If you want to "discover" "obscure" music go to a band's website that get's a positive review from a trusted source or that your favorite DJ plays - or however you hear / hear about new music
I whole heartedly agree with this statement, but have to laugh at the "favorite DJ" part. With the state of radio as it is, I doubt 99% of America could even name a DJ (and no Howard Stern doesn't count since he doesn't actually play music). Even if they could, chances are that "DJ" doesn't have any input whatsoever on what gets played and is there to do nothing more than back announce tracks and occasionaly give away tickets.
Another way I'd mention to discover new music would be a subscription service such as yahoo or rhapsody or the now free napster. Start with a band you like and surf through the reccomendation links and see where you end up. For example, I started on Maroon 5 (who I can't really say I likem but figured it would be a good example) and ended up on Radio Birdman, an excellent 70s Australian band who recently got back together and has an album coming out in a week. These services aren't very good for building a library of music, but they are great for previewing new music to see if its worth buying through more traditonal sources.
Roberts concurring opinion is pretty useless, but this gem is found in Kennedy's concurring opinion (joined by Stevens, Souter and Breyer):
In cases now arising trial courts should bear in mind that in many instances the nature of the patent being enforced and the economic function of the patent holder present considerations quite unlike earlier cases. An industry has developed in which firms use patents not as a basis for producing and selling goods but, instead, primarily for obtaining licensing fees. See FTC, To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy, ch. 3, pp. 38-39 (Oct. 2003), available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/10/innovationrpt.pdf (as visited May 11, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court's case file). For these firms, an injunction, and the potentially serious sanctions arising from its violation, can be employed as a bargaining tool to charge exorbitant fees to companies that seek to buy licenses to practice the patent. See ibid. When the patented invention is but a small component of the product the companies seek to produce and the threat of an injunction is employed simply for undue leverage in negotiations, legal damages may well be sufficient to compensate for the infringement and an injunction may not serve the public interest. In addition injunctive relief may have different consequences for the burgeoning number of patents over business methods, which were not of much economic and legal significance in earlier times. The potential vagueness and suspect validity of some of these patents may affect the calculus under the four-factor test.
Sounds like a huge blow to businesses based entirely around patent licensing.
The decision itself can be found here along with countless other places.
For the most part it is a pretty cut and dry decision stating that a 4-part based on the principles of equality should be applied before an injunction is granted. Specifically:
A plaintiff must demonstrate: (1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (3) that, considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction. See, e.g., Weinberger v. Romero-Barcelo, 456 U. S. 305, 311-313 (1982) ; Amoco Production Co. v. Gambell, 480 U. S. 531, 542 (1987).
There is an interesting part of Thomas opinion:
Although the District Court recited the traditional four-factor test, 275 F. Supp. 2d, at 711, it appeared to adopt certain expansive principles suggesting that injunctive relief could not issue in a broad swath of cases. Most notably, it concluded that a "plaintiff's willingness to license its patents" and "its lack of commercial activity in practicing the patents" would be sufficient to establish that the patent holder would not suffer irreparable harm if an injunction did not issue. Id., at 712. But traditional equitable principles do not permit such broad classifications. For example, some patent holders, such as university researchers or self-made inventors, might reasonably prefer to license their patents, rather than undertake efforts to secure the financing necessary to bring their works to market themselves.
This basically lays out that just because a patent owner has no intention of selling or making the product does not mean that they automatically fail the 4-part test. Presumably if they also have no intention of licensing the patent to someone they would fail the test, but this isn't specifically said in the decision. Might be something to watch for in the future.
These are things they invented or not, I don't really care. I don't also like the "patenting" of such things. There should be a way to make it free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft.
Patent it yourself and allow it to the OSS folks but not to Microsoft? Release it under your own license that says it can only be used for non-commercial activities?
Of course these require you to come up with the idea before someone beats you to it.
They do, but you actually have to read the patent and the claim to figure out what they are talking about instead of relying on a short summary from slashdot.
Wait.. I mentioned common sense in a discussion about US Patent law. I feel both dirty.. and confused...
Nope, common sense would be reading and understanding the issue at hand before commentint on it. For example, read the claims of the patent and then compare those claims to the CD-key/activation key system you are describing.
This idea doesn't seem to be clever enough to be non-obvious as required by section 103 of US Code Title 35
You have the burden of proof wrong here. A patent does not have to rise to a certain level to meet the non-obviousness requirement. Instead it is assumed to be non-obvious unless a prima facie case of obviousness can be made based on the prior art.
There is no requirement of a certain amount of cleverness to be reached before a patent is granted.
More seriuosly, the patents claim to provide an "apparatus and method", but fail to describe any actual appartus beyond the computer running the software under question. This is really a patent on an idea which contravenes section 102 of Title 35.
I'm going to assume you ment section 101 of Tilte 35 here and will point out that this most likely meets the "process" and "machine" sections of that requirment.
There is NOTHING new here, just old ideas re-badged with the word "Internet".
Strange... care to explain why there is no mention of the word "Internet" in the claims of either patent then?
