There are a couple of stories maybe getting mixed up in this discussion.
The first story is about VISA being involved in a classic reverse-cybersquatting action.
The second story is about the most recent ruling in the case, which involvesonly the "dilution" claim, and basically claims that EVISA "dilutes" VISA because "it contains the VISA mark in its entirety". (See the full Court Order on the eff.org site or on 3Dtree.com.) This ruling if left unchallenged could result in a considerable consolidation of Internet domains in the hands of holders of "famous" common-word marks. This is a separate issue from arbitrary coined words like "Kodak". Allowing "Kodak" to control commercial use of the word "kodak" is obviously less problematic than allowing VISA to control commercial use of the word "visa". Or it should be obvious.
The EFF is NOT assisting JSL with the lawsuit as a whole. It is only assisting JSL in trying to get the most recent ruling overturned. As for the other charges in the lawsuit as a whole, the EFF is not involved, nor should it be, because: 1. The EFF has its hands full with the continuous assualt on cyber-rights so well chronicled on slashdot day after day, and 2. the fact that a huge corporation is using the courts to try to bankrupt a small company by issuing complaint after complaint, is not news, and in any case not an issue particular to the Internet.
Still, if the EFF was as powerful as, say, the NRA, VISA would never have even filed this suit. Anyone here not join yet?
I for one don't object to Visa defending their trademark. There is nothing per se wrong with a large company sueing a small one. If I'm hurting their mark, then I deserve to be punished, small or large. Not only that, the "dilution" claim is not on its face completely absurd and abusive. This is mainly because the Federal Antidilution Act is so difficult to interpret that even different federal judges have had major differences in interpretation. We believe that EVISA does not dilute VISA, and we'd like to be able to present the facts supporting this position in a trial. We think our position is the correct one. We disagree with the current ruling because it denies JSL the chance to present evidence at a trial, and because it gives VISA and other common word trademark holders broad powers not intended by Congress.
The other charges: cybersquatting and infringement are a blatant abuse of the court system. We have to defend ourselves, and VISA is making this as expensive as possible. They are also refusing to cooperate as much as they can. If VISA really believed they had any kind of case for cybersquatting they could have submitted the case to WIPO at any time for a quick and cheap resolution. However according to the rules, they would have clearly lost. So instead they literally decided to make a "federal case" out of it, 2 years after JSL started development of evisa.com, and 4 years after development of evisa-jp.com. In all of those years, Visa never sent a cease-and-desist letter or in any way complained about JSL's use of EVISA - because VISA was not in fact concerned about infringement. They're just after the domain. Their strategy was to get a registered mark for "EVISA" and then claim that we were infringing that. When we opposed their registration, they sued us within weeks.
As for playing by the same rules, Visa has subpoenaed me and others, but has refused to allow us to subpoena the person or persons most knowledgable on their side. They have demanded hundreds of documents from us, including virtually all business records and emails (which we provided), yet they have simply refused to provide virtually any important documents to us. They have not divulged one single email. Of course, we can then appeal to the judge to make them comply, but the judge then stayed discovery pending ruling on the summary judgement motions.
It would be nice if there was some way of preventing these kinds of tactics, since they give inordinate power to large entities at the expense of the law. But that would be another discussion.
Wrong about the 250k. They at one time offered 90k. See this page for history of the domain and case.
JSL has a great attorney (Bradley Booke of Las Vegas), and of course he did point out that the "point" about JSL owning picturebookmaker etc. is absurd. Obviously the domain was chosen for the meaning and not for the little-known trademark it "contains". (Anyone here ever heard of Sony Picturebook or ATT USADIRECT before?) I don't see any evidence that the has judge considered *anything* that JSL's attorney has said.
Boring details about corps: Delaware v. NV. These were two separate corps, both owned 100% by Joe Orr (not anonymously). The tax situation is the same for both states - no taxes paid on income created out of state. I had the Del corp first, and then got the NV corp bc someone told me it was a better idea to have the biz location in NV in case I ever have actual employees, which I would have by now, if I wasn't using all my resources defending the company against this lawsuit. I was told that it was simpler just to get a new corp in NV than to get a license for the Del corp. I've now disbanded the Del corp.
Believe me, in the hands of VISA's lawyers, one single overworked person's bumbling attempts to get his paperwork straight while writing 10,000 lines of code per month can look like some kid of fiendish plot...They also cross examined me in my deposition about dates on my resume...unfortunately for them they couldn't find any discrepancies...
