There is no such thing as a "federal election" in the United States. The very broadest elections are state-wide. That includes electing the President. There is no national "popular vote." It is a fiction created by newscasters, I assume to gauge the popularity of the candidates. The only thing that matters is whom you elect to the Electoral College. And I don't think MORE centralization will be a good thing. Power is already too heavily concentrated in Washington, D.C. If we had a single election system, it creates a single point of failure. Figure out how to rig that one system, and you win the whole bag (for an interesting exercise, I guess you could think about what would happen if BOTH candidates rigged the system---something like 50 million people voted, with 33 million voting for the Democrat and 35 million voting for the Republican). Look at how hard it is right now to get rid of bad voting machines. Now think how hard it would be if, instead of fighting a single county or state, you were fighting the entire nation. And let's not forget that one of the primary reasons we have this EVM mess right now is the Help America Vote Act, which was a federal law that gave states lots of money to help them fix their broken election systems. Give me a choice between disorganized chaos and a well-oiled political machine, and I'll take the chaos any day.
People would be modding this "Funny" if they only got the joke. Go on mods---look up the proper pronunciation of "Diebold" and compare it to how you thought it was supposed to be pronounced.
Actually, the general rule is that a contract does not have to be in writing to be valid and enforceable (there are, of course, some important exceptions). If they offered you a certain employment package and you accepted it, you formed a contract with them, regardless of what their "internal" policy is. Despite what another post below yours implied, this is a situation where a lawsuit would be very reasonable. It's the proper way to enforce the terms of a contract when the other party fails to perform. On the other hand, there is some risk in just quitting. In the best case scenario, you can get them to pay your lost salary until you can find a comparable job (and if your new job pays less, possibly even cover the difference). Worst case scenario is you could get nothing from them. That said, I wouldn't want to work for a company that started off the employment relationship by lying to me.
I am not a lawyer, and I am especially not your lawyer. If you feel sufficiently aggrieved to sue this company, contact a lawyer and get his or her opinion. The opinions expressed in this post do not constitute legal advice of any kind to anybody.
Actually, it's to protect incumbents. Look at McCain-Feingold. It's aimed squarely at those who criticize incumbents in the most critical period---the 30 days leading up to the election. This is no different. Campaign finance reform is not about making sure that money doesn't influence elections. It's about making sure that only the right money (i.e., the incumbents' money) gets to influence elections.
The problem is that incumbents enjoy an enormous advantage over challengers. The only way to reasonably challenge an incumbent is with lots of money. So incumbents want to make sure that those with lots of money who oppose them are unable to do so.
The operative question is whether a consumer is likely to be confused as to source. Similarity of goods or services is one factor in a multi-factor test. Generally, the more similar the marks, the greater difference you need in goods or services. So maybe you could get away with iPhone muffins, but iPhone for any kind of phone is going to be confusingly similar.
Abandonment is a GREAT way to lose a trademark. There is one case on the books (I forget the name, but it was over Kitty Clover for potato chips) where a trademark was held abandoned the day after the manufacturer announced that they had killed the brand. If I remember correctly, if you have not had any appreciable use of the mark for 3 years, it is presumed abandoned. And token use doesn't count. It's a very fact-intensive inquiry, and I assume that Cisco and Apple both are paying $500/hr. for hot-shot trademark lawyers to think for them, so I don't think this is news to either side. But I certainly wouldn't call it a foregone conclusion that iPhone is still a valid mark just because it was registered by somebody in 1996. Seriously, when was the last time you saw or heard of a Cisco iPhone?
