. For completing an examination, the examiner earns a second count. Examination of an application is completed when the application is approved, or when an examiner answers an appeal brief, or when the application is abandoned or re-filed by the applicant. An examiner receives no count for a rejection other than for a first action on the merits or in an examiner's answer to an appeal brief. For technologically complex fields, a mid-level examiner is allotted approximately 21-25 working hours per application/re-file. A promotion increases an examiner's hourly production requirements. There is no mechanism preventing an applicant from presenting an examiner with a disclosure, claim or argument that parses perhaps nightmarishly into numerous bewildering stances, with none of them being based in logic or in syntactical or technological accuracy. Putting this in another way, the government is (properly) not fining any applicants for not making sense to a patent examiner. There is no limit on the number of arguments that may be presented to the examiner at one time. A valid argument is to be deemed so by the examiner, no matter how many invalid arguments it may be preceded by or followed by. A patent examiner has the options of attempting to address all arguments as he or she may perceive them, or to approve an application. If an applicant is not impressed with an examiner's rebuttal, the examiner's decision can be appealed to a higher-level patent authority. If the authority is of the opinion that any of an applicant's arguments have not been adequately addressed, then the authority is of course under no obligation to support the position of the rejecting patent examiner. If the authority supports or re-formulates a rejection, an applicant's next recourse is typically within the judicial system. As you may perceive, there are numerous mechanisms in place to encourage a patent examiner to seriously consider each and every argument for patentability, and to encourage a patent examiner to work efficiently. The patent office views each applicant as a customer, and is directly supported by fees, not by income taxes.
Why don't we all get together and file for patents on as many software processes as possible and store them in an OPEN patent bank? Put the stuff online, and let anyone who wants to use the stuff, use it.
Quick sombody with some cash get a patent for the open source development model or we will all be screwed!
Did anybody else catch the irony here?
From the article: "In 1986 Sullivan read 'Profiting from Technological Innovation,' an article written by University of California at Berkeley business school professor David Teece. The Teece article formed the intellectual foundation upon which Sullivan eventually built ICM Group.... Sullivan says[:] 'Most everything I have done has come off that early work.'"
So Sullivan, who goes around encouraging other companies to obtain patents on their business models and then to sue the hell out of anyone infringing on them, owes the existence of his entire operation to the fact that Teece *didn't* patent the business model in his book! And he sees no irony here? Sullivan is trying to eradicate the free flow of innovative ideas even though he has been a prime beneficiary of them -- he wants to make sure nobody else gets a goose like the one that laid his personal golden egg.
What an asshole!
I don't understand why you suggest he read the work again. As he didn't provide an interpretation that was contrary to yours, or even an interpreatation at all, you can't insult him for his comment. Perhaps he is a crook, in which case is comment is absolutely justified. Anyways, to keep it on topic, kudos to wired for keepin it free.
Not that a gold miner is a very noble profession... After all, a widely used technique for extracting Gold involves the use of Cyanide, leading to the possibility of long term environmental damage. Quite a few gold mining companies have been accused of serious human rights abuses.
...and sewer workers are even more necessary, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us should feel obliged to sign over the rights to all of our property, present and future, to them.
(btw, of all the jobs I've ever held in my life I'm proudest of having constructed sewers - now that was really useful, far more so than diddling around with these stupid ugly computers. Think about it. If your personal computer was down a week, so what? I'll bet you'd enjoy the restful vacation. But if the sanitary sewers in any city were down for a week the inhabitants would have to flee; if for two weeks, people would start dying all over.)
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Intellectual Property Does a business ITSELF have an intelligence? No, an individual has the intelligence. How is it, then, that businesses can claim they own their employee's work? Shouldn't the individual that invented it be allowed to the money, not the company that they worked for? Of course, if you were getting paid to do work for the company, then it would be the company's property, becuase they directed you to do it. But somewhere along the line, someone told the programmers to code a one-click shopping deal, and that someone should get more than just a 'thank you'? And what if you invent something while at home? who does it belong to?
Business methods, _per se_, are not patentable. Computerized business methods, on the other hand, may be patentable.