We haven't had a jury trial because the case hasn't gone to trial. This was a summary judgement where the judge held that there are no issues of fact to be decided, only issues of law. Since there are no issues of law, no trial, jury or not, is required.
We think there are issues of fact, so we are trying to get the ruling overturned and to get a jury trial. Even if the ruling is overturned, however, getting a jury trial as opposed to a trial by the same judge isn't a simple as just asking.
The issue of fact is whether EVISA really does dilute VISA. We think that can't be decided unless it is shown that people go to the EVISA site and are reminded of credit cards, or if it can be shown that the existence of the EVISA mark could weaken the association that consumers have between the VISA mark and credit card services. The Antidilution Act requires that these things be shown.
Again, this is a ruling on "dilution" and not infringement. We don't think Visa has a chance of prevailing on the infringement claim.
Wow! Now THIS is really amazing. When VISA made the point about JSL registering "other domains with trademarks in them" and then cited JSERV.COM, PICTUREBOOKMAKER.COM and USA-DIRECTONLINE.COM" I thought that such an asinine point could only serve to backfire against VISA. Imagine my surprise when the judge cited this very point - apropo of nothing by the way, since the current order does NOT rule in favor of VISA's motion for summary judgement on the cybersquatting issue. Imagine my amazement when someone on slashdot other than an anonymous corward repeats this same thing.
JSL has registered a number of domains, all of which are under active development or will be. We have never sold a domain. The domain names above contain ENGLISH WORDS, NOT TRADEMARKS. Can you grasp this idea? Visa simply went and did a trademark search on every word in every domain JSL owns, and then feigned outrage, as if I chose those domains for their resale value. I mean, come on, look at picturebookmaker.com. For that matter look at what used to be on evisa.com. Cybersquatters don't put up hundreds of pages of useful info - they just, well, squat.
But in any case, regardless of whether anyone wants to call me sleazy or not, the EFF is NOT INVOLVED in the cybersquatting complaint. JSL is on its own on the infringement and cybersquatting case (both of which are ridiculous, and we'll no doubt do fine w/o any help). The EFF is only trying to overturn this one ruling which could give VISA rights over the commercial use of domains and business names that contain the word v-i-s-a.
1. VISA does not own the EVISA mark. The EVISA mark is owned by JSL by matter of common law. See this. Both VISA and JSL have applied for registration. Both companies have opposed the other's registration, and JSL is countersuing VISA for infringement of JSL's EVISA mark.
2. The present order being appealed with the help of the EFF is only one ruling in a big lawsuit.(Although it does give VISA basically what it is after). The EFF is not involved in the rest of the lawsuit. The present ruling only deals with the dilution of VISA by EVISA. The judge has pretty much ruled that EVISA dilutes VISA by virtue of the fact that it "contains the VISA mark in its entirety". Check out the ruling for yourself and see whether you think it makes sense, and what the implications might be. Link to complete text of order.
The VISA-JSL lawsuit itself is a more complicated story, will post more soon. But the current issue is simply this one ruling, which is a ruling about "dilution" (not infringement) of VISA by EVISA.
The fact that evisa.com's language apps require IE has nothing to do with LP. The fact that they exist at all has everything to do with LP, since the resources weren't available to create comparable functionality in something other than DHTML using Leo, which greatly sped up development. E.g. Coding the apps in Java would have been much more time consuming.
evisa.com's language apps were written before Netscape 6 was released, at which time IE was the only browser supporting DHTML. In addition IE is required for the pages that have speech, since that uses MS Agent, and there is no comparable technology for Netscape.
Only the dynamic pages in the languages apps section of evisa.com require IE, all other pages support IE, Netscape and Opera.
Hmm.. this is a pretty standard (and justified) complaint about LP and I'm starting to think maybe Leo shouldn't be associated with LP at all, although it is an extension of it.
As the creator of Leo has pointed out, with Leo you aren't writing a novel, you're writing an index. You're building a roadmap - a reference tool. It GREATLY speeds development time. It just is so much easier to program something when you have all the pieces arranged into a clear filing system that you can customize as much as you want.
If you look at the evisa.com example in the tutorials, you'll see that the total of words in the entire Leo outline is maybe one paragraph. That is all that it takes to THOROUGHLY document the ENTIRE project. In fact, the need for a lot of other standard comments is eliminated because the outline shows the relationship of the parts to the whole, and you don't need to keep explaining what point you are at in the program.
Programming with Leo is LP in the sense that you've got an explanation in English that is foundational, but in practice Leo programming is entirely different from standard LP. I hope people who have tried LP and been disillusioned will give Leo a try.