a granted patent was assumed to be valid until proved otherwise, therefore what would in fact happen is that if the evidence that you infringed was strong enough, regardless of possible invalidity of the patent, the court would enjoin you from distributing your product while the case was heard
More precisely, an issued patent is presumed valid, meaning the burden is on the patent defendant to prove the invalidity. If we end up with a paucity of evidence either way, the presumption wins. The case I assume you're thinking of is eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, LLC, 126 S.Ct. 1837. The rule was not quite how you describe it. The CAFC had held that once you had a finding that a patent was valid and infringed, a permanent injunction is essentially automatic. The Supreme Court struck that down. They said that a permanent injunction in a patent case should be based on the equities of the situation just like any other permanent injunction. That took away a favorite tool of patent trolls---the threat of an automatic permanent injunction. But it doesn't eliminate what you described. If the District Court finds that a patent holder is likely to prevail on the merits and that it is equitable to grant a preliminary injunction until the case is concluded, it can and will still do that. Which means you will be enjoined from distributing the thing while the case is heard. And that's a good thing if you're a small-fry inventor and Microsoft or somebody is trying to strong-arm you out of your technology.
Teleflex notwithstanding, I believe that section 103 could still use a revision so that merely doing something well known in a new medium or with a novel technology is prima facie obvious. This would have killed NTP's claims to SMTP over wireless. Otherwise, we can look forward to patents like "sending e-mail on a quantum computer" or "surfing the web on a high-end network-connected refrigerator."
If you are sued for patent infringement, your attorney will file a motion for summary judgment, and one of the theories will be that the patent is invalid as a matter of law. If it fails as a summary judgment motion, it will go before the jury. The validity of the patent WILL get litigated if the case doesn't settle. Forcing the parties to put off litigating infringement until after they settle the validity of the patent would be ridiculously inefficient and more costly for BOTH parties. The problem is not the inability to challenge the validity of a patent in court. The problem is that obviousness under 35 U.S.C. s. 103 has become such a hyper-technical non-hurdle that it is nearly impossible to invalidate a patent once it has been judged novel. Until we revise section 103 to strengthen obviousness, this will continue to happen. Fortunately, the weak obviousness standard is hurting big, monied companies with powerful lobbies (like Microsoft and Sony). So you can bet things are going to change.
If Nintendo had not added the strap, this couldn't have happened.
I think you're seriously underestimating plaintiffs' lawyers. If Nintendo had not included a strap, that attorney would be standing in front of a jury saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, Nintendo could have avoided these grievous injuries to person and property if they had just included a simple strap for the wiimote---a strap that would have cost no more than a few cents each. But those greedy Japanese capitalists had no more regard for Americans than their forebears had when they bombed Pearl Harbor. They put profits before people [this is a plaintiff's attorney's favorite line], and now you should tell them that in America, we don't put up with that sort of thing."
Then you'd have to give copyright protection for the "look and feel" of stuff, which you currently cannot get. Considering that the 14-year lifespan of a design patent is about an order of magnitude shorter than the life span of a copyright (and significantly shorter than the life span of a utility patent), I'd say the design patent is the much better option.
The first image that came to mind on reading the title was a MythTV box dedicated to recording episodes of "Dora the Explorer." And then my brain let out a primal scream, because if there is one thing I don't need in my house, it's more Dora.
I'm guessing it was the little wire connected to the ground node of the DMM in my instrument rack that I touched to the middle of the traceline, but I could be wrong.
Oh the memories. Now that reminds me of another incident with the same project. The cap whose traceline I blew was a rectifier for a high-voltage power supply we were using to power a vacuum tube. So we had this old 1200V transformer we had pulled out of an old Hammond organ (hey, we were cheap students). We were using big, high-voltage rectifier diodes, but we started to notice that the output from the transformer was very erratic. It would fluctuate wildly. Then one time when we were running some tests on the thing, all the sudden it started making funny humming noises, and then one of our diodes blew itself in half, showering ceramic shards all over us. It was quite fascinating. To be fair, we knew that our output was a little over the reverse breakdown voltage of the diodes, but we figured there would be enough margin for us to be okay. Of course, the smart thing for us to do at this point would have been for us to get a new, stable transformer with a lower output voltage, but we were cheap and running up against a deadline. So we just went and found bigger, badder diodes. They held up through our in-class demonstration.