Re:The US Patent Office is very generous . . .
on
Paul Graham on Patents
·
· Score: 3, Informative
35 USC 101:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title [35 USC 1 et seq.].
What most likely happened is one of his applications was claiming multiple inventions, so it got split into two different applications through a restriction/divisional.
I reccomend paying attention to the eBay v. MercExchange case which is currently before the Supreme Court. Basically they are deciding whehter it is proper for trial court judges to automatically issue an injunction if a party is found to be infringing a patent.
Seeing as how the article mentions a decoder, I'd assume this is the claim they're talking about:
13. An apparatus for decoding a compressed digital video signal, comprising:
a means for receiving a compressed digital video bit stream; and
a means responsive to a motion compensation type signal for selectively and adaptively performing motion compensated decoding of frames of the compressed video bit stream.
Claims that include "means for" fall under the provisions of 35 USC 112, 6th paragraph which states:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
So, if you want to figure out what this is actually claiming, you have to read the entire specification to determine what the claimed "means" actually correspond to. However, I'm guessing the vast majority out there will condemn the claim, patent and lawsuit without bothering to take the time to find out what the actual issue is.
RIM established its BlackBerry service prior to May 20, 1991? Very interesting. And here I thought RIM's Blackberry service was a relatively new thing, but I guess its actually 15 years old.
You can definitely do it. I learned that in college parallel parking a Crown Victoria. You really only need a few inches more than the length of your car and some time.
Obvious (does not take an inventor to "buy it now" at a predetermined price)
I have no idea what standards of "obvious" you are using here, but I reccomend checking out the actual standards in the MPEP, specifically sections 2141-2144.
If you want to get into technical details of it then you are correct. However, given the legal knowledge of the average slashdotter, I've found its best not to get to in depth with the details of 102(a), 102(b), 102(e), 103(c) and the requirements for 1.131 affadavits which would need to be filed in order to make a rejection based on 102(a/e).
Also going directly to the statutes isn't always the greatest idea because you are ignoring the mountains of case law regarding those statutes. It would be better to go to the MPEP, specifically chapters 0700 and 2100.
I'm very confused as to why the date on the patent reads 2005-02-15 unless this is a renewal date.
The 2005-02-15 date is the issuance date, i.e. the date at which the application became a patent. The real date(s) you want to look at is the application date (and the priority date if there is one). In this case, the application date is 1999-10-21 and there is no priority date. Therefore, to qualify as prior art someone would have to have been published or sold to the public prior to 1999-10-21.
Whether or not CDs have "better" quality depends on what service you use. The CD format in and of itself is pretty low quality compared to some other digital formats available.
Where are you buying your music online from? Redbook standard is 2 x 16bit channels @ 44.1kHz = 1411.2kbit/s. Meanwhile itunes is compressed to 128kbits/s which is a compression of 11.03x. While it is argueable whether the average listener listing on average equipment will be able to tell the difference, the redbook CDs definitely are higher quality. Even flac files from allofmp3 are encoded from the physical cds and should be equal in quality, not better by any stretch of the imagination.
With online services, you buy only the songs you want and don't get railroaded into paying extra for the rest of the trash on the disc.
If this is a frequently problem for you chances are you don't really like the bands you are listening to. There is also a good chance that you have never bothered to actually listen to the tracks more than once (or even once) to determine if you actually like them. Note that I don't mean the parent poster in particular by "you", but any person who frequently complains that CDs only ever contain 1 or 2 good tracks and a bunch of bad tracks.
I own about 400 cds and a fair sized collection of vinyl and there are only a few songs in the whole collection that I will actually skip over.
I also reccomend finding radio stations which have shows that play music you like, and see what else they play.
For example, WFMU has a nice playlist search where you can look for shows which have played certain artists. They also have all of their shows archived back to ~2000, so you can find a show that plays stuff that you like and listen to a few of the archives to see if they play anything else you like.
They also have a genre finder that allows you to search for shows by genre.
On top of that the EULA that you sign when purchasing DRM'd songs limits you to certain uses, efectively signing away any fair use right you may have had.
Allmusic is a good starting point for reccomendations. You can search an artist and it will give you similar artists along with artists who influenced that artists and artists who were influenced by that artist. It also is a good source for biographical and discography information.
The Yahoo subscription service also has a neat feature where you can queue up songs which are similar to a song/album/artist and listen to those songs, plus at $60 a year it is a pretty cheap way to find new music. I wouldn't reccomend it for building a music library due to the subscriptionyness of it though.
LOL... That is perhaps the funniest thing I've ever read in a Slashdot patent story. It's a shame that its also incredibly accurate, for both Fox News and Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to "discover" "obscure" music go to a band's website that get's a positive review from a trusted source or that your favorite DJ plays - or however you hear / hear about new music
I whole heartedly agree with this statement, but have to laugh at the "favorite DJ" part. With the state of radio as it is, I doubt 99% of America could even name a DJ (and no Howard Stern doesn't count since he doesn't actually play music). Even if they could, chances are that "DJ" doesn't have any input whatsoever on what gets played and is there to do nothing more than back announce tracks and occasionaly give away tickets.
