The GPL is a license, violating a license is not the same as violating copyright. You aren't suing over money, you are suing to have the source code released. There are so many differences between your analogy and what's going on here I don't know where to start.
You clearly don't understand the GPL. The GPL is a license to a copyrighted work. It conditionally grants the licensee the right to do certain things that are reserved exclusively to the copyright owner under copyright law. It purports to rely solely on copyright law for its enforceability (I asked RMS point blank at a public appearance about a month ago whether he thought it had any contractual provisions, and he said "No. It's strictly a license"). That means that if you violate the GPL, the only legal claim that the FSF would pursue against you is copyright violation. It would not be interested in asserting any contract claims.
So the only real difference is the copyright on GPL software gives you a warm fuzzy, but the copyright on books doesn't.
That's like saying "the crumbs on the floor are not ants." It's a factually true statement, but it's hardly a useful one. It would be more useful to say that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. But correlation very often does mean something. The fact that correlation does not necessarily imply causation does not mean that correlation somehow implies non-causation. At the very least, correlation implies "maybe there's something here we should look into a little more closely."
In that case you're only infringing on the patent if you somehow sell or use this gene alone, and not in some derivative product.
The problem, as I understand it, is that you have to use the isolated gene to do anything useful from a pharmaceutical perspective. That's why the patent is valid---it covers the gene in the only form in which it is medically useful. Of course, I am not a biochemist, so somebody who is can feel free to correct me.
Taking six years and multiple rejections is NOT extraordinary for getting a patent issued. Six years is on the longer-side of normal (with 3 to 4 on the shorter side), and multiple rejections is pretty much how the USPTO does business. A lot of those rejections are just BS that the examiner tosses out because they get incentives for forcing applicans into RCEs (what? You don't know what an RCE is? Then you are just complaining about something you know nothing about). Seriously, while there are some bad patents out there, this one is not terribly egregious. It's not like he'll be able to use it to pull a BT and "sue the internet."
Just to add a little clarity, you cannot patent anything that occurs in nature. But these folks managed to convince the courts that these genes are not naturally occuring because they don't occur alone in nature. They always occur in some kind of gene sequence. It's somewhat analogous to if gold only occurred naturally in ore, and you were therefore granted a patent on pure gold once you figured out how to extract it. I'm not saying this is good (in fact, I think it's ridiculous), but that's the theory.
Normally ACs aren't worth replying to, but just a couple of points. The article he linked to describes a citizen of Qatar, not an American citizen. So that doesn't have anything to do with anything. My point was that your average geek is not engaged in armed conflict against U.S. military personnel, and is therefore NOT in danger of being labeled an "illegal enemy combatant."
Now, the AC might have linked to something on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which would be a little closer to the point. Like I said, there are those who would like to hold Hamdi as a combatant without the benefit of habeus corpus. But the Supreme Court held (rightly, I believe) that a U.S. citizen has constitutional rights, even if he's captured while fighting with the enemy. So AC, what's your point?
any american geek who prods too deeply will be branded an enemy combatant.
If he's an American geek (as in citizen of the U.S.), there's no "branding" him an enemy combatant. He is a citizen entitled to due process. He would be tried in a federal district court. Unless he's also caught in the hills of Afghanistan carrying a weapon with a Taliban squad, in which case there are those who would treat him as an enemy combatant. But I don't think that's your average geek.
I'm normally the first one up there with you saying all these rubes on/. are overreacting. But I read the claims, and they're actually WORSE than the summary. The first independent claim looks like "restricting meetings to a definite time." It doesn't even say 40 minutes. It's just a definite time restriction. Now granted, this claim won't be allowed, but... wow.
Ironically, if people understood the law better, I'd probably have more work. People who understand the legal issues surrounding general partnerships and inventions know that they are playing with fire if they don't have some kind of LLC or S-Corp. to put their stuff in. They know how important it is to document things and think in advance. And they know that in school and practice I've seen a lot of issues they've never even considered, so I can draft language that will help prevent problems from arising. It's not because I'm smarter than they are. Some of my clients are absolute geniuses (others, not so much). It's because this is what I do every day.
