Germans and The War live in much less of a state of denial than say Americans and the atomic bomb
Who's in denial? We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. I'm not aware of any big movement denying that it happened. It was a very popular decision at the time. I don't see anybody denying that either. Yes, it was ugly and killed a lot of people, but it also ended a very, very nasty war. If you want to talk about atrocities, don't forget all the people (on both sides) shooting, shelling, and bombing each other before we dropped the Bombs. That's pretty atrocious stuff. It's not like Harry Truman just woke up one day and said, "Set up us The Bomb on Japan."
That alleged episode does not exist. For "The Impossible Planet" to exist, The Doctor would have to be such a rube that he doesn't understand that it is entirely possible for a planet to orbit a black hole without needing a "Magic Gravity Cone." I've been rather fond of The Doctor since my childhood, when I used to watch the Tom Baker shows and they'd scare the crap out of me (and I loved it), so I refuse to believe he's such a rube. The only logical explanation is that some David Tennant lookalike hijacked the TARDIS, played with the controls enough to strand himself on a planet orbiting a black hole, and then started spewing some technobabble nonsense to try to impress Rose (because I can easily believe that she's thick enough not to understand that a planet can orbit a black hole). What we didn't see was between episodes, when The Doctor hunted down the imposter, gave him One Warning(tm), offered him a chance to live a peaceful life on Politzan Seven, and when he refused, dumped him into the black hole with a stony, grim expression on his face.
Interesting theory. Normally, respondeat superior only applies to an employee's activities when he's in the course and scope of employment. But if the company is broadly asserting ownership over all IP, I suppose you could credibly argue that he's in the course and scope (after all, he's creating value for the company). If I represented the company, I think my counter-argument would be that even if creating the IP was in the course and scope, distributing it without permission, in derogation of the company's commercial interests, certainly was not.
Somebody should definitely write a law review article on this topic, unless there's some slam dunk case law that's on point, in which case some law student with free Westlaw access should definitely look it up.
Replying to myself for the sake of completeness. Your employer may own your Great American Novel, even if it's not in the course and scope of your employment. If they have a written employment agreement with your signature on it that says they own all IP you create while employed there, it's theirs. But again, this has nothing to do with whether they reimbursed you for a computer. Either they own it or they don't.
A copyright assignment must be in writing. The exception is if it is work done by an employee in the course and scope of employment, but I doubt that writing the Great American Novel is in his job description. And if it were, the company would own it, whether or not they reimburse him for the laptop. So, while I hasten to point out that this is not legal advice, if the company owns your copyrights, they probably already own it by virtue of the employment agreement. They cannot purchase your copyrights by reimbursing you for a laptop. Note that there may, of course, be other ramifications. For example, if the laptop is "their" property, they may acquire certain "shop rights" if you use it to develop a technology that you later patent. And of course, the real answer is "get a lawyer if you're concerned about it." Of course, hiring a lawyer can easily exceed the reimbursement you get, so you've got to look at the tradeoffs.
If something goes wrong, intentional or otherwise, and the schedule that all these people look at through the phone is incorrect... who's gonna get the angry customer call? The train company.
That may be a valid concern, but it still doesn't make the information copyrightable. And if it happens, the response is, "Sir, you will need to contact the owner of your iPhone app. The only official schedule is this printed one, which shows the right times. We don't control that app, and we don't take responsibility for the information on it. Have a nice day."
Even more than that, information is in the public domain. You cannot copyright the fact that a particular train is supposed to arrive at a particular stop at a particular time. You may be able to copyright your layout of your brochure, and the nifty graphics you put all over it, but there is no creative expression to the fact of a bus schedule.
And still more, is convenience and efficiency so anathema to government that they feel the need to stamp it out wherever they see it, even if it's not costing them anything? Have they considered that maybe MORE people will ride the rail system if they have schedules conveniently accessible?
I really shouldn't respond to this, but whatever, I'm feeling saucy. Let's recount where this has gone:
Robin: Holy Flaming Obviousness, Batman! This is just a patent on metadata! How is that not obvious?