Leo is not a tool for automating the documentation of a program. Did you look at the tutorials?
Secondly, Leo does indeed solve the problem of programmers not being able to write out a clear explanation of the program. The way it works is, the programmer shows the Leo outline to someone else who says "What the hell are you trying to say?" And the programmer just has to keep working on it until it makes sense. There is no excuse for the programmer not to show his code to another person, since it now has an outline IN ENGLISH. That is a much better situation than having this programmer just write out code that no one ever checks for logical clarity - this code will presumably have the same problems that the programmer's prose does.
If you can't explain something, you don't understand it.
The Python 3.5 version, which brings the Python version up to the level of the C++ version is new. Also, the @file feature is new. The @file feature is a breakthrough, since this is what allows Leo to work transparently alongside other tools. It may be this feature more than any other that will make it easier for people to use LP techniques in the workplace, since it allows people to introduce LP techniques as a secondary technology. This is explained better in the Leo docs and the online tutorial. I probably should have said "the new 3.5 version of Leo" in the article instead of just "Leo", but I was trying to be as brief as possible.
Something I didn't put in the original notice but now regret that I left out - Leo has another new feature more difficult to describe, but that which solves the problem that several people have mentioned about not wanting to abandon an existing text editor or tool. Leo can embed an outline structure in comments, so that one programmer can work with the file in JBuilder or EMacs, and a third programmer can still work with the program(s) in Leo. In effect, Leo is a meta-text editor. When Leo opens an outline containing a file that has been edited with another editor, all of the edits are retained. This is a further extension of LP because you are getting code read back into the documentation, which means that LP techniques can be used for understanding and/or teaching existing programs. It also means that Leo allows LP to be a secondary technique to add additional structure and documentation, rather than necessarily being the primary technique. This is explained in more detail in the tutorials and Leo docs.
It is true that there are other IDEs that allow folding, e.g. Visual Studio.NET, but this ability to separate the outline from the program is something new, as far as I know. Also, unmentioned in the original article is the idea of having clone nodes, which means your outline can put the same code section into different branches simultaneously.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a couple of stories maybe getting mixed up in this discussion.
The first story is about VISA being involved in a classic reverse-cybersquatting action.
The second story is about the most recent ruling in the case, which involvesonly the "dilution" claim, and basically claims that EVISA "dilutes" VISA because "it contains the VISA mark in its entirety". (See the full Court Order on the eff.org site or on 3Dtree.com.) This ruling if left unchallenged could result in a considerable consolidation of Internet domains in the hands of holders of "famous" common-word marks. This is a separate issue from arbitrary coined words like "Kodak". Allowing "Kodak" to control
commercial use of the word "kodak" is obviously less problematic than allowing VISA to control commercial use of the word "visa". Or it should be obvious.
The EFF is NOT assisting JSL with the lawsuit as a whole. It is only assisting JSL in trying to get the most recent ruling overturned. As for the other charges in the lawsuit as a whole, the EFF is not involved, nor should it be, because: 1. The EFF has its hands full with the continuous assualt on cyber-rights so well chronicled on slashdot day after day, and 2. the fact that a huge corporation is using the courts to try to bankrupt a small company by issuing complaint after complaint, is not news, and in any case not an issue particular to the Internet.
Still, if the EFF was as powerful as, say, the NRA, VISA would never have even filed this suit. Anyone here not join yet?
I for one don't object to Visa defending their trademark. There is nothing per se wrong with a large company sueing a small one. If I'm hurting their mark, then I deserve to be punished, small or large. Not only that, the "dilution" claim is not on its face completely absurd and abusive. This is mainly because the Federal Antidilution Act is so difficult to interpret that even different federal judges have had major differences in interpretation. We believe that EVISA does not dilute VISA, and we'd like to be able to present the facts supporting this position in a trial. We think our position is the correct one. We disagree with the current ruling because it denies JSL the chance to present evidence at a trial, and because it gives VISA and other common word trademark holders broad powers not intended by Congress.
The other charges: cybersquatting and infringement are a blatant abuse of the court system. We have to defend ourselves, and VISA is making this as expensive as possible. They are also refusing to cooperate as much as they can. If VISA really believed they had any kind of case for cybersquatting they could have submitted the case to WIPO at any time for a quick and cheap resolution. However according to the rules, they would have clearly lost. So instead they literally decided to make a "federal case" out of it, 2 years after JSL started development of evisa.com, and 4 years after development of evisa-jp.com. In all of those years, Visa never sent a cease-and-desist letter or in any way complained about JSL's use of EVISA - because VISA was not in fact concerned about infringement. They're just after the domain. Their strategy was to get a registered mark for "EVISA" and then claim that we were infringing that. When we opposed their registration, they sued us within weeks.