I just litigated a case where (depending on whom you believe) either A stole B's invention after "leaving the fold," or B tried to come in and pretend he (and their loose partnership) was involved with the invention after he saw that A was on the brink of making a lot of money. Nasty, nasty business divorce. And the whole issue could have been avoided if the parties had a clear agreement in the first place.
I sincerely doubt that someone can progress to the level of appointment to the supreme court without having learned to recognize bullshit when they see it.
You've obviously never ready any of Harry Blackmun's opinions.
I work for a big firm that does a lot of insurance defense, so I'm ethically obligated to disagree with GrifterCC;-)
But really, while the law is not magic, it is very, very complicated. For example, if you're Average Joe, and you get served by Big Out of State Corporation (let's say it's a patent infringement case, and you're sued in the ED Tex.), your first impulse will probably be to shoot off an answer to the court saying, "No, court, they're full of it. This is nothing like their patent."
Two problems: chances are, you have no idea how patent claims work (because, in fact, most ATTORNEYS have no idea how patent claims work), so you really don't know if you infringe. And even worse, let's say you're running your little business out of Middle of Nowhere, ND, you've never left the state, and all your sales are local. Congratulations! You've just consented to jurisdiction in the great state of Texas! No going back. No do-overs. No appeals. You're going to Marshall.
Yes, you could have done some research on personal jurisdiction. Yes, you could have read Pennoyer v. Neff and International Shoe and the whole line of cases (after which, you would be even more confused). Yes, you could have gone down to the nearest law school library and done some research on special appearances, but you didn't even know that you needed to.
You hire a lawyer not because he knows everything, but because he has a pretty good idea of what he doesn't know and where to look for answers.
And since I'm a patent attorney, I have to throw this in: drafting patents (especially the claims) pretty much is black magic. Pro se patent applications (including pro se applications drafted by attorneys who are not patent attorneys) are almost uniformly worthless. Do not try this at home. You will fail. It will not blend.
As we all know the Wall Street Journal has been succesful in charging for content
But people (at least ostensibly) use the WSJ to make money. So it can be considered a sort of investment. There is no way I'm going to pay any amount of money to let Rupert Murdoch and his cronies tell me what to think, and I think a lot of people feel the same. It's just not important enough to me.
Was he using the name in commerce as a source identifier for goods and services? No? Then it's not a trademark. And even if it was, he couldn't assert it against a boat unless he was selling Shadowfax-branded boats. Trademark doesn't give you "ownership" of a name or word. It gives you the right to prevent others from using it as a confusingly-similar source identifier for goods and/or services.
Bottom line, there's pretty much nothing Tolkein could do to stop somebody from naming his hydrofoil "Shadowfax." He doesn't own the word just because he made it up.
You're forgetting one important thing: derivative works. Sure, Rowling's publishers wouldn't want to bump her off, because they'd lose their monopoly. And the existing books wouldn't be worth a whole lot. It would be about like re-publishing Victor Hugo or Jane Austen
But we're talking about the ability to make MOVIES while Potter is still hot, and churn out scads of sequels with an army of sweatshop writers (and since it's a collaborative work, we'll just give it to the corp., which means it gets a tidy 95-year copyright, regardless of whom you kill). So while I was being a little tongue-in-cheek, there ARE really big financial incentives, especially if you are guaranteed the ability to cash in while a craze is still hot.
Also, you only go to prison if you get caught. That's why you hire a professional. If they can't catch him, they can't catch you.
Seriously, if copyright were tied to death + only a short time, JK Rowling would be toast. All the publishing houses would be hiring professional hitmen. And striking it big with the Great American Novel would pretty much be your death knell.
On the other hand, that sound like a good setting for some kind of post-apocalyptic copyright thriller.
The idea is all the states would have to do it at once. Nobody wants to do it all alone, because then everybody else is still important, but we're not (in fact, I think it was Colorado that recently had a proposal to assign their electors proportionally, and it was predictably defeated). Basically, your state would only have a handful of electors "in play" while Pennsylvia would still have a bunch, so everybody would ignore you while they fell all over themselves to subsidize steel. If we had a constitutional amendment, then everybody would have to do it all together (and there wouldn't be so much incentive to subsidize steel, because there would only be a couple of electors directly tied to the PA steel territories).