Batman: No, Boy Wonder. That's not how patents work. You have to go through the entire claim, word-by-word, and read it in light of the specification and the file wrapper to know how broad or narrow a claim is. You can't just say, "This is a patent on 'blah' broad concept." It just doesn't work like that.
Robin: But Batman, this is just a patent on metadata. I think that's obvious. The concept of metadata has been known for a long time!
Batman: Boy Wonder, did you even read what I wrote? THAT'S NOT HOW PATENTS WORK. Each and every word in a patent claim has a specific meaning, and you don't even know exactly what it is until you've hashed it out in court for months on end. I have, myself, literally been in intense litigation of the meaning of the word "is" in a patent claim.
Robin: [Disguising himself with a sock puppet, to give a false appearance of outside support] But Robin is right, Batman. I sincerely believe that this is just a patent on metadata. Furthermore, I am going to wave my hands and treat your reasonable explanations of patent law lightly and contemptuously, claiming that you are just waving your hands to confuse the issue.
Batman: Boy Wonder, since you obstinately refuse to get the point, and since you have treated my explanations contemptuously, I will take the liberty to treat your argument a little contemptuously. Your belief may be just as sincere as my daughter's belief in the Tooth Fairy, but it is just as uninformed and wrong. Note that I have made no personal attacks on you, I have merely pointed out that your belief in something that is wrong does not make it true.
Robin: Now you're just waving your hands and attacking the man, Batman.
Batman: No, Boy Wonder. Attacking the man would have been if I had said what I wanted to, which was, "She's six. What's your excuse?" But I refrained at the time because it would have been rude and in poor taste. In any case, I have done my civic duty by trying to explain how patents work to people who seem to have passionate feelings about how patents affect them. But I see now that they are actually just wanting to whine about "the Establishment," and complain about things they don't understand (and don't want to understand). So I will cede the point. You may respond and besmirch my honor if you like. I'm done.
large Open Office installations are in Europe where the patent won't apply anyway.
Actually, the U.S. patent will not apply at all in Europe, or Mexico, or China, or Japan, or anywhere else. It's strictly national. It looks like there's a Canadian patent in the family, but I don't see any others (with the caveat that I am not offering legal advice about whether or not this is patented or not in any particular country).
You still don't understand. This isn't a patent on metadata. This is a patent on what is in the claims. Each and every word of the claims has a specific meaning that limits the scope of the claim. You don't infringe the patent unless you infringe every word of the claim. You can't just summarize a claim and then say, "Look, it's obvious." Parties in litigation spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and more fighting about what all those words mean. And these claims are teeming with "means-plus-function" limitations, which means it's even more complicated to determine what they mean.
I will say this again. If there were any decent prior art on these claims, you can bet Microsoft wouldn't be playing Wookie defense.
Permit me to be more precise. All determinations of obviousness are necessarily made in hindsight. By the time anybody examines a patent or patent application, the invention has already been disclosed. But obviousness cannot be evaluated in light of that hindsight. Even clever things look simple and obvious once you know about them. So the person evaluating the validity of the patent must fictionally place himself in the shoes of a person having ordinary skill in the art on the day of invention, and then ask, "Is the invention obvious." The weed eater patent was overturned because a judge decided that it was obvious when it was invented, not that it is obvious now that it has been invented.
You really believe nine out of ten people here would file software patents? You obviously haven't been paying attention.
No, I don't think they're that smart. I said they would feel ripped off and want to sue when Microsoft took their work. If they were smart enough to file a software patent (and they actually had something worth patenting), they would have something to sue for. If they weren't, they'd just have their own impotent rage.
Can i4i show that MS knew about their product before implementing the functionality in Word?
A necessary showing for willful infringement is that the defendant actually knew about the patent.
I don't think MS should be punished for re-inventing something independently. (IANAL, I don't know how patents are supposed to work when two people independently invent the same thing, but I would suppose it would be treated as if it were malicious patent infringement anyway.)
