If a patent is (wrongly) awarded for a technology that has been covered by prior art, even if the prior art has not previously been patented, what is the legal status of the patent and the prior art?
You can patent something that somebody has implemented, but not published. When the patent is granted, you can sue the originating implementer and compel them to (a) stop doing business based on the claims in your patent, or (b) license your patent.
If the original implementer PUBLISHED the inventor before you filed for your patent, then that demonstrates prior art and it would cause a real legal battle if you manner to get a patent for it.
IANAL, but I did attend an information session presented by my companies resident IP lawyer recently.
People would have been better off if they had done nothing at all, but that's not what they did.
I thought about this, too. I think it's near-sighted to say "Don't allow a city to exist where New Orleans is." There are *resources* available there and the city of New Orleans had developed from the desire to use those resources.
Without New Orleans, you cut of St. Louis and Chicago from the shipping routes from the Gulf of Mexico. Without New Orleans, you lose lots of fishing that's done in the Gulf of Mexico. Without New Orleans you lose the off-shore oil production that's located in the Gulf of Mexico.
I'm not sure if these are things that we need now, but in the 19th and 20th century these resources were enough to warrant building a city there. So I disagree, people would not have been better off without New Orleans.
Like all things... knowing the risks and the costs of mitigating the risks is tantamount. Blaming people for not mitigating low likelihood risks isn't the answer, nor is assigning a value based on litigation (though, as has been noted, $3 Million from this lawsuit isn't outrageous.)
At the beginning of the trial this summer, US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval asked, "You all know what this is about:... What did the Corps know, when did it know it, and when should it have known?"
He answered in a 158-page ruling late Wednesday.
"It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness," he wrote.
He awarded 4 people (presumably New Orleans landowners) about $750,000 apiece for a lawsuit that's been going on since 2006. I don't know any more specifics about this case, but that seems like a small price to pay compared to the millions/billions that were spent immediately after the storm.
What I don't understand is why natural disasters should have been mitigated by technology. There are certain areas of the country that are susceptible to certain disasters. They wouldn't blame a construction firm when a tornado rips apart a building in the Midwest. They wouldn't blame the fire department when fires are engulfing a city. Why point extra blame towards the Corps of Engineers when a very powerful storm hits a susceptible city with the full force of its power? I don't buy the argument that we should be expected to spend the money up-front to guard against storms that big.
If Wikipedia results disappeared from Google, I'd start using a different search engine. Cuban *only* needs to figure out how much money to give to Jimmy Wales and a technical way to take Wikipedia off the Google search results and he'll have gone and done major damage to Google.
I don't know why I'm replying to your flamebait. I asked a pointed question and your answer deflected. Maybe I'm holding out hope that you have some extra insight as to what nuances make teaching different from other creative public jobs.
Now: to address your claim that "that aren't getting paid for lesson development" I'd like to take a look at how public school teachers actually get paid and compare that to a much more comfortable wage (i.e. mine).
I make about $80k/year for 2000 hours of work (approximately $40/hr). Teachers make about $50k/year for a quantity of work that is harder to quantify. I recall "school" takes 6 hours and that the average year has 180 calendar days in it. This multiplies out to about 1100 hours of "work time" per year for a teacher. By my calculation, teachers "owe" 170 hours per year of their personal time to match my salary level (approx $40/hour).
Thus, from a monetary perspective I refute your claim that they aren't getting paid to do this.
From an engineering standpoint, though, if I turned around and made extra money on the side selling knowledge related to my work I'd be fired faster than the people who get caught watching porn on the company networks.
And Point 2:
since the school provides significantly too little time during working hours, the teachers, in what would otherwise be their spare time, put together lesson plans for the benefit of the students
When I went to high school, teachers taught during 3 or 4 class periods per day and got to spend the other 4 or 5 class periods doing whatever they wanted. If your experience is different, maybe you should consider moving to a district where teachers ARE PAID for the efforts required to create lesson plans. It seems like any other experience fits closer with the "babysitter" ideology.
And don't get me wrong... I hope to think that I'll never vote against a school budget because the benefit of teachers, schools, and productive students is of utmost importance to the world. But letting teacher's profit from lesson plans is absurd. Teacher's should be collaborating on their lesson plans so that they can produce better ones. Lesson plans, I suspect, are one area where capitalism will not make a better overall product. Let these valuable lesson plans be public domain!