If there is no majority in the U.S. Presidential election, the House picks the President. But I'm not aware of that ever happening.
If you're thinking of 50% of the "popular vote," you have a fundamental problem, because there is no popular vote in the U.S. It's a fiction of the media's imagination. The people do not elect the President. They vote for electors, who vote for President and Vice President.
What would be interesting is if all the states went from a "winner takes all" model to picking electors by congressional district and then awarding the two extra electors based on the candidate with a statewide plurality. In that case, a third-party candidate would actually have a chance of not just picking up a few percentage points in the fictional "popular vote", but actually picking up some electors, which could throw a wrench in the major parties' calculus of states. Imagine, for example, if we had done this in 1992. Perot probably would have picked up a fair number of electors, and there would not have been a majority. Yes, it would have gone to the House then, and they would have elected Clinton anyway since the Dems had a majority. But it sure would have been interesting.
Of course, states don't want to do this voluntarily, because it dilutes their relative importance (and therefore dilutes their ability to demand favors). We'd have to do it by constitutional amendment if we do it at all.
The problem with proportional representation is the moron / idiot / joke candidates can pick up enough votes on a national populous to get a seat. Once in, they'll be voted for again, as a joke. Try getting them out, you can't. Ask France about P.R. voting fallout.
Why bother going to France? Just ask Minnesota. They seem to manage this regularly. It was mildly amusing with Jesse Ventura. You want a trained gorilla as your governor, that's your business. But now they've getting ready to send a fictional character to the real, honest-to-goodness U.S. Senate. Somebody needs to tell Minnesota that the folks in the little box are just moving pictures. They're NOT REAL. And a candidate for major political office should, AT A MINIMUM, be a real person.
Wow, I guess I'm just an old fogie. Back in my day, we had the SMS and then the Genesis, and neither of those were capable of serving food. They just played video games.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL is a license, violating a license is not the same as violating copyright. You aren't suing over money, you are suing to have the source code released. There are so many differences between your analogy and what's going on here I don't know where to start.
You clearly don't understand the GPL. The GPL is a license to a copyrighted work. It conditionally grants the licensee the right to do certain things that are reserved exclusively to the copyright owner under copyright law. It purports to rely solely on copyright law for its enforceability (I asked RMS point blank at a public appearance about a month ago whether he thought it had any contractual provisions, and he said "No. It's strictly a license"). That means that if you violate the GPL, the only legal claim that the FSF would pursue against you is copyright violation. It would not be interested in asserting any contract claims.
So the only real difference is the copyright on GPL software gives you a warm fuzzy, but the copyright on books doesn't.
That's like saying "the crumbs on the floor are not ants." It's a factually true statement, but it's hardly a useful one. It would be more useful to say that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. But correlation very often does mean something. The fact that correlation does not necessarily imply causation does not mean that correlation somehow implies non-causation. At the very least, correlation implies "maybe there's something here we should look into a little more closely."
Biotech is not my field either. But it doesn't sound like the gene appears physically separate in nature. So they get the patent (at least for now).
In that case you're only infringing on the patent if you somehow sell or use this gene alone, and not in some derivative product.
The problem, as I understand it, is that you have to use the isolated gene to do anything useful from a pharmaceutical perspective. That's why the patent is valid---it covers the gene in the only form in which it is medically useful. Of course, I am not a biochemist, so somebody who is can feel free to correct me.
Taking six years and multiple rejections is NOT extraordinary for getting a patent issued. Six years is on the longer-side of normal (with 3 to 4 on the shorter side), and multiple rejections is pretty much how the USPTO does business. A lot of those rejections are just BS that the examiner tosses out because they get incentives for forcing applicans into RCEs (what? You don't know what an RCE is? Then you are just complaining about something you know nothing about). Seriously, while there are some bad patents out there, this one is not terribly egregious. It's not like he'll be able to use it to pull a BT and "sue the internet."
GP was correct to cite the claim. The abstract means nothing. The patent is on the isolated gene.
Just to add a little clarity, you cannot patent anything that occurs in nature. But these folks managed to convince the courts that these genes are not naturally occuring because they don't occur alone in nature. They always occur in some kind of gene sequence. It's somewhat analogous to if gold only occurred naturally in ore, and you were therefore granted a patent on pure gold once you figured out how to extract it. I'm not saying this is good (in fact, I think it's ridiculous), but that's the theory.
