The other benefit of ITC proceedings is they are very, very fast. I don't see that a trial date is set yet, but I would expect to see this go to trial around August or September.
But don't make the mistake of thinking ITC proceedings are cheap. Basically, you're paying much of the cost of a district court proceeding, but all in a compressed time period. So don't expect this to be something like the NTP case. You should expect to see something (most likely a settlement---that's what always happens anymore) happen in this case this year.
I'm also not so naive and arrogant that I really believe the source will stay private once criminal defendants can access it. For one thing, they (at least some of them) are *criminals*.
The parties are not the ones who get to see confidential business information. Their attorneys and experts do. For example, I just worked on a case where both sides had to produce competition-sensitive documents to the other side in discovery. These documents were clearly marked "CBI," and I would have been in very serious trouble if I had sent these to my client. If I had done so on purpose, I could possibly have been disbarred. So no, the criminals probably won't get to see this source code. Their attorneys will give it to their experts, and if they find something really useful, they will ask the judge if they can pretty please use it in open court after stripping away anything superfluous to the reason for which it is being used. That will not be enough for their clients to make a competing product.
Illegal, no. But sometimes it is inprudent. I work for a firm, and my job is to make money for the firm. If I only took cases I personally liked or was only willing to advocate positions that I found personally appealing, I would be useless. There are many aspects of the law I wish were different, but that doesn't mean I don't give my clients the full benefit of the law as it is. Where you have to draw the line is at being unethical. I will not do something for a client that is unethical or illegal. I will not argue a position that is unethical. There are lawsuits I wouldn't file. I have defended clients against some of them (including patent trolls). That's the problem with the RIAA's lawyers. In my opinion, they crossed the ethics line. I can get behind advocating for a client you don't agree with. I can't get behind breaking the law, misrepresenting facts, and filing suits without an adequate basis.
If the University's policy is that work done by students is the property of the university, they are not "stealing" your ideas. They are commercializing what you have assigned to them. Find out what they give you in return. Even if all you get is your name on a patent, it's a great resume builder (remember, whatever your agreement says, a prof. can't just steal your idea and claim it's his; a patent MUST list all of the inventors and only the inventors; if an inventor is intentionally omitted, or a non-inventor is intentionally added, the patent is VOID).
I don't represent you. This post is not legal advice.
Apparently somebody didn't get the memo that the only valid way to use this phrase anymore is to mock people who want to grow the enterprise by leveraging synergies.
To send your digital file, you have to make a copy of it. That would violate the copyright if you don't have permission. I suppose you could give somebody the physical disk it's on and you'd be okay (legally, even loading into RAM is making a copy, but if you are a legal owner of a copy, the law gives you a right to make temporary copies in RAM).
What's the downside? It's not like people are going to consume less gas if the tax goes up.
Gas is not that inelastic. When the price of gas hit $4/gal., I got a bus pass. There's a park-and-ride right by my house, and the express goes straight downtown to where I work. And I now spend 25 minutes each way on leisure reading rather than fighting traffic. Now that gas is cheap, I still ride the bus. Basically, whoever decided to put on the squeeze made a permanent convert. I probably won't ever go back to driving myself. Between gas and parking, I save $200 to $300 a month and I save myself lots of trouble.
Some will run, but remember all that EMM/Highmem stuff DOS had to do to work with more than 640k memory? That stuff doesn't translate well. I still don't remember which is which or how it all worked (I knew once, a long time ago), but I remember once trying to run some DOS program in Win2K and having to mess with all that, and finally just giving up. So yes, theoretically you can still run DOS programs. But as a practical matter, it may be more trouble than it's worth.
Of course, in reality publishing details is usually not enough to prevent someone else from patenting, because it seems that no one (least of all patent examiners) does a thorough job of uncovering prior art.
Patent examiners basically search issued patents and published patent applications. If you want to challenge a pending application based on prior art, here is the:
POOR MAN'S CHALLENGE TO A PENDING PATENT APPLICATION.