There is no way that I could re-do those years of work while moving my career ahead. Some of that stuff is now in my permanent bag of tricks.
It makes no sense that schools would own the hard work of teachers. Shouldn't lessons plans created by public school teachers be marked as public works that are licensed under the public domain? I know whenever NASA releases an image that I can use it however I wish as long as I give them an attribution.
Is there a nuance that makes teaching in public schools different from working for NASA? As far as I know, the only NASA work that will never be public domain is ITAR restricted work. Surely these concerns don't apply to school teachers.
Once you've figured out how to price text books about the same as a best seller hard-cover book instead $100-200 a copy
California is beginning to figure it out with the recent push to approve Open Source Text Books for use in public schools.
My only thought about lessons plans created by public school teachers... why aren't these creations marked as public works that are licensed under the public domain? I know whenever NASA releases an image that I can use it however I wish as long as I give them an attribution.
Is there a nuance that makes teaching in public schools different from working for NASA? As far as I know, the only NASA work that will never be public domain is ITAR restricted work. Surely these concerns don't apply to school teachers.
Imagine a mechanic telling his brother-in-law "pay me for parts and labor, or just take it to the dealership". I can't imagine this. At the very best, I can imagine the mechanic saying "XYZ is probably wrong, I don't have the time to fix it, take it to RST and tell them ABC. They should be able to fix it for $HIJ"
Though... this illustrates that fact that a family car mechanic has his families interests in mind by giving them hints when the other mechanic tries to rip them off. Also, that mechanics are busy people and actually don't have time to fart around helping their families. There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is.
until we use political channels to create new regulations
Economic channels, as well. I know obvious stuff like taxation is a delusion because it's naive to think that somebody who would cheat their customers wouldn't also cheat the government. Even charities these days are based on pushing agendas (albeit somewhat altruistic ones) of the big players and giving them tax shelters.
What I think *would* make a difference is price controls on certain areas of the economy to make sure things stay affordable to families who make the average salary for the geographic region they live in. For example, the *most* expensive house in a region should not be allowed to be sold for $AVERAGE_ANNUAL_INCOME * 7. And this serves the double-benefit of helping to insulate us from housing bubbles.
(Though, I guess this is rudimentarily an idea that needs to make its way through political channels, so your original assertions stands!)
What's the sense in copying down notes about the professor's lecture when he e-mailed the presentation package prior to class?
o Powerpoint does contain the full picture.
Powerpoint presentations were created by humans so they inherently lack full details on a topic. If God ever begins marketing a series of Powerpoint lectures that are from His omnipotent perspective and contain all the necessary details without the superfluous fluff, the medium will improve.
I recall Jerry Falwell has a similar case and lost. When you make a living condemning HALF THE WORLD you ought to expect this sort of thing. Beck's opinions are usually heavily slanted towards big business and he frequently denigrates anybody who would try to slow down the economy with harmful regulation (sic).
His book makes me laugh, as I feel that the title implies that it's a Howto guide for people to interact with him.
3. How is it technically feasible, if at all, to make a ruling on the Business
Methods case without influencing whether software can or cannot be patented?
People want software patents that are unspecific to be impossible to get. I think less people would object to specific implementations with published source code so that when the patent expires the full functionality goes public domain. In my opinion, let Microsoft choose to patent Windows and ship a copy of the source code to the patent office or rely on "trade secrets" to protect them. I know Coca-Cola relies on trade secrets for the recipe for their flagship product and this has worked well for decades.
But without published sources, I can't begin to imagine how Company A can claim Company B has "infringed" on their patent by "implementing a method to purchase a product through an internet connection utilizing a Single-Click action", because there are dozens of ways of implementing this (Java or Perl? Cookies or Server-side Database? Credit or Debit charge? Fat (like AOL) or Thin (via Firefox) Client?).
Lots of people are screaming "Wire Fraud" about this but I don't buy it. Microsoft needs to be accountable for their lack of security. They cost the world Billions of dollars (lost productivity plus value of the anti-virus/removal industry) because they're the leaders of a mentality where rushing products out the door is preferable to more reliable measures.