The article is entitled 'Gold Diggers' which I've always thought of as a rather pejorative phrase suggesting that they're only after the money without actually having earned it
Maybe it's me, but whenever I hear the phrase "Gold Diggers" I think of these guys...
Jay (=
Of course, we shouldn't "sign over the rights" to our life to lawyers. They do, however, fill an essential function in modern society. For example, if you were to be charged with a crime, would you not want the best lawyer available? If you're facing the death penalty for murder, I think you'd be more concerned with your lawyer's abilities than that of your sanitary engineers, or what have you. Likewise, if you run a company, you need to be reasonably confident in your legal counsel's abilities.
The fact of the matter is that it takes all types to make this world go round. In other words, We need garbage men, but we also need lawyers too. It is no wiser to be an (ignorant) layman and snub lawyers, than it is to be affluent and snub garbage men.
Merry Xmass.
It sounds like the time has come for us to reboot The System.
Actually, contrary to popular belief copyright protection applies to broader than exact copies. To show a violation a copyright holder need only show that the alleged violator had access to the copyrighted work (i.e. had seen it previously) and that the alleged violator's work was "substantially similar". Of course what qualifies as "substantially similar" is decided by a judge who usually doesn't know squat about software, so its pretty much pot luck as to what he/she decides. Essentially if an idea is simple enough, even an "original" implementation may be found "substantially similar" and thus a copyright violation.
This is not legal advice. The ideas and opinions expressed are mine alone and not those of my firm or clients.
These guys will sue you if you *don't* patent something. You're some CEO with a consience, and you say, "This has already been done, and it's very obvious". They'll sue you if you're a big enough target for not trying to patent it, for being negligent to your shareholders.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
A lot of the Sci-Fi novelists (Slashdotters..) that employ-discuss-extrapolate upon ideas ahead of their time could create a legal database to protect themselves against straw-law-dawgs.
All of the greedsters should be hauled off to farms where they will be forced to do horseradish picking (like the other migrants) for two years living off of minimum wage.
Signal 11 typically comes to your process from the kernel, not gcc.
What must be obvious to a person of ordinary skill is not the invention as a whole, but the particular combination of prior art references that "add up to" the claim. First, you have to have some prior art. Then, you have to show that the differences between the prior art would be obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art -- not to a genius, an expert, or even someone more than moderately good.
Indeed, the obviousness standard as used in the courts cannot rely on an in retrospect analysis of obviousness. Indeed, it cannot rely on a statement of the problem that is solved leading to a "natural" solution. The issue is whether the prior art itself motivates that additional matter.
In my view, the problem is not so much the standards for patentability as their inapplicability in practice to invalidate patents. The "clear and convincing" evidence standard that must be overcome is virtually impossible to overcome. (Imagine six people off the street, taken from their jobs, baffled for weeks by inconsistent and conflicting testimony, given two hours of incomprehensible jury charges -- now tell them that if they have any recurring doubts whether the patent is invalid, they must decide validity in favor of the plaintiff -- well, the result in a complex case is settled before you have empaneled the jury unless the plaintiff or her lawyer enrages them in some way). One solution would be to relax the standard to ordinary "proponderance of the evidence," for art that is not less relevant than that studied by the PTO.
The Amazon "One Click" innovation is so obvious as to be laughable, but the notion that business model innovation is protectable under patent law is the big problem. The constitutionality of business model patents needs to be challenged.
These statements are so easy to make, but when placed under the light of actual claims and evidence are much, much harder to prove. While everyone likes to say, "its obvious," no one has yet to produce viable prior art.
Not even the highly qualified patent attorneys representing B&N, who could not even find art sufficient to defeat a preliminary injunction. The standard there is simply to show that the Plaintiff doesn't have a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits. At trial, the standard is to prove validity by clear and convincing evidence.
I assure you, whatever you may think about the claims being "obvious," this informal use of the word has nothing whatsoever to do with the term of art as it is used in patent practice, or the relevant language in Title 35, Section 103.