Make a copy of the reference you think anticipates the patent. Send a copy to the applicant's attorney of record, and keep a copy of everything for yourself.
Attorney has a duty to submit relevant prior art. He has to either determine that the reference is not material (in which case, he risks being sanctioned and having ALL of the patent claims---not just the ones material to the reference---invalidated when the patent is later in litigation if the court determines he should have sent it in), or he has to submit it to the patent office. Most attorneys will just submit it to the patent office to be on the safe side. Chances are, if the reference is remotely relevant, the rejection-happy patent examiner will cite the thing (and despite what all the Slashbots think, the patent office is rejection happy; in fact, there are big incentives for examiners to reject applications at least twice). Everybody wins. You get to keep a possibly invalid claim from issuing, the examiner gets his points, the attorney gets paid for arguing around the reference if necessary*, and the client gets a stronger, more valid patent that now cites the most relevant prior art and has claims drawn to what he is actually entitled to claim.
*This is in my little fantasy world where clients actually pay their patent attorneys.
This post is not legal advice. I don't represent you, and I'm not advising you to do this. You should not rely on this post for any reason whatsoever.
HGTV is, in fact, proof that Satan is a woman. WHY DO I CARE WHETHER YOU BUY HOUSE 1, HOUSE 2, OR HOUSE 3! And if I hear one more person use the word "eclectic," I swear, an octopus is going to die.
That is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this headline. I thought it should have had a drwho tag, but then I thought that's a pretty esoteric reference, even for Slashdot. Also, fortunately that all happened in a parallel universe earth, so the Brigadier is still alive and kickin' here.
7.6 Zordak has been happily married for 10 years, has kids, a mortgage, non-pasty skin, a minivan, a job, no facebook account, and no desire to pick up girls on the internet. Sorry to disappoint.
Something to consider: If the behavior is really widely socially acceptable, why did his reputation suffer?
I fully agree with you that actual sexual assault against a non-consenting person has more severe consequences for the victim. But if you would extend that argument to say statutory rape is a "victimless crime," we will have to agree to disagree, and I think this story is a good example of my own thoughts. Reckless sex with a girl led to the very adult consequence of an unwanted pregnancy, which led to an abortion (no word on what role, if any, the guy played in encouraging that, but if she felt pressured, she probably resented him), which trashed the relationship (a very, very common story), likely traumatized the girl to some degree, and strained her family relationships. Every one of those results is well understood and utterly predictable.
Snowgirl basically sidestepped the point of the cautionary tale. The point was that the father saw no problem with this relationship.
The father's approval is not a defense to statutory rape (at least I'm pretty sure it's not in Texas; I don't do criminal law, and your state may vary). It just means the father was complicit.
The father decided after the fact to explicitly use a relationship he previously approved of to "get back" at the person. This is a demonstration of how accusations of rape can carry serious consequences.
Actually, I think the Duke lacrosse case is a good demonstration of the fact that false accusations of rape can have serious consequences. The moral of the buddy's story is that reckless sexual behavior with a teenager can have serious consequences, like unwanted pregnancy, abortion (which is frequently emotionally devestating for a woman), and criminal prosecution, especially when her dad is a cop who is not afraid to abuse his power.
Once again, dad is no hero here. The dad was a jerk. But that's not the point. The buddy wanted to play house with a teenager and wants to complain that it came back to bite him. Sex is not a casual thing. It has serious emotional and physical ramfications, for good or ill. That's not society mistreating you. It's just nature.
1. Submitter rightly points out that it is inconsistent to, for example, demonize the Duke Lacrosse team while protecting the name of the accuser.
2. Poster tells cautionary tale of a friend who admittedly committed statutory rape and was charged with statutory rape. Certainly the dad was no hero here, but this has nothing to do with the original story, because the friend was not falsely accused of a crime. He was, rather, charged for a crime that he committed that is rarely prosecuted (which is not a defense).
3. snowgirl points out that poster's buddy was in fact charged with a crime he admittedly committed, and wonders why he deserves her sympathy.