I mean... blame the person who exploited the crappy security all you want... but if Microsoft doesn't stop the $2k deposit from going into his account I don't think laws should give them a leg to stand-on. One poster noted that Microsoft probably has a team to review these large charges and I would agree that they do have resources to manually stop this large payment.
But if they don't stop it... well if MUST be more profitable to make that choice because Microsoft is a very, very smart business and they have historically made very, very ballsy and successful business decisions. So, as long as valuable taxpayer dollars don't get wasted on the case of whether it's morally right to exploit Microsoft for personal gain, I don't think there's much to talk about here. BUT if this becomes a court battle (Unreliable, Cheap Software v. John Doe) I hope the Unreliable, Cheap Software loses.
...usually doesn't add a reoccurring charge of $60/month. I believe a more appropriate term would be Jackson and Granting (after President Andrew Jackson whose face appears on the $20 bill and President Ulysses S. Grant who is on the $50 bill).
Actually... I rather like the idea of a "guarded pasture" that prevents people from seeing 99% of the internet as long as anybody with any knowledge of computers can get access to whatever they want.
I'd also like to see a new law... if you post content on the internet without any explicit claim of copyright, then it's free to copy and distribute non-commercially with attribution.
I was in 7th grade when the internet came into my reach. This was approximately in 1994-1995 with AOL. Discovery of a thing as it was first hitting critical mass was a very fun thing to experience, in retrospect.
I'm honestly surprised that Apple isn't suing for stealing their "There's an App for that" slogan. I mean... "There's a Map for that" isn't very original.
They seem to be using real historic values on that site. Try entering 1925 and 1931 and see what the depression did to the cost of goods!
It seems like you've discovered that inflation has been real low during the last 14 years. Check out under the "Inflation and Prices" menu and you can peak at the historic values.
Investigative journalism can't be done in your spare time. However, you could be an "expert source" that contributes to investigative stories done by professional journalists.
There is a need for truly ground-breaking investigative stories to come from journalists who are well-connected politically so they can get interviews from real decision-makers about what's going on in the world. I suspect Watergate would not have been possible if a world where the main source of news is the rants and raves coming from the Blogosphere.
The calculation I wanted you to do was to figure out that if you had $1.60 today then you'd expect to have $0.80 in 18 years with 4% inflation. I'd bet the calculator you found uses real historical values from the last 14 years instead of the catch-all 4% that they taught me in Economics 101... but the main point was comparing gross dollars from 1996 to gross dollars in 2009 is like comparing apples and oranges. You *need* to put the 1996 values in 2009 terms.
With regard to the spike in inflation... as long as my salary reflects the bump I welcome it with open arms. Inflation is designed to prevent rich guys like Bill Gates from sitting on their $80 Billion war chest (counting the Buffet contributions that are promised) that's earmarked for charities. The idea is that if they don't reinvest their money, it will progressively lessen in value. This is a good thing for regular folk like me and you.
The fact is that writing as a profession has such low barriers to entry these days these days (all you need is a keyboard, an internet connection, and a deal in place to host your published ideas), and the concept that ideas from certain writers are more valuable than others seems to be misguided.
Instead, sites should focus on improving their most worthwhile content by making sure their best writers are writing IN DEPTH INVESTIGATIVE STORIES that elevate the nationwide discussion. For what it's worth, the strategy of publishing mounds of opinionated drivel is being demonstrated to lead to minimal success.
Though, while we're here I'd like to plug my own source of potentially opinionated drivel at my site and invite anybody who thinks my ideas are worthwhile to help me get some of my ideas published in the mainstream media (which unrelentlessly still controls 90% of the power within the news publication game).
Slashdot Mirror
when it was part of my job to change the tapes.
I had that job once. I hated that part of my job because it was repetitive and boring and the backups failed more than they should have.
If a patent is (wrongly) awarded for a technology that has been covered by prior art, even if the prior art has not previously been patented, what is the legal status of the patent and the prior art?
You can patent something that somebody has implemented, but not published. When the patent is granted, you can sue the originating implementer and compel them to (a) stop doing business based on the claims in your patent, or (b) license your patent.