Another article on the same website about the Goo Goo Dolls vs. their record label and owning their own domain name. Here the lawyer talks about how to protect one's self but again they want to bring lawyers into it (= Good luck convincing lawmakers to limit lawyers in any way, how do you become a lawmaker without law experience or a pro-wrestling career?
(This bit made me groan...)
The software, introduced in 1997, is called Aureka. The
"Au" in Aurigin and Aureka stands for the periodic symbol
for gold. (And, yes, the company name and product name
are puns for origin and eureka. Who said lawyers don't have
senses of humor?
Is this 'Slashdot' thing patented. You could be on to a gold mine (minus my royalties for my patent on 'Getting up in the morning').
Allright I would like to state before hand that I'm more than likely an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about. If you feel that this is the case I welcome any corrections and/or flames. I don't have a problem with lawyers suing the the everliving crap out of anything that moves in an attempt to make as much money as possible. I have always been in favor of 6 digit bank accounts. My problem is the things that they are suing over. I don't know how amazons system works but I just cannot see any logical way that someone can say, "We do business this way with this system. We are going to get a patent for the way we do business so that no one can copy us." Isn't that a monopolistic tactic, suing someone because they have a similer ordering system. What's next... will someone be allowed to patent cash payments, or perhaps financing, or layaway. And the whole Etoys thing I don't understand how you can win an injunction against someone who was using a different name before your company even existed. Hey if someone breaks into your house steals a program that you've been working on and sells it for a million dollars, by all means sue the shit out of them. But don't think that just because you though of one way to do something no one should be allowed to do it another way.
Aren't these lawyer-folks jeering Wired for not patenting banner ads? Damn, imagine the Net we'd have if people had to pay a fee to use those godforsaken things! (I know, I know, no monee no sitee but the concept's amazing) Il Cthanio
"hey, free dummy" -Jack Handey
The question of "obviousness" before an examiner is about: what would have, at the time the invention was made (by default it is the date of priority filing), been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the relevant art or (controversially to some and arguable to others)arts (plural). There is "permissible hindsight" argued to be allowable in the decision. An "obviousness" rejection may be based on none or more items of "prior art." The prior art has to have been "made public" before at least the priority filing date of the application under examination. If the examiner alleges personal knowledge of an element applied in an obviousness rejection without published documentation, the examiner may be requested to produce a formal sworn document, something along the lines of: the element was known by him or her to have been at least public knowledge prior to the priority filing date of the application. And I'm only scratching a surface.
Yes, but that means that "automated business methods" are patentables, whether using a computer, or having an operator following sufficietly detailled instructions of some book.
I'll give you that some laws are unnecessary, and others are needlessly complex. However, the view that most every law is unnecessary is only afforded those who live a cloistered existence. It's easy to rant and rave about business, when you don't operate one. I'll be willing to bet that you've never operated a business, or tried to draw up a contract. More than likely, you're still in academia. You've definetly never actually patented anything in your life, let alone developed a viable product off of it....ah what the hell why waste my time on you? I just tire of the sophmoric rants that comprise the bulk of slashdot.
/* aspestos suit: On */
Open source special interest group? Let's think about this for a moment: Who would constitute this group? Hmmm, since most of the internet runs on Linux/FreeBSD/Apache/etc., that would be everyone using the 'net. Now there's a narrow little segment of the population! Oh, and by the way, political genius, it wouldn't hurt to pick up a dictionary now and then, or would that make you feel "opressed"?
1. If such an organization were formed, it would be nice to see some of the OSL companies such as Redhat and VA Systems kick in some of those fabulous IPO dollars. That could really get the ball rolling (God, I'm generous with other people's money ;).
2. The easiest way for something like this to fail would be to get mixed up in fighting over "pseudo" open source licenses such as the SCSL. Yes, before you flame me, the SCSL is certainly lame. But we're all big boys and girls, and we are responsible for our own choices. If people choose to contribute code under licenses like the SCSL then they've really got nothing to complain about if companies like Sun make dopey mistakes like the blackdown incident. For OSLDF (or something like) it to get involved in a non-issue such as the blackdown fiasco would be a quixotic mistake.
