using continuations to update a patent to cover the state-of-the-art while maintaining a past priority date is a favorite patent troll tactic.
This was more the Lemelson tactic. You can't do it anymore because the calculation of the patent term changed. If the state of the art changes, you can only "update" your claims if the state of the art was already in your original disclosure. If it was, then you really are the inventor, and I don't have a problem with you getting those claims. The other option is filing a CIP as the state of the art changes, but you can't file on matter you didn't invent yourself (and if you do, your patent is void). So again, I have no problem with you getting claims to stuff that you yourself actually invented.
It's hard for me to see why that one is procedural rather than substantive.
The two-continuation rule was a hard limit (with some possible exceptions in extraordinary circumstances). The 5/25 rule is not a hard limit. After 5/25, you have to file a "search document" that makes your application astronomically more expensive to file, and wipes out a lot of its value because it forces you to box yourself in. So technically, you could still file more than 5/25, but it would be tremendously expensive, and you would have to do the patent examiner's job for him.
We all know from economics 101 that monopolies tend to be bad for the public in the long run (see M$ for an empirical example).
Actually, we tend to believe that perpetual monopolies are a bad thing. Copyright is dangerously close to just being a perpetual monopoly. The term is ridiculously long, and we are seeing problems from that. But we decided way back in Article 1 of our U.S. Constitution that a limited monopoly would be a good thing to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." Maybe you disagree with that individually, and you're entitled to believe whatever you want. But the general consensus is, and has been for more than 200 years, that limited monopolies in exchange for certain disclosures give a net benefit to society. I could go on for pages about the quid pro quos and disclosures that would be kept trade secrets, or not disclosed at all, and all the theory behind that. But that's really beyond the scope of Slashdot posts, and I suspect that at the end of the day, you wouldn't be convinced anyway.
True, it's not perfect. But the totally effective thing to do would be to get a signed non-engagement letter from every Slashdot user and AC, co-signed by their own attorney for best results, clearly indicating that I don't represent them. Sometimes you just go with "good enough." Some people have.sigs off, but most don't. And sometimes, if I want to be extra careful, I will add an extra inline disclaimer.
After you've paid $10,000 -- $20,000 or more to get a patent issued, how much are you personally going to have to "invest" in the technology? Now take a poll of your friends and family. How much will they each have left to "invest" in the technology? Some try to file applications on their own to save on the attorneys' fees, and with very, very few exceptions, they end up with worthless or near worthless patents. The truth is, the cost of a patent is already prohibitive to many deserving people with good ideas who just can't come up with the money. What do we accomplish by raising that particular bar, except ensuring that nobody except really rich companies get patents? I don't want to live in that world, because I actually root for the little guys. I want to see them succeed.
The problem is that not everybody who has great ideas has the money and/or business sense to run a business. I have seen plenty of brilliant people who could not run a business with any amount of money. As a society, we still want their inventions, so we let them license the technology to others rather than make it themselves.
Because if the case is valuable, the little guy can get an attorney to represent him on contingency. Even my very conservative firm that ONLY takes matters on an hourly basis and NEVER takes contingency cases is considering taking some patent plaintiffs' work on a contingency basis.
Because you can sue a lawyer for negligently giving you bad legal advice, especially if he creates the impression that he represents you. Yes, there are people in the world who really are stupid enough to think that a random post on Slashdot is legitimate legal advice (or at least claim they did, trying to strike it rich). So when you sue me, exhibit A is my.sig.
Okay, I'm a bona fide registered patent attorney, and I actually litigate against trolls. It is maddening to see them make some of their more credibility-stretching arguments to a court. Bad patents are my great nemesis. But the truth is, these were very, very bad rules, and everybody knew it. I know it's popular to knock the patent office on Slashdot, and yes, some bad patents have issued (I've litigated against some of them), but these rules are not the answer.
The first problem is the limit on continuations, which was flagrantly in violation of statute. That's the one that got struck down, and without it, the others are not so meaningful. Actually, leaving continuations while limiting RCEs actually just creates MORE delay. So this doesn't fix the pendency problem. The second problem is an inventor often doesn't know what the patentable part of his invention is when he first files. I always tell my clients to give me very, very detailed disclosures, because chances are what you think is your invention turns out to not be patentable, or turns out to be only one of several patentable aspects of your disclosure. So most of my applications will have fewer than the 5/25 claim limit, but sometimes you need more flexibility, because you don't know which patents are going to survive examination, and it's much better to just cancel a claim and fall back on an existing alternative than to have to amend a claim.