If the original implementer PUBLISHED the inventor before you filed for your patent, then that demonstrates prior art and it would cause a real legal battle if you manner to get a patent for it.
IANAL, but I did attend an information session presented by my companies resident IP lawyer recently.
People would have been better off if they had done nothing at all, but that's not what they did.
I thought about this, too. I think it's near-sighted to say "Don't allow a city to exist where New Orleans is." There are *resources* available there and the city of New Orleans had developed from the desire to use those resources.
Without New Orleans, you cut of St. Louis and Chicago from the shipping routes from the Gulf of Mexico. Without New Orleans, you lose lots of fishing that's done in the Gulf of Mexico. Without New Orleans you lose the off-shore oil production that's located in the Gulf of Mexico.
I'm not sure if these are things that we need now, but in the 19th and 20th century these resources were enough to warrant building a city there. So I disagree, people would not have been better off without New Orleans.
Like all things... knowing the risks and the costs of mitigating the risks is tantamount. Blaming people for not mitigating low likelihood risks isn't the answer, nor is assigning a value based on litigation (though, as has been noted, $3 Million from this lawsuit isn't outrageous.)
At the beginning of the trial this summer, US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval asked, "You all know what this is about: ... What did the Corps know, when did it know it, and when should it have known?"
He answered in a 158-page ruling late Wednesday.
"It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness," he wrote.
He awarded 4 people (presumably New Orleans landowners) about $750,000 apiece for a lawsuit that's been going on since 2006. I don't know any more specifics about this case, but that seems like a small price to pay compared to the millions/billions that were spent immediately after the storm.
What I don't understand is why natural disasters should have been mitigated by technology. There are certain areas of the country that are susceptible to certain disasters. They wouldn't blame a construction firm when a tornado rips apart a building in the Midwest. They wouldn't blame the fire department when fires are engulfing a city. Why point extra blame towards the Corps of Engineers when a very powerful storm hits a susceptible city with the full force of its power? I don't buy the argument that we should be expected to spend the money up-front to guard against storms that big.
But even cooler is the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX), a laser that is mounted on a truck
1. Mounted on a Truck
2. ????
3. Mounted on a Carcharhiniforme
4. Profit!
If Wikipedia results disappeared from Google, I'd start using a different search engine. Cuban *only* needs to figure out how much money to give to Jimmy Wales and a technical way to take Wikipedia off the Google search results and he'll have gone and done major damage to Google.
I don't know why I'm replying to your flamebait. I asked a pointed question and your answer deflected. Maybe I'm holding out hope that you have some extra insight as to what nuances make teaching different from other creative public jobs.
Now: to address your claim that "that aren't getting paid for lesson development" I'd like to take a look at how public school teachers actually get paid and compare that to a much more comfortable wage (i.e. mine).
I make about $80k/year for 2000 hours of work (approximately $40/hr). Teachers make about $50k/year for a quantity of work that is harder to quantify. I recall "school" takes 6 hours and that the average year has 180 calendar days in it. This multiplies out to about 1100 hours of "work time" per year for a teacher. By my calculation, teachers "owe" 170 hours per year of their personal time to match my salary level (approx $40/hour).
Thus, from a monetary perspective I refute your claim that they aren't getting paid to do this.
From an engineering standpoint, though, if I turned around and made extra money on the side selling knowledge related to my work I'd be fired faster than the people who get caught watching porn on the company networks.
And Point 2:
since the school provides significantly too little time during working hours, the teachers, in what would otherwise be their spare time, put together lesson plans for the benefit of the students
When I went to high school, teachers taught during 3 or 4 class periods per day and got to spend the other 4 or 5 class periods doing whatever they wanted. If your experience is different, maybe you should consider moving to a district where teachers ARE PAID for the efforts required to create lesson plans. It seems like any other experience fits closer with the "babysitter" ideology.
And don't get me wrong... I hope to think that I'll never vote against a school budget because the benefit of teachers, schools, and productive students is of utmost importance to the world. But letting teacher's profit from lesson plans is absurd. Teacher's should be collaborating on their lesson plans so that they can produce better ones. Lesson plans, I suspect, are one area where capitalism will not make a better overall product. Let these valuable lesson plans be public domain!