3. Don't let RMS anywhere near a courtroom. He would surely end up in the pokey for contempt of court, and we need him where he is: On the outside, throwing bombs.
You may work as a contracter, but you don't understand the logistics involved in writing a complex contract, let alone a patent. I agree in that laws can be writen more plainly, but you way way way oversimplfy. For example, you said "the only way to make money on a patent it to use them like landmines". While a few may make profits like this, you're ignoring the hundreds of thousands of technological innovations which would have simply never happened without intellectual property. Having seen some of these developments first hand, I can tell you flatly that your statement is simply wrong.
For example, my company is in the process of developing an artificial pancreas (read: not a frivilous device, this is a device that can save and extend the lives of millions of diabetics. A device also which many companies have tried and failed to builld already). It is a multimillion dollar project just for development. Suppose my company finished development tomorrow; it cost 50million dollars. We submit it to the FDA, and begin clinical trials. Our competitors get ahold of it. They realize the genius of our device, it seems so simple. So they copy it, and produce it at a cost of 500 dollars a unit. We on the other hand, have not only 500 dollars a unit, but also the R&D costs on top of it. How do we justify spending 50 million dollars on R&D, when our competitors can force us to compete at cost? Futhermore, how do we justify the risk (high chance of failure) to potential investors (e.g., Venture Capitalists). If 9 in 10 ventures of its kind (from their limited insight atleast) fail, the investors need that one company that suceeds to ATLEAST pay the costs of those 9 other failed companies (plus its own) to break even. That means that we need to enjoy monopoly rents on that product to make it happen. I can tell you from experience that it is simply not going to come to fruition otherwise, a great many diabetics would have their lives cut short as a result. In addition, the protection that patents offer is limited (though still valuable). History has proven that it does not take the competition long to figure out what we did right (without infringing on our patents); two to three years later, they produce competing product, price levels come down....How is this an unnecessary landmine foisted on the back of society to the benefit of only lawyers?
Anyhow, i'm going on vacation now, no reply. Bye
Ive decided to file for "A method for describing the wavelenghts of visible light as they are reflected off of objects. Includes, "Red"(C)(tm)(R),"Blue"(C)(tm)(R),"Yellow"(C)(tm)(R ),"Green"(C)(tm)(R),"Orange"(C)(tm)(R)," Black"(C)(tm)(R),"Purple"(C)(tm)(R). What do you think? :)
Why is it the Slashdotters always complain to each other but almost never try to make a difference? After reading this story on /. I emailed the editor of that website and he intends to publish my letter on their letters to the Editor page. Here's my email...
t ml):
/ oracle.html). This is a
> Mr. Orr:
>
> Thanks for your response. Can we have permission to run the letter on our
> Letter to the Editor page.
>
> To do so, I need to ask the city in which you reside or work.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Tony Aarons
> Executive Editor, Legal News
> Law.com/Law News Network
I would love to have my letter run on the Editor page. I've revised the
letter a little bit, so please use the one included below. My name and
city are are the bottom of the letter. Please also feel free to include
my e-mail address (the address listed at the bottom of the letter!).
thanks,
David Orr
**
To Victoria Slind-Flor and All Software Patent Lawyers:
I don't usually write email to people in a situation like this, but I feel
like I should say something about the "Gold Diggers" article. I'm
absolutely appalled at what it describes. I don't think someone who could
write such an article could even understand why some people would be
disgusted by it (and I'm sure you don't have any idea), but I'll make an
attempt to make my point anyway.
It is this very line of thinking that gives people reason to hate lawyers.
You don't even seem to realize that there are people out there, engineers,
scientists, even business owners, who go to work everyday happy that they
are creating something great and useful. Could your greed-driven mind
even fathom why software engineers devote their free time to creating free
open-source software? Maybe they don't want lawyers to come in and find
ways to use their ideas as "landmines" to "pounce" on other companies and
individuals who may create something that inadvertently uses similar
ideas.