As for anti-business bias, I write patents for both really big companies you definitely know (and quite possibly hate) and little individual inventors. Guess who loses under these rules? The little guy, every time. This basically shuts down the ability of any little guys to take an idea to market and make money, because the ONLY competitive advantage they have against the big guys is their patents. This means that little guys will never disclose their ideas to big guys, because in most cases, your patent is the only protection you have against them just taking your idea and doing what they want with it.
So yes, there are bad patents. Yes, there are trolls. Yes, I despise them as much as you do. In fact, I wrote a comment for the law review when I was in law school about the problem of patent trolls. My analysis was that the only way to shut down trolls without stifling legitimate inventors was to strengthen the obviousness standard, and specifically, to let go of the rigid adherence to the "Teaching, Suggestion, or Motivation" test. Just when I was ready to submit it for publication, the Supreme Court came out with KSR and adopted my exact reasoning (if only I'd sent them my paper, maybe I could have claimed credit). These rules do nothing to further innovation. They were the product of inept bureaucrats (including a director of the USPTO who was not even statutorily qualified for the position) trying desperately to pin their own failures on the patent bar by making it look like so-called "abuse of continuations" was the real problem. The truth is, only a very small percentage of applicants are doing anything remotely abusive with continuation practice. The real problem was Dudas and his cronies at the USPTO. These guys were appointed as political payoff, and they ran the place like payoff political appointees (i.e., ineptly). They railroaded these rules through, totally ignoring comments and concerns from the patent bar, applied them retroactively to existing applications, ignored statute, and then presented them in a sham unveiling where they solicited questions from participants, then ignored all of the questions submitted and at the end, instead answered a bunch of pre-canned softball questions they had carefully crafted themselves (hint to inept bureaucrats: it looks suspicious when you have power point slides for supposedly answering questions in real time). The whole thing was shady, abusive, and dishonest.
Welcome to Slashdot, where the only religion we tolerate is the Church of Global Warming, and the only prophet we revere is His Holiness Al Gore. And we dismiss all who are not "true believers" as heretics.
Now tell me again, how many climate scientists are there in the world total? How many definitely, for sure have signed on to Al Gore's human-fueled global warming theory? How many have definitely, for sure ratified his carbon-trading method as a meaningful solution? And more importantly, what reproducible experiment have they given us that their global warming model reliably predicts results for? If there is one, I'd honestly like to hear about it, because like I said, I don't know. I'm not a climate scientist, so maybe I just haven't seen that experiment. But "we all agree" doesn't cut it for me because one, they don't all agree, and two, even if they did, that doesn't prove anything until they can show me that the reason they agree is that they have been able to consistently reproduce experimental results. Show me some science, not "consensus," and not "we have models." I'm all for models when we're talking about something highly predictable, like orbital mechanics, and/or when we can point to successful predictions, like "we said this is where Venus would be on this day, and it was." I haven't seen climate models accurately predict anything yet. If they have, please fill me in. I'd really like to know.
That's the real problem with Gore. He's making a fortune off of inciting panic and then selling smoke and mirrors.
Is global warming happening? If so, is it caused by humans? I don't know. The evidence I have seen for global warming is that supposedly "everybody" agrees that it's happening. Of course, there are a lot of legitimate scientists who are apparently not part of "everybody," and I'm skeptical of anybody who claims to understand something as complex as the earth in such minute detail to say with such certainty "this is definitely what's happening and this is the cause" (Oh, but we have computer models; those are infallible). Maybe it is happening. Maybe we are causing it. And maybe an asteroid will hit tomorrow and wipe out much of humanity. I haven't seen anything yet so compelling as to justify the full-scale panic Gore & Co. want me to feel.
What I know for sure is Gore has jumped on something that may or may not be happening, has crafted a business model that almost certainly does nothing to fix the problem if it exists (buying "carbon offsets" from people who aren't using that carbon anyway) (in other words, do you want to pay me to not cheat on my wife, which I'm not doing anyway? if so, does that balance out the bad karma in the universe when you cheat on your wife?), and is using it to line his pockets. Hey, that's capitalism, right? Sure, but most people who sell that kind of snake oil call them "Vitamin Compounds" or something along those lines, and are denounced as frauds.