There is no way that I could re-do those years of work while moving my career ahead. Some of that stuff is now in my permanent bag of tricks.
It makes no sense that schools would own the hard work of teachers. Shouldn't lessons plans created by public school teachers be marked as public works that are licensed under the public domain? I know whenever NASA releases an image that I can use it however I wish as long as I give them an attribution.
Is there a nuance that makes teaching in public schools different from working for NASA? As far as I know, the only NASA work that will never be public domain is ITAR restricted work. Surely these concerns don't apply to school teachers.
Once you've figured out how to price text books about the same as a best seller hard-cover book instead $100-200 a copy
California is beginning to figure it out with the recent push to approve Open Source Text Books for use in public schools.
My only thought about lessons plans created by public school teachers... why aren't these creations marked as public works that are licensed under the public domain? I know whenever NASA releases an image that I can use it however I wish as long as I give them an attribution.
Is there a nuance that makes teaching in public schools different from working for NASA? As far as I know, the only NASA work that will never be public domain is ITAR restricted work. Surely these concerns don't apply to school teachers.
tell them to get it repaired at the store.
Imagine a mechanic telling his brother-in-law "pay me for parts and labor, or just take it to the dealership". I can't imagine this. At the very best, I can imagine the mechanic saying "XYZ is probably wrong, I don't have the time to fix it, take it to RST and tell them ABC. They should be able to fix it for $HIJ"
Though... this illustrates that fact that a family car mechanic has his families interests in mind by giving them hints when the other mechanic tries to rip them off. Also, that mechanics are busy people and actually don't have time to fart around helping their families. There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is.
until we use political channels to create new regulations
Economic channels, as well. I know obvious stuff like taxation is a delusion because it's naive to think that somebody who would cheat their customers wouldn't also cheat the government. Even charities these days are based on pushing agendas (albeit somewhat altruistic ones) of the big players and giving them tax shelters.
What I think *would* make a difference is price controls on certain areas of the economy to make sure things stay affordable to families who make the average salary for the geographic region they live in. For example, the *most* expensive house in a region should not be allowed to be sold for $AVERAGE_ANNUAL_INCOME * 7. And this serves the double-benefit of helping to insulate us from housing bubbles.
(Though, I guess this is rudimentarily an idea that needs to make its way through political channels, so your original assertions stands!)
It seems a bit surprising to me that this study shows that only 15% of vulnerabilities are in IE.
There is an explanation for that.
Cenzic Recognized as a Microsoft Certified Partner, Experiences Substantial Momentum in Q2
Why it should be banned
o People don't learn well from PowerPoint
Powerpoint is hard to learn from.
o It discourages making written notes.
What's the sense in copying down notes about the professor's lecture when he e-mailed the presentation package prior to class?
o Powerpoint does contain the full picture.
Powerpoint presentations were created by humans so they inherently lack full details on a topic. If God ever begins marketing a series of Powerpoint lectures that are from His omnipotent perspective and contain all the necessary details without the superfluous fluff, the medium will improve.
o Thus the problem is God
Divine intervention would be appreciated.
SLIDE 2
Now moving along to slide 3.
I recall Jerry Falwell has a similar case and lost. When you make a living condemning HALF THE WORLD you ought to expect this sort of thing. Beck's opinions are usually heavily slanted towards big business and he frequently denigrates anybody who would try to slow down the economy with harmful regulation (sic).
His book makes me laugh, as I feel that the title implies that it's a Howto guide for people to interact with him.
When talking of references, whenever anyone says "Professor Farnsworth" I think of the inventor of TV
I learn something new everyday. Thank you!
3. How is it technically feasible, if at all, to make a ruling on the Business Methods case without influencing whether software can or cannot be patented?
People want software patents that are unspecific to be impossible to get. I think less people would object to specific implementations with published source code so that when the patent expires the full functionality goes public domain. In my opinion, let Microsoft choose to patent Windows and ship a copy of the source code to the patent office or rely on "trade secrets" to protect them. I know Coca-Cola relies on trade secrets for the recipe for their flagship product and this has worked well for decades.