While you wouldn't be hit for willful infringement under these circumstances, you can still be sued for infringement. Patent law is not concerned with whether you "copied" a patented invention. It's just whether your invention reads on the issued claims. (Contrast this to copyright law, which is all about copying. For example, you could write a book about a young wizard named "Harry Potter" who goes to a school called "Hogwarts," and if you could somehow prove that you've never had access to JK Rowling's books---perhaps you wrote it while stranded on an island for 20 years---then you would not be guilty of copyright infringement).
Ok. The patent is on XML authoring. How is storing any kind of data in XML non-obvious?
Actually, U.S. Patent 5,787,449 is a patent on "a computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content; said system comprising:
metacode map distinct storage means;
means for providing a menu of metacodes to said metacode storage means;
and means for compiling said metacodes of the menu by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes in the document to constitute the map and storing the map in the metacode storage means; and
means for resolving the content and the metacode map into the document." It is also a patent on "A method for producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content and stored in distinct map storage means, the method comprising:
providing the mapped content to mapped content storage means;
providing a menu of metacodes; and
compiling a map of the metacodes in the distinct storage means, by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes; and
providing the document as the content of the document and the metacode map of the document." And finally, it is a patent on "A method for producing from a document made up of metacodes and content, a map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content of the document and stored in distinct map storage means, the method comprising:
(a) reading the content of the document until a metacode is found;
(b) copying the content and storing the copied content in a mapped content storage;
(c) noting in the map the found metacode and its position in the content;
(d) repeating the processing of (a)-(c) until the entire document has been processed; and then
(e) providing the document as the content of the document separately from the metacode map of the document."
Apparently, I cannot say this enough times on Slashdot. A patent's scope is determined by its claims, not by your vague, fleeting impression of the title, or a fleeting summary by some tech editor.
Obviousness is not judged in hindsight. The fact that you can implement an invention after you see somebody else doing it doesn't invalidate the invention. If that were the case, there would be no such thing as a valid invention, because they're all obvious in hindsight. It's like when a magician shows you how he did a trick that totally baffled you, and you think, "Well, of COURSE, that was obvious." The point of a patent is, you tell us how to do a trick, and we'll keep others from performing it for a while.
Without looking at the patent, you haven't a clue what the patent is. You can't just look at the title and think you understand the patent. The scope of a patent is entirely defined by its claims. Until you have spent hours picking apart the claims, the specification, and the file wrapper, you don't know how broad the claims are or whether you could implement them, or what "basic idea" they cover. And if you are able to implement them after you've picked through the patent, that's pretty good evidence that the claims were properly enabled. In fact, in some recent litigation, one of our arguments was that the patent was invalid because after working all the way through the patent, we couldn't implement the invention.
It's willful infringement, which means they were fully aware of the patent and decided to do it anyway. Before we just dismiss i4i as trolls, maybe we could consider the possibility that they did something innovative and Microsoft flagrantly ripped it off, giving them the finger and saying, "If you don't like it, we'll see you in court." Maybe you don't like software patents, but they are the law. i4i layed down a lot of money to get a patent issued because the current state of the law made that patent valuable. Seriously, everybody on/. seems to assume that every single patent infringement lawsuit is a "patent troll." But patent law is a lot more complicated than that. And I imagine that about nine out of ten people here would have the exact same reaction if Microsoft ripped off their product: let's sue.
Using patents to prevent Microsoft from competing is anti-competitive.
That's because patents are inherently anti-competitive. A patent is a limited-term monopoly expressly granted by the government. That's the whole idea.
And your naive and simplified free market solution is unrealistic. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of free markets too. But they're not flawless and universally efficient. If i4i were to compete head-to-head against Microsoft, they would get crushed regardless of the quality of their product.
Fortunately for them, the USPTO has, pursuant to its statutory authority (which is well-grounded in the constitution, unlike about 90% of what the federal government does), granted them a limited monopoly. They now have the right to enforce that monopoly in the courts, which means they get a chance to compete.