Somebody prove to me that the globe is really warming catastrophically and that we can do something about it, and I'll jump on board with you. In the meantime, how 'bout we all just try to be less wasteful because it's a good idea anyway and we don't like pollution. But don't try to legislate me (and the rest of the world) into the dark ages over this specter. Show me some real, compelling proof that justifies the very real increase in human suffering as we decrease our own quality of life and pressure others to do the same. And if you REALLY want cleaner energy, when was the last time you marched on Washington to demand more nuclear power?
Agreed. Nobody knows about general-purpose computers.
Next, I never said that the hardware wasn't patentable subject matter, only that all the software/DRM claims were questionable after Bilski.
Ah, but there's the issue. You just said, in general, you thought the DRM software patent might be invalid. You didn't say anything about hardware claims, but you didn't say anything about method claims either. That's the fundamental thing that pretty much everybody on Slashdot misses about Bilski. It doesn't kill software claims, even if a general-purpose computer is not a "particular machine." It just means that all your software claims will have to be Beauregard claims (e.g., "A data storage medium connected to a computing device, the data storage medium including software instructions that, when executed, instruct the computing device to:..."). Bilski does not touch those because they are not method claims, and Bilski only deals with method claims. I think it took like two weeks to get a court ruling on that after Bilski issued, and nobody was surprised. So bottom line, software claims are still viable post-Bilski, even if software method claims are dead.
I haven't looked at the hardware diagrams, but it sounds like they're approximately the kinds of block diagrams I put in my patent applications. You don't have to go into a whole lot of detail. Those devices are well-known in the art. You just have to tie it to enough hardware that you're not claiming an abstract idea. And again, the hardware is not necessarily the innovative part here. It's the software that you want to claim, so it's the software you need to enable. So high-level block diagrams of a computer are exactly what I would expect to see.
On the other hand, if an inventor wants me to file claims on innovative hardware, then yes, I'm going to tell him to bring me some schematics.
The real question is posed in the summary: is this a 'particular machine or apparatus' or is decrypting an e-book a 'transformation' process.
I already commented that I think it's a particular machine, so I won't repeat myself on that. But I don't think this will pass the "transformation" test. The Fed. Cir. said that a transformation has to transform actual matter, or it has to transform data that represent actual matter. In other words, you can only be one degree removed from real matter (if you're thinking that sounds arbitrary, I agree). All they're doing here is obfuscating text. I guess you could argue that the text represents words on a physical page, but I think that's a stretch.
I can get home from that day's proceedings and have Wikipedia summaries of the law, tons of background info on the defendant and plaintiff, and every news article about the case ever printed in about 2.5 minutes using the internet.
I think you're overestimating the notoriety of the average case. Sure, if you're a juror for OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson, you can read every tiny little detail on Wikipedia. But if you're sitting on the jury for $JUNKIE[357], you probably won't find much except for the defendant's poorly-spelled and gramatically-dubious blog posts about his sexual exploits of questionable veracity. Maybe you'll find something on the arresting officer or DA in the local paper's archives if they've done something really unusual, but again, you're more likely to see a bunch of worthless, profanity-laden, poorly-spelled blog posts from other junkies (these will appear right after their posts about sexual exploits of questionable veracity). And if you end up on the jury for $SLIP_N_FALL[1574], you can probably find some information about the defendant (after all, it has to be big enough to have deep pockets to be worth suing), but it probably won't have anything to do with their policies for posting "Caution" signs after mopping. And the plaintiff is not going to be any more well-known than $JUNKIE.
While it's true that some jurors may be unduly influenced by all that, it won't be because they got the "real story" from the internet. It will be because they're stupid.
Even if the patent covers patentable subject matter
The patent does cover patentable subject matter. There are about 30 device claims drawn to an e-book reader. Bilksi has absolutely no bearing on those; an e-book reader is definitely patentable subject matter, despite what IDontBelieve wants to believe.
Also, even the method claims are tied to an e-book reader, which is very likely a particular machine. Bilski left open the question of whether a general-purpose computer is a particular machine, but an e-book reader is hardly a general-purpose computer. I'd say the odds are pretty good all of these claims withstand Bilski (but if Amazon wants to retain me to argue otherwise, I'm game).
As for obviousness, with over 170 claims, chances are at least one of them passes muster (remember, since the patent issued, the claims are presumed valid, which means it's expensive and time-consuming to kill even one claim, much less 170). So the only real question is whether Amazon infringes the non-obvious claim or claims.