4. In response, AC implies that female poster only said what she did because she was raped and hasn't gotten over it.
5. snowgirl expresses disgust with AC.
6. McGrew says that snowgirl missed the point: The Duke girl was a stripper and probably a prostitute. This is probably true (and completely irrelevant---if you rape a prostitute, it's still rape). None of this has any bearing on snowgirl's point, which is that the buddy's story is not like the Duke story because the buddy was, in fact, and admittedly, guilty of the charged crime, not innocent, like the Duke Lacrosse players.
7. Somebody below accuses snowgirl of being ugly and maladjusted, or something along those lines.
8. [A week from now] Slashdot runs another story bemoaning the mysterious dearth of women in IT.
Exactly. This guy got a trademark. Trademarks only cover confusingly-similar uses (at least in the U.S. and most other countries). That means that he can only restrict your use of the emoticon in cases where your use would confuse people into believing you're selling his product. The summary doesn't say what he's selling, but assume he's selling pens with smiley face on them. That means that if you sell smiley-face gasoline, you're okay. In other words, this is a non-issue.
While this is a.gov domain name, Barack Obama is not The Government. In fact, I'm not aware that he holds any government position at all, since he has resigned his Senate seat. He has not even technically been elected yet, since the electoral college doesn't meet until the 15th. Right now, he is nothing more than a private citizen who expects (for good reason) to be elected as president in a few days. He has no official powers or duties whatsoever. If he wants to use Google's JavaScript to let the peanut gallery quiz him, let him use the JavaScript. Seriously, I'll be the first in line to call the guy out when he abuses his position, but is there a bigger non-issue in the known universe right now? EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! CELEBRITY PRIVATE CITIZEN USES JAVASCRIPT ON HIS WEBSITE!!!
Which is why Congress is, at this moment, working on the CAN-SMILE act, which will put a stop to smiling, along with other un-American behavior like being happy, being friendly, playing with your children, giving to charity, and staying out of debt.
Slashdot Mirror
The other benefit of ITC proceedings is they are very, very fast. I don't see that a trial date is set yet, but I would expect to see this go to trial around August or September.
But don't make the mistake of thinking ITC proceedings are cheap. Basically, you're paying much of the cost of a district court proceeding, but all in a compressed time period. So don't expect this to be something like the NTP case. You should expect to see something (most likely a settlement---that's what always happens anymore) happen in this case this year.
If you license something under the GPL, you have to provide a license to your patents too. It doesn't void the patent, though.
The parties are not the ones who get to see confidential business information. Their attorneys and experts do. For example, I just worked on a case where both sides had to produce competition-sensitive documents to the other side in discovery. These documents were clearly marked "CBI," and I would have been in very serious trouble if I had sent these to my client. If I had done so on purpose, I could possibly have been disbarred. So no, the criminals probably won't get to see this source code. Their attorneys will give it to their experts, and if they find something really useful, they will ask the judge if they can pretty please use it in open court after stripping away anything superfluous to the reason for which it is being used. That will not be enough for their clients to make a competing product.
I think musty bean is being generous. I tried one, and it just tasted like dirt. Korea has some great dishes, but bbeon-dae-gi isn't one of them.
Illegal, no. But sometimes it is inprudent. I work for a firm, and my job is to make money for the firm. If I only took cases I personally liked or was only willing to advocate positions that I found personally appealing, I would be useless. There are many aspects of the law I wish were different, but that doesn't mean I don't give my clients the full benefit of the law as it is. Where you have to draw the line is at being unethical. I will not do something for a client that is unethical or illegal. I will not argue a position that is unethical. There are lawsuits I wouldn't file. I have defended clients against some of them (including patent trolls). That's the problem with the RIAA's lawyers. In my opinion, they crossed the ethics line. I can get behind advocating for a client you don't agree with. I can't get behind breaking the law, misrepresenting facts, and filing suits without an adequate basis.
them to be nervous and worried about UAC dialogs...