The alternative is that MegaCorps get to decide every single product and service that is available to you. There would be no way for disruptive technologies to get a footing. All startups could be crushed at inception, because their ideas (the only asset where they may possibly have an edge on the MegaCorp) would be free for the taking. MegaCorp gets to decide what you can buy and what you can't (and in what form). Sounds like Utopia, huh?
There should be a "+1, Actually Read the Claims" mod.
And if I understand "communication between the electronic device and an external device" without actually bothering to read the Spec, it sounds to me like Apple has added the lovely feature that it phones home. That's sure to be a winner around here.
Other than this piece of nonsense, which I take to mean "you can use just about any channel for communications", the patent is very similar to a soccer team call-down list.
The problem is, you can't just generalize a claim term like that. The patentee cannot just go into court, and say, "Your honor, this limitation just means that you can use just about any channel for communications. So they infringe." And the defendant can't go into court and say, "Your honor, this just says... so this prior art anticipates it." Each and every word in that big, long, messy clause has a meaning and limits the scope of the claim. You can't just discount the fact, for example, that the message is transmitted through at least two industry-standard gateways simultaneously. If Twitter doesn't do that (and I have no idea if it does), it doesn't infringe. What I am certain of is that a 10-second reading of the abstract by a mob of angry Slashdotters is utterly insufficient to determine whether the patent is (1) valid and (2) infringed by Twitter.
The guys approving these patents must not be spending more than 5 minutes on them.
A little exaggerated, but sadly more or less true. The patent examiners are under tremendous pressure to process cases quickly, and I know from personal experience that this can result in both bad rejections and bad allowances.
Slashdot Mirror
Germans and The War live in much less of a state of denial than say Americans and the atomic bomb
Who's in denial? We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. I'm not aware of any big movement denying that it happened. It was a very popular decision at the time. I don't see anybody denying that either. Yes, it was ugly and killed a lot of people, but it also ended a very, very nasty war. If you want to talk about atrocities, don't forget all the people (on both sides) shooting, shelling, and bombing each other before we dropped the Bombs. That's pretty atrocious stuff. It's not like Harry Truman just woke up one day and said, "Set up us The Bomb on Japan."
That alleged episode does not exist. For "The Impossible Planet" to exist, The Doctor would have to be such a rube that he doesn't understand that it is entirely possible for a planet to orbit a black hole without needing a "Magic Gravity Cone." I've been rather fond of The Doctor since my childhood, when I used to watch the Tom Baker shows and they'd scare the crap out of me (and I loved it), so I refuse to believe he's such a rube. The only logical explanation is that some David Tennant lookalike hijacked the TARDIS, played with the controls enough to strand himself on a planet orbiting a black hole, and then started spewing some technobabble nonsense to try to impress Rose (because I can easily believe that she's thick enough not to understand that a planet can orbit a black hole). What we didn't see was between episodes, when The Doctor hunted down the imposter, gave him One Warning(tm), offered him a chance to live a peaceful life on Politzan Seven, and when he refused, dumped him into the black hole with a stony, grim expression on his face.
Interesting theory. Normally, respondeat superior only applies to an employee's activities when he's in the course and scope of employment. But if the company is broadly asserting ownership over all IP, I suppose you could credibly argue that he's in the course and scope (after all, he's creating value for the company). If I represented the company, I think my counter-argument would be that even if creating the IP was in the course and scope, distributing it without permission, in derogation of the company's commercial interests, certainly was not.
Somebody should definitely write a law review article on this topic, unless there's some slam dunk case law that's on point, in which case some law student with free Westlaw access should definitely look it up.
Replying to myself for the sake of completeness. Your employer may own your Great American Novel, even if it's not in the course and scope of your employment. If they have a written employment agreement with your signature on it that says they own all IP you create while employed there, it's theirs. But again, this has nothing to do with whether they reimbursed you for a computer. Either they own it or they don't.