555 numbers are starting to be assigned now. Only 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved for fictional use anymore. And TELL ME appears to be a real operation.
The whole point of the GPL is to game the system: either you say copyright doesn't matter, and the stuff is free to share, or you say it does matter, and the GPL says the stuff is free to share.
No, I don't miss the point. I am pretty well versed on the GPL. I've even written a paper on it, which I share with my clients who want to use GPL in the back office. Here's the problem. If there is no copyright, there is no "copyleft." Microsoft can take your code and roll it into the next version of Windows and turn a deaf ear to your complaints. They can still use "product activation" to cut down on pirated copies. They can go even more draconian with the DRM. And you would have no recourse because there's no copyright.
Sure, DRM can be broken, and no system is perfect. But most people don't know that, and they can't be bothered to fight the DRM. Microsoft would still be the dominant player, and every time you wrote a handy little utility, you would be taking the risk that you are donating code to them.
The GPL has the power to protect the "freedom" of your code only because copyright law gives it teeth. Without copyright, even if you had a valid contract, you would never recover anything. Contract will only give you the benefit you lost, and if you're giving away code for free, you didn't lose anything of tangible, provable economic value. And since there are not punitive damages in contract, Microsoft would have your code locked up as their trade secret, and there'd be nothing you could do about it. Bottom line: if you want free software, copyright is your friend.
For a site that posts as many stories about copyright as Slashdot does, you'd think the editors would have at least a basic understanding of it.
Actually, my experience has been that the lot of them fail to grasp the most basic concepts of IP. The mantra is "All IP is bad except when you use copyright to enforce the GPL." As long as a submission fits that mantra, it will get posted, regardless of how inflammatory (or just flat-out wrong) it is.
I am not aware of any law that allows copying a game. Not even for backups. Please provide a citation.
17 U.S.C. section 117(a):
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.--- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
It's always a good day when you learn something new, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Rule 11 is federal. Texas Rule 13 is similar. But this is federal court, so federal rules apply.
using continuations to update a patent to cover the state-of-the-art while maintaining a past priority date is a favorite patent troll tactic.
This was more the Lemelson tactic. You can't do it anymore because the calculation of the patent term changed. If the state of the art changes, you can only "update" your claims if the state of the art was already in your original disclosure. If it was, then you really are the inventor, and I don't have a problem with you getting those claims. The other option is filing a CIP as the state of the art changes, but you can't file on matter you didn't invent yourself (and if you do, your patent is void). So again, I have no problem with you getting claims to stuff that you yourself actually invented.
It's hard for me to see why that one is procedural rather than substantive.
The two-continuation rule was a hard limit (with some possible exceptions in extraordinary circumstances). The 5/25 rule is not a hard limit. After 5/25, you have to file a "search document" that makes your application astronomically more expensive to file, and wipes out a lot of its value because it forces you to box yourself in. So technically, you could still file more than 5/25, but it would be tremendously expensive, and you would have to do the patent examiner's job for him.
We all know from economics 101 that monopolies tend to be bad for the public in the long run (see M$ for an empirical example).
Actually, we tend to believe that perpetual monopolies are a bad thing. Copyright is dangerously close to just being a perpetual monopoly. The term is ridiculously long, and we are seeing problems from that. But we decided way back in Article 1 of our U.S. Constitution that a limited monopoly would be a good thing to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." Maybe you disagree with that individually, and you're entitled to believe whatever you want. But the general consensus is, and has been for more than 200 years, that limited monopolies in exchange for certain disclosures give a net benefit to society. I could go on for pages about the quid pro quos and disclosures that would be kept trade secrets, or not disclosed at all, and all the theory behind that. But that's really beyond the scope of Slashdot posts, and I suspect that at the end of the day, you wouldn't be convinced anyway.
True, it's not perfect. But the totally effective thing to do would be to get a signed non-engagement letter from every Slashdot user and AC, co-signed by their own attorney for best results, clearly indicating that I don't represent them. Sometimes you just go with "good enough." Some people have .sigs off, but most don't. And sometimes, if I want to be extra careful, I will add an extra inline disclaimer.
After you've paid $10,000 -- $20,000 or more to get a patent issued, how much are you personally going to have to "invest" in the technology? Now take a poll of your friends and family. How much will they each have left to "invest" in the technology? Some try to file applications on their own to save on the attorneys' fees, and with very, very few exceptions, they end up with worthless or near worthless patents. The truth is, the cost of a patent is already prohibitive to many deserving people with good ideas who just can't come up with the money. What do we accomplish by raising that particular bar, except ensuring that nobody except really rich companies get patents? I don't want to live in that world, because I actually root for the little guys. I want to see them succeed.