The most unfortunate situations occur when patents are granted for obvious
techniques. Examples include the Amazon "one-click" patent. How
innovative is it really to keep a person's credit card number and use then
use the same number again for their next order? Or the Y2K "windowing"
patent. It is obvious that if you're writing a program that interprets
two-digit years that if they enter "10" you might want to consider it to
be 2010 and not 1910.
Whenever a software engineer creates a software program, he or she may
"invent" hundreds of little solutions such as these on the fly in the
course of creating the software. This is what programming is all about.
Software creation is unique in the respect that "inventions" occur
frequently and rapidly with very little time or money invested in them.
Programmers don't want lawyers looking over their shoulders to lay claim
to every novel idea. They also don't want to have to hire a lawyer to
sit next to them while they write programs so that they can be sure to
avoid all of the techniques that may have been patented by someone else.
This defeats a key concept behind modern software development: the
constant reuse and sharing of ideas. This is a big part of what makes
today's software technology great. And when it comes to software, keeping
an idea bottled up for 17 years is more than an eternity. The old world
patent system simply shouldn't be applied to the area of software.
To make matters worse, it seems the USPTO doesn't have the technical staff
required to interpret software patents, so they apparently are granting
virtually all software patents and leaving it up to the courts to sort
through the mess. And that's where the high-priced patent lawyers step in
to take advantage of the situation.
The result? According to Feed Magazine
(http://www.feedmag.com/daily/dy122399_master.h
"Lawsuits are threatening to dampen the dynamism of the internet because,
even when they are obviously spurious, they add so much to the cost of
doing business that soon amateurs and upstarts might not be able to
afford to compete with anyone who can afford a lawyer."
We're creating a system where companies are spending more money on patent
lawyers to defend themselves against other patent lawyers than they are
spending on creative and productive innovation. In many cases companies
that generally oppose software patents are forced to seek patents on their
own software simply so they will have a bartering chip for using patented
techniques of other companies. This is the case with companies such as
Oracle (there is a great explanation of their policy at
http://www.base.com/software-patents/statements
system created by lawyers for the benefit of lawyers.
The lawyers are clawing their way into areas where they aren't wanted for
their own greed. If this trend continues, we'll probably look back at
today as the golden age of computer software when even new young companies
could compete without the prohibitive costs of lawsuits and lawyers to
walk a minefield of patents when they want to create even the simplest
software.
David Orr (orrd101@yahoo.com)
Gainesville, Florida
After reading through a lot of the comments posted in response to this article, it seems to me that a lot of open source types are opposed to the patent system because it prevents them from simply taking what they want. Patents in general exist to allow companies and individuals to prevent others from practicing their ideas for a limited time in return for revealing their ideas to the world. Essentially, it's a motivator for innovation. You come up with a good idea, and in return for letting everyone know about it you'll be protected for a set number of years. It would be pretty tough to convince a major company, who is ultimately liable to its shareholders, to invest millions of dollars and hours of their time to create a product only to have it ripped off by the competition. Now I know many people are complaining that the patent system is "out of control" due to parties such as Amazon obtaining patents for ideas that many agree are completely obvious. Unfortunately, technology is moving so fast that attorneys and the USPTO don't have the time and resources to find every piece of prior art when it comes to software patents. Instead of simply complaining about the situation (because that will NOT change anything), the community should work within the system to effect change. The best way to do this would be to provide IP attorneys who are in the software industry and the USPTO a new resource by which to identify prior art. If patent agents at the USPTO could simply go to a well maintained site that cataloged software innovations and inventions that have been done, a lot patents that many people in software consider "obvious" would never be granted patent protection in the first place, thereby eliminating the litigation that gives lawyers such a bad name. Unfortunately, however, when someone comes up with an idea that no one has done before, even something as simple as "one click shopping" they will be granted a patent for it. The standard is obvious, not simple. Providing lawyers and the PTO with a resource to accurately identify prior art, especially obscure prior art, is probably the best solution to the problem. I guess the biggest problem is getting a group of people together to get a site up and running. Any suggestions? --The opinions expressed herein are mine alone and do not represent the opinions of my employers--