A copyright assignment must be in writing. The exception is if it is work done by an employee in the course and scope of employment, but I doubt that writing the Great American Novel is in his job description. And if it were, the company would own it, whether or not they reimburse him for the laptop. So, while I hasten to point out that this is not legal advice, if the company owns your copyrights, they probably already own it by virtue of the employment agreement. They cannot purchase your copyrights by reimbursing you for a laptop. Note that there may, of course, be other ramifications. For example, if the laptop is "their" property, they may acquire certain "shop rights" if you use it to develop a technology that you later patent. And of course, the real answer is "get a lawyer if you're concerned about it." Of course, hiring a lawyer can easily exceed the reimbursement you get, so you've got to look at the tradeoffs.
If something goes wrong, intentional or otherwise, and the schedule that all these people look at through the phone is incorrect... who's gonna get the angry customer call? The train company.
That may be a valid concern, but it still doesn't make the information copyrightable. And if it happens, the response is, "Sir, you will need to contact the owner of your iPhone app. The only official schedule is this printed one, which shows the right times. We don't control that app, and we don't take responsibility for the information on it. Have a nice day."
rail and bus information is public domain.
Even more than that, information is in the public domain. You cannot copyright the fact that a particular train is supposed to arrive at a particular stop at a particular time. You may be able to copyright your layout of your brochure, and the nifty graphics you put all over it, but there is no creative expression to the fact of a bus schedule.
And still more, is convenience and efficiency so anathema to government that they feel the need to stamp it out wherever they see it, even if it's not costing them anything? Have they considered that maybe MORE people will ride the rail system if they have schedules conveniently accessible?
I'd be more interested in a robot that would have no trouble climbing stairs
Or better yet, leveling the building.
I really shouldn't respond to this, but whatever, I'm feeling saucy. Let's recount where this has gone:
Robin: Holy Flaming Obviousness, Batman! This is just a patent on metadata! How is that not obvious?
Batman: No, Boy Wonder. That's not how patents work. You have to go through the entire claim, word-by-word, and read it in light of the specification and the file wrapper to know how broad or narrow a claim is. You can't just say, "This is a patent on 'blah' broad concept." It just doesn't work like that.
Robin: But Batman, this is just a patent on metadata. I think that's obvious. The concept of metadata has been known for a long time!
Batman: Boy Wonder, did you even read what I wrote? THAT'S NOT HOW PATENTS WORK. Each and every word in a patent claim has a specific meaning, and you don't even know exactly what it is until you've hashed it out in court for months on end. I have, myself, literally been in intense litigation of the meaning of the word "is" in a patent claim.
Robin: [Disguising himself with a sock puppet, to give a false appearance of outside support] But Robin is right, Batman. I sincerely believe that this is just a patent on metadata. Furthermore, I am going to wave my hands and treat your reasonable explanations of patent law lightly and contemptuously, claiming that you are just waving your hands to confuse the issue.
Batman: Boy Wonder, since you obstinately refuse to get the point, and since you have treated my explanations contemptuously, I will take the liberty to treat your argument a little contemptuously. Your belief may be just as sincere as my daughter's belief in the Tooth Fairy, but it is just as uninformed and wrong. Note that I have made no personal attacks on you, I have merely pointed out that your belief in something that is wrong does not make it true.
Robin: Now you're just waving your hands and attacking the man, Batman.
Batman: No, Boy Wonder. Attacking the man would have been if I had said what I wanted to, which was, "She's six. What's your excuse?" But I refrained at the time because it would have been rude and in poor taste. In any case, I have done my civic duty by trying to explain how patents work to people who seem to have passionate feelings about how patents affect them. But I see now that they are actually just wanting to whine about "the Establishment," and complain about things they don't understand (and don't want to understand). So I will cede the point. You may respond and besmirch my honor if you like. I'm done.
...and, it looks like we had a little problem with the href tag. The Canadian patent shows up here.
large Open Office installations are in Europe where the patent won't apply anyway.