The problem is that not everybody who has great ideas has the money and/or business sense to run a business. I have seen plenty of brilliant people who could not run a business with any amount of money. As a society, we still want their inventions, so we let them license the technology to others rather than make it themselves.
You jest, but in Texas, after all of our insurance-industry-fueled "tort reform," lawyers are about the only people left you can sue.
Because if the case is valuable, the little guy can get an attorney to represent him on contingency. Even my very conservative firm that ONLY takes matters on an hourly basis and NEVER takes contingency cases is considering taking some patent plaintiffs' work on a contingency basis.
Because you can sue a lawyer for negligently giving you bad legal advice, especially if he creates the impression that he represents you. Yes, there are people in the world who really are stupid enough to think that a random post on Slashdot is legitimate legal advice (or at least claim they did, trying to strike it rich). So when you sue me, exhibit A is my .sig.
Okay, I'm a bona fide registered patent attorney, and I actually litigate against trolls. It is maddening to see them make some of their more credibility-stretching arguments to a court. Bad patents are my great nemesis. But the truth is, these were very, very bad rules, and everybody knew it. I know it's popular to knock the patent office on Slashdot, and yes, some bad patents have issued (I've litigated against some of them), but these rules are not the answer.
The first problem is the limit on continuations, which was flagrantly in violation of statute. That's the one that got struck down, and without it, the others are not so meaningful. Actually, leaving continuations while limiting RCEs actually just creates MORE delay. So this doesn't fix the pendency problem. The second problem is an inventor often doesn't know what the patentable part of his invention is when he first files. I always tell my clients to give me very, very detailed disclosures, because chances are what you think is your invention turns out to not be patentable, or turns out to be only one of several patentable aspects of your disclosure. So most of my applications will have fewer than the 5/25 claim limit, but sometimes you need more flexibility, because you don't know which patents are going to survive examination, and it's much better to just cancel a claim and fall back on an existing alternative than to have to amend a claim.
As for anti-business bias, I write patents for both really big companies you definitely know (and quite possibly hate) and little individual inventors. Guess who loses under these rules? The little guy, every time. This basically shuts down the ability of any little guys to take an idea to market and make money, because the ONLY competitive advantage they have against the big guys is their patents. This means that little guys will never disclose their ideas to big guys, because in most cases, your patent is the only protection you have against them just taking your idea and doing what they want with it.
So yes, there are bad patents. Yes, there are trolls. Yes, I despise them as much as you do. In fact, I wrote a comment for the law review when I was in law school about the problem of patent trolls. My analysis was that the only way to shut down trolls without stifling legitimate inventors was to strengthen the obviousness standard, and specifically, to let go of the rigid adherence to the "Teaching, Suggestion, or Motivation" test. Just when I was ready to submit it for publication, the Supreme Court came out with KSR and adopted my exact reasoning (if only I'd sent them my paper, maybe I could have claimed credit). These rules do nothing to further innovation. They were the product of inept bureaucrats (including a director of the USPTO who was not even statutorily qualified for the position) trying desperately to pin their own failures on the patent bar by making it look like so-called "abuse of continuations" was the real problem. The truth is, only a very small percentage of applicants are doing anything remotely abusive with continuation practice. The real problem was Dudas and his cronies at the USPTO. These guys were appointed as political payoff, and they ran the place like payoff political appointees (i.e., ineptly). They railroaded these rules through, totally ignoring comments and concerns from the patent bar, applied them retroactively to existing applications, ignored statute, and then presented them in a sham unveiling where they solicited questions from participants, then ignored all of the questions submitted and at the end, instead answered a bunch of pre-canned softball questions they had carefully crafted themselves (hint to inept bureaucrats: it looks suspicious when you have power point slides for supposedly answering questions in real time). The whole thing was shady, abusive, and dishonest.
Welcome to Slashdot, where the only religion we tolerate is the Church of Global Warming, and the only prophet we revere is His Holiness Al Gore. And we dismiss all who are not "true believers" as heretics.