Too much work. Surely somebody had a registry hack that adds a "fnord" to every UAC dialog.
If the University's policy is that work done by students is the property of the university, they are not "stealing" your ideas. They are commercializing what you have assigned to them. Find out what they give you in return. Even if all you get is your name on a patent, it's a great resume builder (remember, whatever your agreement says, a prof. can't just steal your idea and claim it's his; a patent MUST list all of the inventors and only the inventors; if an inventor is intentionally omitted, or a non-inventor is intentionally added, the patent is VOID).
I don't represent you. This post is not legal advice.
Apparently somebody didn't get the memo that the only valid way to use this phrase anymore is to mock people who want to grow the enterprise by leveraging synergies.
To send your digital file, you have to make a copy of it. That would violate the copyright if you don't have permission. I suppose you could give somebody the physical disk it's on and you'd be okay (legally, even loading into RAM is making a copy, but if you are a legal owner of a copy, the law gives you a right to make temporary copies in RAM).
Please find attached evidence that you have missed one of the worst offenses of corporate speech against the English language.
Gas is not that inelastic. When the price of gas hit $4/gal., I got a bus pass. There's a park-and-ride right by my house, and the express goes straight downtown to where I work. And I now spend 25 minutes each way on leisure reading rather than fighting traffic. Now that gas is cheap, I still ride the bus. Basically, whoever decided to put on the squeeze made a permanent convert. I probably won't ever go back to driving myself. Between gas and parking, I save $200 to $300 a month and I save myself lots of trouble.
Some will run, but remember all that EMM/Highmem stuff DOS had to do to work with more than 640k memory? That stuff doesn't translate well. I still don't remember which is which or how it all worked (I knew once, a long time ago), but I remember once trying to run some DOS program in Win2K and having to mess with all that, and finally just giving up. So yes, theoretically you can still run DOS programs. But as a practical matter, it may be more trouble than it's worth.
"Insightful"? I think he was going for the "Funny."
Yes, but enough about Bill Gates. Some people have a lot of debt and like to have new toys.
Patent examiners basically search issued patents and published patent applications. If you want to challenge a pending application based on prior art, here is the:
POOR MAN'S CHALLENGE TO A PENDING PATENT APPLICATION.
Make a copy of the reference you think anticipates the patent. Send a copy to the applicant's attorney of record, and keep a copy of everything for yourself.
Attorney has a duty to submit relevant prior art. He has to either determine that the reference is not material (in which case, he risks being sanctioned and having ALL of the patent claims---not just the ones material to the reference---invalidated when the patent is later in litigation if the court determines he should have sent it in), or he has to submit it to the patent office. Most attorneys will just submit it to the patent office to be on the safe side. Chances are, if the reference is remotely relevant, the rejection-happy patent examiner will cite the thing (and despite what all the Slashbots think, the patent office is rejection happy; in fact, there are big incentives for examiners to reject applications at least twice). Everybody wins. You get to keep a possibly invalid claim from issuing, the examiner gets his points, the attorney gets paid for arguing around the reference if necessary*, and the client gets a stronger, more valid patent that now cites the most relevant prior art and has claims drawn to what he is actually entitled to claim.
*This is in my little fantasy world where clients actually pay their patent attorneys.
This post is not legal advice. I don't represent you, and I'm not advising you to do this. You should not rely on this post for any reason whatsoever.
HGTV is, in fact, proof that Satan is a woman. WHY DO I CARE WHETHER YOU BUY HOUSE 1, HOUSE 2, OR HOUSE 3! And if I hear one more person use the word "eclectic," I swear, an octopus is going to die.
That is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this headline. I thought it should have had a drwho tag, but then I thought that's a pretty esoteric reference, even for Slashdot. Also, fortunately that all happened in a parallel universe earth, so the Brigadier is still alive and kickin' here.
7.6 Zordak has been happily married for 10 years, has kids, a mortgage, non-pasty skin, a minivan, a job, no facebook account, and no desire to pick up girls on the internet. Sorry to disappoint.