Actually, the U.S. patent will not apply at all in Europe, or Mexico, or China, or Japan, or anywhere else. It's strictly national. It looks like there's a Canadian patent in the family, but I don't see any others (with the caveat that I am not offering legal advice about whether or not this is patented or not in any particular country).
I think the GP poster had it correct, it _is_ a patent about metadata.
And my six-year-old thinks that the Tooth Fairy leaves quarters under pillows. That doesn't make it true.
You still don't understand. This isn't a patent on metadata. This is a patent on what is in the claims. Each and every word of the claims has a specific meaning that limits the scope of the claim. You don't infringe the patent unless you infringe every word of the claim. You can't just summarize a claim and then say, "Look, it's obvious." Parties in litigation spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and more fighting about what all those words mean. And these claims are teeming with "means-plus-function" limitations, which means it's even more complicated to determine what they mean.
I will say this again. If there were any decent prior art on these claims, you can bet Microsoft wouldn't be playing Wookie defense.
Permit me to be more precise. All determinations of obviousness are necessarily made in hindsight. By the time anybody examines a patent or patent application, the invention has already been disclosed. But obviousness cannot be evaluated in light of that hindsight. Even clever things look simple and obvious once you know about them. So the person evaluating the validity of the patent must fictionally place himself in the shoes of a person having ordinary skill in the art on the day of invention, and then ask, "Is the invention obvious." The weed eater patent was overturned because a judge decided that it was obvious when it was invented, not that it is obvious now that it has been invented.
You really believe nine out of ten people here would file software patents? You obviously haven't been paying attention.
No, I don't think they're that smart. I said they would feel ripped off and want to sue when Microsoft took their work. If they were smart enough to file a software patent (and they actually had something worth patenting), they would have something to sue for. If they weren't, they'd just have their own impotent rage.
Can i4i show that MS knew about their product before implementing the functionality in Word?
A necessary showing for willful infringement is that the defendant actually knew about the patent.
I don't think MS should be punished for re-inventing something independently. (IANAL, I don't know how patents are supposed to work when two people independently invent the same thing, but I would suppose it would be treated as if it were malicious patent infringement anyway.)
While you wouldn't be hit for willful infringement under these circumstances, you can still be sued for infringement. Patent law is not concerned with whether you "copied" a patented invention. It's just whether your invention reads on the issued claims. (Contrast this to copyright law, which is all about copying. For example, you could write a book about a young wizard named "Harry Potter" who goes to a school called "Hogwarts," and if you could somehow prove that you've never had access to JK Rowling's books---perhaps you wrote it while stranded on an island for 20 years---then you would not be guilty of copyright infringement).
Ok. The patent is on XML authoring. How is storing any kind of data in XML non-obvious?
Actually, U.S. Patent 5,787,449 is a patent on "a computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content; said system comprising: metacode map distinct storage means; means for providing a menu of metacodes to said metacode storage means; and means for compiling said metacodes of the menu by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes in the document to constitute the map and storing the map in the metacode storage means; and means for resolving the content and the metacode map into the document." It is also a patent on "A method for producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content and stored in distinct map storage means, the method comprising: providing the mapped content to mapped content storage means; providing a menu of metacodes; and compiling a map of the metacodes in the distinct storage means, by locating, detecting and addressing the metacodes; and providing the document as the content of the document and the metacode map of the document." And finally, it is a patent on "A method for producing from a document made up of metacodes and content, a map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content of the document and stored in distinct map storage means, the method comprising: (a) reading the content of the document until a metacode is found; (b) copying the content and storing the copied content in a mapped content storage; (c) noting in the map the found metacode and its position in the content; (d) repeating the processing of (a)-(c) until the entire document has been processed; and then (e) providing the document as the content of the document separately from the metacode map of the document."
Apparently, I cannot say this enough times on Slashdot. A patent's scope is determined by its claims, not by your vague, fleeting impression of the title, or a fleeting summary by some tech editor.