Now tell me again, how many climate scientists are there in the world total? How many definitely, for sure have signed on to Al Gore's human-fueled global warming theory? How many have definitely, for sure ratified his carbon-trading method as a meaningful solution? And more importantly, what reproducible experiment have they given us that their global warming model reliably predicts results for? If there is one, I'd honestly like to hear about it, because like I said, I don't know. I'm not a climate scientist, so maybe I just haven't seen that experiment. But "we all agree" doesn't cut it for me because one, they don't all agree, and two, even if they did, that doesn't prove anything until they can show me that the reason they agree is that they have been able to consistently reproduce experimental results. Show me some science, not "consensus," and not "we have models." I'm all for models when we're talking about something highly predictable, like orbital mechanics, and/or when we can point to successful predictions, like "we said this is where Venus would be on this day, and it was." I haven't seen climate models accurately predict anything yet. If they have, please fill me in. I'd really like to know.
The offsets aren't some magic.
That's the real problem with Gore. He's making a fortune off of inciting panic and then selling smoke and mirrors.
Is global warming happening? If so, is it caused by humans? I don't know. The evidence I have seen for global warming is that supposedly "everybody" agrees that it's happening. Of course, there are a lot of legitimate scientists who are apparently not part of "everybody," and I'm skeptical of anybody who claims to understand something as complex as the earth in such minute detail to say with such certainty "this is definitely what's happening and this is the cause" (Oh, but we have computer models; those are infallible). Maybe it is happening. Maybe we are causing it. And maybe an asteroid will hit tomorrow and wipe out much of humanity. I haven't seen anything yet so compelling as to justify the full-scale panic Gore & Co. want me to feel.
What I know for sure is Gore has jumped on something that may or may not be happening, has crafted a business model that almost certainly does nothing to fix the problem if it exists (buying "carbon offsets" from people who aren't using that carbon anyway) (in other words, do you want to pay me to not cheat on my wife, which I'm not doing anyway? if so, does that balance out the bad karma in the universe when you cheat on your wife?), and is using it to line his pockets. Hey, that's capitalism, right? Sure, but most people who sell that kind of snake oil call them "Vitamin Compounds" or something along those lines, and are denounced as frauds.
Somebody prove to me that the globe is really warming catastrophically and that we can do something about it, and I'll jump on board with you. In the meantime, how 'bout we all just try to be less wasteful because it's a good idea anyway and we don't like pollution. But don't try to legislate me (and the rest of the world) into the dark ages over this specter. Show me some real, compelling proof that justifies the very real increase in human suffering as we decrease our own quality of life and pressure others to do the same. And if you REALLY want cleaner energy, when was the last time you marched on Washington to demand more nuclear power?
It's a pretty specific bill.
Which is the real problem. It's a bill of attainder.
Agreed. Nobody knows about general-purpose computers.
Next, I never said that the hardware wasn't patentable subject matter, only that all the software/DRM claims were questionable after Bilski.
Ah, but there's the issue. You just said, in general, you thought the DRM software patent might be invalid. You didn't say anything about hardware claims, but you didn't say anything about method claims either. That's the fundamental thing that pretty much everybody on Slashdot misses about Bilski. It doesn't kill software claims, even if a general-purpose computer is not a "particular machine." It just means that all your software claims will have to be Beauregard claims (e.g., "A data storage medium connected to a computing device, the data storage medium including software instructions that, when executed, instruct the computing device to: ..."). Bilski does not touch those because they are not method claims, and Bilski only deals with method claims. I think it took like two weeks to get a court ruling on that after Bilski issued, and nobody was surprised. So bottom line, software claims are still viable post-Bilski , even if software method claims are dead.
I haven't looked at the hardware diagrams, but it sounds like they're approximately the kinds of block diagrams I put in my patent applications. You don't have to go into a whole lot of detail. Those devices are well-known in the art. You just have to tie it to enough hardware that you're not claiming an abstract idea. And again, the hardware is not necessarily the innovative part here. It's the software that you want to claim, so it's the software you need to enable. So high-level block diagrams of a computer are exactly what I would expect to see.
On the other hand, if an inventor wants me to file claims on innovative hardware, then yes, I'm going to tell him to bring me some schematics.
The real question is posed in the summary: is this a 'particular machine or apparatus' or is decrypting an e-book a 'transformation' process.
I already commented that I think it's a particular machine, so I won't repeat myself on that. But I don't think this will pass the "transformation" test. The Fed. Cir. said that a transformation has to transform actual matter, or it has to transform data that represent actual matter. In other words, you can only be one degree removed from real matter (if you're thinking that sounds arbitrary, I agree). All they're doing here is obfuscating text. I guess you could argue that the text represents words on a physical page, but I think that's a stretch.