I once thought I had let the smoke out of a somewhat expensive (~$12) 12k uF cap when I accidentally grounded a 600V node (long story). But it turned out that I had just let the smoke out of the traceline on our board and vaporized the solder connecting it to the cap. We soldered it back on and our power supply worked just fine (it blew a hole in the middle of the traceline, but fortunately left the edges intact. And since the edges are where the current flows, we were in good shape).
What's funny is right now I'm sitting in a law school Remedies class, and we are talking about compensatory damages. I thought that exact same thing. "Oh, a robot that pokes, prods and scans the plaintiff and then calculates his compensatory damages. I wonder if it has an algorithm for mental anguish."
The article is sparse on details, but it sounds more like a problem where the date on the shuttles computer does not match the date on the ground system's computer. That can be a problem.
The patents were published on Nov. 2, 2006. They were filed 18 months prior to that---around April 2005. That may seem like a nitpicky point, but it could be very important in May of 2025.
One last point: Yes, in a criminal case, if the jury says "Not guilty," that's it. End of the road, regardless of the law and/or facts. Usually when judges mess with jury findings, it's bad for the plaintiff/prosecution.
Yes, juries can decide whatever they want, regardless of the law. But the judge will not allow some things to go to the jury. The judge may decide certain issues as a matter of law, and those issues may eviscerate one party's case so much that there is no need for a jury trial. If there is a jury trial, the court can adjust the jury's award of damages either because they are capped by statute, or because he considers them "excessive." Judges can even issue Judgments Notwithstanding the Verdict, meaning that the judge deems that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find as it did. All of these are "legal" issues that the judge decides. The jury decides facts like "who's lying; who's telling the truth." We never ask them to interpret the law---just how the facts fit the law they are given.
Your.sig is completely wrong. You may WANT juries in America to judge the LAW, but they don't. They judge the facts. Questions of law are always decided by judges, because they know the law and (presumably) the juries don't. But your comment was spot on.
If my neighbor has been letting his dog dump on my front lawn for years, does that mean that I lose my right to ask him to pick it up or take the dog elsewhere? I don't think so.
Well, actually, if you let his dog dump on your lawn long enough, it's possible that your neighbor has established an easement for his dog dumping on your lawn by virtue of adverse possession. At that point, your neighbor would have an established property interest in your lawn that gives him the right to let his dog poop on it. If you have a right, you're always better off asserting it sooner rather than later.
But your point is otherwise valid. In this case, they appear to be well within the statute of limitations for patent infringement, so the suit is proper.
I see you've been modded funny. I hope that you were trying to be funny, because if this was a serious argument, it is astoundingly ineffective. If I grant you a license to my copyrighted work with the only restriction being that you are not allowed to copy it onto papyrus, you are bound by that term if you accept the copy. The only thing I can't do is restrict non-infringing copying or statutory fair uses, because Title 17 doesn't give me control over those in the first place. Other than that, I can pretty well impose whatever restrictions I like, let them be ever so arbitrary, silly and/or useless. "The work was readily available," is not an excuse.
As for the argument that being electronically encoded is itself an "implicit content lock," I invite you to convince a court that your ludicrous definition is correct. You could just as easily argue that writing in English is an encryption because not all people are literate in English, and you would be just as wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no such thing as a "federal election" in the United States. The very broadest elections are state-wide. That includes electing the President. There is no national "popular vote." It is a fiction created by newscasters, I assume to gauge the popularity of the candidates. The only thing that matters is whom you elect to the Electoral College. And I don't think MORE centralization will be a good thing. Power is already too heavily concentrated in Washington, D.C. If we had a single election system, it creates a single point of failure. Figure out how to rig that one system, and you win the whole bag (for an interesting exercise, I guess you could think about what would happen if BOTH candidates rigged the system---something like 50 million people voted, with 33 million voting for the Democrat and 35 million voting for the Republican). Look at how hard it is right now to get rid of bad voting machines. Now think how hard it would be if, instead of fighting a single county or state, you were fighting the entire nation. And let's not forget that one of the primary reasons we have this EVM mess right now is the Help America Vote Act, which was a federal law that gave states lots of money to help them fix their broken election systems. Give me a choice between disorganized chaos and a well-oiled political machine, and I'll take the chaos any day.