Obviousness is not judged in hindsight. The fact that you can implement an invention after you see somebody else doing it doesn't invalidate the invention. If that were the case, there would be no such thing as a valid invention, because they're all obvious in hindsight. It's like when a magician shows you how he did a trick that totally baffled you, and you think, "Well, of COURSE, that was obvious." The point of a patent is, you tell us how to do a trick, and we'll keep others from performing it for a while.
without looking at the patent
Without looking at the patent, you haven't a clue what the patent is. You can't just look at the title and think you understand the patent. The scope of a patent is entirely defined by its claims. Until you have spent hours picking apart the claims, the specification, and the file wrapper, you don't know how broad the claims are or whether you could implement them, or what "basic idea" they cover. And if you are able to implement them after you've picked through the patent, that's pretty good evidence that the claims were properly enabled. In fact, in some recent litigation, one of our arguments was that the patent was invalid because after working all the way through the patent, we couldn't implement the invention.
It's willful infringement, which means they were fully aware of the patent and decided to do it anyway. Before we just dismiss i4i as trolls, maybe we could consider the possibility that they did something innovative and Microsoft flagrantly ripped it off, giving them the finger and saying, "If you don't like it, we'll see you in court." Maybe you don't like software patents, but they are the law. i4i layed down a lot of money to get a patent issued because the current state of the law made that patent valuable. Seriously, everybody on /. seems to assume that every single patent infringement lawsuit is a "patent troll." But patent law is a lot more complicated than that. And I imagine that about nine out of ten people here would have the exact same reaction if Microsoft ripped off their product: let's sue.
Using patents to prevent Microsoft from competing is anti-competitive.
That's because patents are inherently anti-competitive. A patent is a limited-term monopoly expressly granted by the government. That's the whole idea.
And your naive and simplified free market solution is unrealistic. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of free markets too. But they're not flawless and universally efficient. If i4i were to compete head-to-head against Microsoft, they would get crushed regardless of the quality of their product.
Fortunately for them, the USPTO has, pursuant to its statutory authority (which is well-grounded in the constitution, unlike about 90% of what the federal government does), granted them a limited monopoly. They now have the right to enforce that monopoly in the courts, which means they get a chance to compete.
The alternative is that MegaCorps get to decide every single product and service that is available to you. There would be no way for disruptive technologies to get a footing. All startups could be crushed at inception, because their ideas (the only asset where they may possibly have an edge on the MegaCorp) would be free for the taking. MegaCorp gets to decide what you can buy and what you can't (and in what form). Sounds like Utopia, huh?
Or just blame the guy in front of you. "Hey, I came here to vote, and all this machine will let me do is play Pac Man."
There should be a "+1, Actually Read the Claims" mod.
And if I understand "communication between the electronic device and an external device" without actually bothering to read the Spec, it sounds to me like Apple has added the lovely feature that it phones home. That's sure to be a winner around here.
Other than this piece of nonsense, which I take to mean "you can use just about any channel for communications", the patent is very similar to a soccer team call-down list.
The problem is, you can't just generalize a claim term like that. The patentee cannot just go into court, and say, "Your honor, this limitation just means that you can use just about any channel for communications. So they infringe." And the defendant can't go into court and say, "Your honor, this just says ... so this prior art anticipates it." Each and every word in that big, long, messy clause has a meaning and limits the scope of the claim. You can't just discount the fact, for example, that the message is transmitted through at least two industry-standard gateways simultaneously. If Twitter doesn't do that (and I have no idea if it does), it doesn't infringe. What I am certain of is that a 10-second reading of the abstract by a mob of angry Slashdotters is utterly insufficient to determine whether the patent is (1) valid and (2) infringed by Twitter.
The guys approving these patents must not be spending more than 5 minutes on them.
A little exaggerated, but sadly more or less true. The patent examiners are under tremendous pressure to process cases quickly, and I know from personal experience that this can result in both bad rejections and bad allowances.
Does this patent event fit Twitter?
That's what the trial determines.