None of which matters, because "reasonable" means what the courts say it means.
And don't forget, turning up this soft soil may reveal something important.
Especially if the "soft soil" turns out to be warm poo.
Normally ACs aren't worth replying to, but just a couple of points. The article he linked to describes a citizen of Qatar, not an American citizen. So that doesn't have anything to do with anything. My point was that your average geek is not engaged in armed conflict against U.S. military personnel, and is therefore NOT in danger of being labeled an "illegal enemy combatant."
Now, the AC might have linked to something on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which would be a little closer to the point. Like I said, there are those who would like to hold Hamdi as a combatant without the benefit of habeus corpus. But the Supreme Court held (rightly, I believe) that a U.S. citizen has constitutional rights, even if he's captured while fighting with the enemy. So AC, what's your point?
any american geek who prods too deeply will be branded an enemy combatant.
If he's an American geek (as in citizen of the U.S.), there's no "branding" him an enemy combatant. He is a citizen entitled to due process. He would be tried in a federal district court. Unless he's also caught in the hills of Afghanistan carrying a weapon with a Taliban squad, in which case there are those who would treat him as an enemy combatant. But I don't think that's your average geek.
I'm normally the first one up there with you saying all these rubes on /. are overreacting. But I read the claims, and they're actually WORSE than the summary. The first independent claim looks like "restricting meetings to a definite time." It doesn't even say 40 minutes. It's just a definite time restriction. Now granted, this claim won't be allowed, but ... wow.
Ironically, if people understood the law better, I'd probably have more work. People who understand the legal issues surrounding general partnerships and inventions know that they are playing with fire if they don't have some kind of LLC or S-Corp. to put their stuff in. They know how important it is to document things and think in advance. And they know that in school and practice I've seen a lot of issues they've never even considered, so I can draft language that will help prevent problems from arising. It's not because I'm smarter than they are. Some of my clients are absolute geniuses (others, not so much). It's because this is what I do every day.
I just litigated a case where (depending on whom you believe) either A stole B's invention after "leaving the fold," or B tried to come in and pretend he (and their loose partnership) was involved with the invention after he saw that A was on the brink of making a lot of money. Nasty, nasty business divorce. And the whole issue could have been avoided if the parties had a clear agreement in the first place.
I sincerely doubt that someone can progress to the level of appointment to the supreme court without having learned to recognize bullshit when they see it.
You've obviously never ready any of Harry Blackmun's opinions.
I work for a big firm that does a lot of insurance defense, so I'm ethically obligated to disagree with GrifterCC ;-)
But really, while the law is not magic, it is very, very complicated. For example, if you're Average Joe, and you get served by Big Out of State Corporation (let's say it's a patent infringement case, and you're sued in the ED Tex.), your first impulse will probably be to shoot off an answer to the court saying, "No, court, they're full of it. This is nothing like their patent."
Two problems: chances are, you have no idea how patent claims work (because, in fact, most ATTORNEYS have no idea how patent claims work), so you really don't know if you infringe. And even worse, let's say you're running your little business out of Middle of Nowhere, ND, you've never left the state, and all your sales are local. Congratulations! You've just consented to jurisdiction in the great state of Texas! No going back. No do-overs. No appeals. You're going to Marshall.
Yes, you could have done some research on personal jurisdiction. Yes, you could have read Pennoyer v. Neff and International Shoe and the whole line of cases (after which, you would be even more confused). Yes, you could have gone down to the nearest law school library and done some research on special appearances, but you didn't even know that you needed to.
You hire a lawyer not because he knows everything, but because he has a pretty good idea of what he doesn't know and where to look for answers.
And since I'm a patent attorney, I have to throw this in: drafting patents (especially the claims) pretty much is black magic. Pro se patent applications (including pro se applications drafted by attorneys who are not patent attorneys) are almost uniformly worthless. Do not try this at home. You will fail. It will not blend.
As we all know the Wall Street Journal has been succesful in charging for content
But people (at least ostensibly) use the WSJ to make money. So it can be considered a sort of investment. There is no way I'm going to pay any amount of money to let Rupert Murdoch and his cronies tell me what to think, and I think a lot of people feel the same. It's just not important enough to me.