People would be modding this "Funny" if they only got the joke. Go on mods---look up the proper pronunciation of "Diebold" and compare it to how you thought it was supposed to be pronounced.
Actually, the general rule is that a contract does not have to be in writing to be valid and enforceable (there are, of course, some important exceptions). If they offered you a certain employment package and you accepted it, you formed a contract with them, regardless of what their "internal" policy is. Despite what another post below yours implied, this is a situation where a lawsuit would be very reasonable. It's the proper way to enforce the terms of a contract when the other party fails to perform. On the other hand, there is some risk in just quitting. In the best case scenario, you can get them to pay your lost salary until you can find a comparable job (and if your new job pays less, possibly even cover the difference). Worst case scenario is you could get nothing from them. That said, I wouldn't want to work for a company that started off the employment relationship by lying to me.
I am not a lawyer, and I am especially not your lawyer. If you feel sufficiently aggrieved to sue this company, contact a lawyer and get his or her opinion. The opinions expressed in this post do not constitute legal advice of any kind to anybody.
I've never even been in the military, and that's the first thing I thought of. But then I did formerly work for a defense contractor.
The problem is that incumbents enjoy an enormous advantage over challengers. The only way to reasonably challenge an incumbent is with lots of money. So incumbents want to make sure that those with lots of money who oppose them are unable to do so.
The operative question is whether a consumer is likely to be confused as to source. Similarity of goods or services is one factor in a multi-factor test. Generally, the more similar the marks, the greater difference you need in goods or services. So maybe you could get away with iPhone muffins, but iPhone for any kind of phone is going to be confusingly similar.
If the mark is valid, this is guaranteed to be confusingly similar.
Abandonment is a GREAT way to lose a trademark. There is one case on the books (I forget the name, but it was over Kitty Clover for potato chips) where a trademark was held abandoned the day after the manufacturer announced that they had killed the brand. If I remember correctly, if you have not had any appreciable use of the mark for 3 years, it is presumed abandoned. And token use doesn't count. It's a very fact-intensive inquiry, and I assume that Cisco and Apple both are paying $500/hr. for hot-shot trademark lawyers to think for them, so I don't think this is news to either side. But I certainly wouldn't call it a foregone conclusion that iPhone is still a valid mark just because it was registered by somebody in 1996. Seriously, when was the last time you saw or heard of a Cisco iPhone?
Teleflex notwithstanding, I believe that section 103 could still use a revision so that merely doing something well known in a new medium or with a novel technology is prima facie obvious. This would have killed NTP's claims to SMTP over wireless. Otherwise, we can look forward to patents like "sending e-mail on a quantum computer" or "surfing the web on a high-end network-connected refrigerator."
If you are sued for patent infringement, your attorney will file a motion for summary judgment, and one of the theories will be that the patent is invalid as a matter of law. If it fails as a summary judgment motion, it will go before the jury. The validity of the patent WILL get litigated if the case doesn't settle. Forcing the parties to put off litigating infringement until after they settle the validity of the patent would be ridiculously inefficient and more costly for BOTH parties. The problem is not the inability to challenge the validity of a patent in court. The problem is that obviousness under 35 U.S.C. s. 103 has become such a hyper-technical non-hurdle that it is nearly impossible to invalidate a patent once it has been judged novel. Until we revise section 103 to strengthen obviousness, this will continue to happen. Fortunately, the weak obviousness standard is hurting big, monied companies with powerful lobbies (like Microsoft and Sony). So you can bet things are going to change.
Then you'd have to give copyright protection for the "look and feel" of stuff, which you currently cannot get. Considering that the 14-year lifespan of a design patent is about an order of magnitude shorter than the life span of a copyright (and significantly shorter than the life span of a utility patent), I'd say the design patent is the much better option.
The first image that came to mind on reading the title was a MythTV box dedicated to recording episodes of "Dora the Explorer." And then my brain let out a primal scream, because if there is one thing I don't need in my house, it's more Dora.