But without published sources, I can't begin to imagine how Company A can claim Company B has "infringed" on their patent by "implementing a method to purchase a product through an internet connection utilizing a Single-Click action", because there are dozens of ways of implementing this (Java or Perl? Cookies or Server-side Database? Credit or Debit charge? Fat (like AOL) or Thin (via Firefox) Client?).
Lots of people are screaming "Wire Fraud" about this but I don't buy it. Microsoft needs to be accountable for their lack of security. They cost the world Billions of dollars (lost productivity plus value of the anti-virus/removal industry) because they're the leaders of a mentality where rushing products out the door is preferable to more reliable measures.
I mean... blame the person who exploited the crappy security all you want... but if Microsoft doesn't stop the $2k deposit from going into his account I don't think laws should give them a leg to stand-on. One poster noted that Microsoft probably has a team to review these large charges and I would agree that they do have resources to manually stop this large payment.
But if they don't stop it... well if MUST be more profitable to make that choice because Microsoft is a very, very smart business and they have historically made very, very ballsy and successful business decisions. So, as long as valuable taxpayer dollars don't get wasted on the case of whether it's morally right to exploit Microsoft for personal gain, I don't think there's much to talk about here. BUT if this becomes a court battle (Unreliable, Cheap Software v. John Doe) I hope the Unreliable, Cheap Software loses.
...usually doesn't add a reoccurring charge of $60/month. I believe a more appropriate term would be Jackson and Granting (after President Andrew Jackson whose face appears on the $20 bill and President Ulysses S. Grant who is on the $50 bill).
Actually... I rather like the idea of a "guarded pasture" that prevents people from seeing 99% of the internet as long as anybody with any knowledge of computers can get access to whatever they want.
I'd also like to see a new law... if you post content on the internet without any explicit claim of copyright, then it's free to copy and distribute non-commercially with attribution.
I was in 7th grade when the internet came into my reach. This was approximately in 1994-1995 with AOL. Discovery of a thing as it was first hitting critical mass was a very fun thing to experience, in retrospect.
I'm honestly surprised that Apple isn't suing for stealing their "There's an App for that" slogan. I mean... "There's a Map for that" isn't very original.
They seem to be using real historic values on that site. Try entering 1925 and 1931 and see what the depression did to the cost of goods!
It seems like you've discovered that inflation has been real low during the last 14 years. Check out under the "Inflation and Prices" menu and you can peak at the historic values.
Investigative journalism can't be done in your spare time. However, you could be an "expert source" that contributes to investigative stories done by professional journalists.
There is a need for truly ground-breaking investigative stories to come from journalists who are well-connected politically so they can get interviews from real decision-makers about what's going on in the world. I suspect Watergate would not have been possible if a world where the main source of news is the rants and raves coming from the Blogosphere.
The calculation I wanted you to do was to figure out that if you had $1.60 today then you'd expect to have $0.80 in 18 years with 4% inflation. I'd bet the calculator you found uses real historical values from the last 14 years instead of the catch-all 4% that they taught me in Economics 101... but the main point was comparing gross dollars from 1996 to gross dollars in 2009 is like comparing apples and oranges. You *need* to put the 1996 values in 2009 terms.
With regard to the spike in inflation... as long as my salary reflects the bump I welcome it with open arms. Inflation is designed to prevent rich guys like Bill Gates from sitting on their $80 Billion war chest (counting the Buffet contributions that are promised) that's earmarked for charities. The idea is that if they don't reinvest their money, it will progressively lessen in value. This is a good thing for regular folk like me and you.
The fact is that writing as a profession has such low barriers to entry these days these days (all you need is a keyboard, an internet connection, and a deal in place to host your published ideas), and the concept that ideas from certain writers are more valuable than others seems to be misguided.
Instead, sites should focus on improving their most worthwhile content by making sure their best writers are writing IN DEPTH INVESTIGATIVE STORIES that elevate the nationwide discussion. For what it's worth, the strategy of publishing mounds of opinionated drivel is being demonstrated to lead to minimal success.
Though, while we're here I'd like to plug my own source of potentially opinionated drivel at my site and invite anybody who thinks my ideas are worthwhile to help me get some of my ideas published in the mainstream media (which unrelentlessly still controls 90% of the power within the news publication game).