As for playing by the same rules, Visa has subpoenaed me and others, but has refused to allow us to subpoena the person or persons most knowledgable on their side. They have demanded hundreds of documents from us, including virtually all business records and emails (which we provided), yet they have simply refused to provide virtually any important documents to us. They have not divulged one single email. Of course, we can then appeal to the judge to make them comply, but the judge then stayed discovery pending ruling on the summary judgement motions.
It would be nice if there was some way of preventing these kinds of tactics, since they give inordinate power to large entities at the expense of the law. But that would be another discussion.
-Joe Orr
JSL
Wrong about the 250k. They at one time offered 90k. See this page for history of the domain and case.
JSL has a great attorney (Bradley Booke of Las Vegas), and of course he did point out that the "point" about JSL owning picturebookmaker etc. is absurd. Obviously the domain was chosen for the meaning and not for the little-known trademark it "contains". (Anyone here ever heard of Sony Picturebook or ATT USADIRECT before?) I don't see any evidence that the has judge considered *anything* that JSL's attorney has said.
Boring details about corps: Delaware v. NV. These were two separate corps, both owned 100% by Joe Orr (not anonymously). The tax situation is the same for both states - no taxes paid on income created out of state. I had the Del corp first, and then got the NV corp bc someone told me it was a better idea to have the biz location in NV in case I ever have actual employees, which I would have by now, if I wasn't using all my resources defending the company against this lawsuit. I was told that it was simpler just to get a new corp in NV than to get a license for the Del corp. I've now disbanded the Del corp.
Believe me, in the hands of VISA's lawyers, one single overworked person's bumbling attempts to get his paperwork straight while writing 10,000 lines of code per month can look like some kid of fiendish plot...They also cross examined me in my deposition about dates on my resume...unfortunately for them they couldn't find any discrepancies...
-Joe Orr
JSL
We haven't had a jury trial because the case hasn't gone to trial. This was a summary judgement where the judge held that there are no issues of fact to be decided, only issues of law. Since there are no issues of law, no trial, jury or not, is required.
We think there are issues of fact, so we are trying to get the ruling overturned and to get a jury trial. Even if the ruling is overturned, however, getting a jury trial as opposed to a trial by the same judge isn't a simple as just asking.
The issue of fact is whether EVISA really does dilute VISA. We think that can't be decided unless it is shown that people go to the EVISA site and are reminded of credit cards, or if it can be shown that the existence of the EVISA mark could weaken the association that consumers have between the VISA mark and credit card services. The Antidilution Act requires that these things be shown.
Again, this is a ruling on "dilution" and not infringement. We don't think Visa has a chance of prevailing on the infringement claim.
-Joe Orr
um...
No, that wasn't me. Try looking for "Joe Orr" on Google. There are a bunch. I'm the software developer.
Smackdown deserved or not, the present issue is how far the Antidilution is going to reach. That'll affect a lot more people than just Joe Orr.
Wow! Now THIS is really amazing. When VISA made the point about JSL registering "other domains with trademarks in them" and then cited JSERV.COM, PICTUREBOOKMAKER.COM and USA-DIRECTONLINE.COM" I thought that such an asinine point could only serve to backfire against VISA. Imagine my surprise when the judge cited this very point - apropo of nothing by the way, since the current order does NOT rule in favor of VISA's motion for summary judgement on the cybersquatting issue. Imagine my amazement when someone on slashdot other than an anonymous corward repeats this same thing.
JSL has registered a number of domains, all of which are under active development or will be. We have never sold a domain. The domain names above contain ENGLISH WORDS, NOT TRADEMARKS. Can you grasp this idea? Visa simply went and did a trademark search on every word in every domain JSL owns, and then feigned outrage, as if I chose those domains for their resale value. I mean, come on, look at picturebookmaker.com. For that matter look at what used to be on evisa.com. Cybersquatters don't put up hundreds of pages of useful info - they just, well, squat.
But in any case, regardless of whether anyone wants to call me sleazy or not, the EFF is NOT INVOLVED in the cybersquatting complaint. JSL is on its own on the infringement and cybersquatting case (both of which are ridiculous, and we'll no doubt do fine w/o any help). The EFF is only trying to overturn this one ruling which could give VISA rights over the commercial use of domains and business names that contain the word v-i-s-a.
-Joe Orr
JSL
The above post isn't correct.