Something to consider: If the behavior is really widely socially acceptable, why did his reputation suffer?
I fully agree with you that actual sexual assault against a non-consenting person has more severe consequences for the victim. But if you would extend that argument to say statutory rape is a "victimless crime," we will have to agree to disagree, and I think this story is a good example of my own thoughts. Reckless sex with a girl led to the very adult consequence of an unwanted pregnancy, which led to an abortion (no word on what role, if any, the guy played in encouraging that, but if she felt pressured, she probably resented him), which trashed the relationship (a very, very common story), likely traumatized the girl to some degree, and strained her family relationships. Every one of those results is well understood and utterly predictable.
The father's approval is not a defense to statutory rape (at least I'm pretty sure it's not in Texas; I don't do criminal law, and your state may vary). It just means the father was complicit.
Actually, I think the Duke lacrosse case is a good demonstration of the fact that false accusations of rape can have serious consequences. The moral of the buddy's story is that reckless sexual behavior with a teenager can have serious consequences, like unwanted pregnancy, abortion (which is frequently emotionally devestating for a woman), and criminal prosecution, especially when her dad is a cop who is not afraid to abuse his power.
Once again, dad is no hero here. The dad was a jerk. But that's not the point. The buddy wanted to play house with a teenager and wants to complain that it came back to bite him. Sex is not a casual thing. It has serious emotional and physical ramfications, for good or ill. That's not society mistreating you. It's just nature.
To summarize this conversation:
1. Submitter rightly points out that it is inconsistent to, for example, demonize the Duke Lacrosse team while protecting the name of the accuser.
2. Poster tells cautionary tale of a friend who admittedly committed statutory rape and was charged with statutory rape. Certainly the dad was no hero here, but this has nothing to do with the original story, because the friend was not falsely accused of a crime. He was, rather, charged for a crime that he committed that is rarely prosecuted (which is not a defense).
3. snowgirl points out that poster's buddy was in fact charged with a crime he admittedly committed, and wonders why he deserves her sympathy.
4. In response, AC implies that female poster only said what she did because she was raped and hasn't gotten over it.
5. snowgirl expresses disgust with AC.
6. McGrew says that snowgirl missed the point: The Duke girl was a stripper and probably a prostitute. This is probably true (and completely irrelevant---if you rape a prostitute, it's still rape). None of this has any bearing on snowgirl's point, which is that the buddy's story is not like the Duke story because the buddy was, in fact, and admittedly, guilty of the charged crime, not innocent, like the Duke Lacrosse players.
7. Somebody below accuses snowgirl of being ugly and maladjusted, or something along those lines.
8. [A week from now] Slashdot runs another story bemoaning the mysterious dearth of women in IT.
Exactly. This guy got a trademark. Trademarks only cover confusingly-similar uses (at least in the U.S. and most other countries). That means that he can only restrict your use of the emoticon in cases where your use would confuse people into believing you're selling his product. The summary doesn't say what he's selling, but assume he's selling pens with smiley face on them. That means that if you sell smiley-face gasoline, you're okay. In other words, this is a non-issue.
While this is a .gov domain name, Barack Obama is not The Government. In fact, I'm not aware that he holds any government position at all, since he has resigned his Senate seat. He has not even technically been elected yet, since the electoral college doesn't meet until the 15th. Right now, he is nothing more than a private citizen who expects (for good reason) to be elected as president in a few days. He has no official powers or duties whatsoever. If he wants to use Google's JavaScript to let the peanut gallery quiz him, let him use the JavaScript. Seriously, I'll be the first in line to call the guy out when he abuses his position, but is there a bigger non-issue in the known universe right now? EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! CELEBRITY PRIVATE CITIZEN USES JAVASCRIPT ON HIS WEBSITE!!!
Which is why Congress is, at this moment, working on the CAN-SMILE act, which will put a stop to smiling, along with other un-American behavior like being happy, being friendly, playing with your children, giving to charity, and staying out of debt.
Mormons have not had plural marriages in well over a century.