I absolutely agree.
I can get home from that day's proceedings and have Wikipedia summaries of the law, tons of background info on the defendant and plaintiff, and every news article about the case ever printed in about 2.5 minutes using the internet.
I think you're overestimating the notoriety of the average case. Sure, if you're a juror for OJ Simpson or Michael Jackson, you can read every tiny little detail on Wikipedia. But if you're sitting on the jury for $JUNKIE[357], you probably won't find much except for the defendant's poorly-spelled and gramatically-dubious blog posts about his sexual exploits of questionable veracity. Maybe you'll find something on the arresting officer or DA in the local paper's archives if they've done something really unusual, but again, you're more likely to see a bunch of worthless, profanity-laden, poorly-spelled blog posts from other junkies (these will appear right after their posts about sexual exploits of questionable veracity). And if you end up on the jury for $SLIP_N_FALL[1574], you can probably find some information about the defendant (after all, it has to be big enough to have deep pockets to be worth suing), but it probably won't have anything to do with their policies for posting "Caution" signs after mopping. And the plaintiff is not going to be any more well-known than $JUNKIE.
While it's true that some jurors may be unduly influenced by all that, it won't be because they got the "real story" from the internet. It will be because they're stupid.
The patent does cover patentable subject matter. There are about 30 device claims drawn to an e-book reader. Bilksi has absolutely no bearing on those; an e-book reader is definitely patentable subject matter, despite what IDontBelieve wants to believe.
Also, even the method claims are tied to an e-book reader, which is very likely a particular machine. Bilski left open the question of whether a general-purpose computer is a particular machine, but an e-book reader is hardly a general-purpose computer. I'd say the odds are pretty good all of these claims withstand Bilski (but if Amazon wants to retain me to argue otherwise, I'm game).
As for obviousness, with over 170 claims, chances are at least one of them passes muster (remember, since the patent issued, the claims are presumed valid, which means it's expensive and time-consuming to kill even one claim, much less 170). So the only real question is whether Amazon infringes the non-obvious claim or claims.
555 numbers are starting to be assigned now. Only 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved for fictional use anymore. And TELL ME appears to be a real operation.
You talk about decompiling Windows like it's a trivial task. It's not.
The whole point of the GPL is to game the system: either you say copyright doesn't matter, and the stuff is free to share, or you say it does matter, and the GPL says the stuff is free to share.
No, I don't miss the point. I am pretty well versed on the GPL. I've even written a paper on it, which I share with my clients who want to use GPL in the back office. Here's the problem. If there is no copyright, there is no "copyleft." Microsoft can take your code and roll it into the next version of Windows and turn a deaf ear to your complaints. They can still use "product activation" to cut down on pirated copies. They can go even more draconian with the DRM. And you would have no recourse because there's no copyright.
Sure, DRM can be broken, and no system is perfect. But most people don't know that, and they can't be bothered to fight the DRM. Microsoft would still be the dominant player, and every time you wrote a handy little utility, you would be taking the risk that you are donating code to them.
The GPL has the power to protect the "freedom" of your code only because copyright law gives it teeth. Without copyright, even if you had a valid contract, you would never recover anything. Contract will only give you the benefit you lost, and if you're giving away code for free, you didn't lose anything of tangible, provable economic value. And since there are not punitive damages in contract, Microsoft would have your code locked up as their trade secret, and there'd be nothing you could do about it. Bottom line: if you want free software, copyright is your friend.
For a site that posts as many stories about copyright as Slashdot does, you'd think the editors would have at least a basic understanding of it.
Actually, my experience has been that the lot of them fail to grasp the most basic concepts of IP. The mantra is "All IP is bad except when you use copyright to enforce the GPL." As long as a submission fits that mantra, it will get posted, regardless of how inflammatory (or just flat-out wrong) it is.
I am not aware of any law that allows copying a game. Not even for backups. Please provide a citation.
17 U.S.C. section 117(a):
(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.--- Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
It's always a good day when you learn something new, isn't it?
Slashdot broken?
With that low user ID, you should have figured this out a long time ago.
I use Linux, where would I buy digital music that plays on my system and has any value?
Um, Amazon for starters? Or did you not realize that iTunes is not the only digital music store in the world?