1. VISA does not own the EVISA mark. The EVISA mark is owned by JSL by matter of common law. See this. Both VISA and JSL have applied for registration. Both companies have opposed the other's registration, and JSL is countersuing VISA for infringement of JSL's EVISA mark.
2. The present order being appealed with the help of the EFF is only one ruling in a big lawsuit.(Although it does give VISA basically what it is after). The EFF is not involved in the rest of the lawsuit. The present ruling only deals with the dilution of VISA by EVISA. The judge has pretty much ruled that EVISA dilutes VISA by virtue of the fact that it "contains the VISA mark in its entirety". Check out the ruling for yourself and see whether you think it makes sense, and what the implications might be. Link to complete text of order.
The VISA-JSL lawsuit itself is a more complicated story, will post more soon. But the current issue is simply this one ruling, which is a ruling about "dilution" (not infringement) of VISA by EVISA.
-Joe Orr
JSL
The fact that evisa.com's language apps require IE has nothing to do with LP. The fact that they exist at all has everything to do with LP, since the resources weren't available to create comparable functionality in something other than DHTML using Leo, which greatly sped up development. E.g. Coding the apps in Java would have been much more time consuming.
evisa.com's language apps were written before Netscape 6 was released, at which time IE was the only browser supporting DHTML. In addition IE is required for the pages that have speech, since that uses MS Agent, and there is no comparable technology for Netscape.
Only the dynamic pages in the languages apps section of evisa.com require IE, all other pages support IE, Netscape and Opera.
Hmm.. this is a pretty standard (and justified) complaint about LP and I'm starting to think maybe Leo shouldn't be associated with LP at all, although it is an extension of it.
As the creator of Leo has pointed out, with Leo you aren't writing a novel, you're writing an index. You're building a roadmap - a reference tool. It GREATLY speeds development time. It just is so much easier to program something when you have all the pieces arranged into a clear filing system that you can customize as much as you want.
If you look at the evisa.com example in the tutorials, you'll see that the total of words in the entire Leo outline is maybe one paragraph. That is all that it takes to THOROUGHLY document the ENTIRE project. In fact, the need for a lot of other standard comments is eliminated because the outline shows the relationship of the parts to the whole, and you don't need to keep explaining what point you are at in the program.
Programming with Leo is LP in the sense that you've got an explanation in English that is foundational, but in practice Leo programming is entirely different from standard LP. I hope people who have tried LP and been disillusioned will give Leo a try.
Leo is not a tool for automating the documentation of a program. Did you look at the tutorials?
Secondly, Leo does indeed solve the problem of programmers not being able to write out a clear explanation of the program. The way it works is, the programmer shows the Leo outline to someone else who says "What the hell are you trying to say?" And the programmer just has to keep working on it until it makes sense. There is no excuse for the programmer not to show his code to another person, since it now has an outline IN ENGLISH. That is a much better situation than having this programmer just write out code that no one ever checks for logical clarity - this code will presumably have the same problems that the programmer's prose does.
If you can't explain something, you don't understand it.
The Python 3.5 version, which brings the Python version up to the level of the C++ version is new. Also, the @file feature is new. The @file feature is a breakthrough, since this is what allows Leo to work transparently alongside other tools. It may be this feature more than any other that will make it easier for people to use LP techniques in the workplace, since it allows people to introduce LP techniques as a secondary technology. This is explained better in the Leo docs and the online tutorial. I probably should have said "the new 3.5 version of Leo" in the article instead of just "Leo", but I was trying to be as brief as possible.
Something I didn't put in the original notice but now regret that I left out - Leo has another new feature more difficult to describe, but that which solves the problem that several people have mentioned about not wanting to abandon an existing text editor or tool. Leo can embed an outline structure in comments, so that one programmer can work with the file in JBuilder or EMacs, and a third programmer can still work with the program(s) in Leo. In effect, Leo is a meta-text editor. When Leo opens an outline containing a file that has been edited with another editor, all of the edits are retained. This is a further extension of LP because you are getting code read back into the documentation, which means that LP techniques can be used for understanding and/or teaching existing programs. It also means that Leo allows LP to be a secondary technique to add additional structure and documentation, rather than necessarily being the primary technique. This is explained in more detail in the tutorials and Leo docs.
.NET, but this ability to separate the outline from the program is something new, as far as I know. Also, unmentioned in the original article is the idea of having clone nodes, which means your outline can put the same code section into different branches simultaneously.
It is true that there are other IDEs that allow folding, e.g. Visual Studio