Was he using the name in commerce as a source identifier for goods and services? No? Then it's not a trademark. And even if it was, he couldn't assert it against a boat unless he was selling Shadowfax-branded boats. Trademark doesn't give you "ownership" of a name or word. It gives you the right to prevent others from using it as a confusingly-similar source identifier for goods and/or services.
Bottom line, there's pretty much nothing Tolkein could do to stop somebody from naming his hydrofoil "Shadowfax." He doesn't own the word just because he made it up.
You're forgetting one important thing: derivative works. Sure, Rowling's publishers wouldn't want to bump her off, because they'd lose their monopoly. And the existing books wouldn't be worth a whole lot. It would be about like re-publishing Victor Hugo or Jane Austen
But we're talking about the ability to make MOVIES while Potter is still hot, and churn out scads of sequels with an army of sweatshop writers (and since it's a collaborative work, we'll just give it to the corp., which means it gets a tidy 95-year copyright, regardless of whom you kill). So while I was being a little tongue-in-cheek, there ARE really big financial incentives, especially if you are guaranteed the ability to cash in while a craze is still hot.
Also, you only go to prison if you get caught. That's why you hire a professional. If they can't catch him, they can't catch you.
Seriously, if copyright were tied to death + only a short time, JK Rowling would be toast. All the publishing houses would be hiring professional hitmen. And striking it big with the Great American Novel would pretty much be your death knell.
On the other hand, that sound like a good setting for some kind of post-apocalyptic copyright thriller.
The idea is all the states would have to do it at once. Nobody wants to do it all alone, because then everybody else is still important, but we're not (in fact, I think it was Colorado that recently had a proposal to assign their electors proportionally, and it was predictably defeated). Basically, your state would only have a handful of electors "in play" while Pennsylvia would still have a bunch, so everybody would ignore you while they fell all over themselves to subsidize steel. If we had a constitutional amendment, then everybody would have to do it all together (and there wouldn't be so much incentive to subsidize steel, because there would only be a couple of electors directly tied to the PA steel territories).
If there is no majority in the U.S. Presidential election, the House picks the President. But I'm not aware of that ever happening.
If you're thinking of 50% of the "popular vote," you have a fundamental problem, because there is no popular vote in the U.S. It's a fiction of the media's imagination. The people do not elect the President. They vote for electors, who vote for President and Vice President.
What would be interesting is if all the states went from a "winner takes all" model to picking electors by congressional district and then awarding the two extra electors based on the candidate with a statewide plurality. In that case, a third-party candidate would actually have a chance of not just picking up a few percentage points in the fictional "popular vote", but actually picking up some electors, which could throw a wrench in the major parties' calculus of states. Imagine, for example, if we had done this in 1992. Perot probably would have picked up a fair number of electors, and there would not have been a majority. Yes, it would have gone to the House then, and they would have elected Clinton anyway since the Dems had a majority. But it sure would have been interesting.
Of course, states don't want to do this voluntarily, because it dilutes their relative importance (and therefore dilutes their ability to demand favors). We'd have to do it by constitutional amendment if we do it at all.
The problem with proportional representation is the moron / idiot / joke candidates can pick up enough votes on a national populous to get a seat. Once in, they'll be voted for again, as a joke. Try getting them out, you can't. Ask France about P.R. voting fallout.
Why bother going to France? Just ask Minnesota. They seem to manage this regularly. It was mildly amusing with Jesse Ventura. You want a trained gorilla as your governor, that's your business. But now they've getting ready to send a fictional character to the real, honest-to-goodness U.S. Senate. Somebody needs to tell Minnesota that the folks in the little box are just moving pictures. They're NOT REAL. And a candidate for major political office should, AT A MINIMUM, be a real person.
You need to brush up on your Slashdot memes. By the way, "insensitive clod" is often used to complain about missing poll option.
The first was the Dreamcast, which catered
Wow, I guess I'm just an old fogie. Back in my day, we had the SMS and then the Genesis, and neither of those were capable of serving food. They just played video games.
Too bad. We need some new darwin awards.