I'm guessing it was the little wire connected to the ground node of the DMM in my instrument rack that I touched to the middle of the traceline, but I could be wrong.
Oh the memories. Now that reminds me of another incident with the same project. The cap whose traceline I blew was a rectifier for a high-voltage power supply we were using to power a vacuum tube. So we had this old 1200V transformer we had pulled out of an old Hammond organ (hey, we were cheap students). We were using big, high-voltage rectifier diodes, but we started to notice that the output from the transformer was very erratic. It would fluctuate wildly. Then one time when we were running some tests on the thing, all the sudden it started making funny humming noises, and then one of our diodes blew itself in half, showering ceramic shards all over us. It was quite fascinating. To be fair, we knew that our output was a little over the reverse breakdown voltage of the diodes, but we figured there would be enough margin for us to be okay. Of course, the smart thing for us to do at this point would have been for us to get a new, stable transformer with a lower output voltage, but we were cheap and running up against a deadline. So we just went and found bigger, badder diodes. They held up through our in-class demonstration.
I once thought I had let the smoke out of a somewhat expensive (~$12) 12k uF cap when I accidentally grounded a 600V node (long story). But it turned out that I had just let the smoke out of the traceline on our board and vaporized the solder connecting it to the cap. We soldered it back on and our power supply worked just fine (it blew a hole in the middle of the traceline, but fortunately left the edges intact. And since the edges are where the current flows, we were in good shape).
And yes, I should be paying attention right now.
The article is sparse on details, but it sounds more like a problem where the date on the shuttles computer does not match the date on the ground system's computer. That can be a problem.
The patents were published on Nov. 2, 2006. They were filed 18 months prior to that---around April 2005. That may seem like a nitpicky point, but it could be very important in May of 2025.
One last point: Yes, in a criminal case, if the jury says "Not guilty," that's it. End of the road, regardless of the law and/or facts. Usually when judges mess with jury findings, it's bad for the plaintiff/prosecution.
Yes, juries can decide whatever they want, regardless of the law. But the judge will not allow some things to go to the jury. The judge may decide certain issues as a matter of law, and those issues may eviscerate one party's case so much that there is no need for a jury trial. If there is a jury trial, the court can adjust the jury's award of damages either because they are capped by statute, or because he considers them "excessive." Judges can even issue Judgments Notwithstanding the Verdict, meaning that the judge deems that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to find as it did. All of these are "legal" issues that the judge decides. The jury decides facts like "who's lying; who's telling the truth." We never ask them to interpret the law---just how the facts fit the law they are given.
Your .sig is completely wrong. You may WANT juries in America to judge the LAW, but they don't. They judge the facts. Questions of law are always decided by judges, because they know the law and (presumably) the juries don't. But your comment was spot on.
Well, actually, if you let his dog dump on your lawn long enough, it's possible that your neighbor has established an easement for his dog dumping on your lawn by virtue of adverse possession. At that point, your neighbor would have an established property interest in your lawn that gives him the right to let his dog poop on it. If you have a right, you're always better off asserting it sooner rather than later.
But your point is otherwise valid. In this case, they appear to be well within the statute of limitations for patent infringement, so the suit is proper.
I see you've been modded funny. I hope that you were trying to be funny, because if this was a serious argument, it is astoundingly ineffective. If I grant you a license to my copyrighted work with the only restriction being that you are not allowed to copy it onto papyrus, you are bound by that term if you accept the copy. The only thing I can't do is restrict non-infringing copying or statutory fair uses, because Title 17 doesn't give me control over those in the first place. Other than that, I can pretty well impose whatever restrictions I like, let them be ever so arbitrary, silly and/or useless. "The work was readily available," is not an excuse.
As for the argument that being electronically encoded is itself an "implicit content lock," I invite you to convince a court that your ludicrous definition is correct. You could just as easily argue that writing in English is an encryption because not all people are literate in English, and you would be just as wrong.