Another way I'd mention to discover new music would be a subscription service such as yahoo or rhapsody or the now free napster. Start with a band you like and surf through the reccomendation links and see where you end up. For example, I started on Maroon 5 (who I can't really say I likem but figured it would be a good example) and ended up on Radio Birdman, an excellent 70s Australian band who recently got back together and has an album coming out in a week. These services aren't very good for building a library of music, but they are great for previewing new music to see if its worth buying through more traditonal sources.
For the most part it is a pretty cut and dry decision stating that a 4-part based on the principles of equality should be applied before an injunction is granted. Specifically:There is an interesting part of Thomas opinion:This basically lays out that just because a patent owner has no intention of selling or making the product does not mean that they automatically fail the 4-part test. Presumably if they also have no intention of licensing the patent to someone they would fail the test, but this isn't specifically said in the decision. Might be something to watch for in the future.
Off to read the two concurring opinions.
These are things they invented or not, I don't really care. I don't also like the "patenting" of such things. There should be a way to make it free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft.
Patent it yourself and allow it to the OSS folks but not to Microsoft?
Release it under your own license that says it can only be used for non-commercial activities?
Of course these require you to come up with the idea before someone beats you to it.
They do, but you actually have to read the patent and the claim to figure out what they are talking about instead of relying on a short summary from slashdot.
Wait.. I mentioned common sense in a discussion about US Patent law. I feel both dirty.. and confused...
Nope, common sense would be reading and understanding the issue at hand before commentint on it. For example, read the claims of the patent and then compare those claims to the CD-key/activation key system you are describing.
This idea doesn't seem to be clever enough to be non-obvious as required by section 103 of US Code Title 35
You have the burden of proof wrong here. A patent does not have to rise to a certain level to meet the non-obviousness requirement. Instead it is assumed to be non-obvious unless a prima facie case of obviousness can be made based on the prior art.
There is no requirement of a certain amount of cleverness to be reached before a patent is granted.
More seriuosly, the patents claim to provide an "apparatus and method", but fail to describe any actual appartus beyond the computer running the software under question. This is really a patent on an idea which contravenes section 102 of Title 35.
I'm going to assume you ment section 101 of Tilte 35 here and will point out that this most likely meets the "process" and "machine" sections of that requirment.
There is NOTHING new here, just old ideas re-badged with the word "Internet".
Strange... care to explain why there is no mention of the word "Internet" in the claims of either patent then?
I reccomend paying attention to the eBay v. MercExchange case which is currently before the Supreme Court. Basically they are deciding whehter it is proper for trial court judges to automatically issue an injunction if a party is found to be infringing a patent.
RIM established its BlackBerry service prior to May 20, 1991? Very interesting. And here I thought RIM's Blackberry service was a relatively new thing, but I guess its actually 15 years old.
You can definitely do it. I learned that in college parallel parking a Crown Victoria. You really only need a few inches more than the length of your car and some time.
Nonstatutory (method of doing business)
As of 1998 you are dead wrong on this count, see State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.
Obvious (does not take an inventor to "buy it now" at a predetermined price)
I have no idea what standards of "obvious" you are using here, but I reccomend checking out the actual standards in the MPEP, specifically sections 2141-2144.
That should read: "make a rejection based on 102(a/e) invalid".
If you want to get into technical details of it then you are correct. However, given the legal knowledge of the average slashdotter, I've found its best not to get to in depth with the details of 102(a), 102(b), 102(e), 103(c) and the requirements for 1.131 affadavits which would need to be filed in order to make a rejection based on 102(a/e).
Also going directly to the statutes isn't always the greatest idea because you are ignoring the mountains of case law regarding those statutes. It would be better to go to the MPEP, specifically chapters 0700 and 2100.
I'm very confused as to why the date on the patent reads 2005-02-15 unless this is a renewal date.
The 2005-02-15 date is the issuance date, i.e. the date at which the application became a patent. The real date(s) you want to look at is the application date (and the priority date if there is one). In this case, the application date is 1999-10-21 and there is no priority date. Therefore, to qualify as prior art someone would have to have been published or sold to the public prior to 1999-10-21.
Whether or not CDs have "better" quality depends on what service you use. The CD format in and of itself is pretty low quality compared to some other digital formats available.
Where are you buying your music online from? Redbook standard is 2 x 16bit channels @ 44.1kHz = 1411.2kbit/s. Meanwhile itunes is compressed to 128kbits/s which is a compression of 11.03x. While it is argueable whether the average listener listing on average equipment will be able to tell the difference, the redbook CDs definitely are higher quality. Even flac files from allofmp3 are encoded from the physical cds and should be equal in quality, not better by any stretch of the imagination.
With online services, you buy only the songs you want and don't get railroaded into paying extra for the rest of the trash on the disc.
If this is a frequently problem for you chances are you don't really like the bands you are listening to. There is also a good chance that you have never bothered to actually listen to the tracks more than once (or even once) to determine if you actually like them. Note that I don't mean the parent poster in particular by "you", but any person who frequently complains that CDs only ever contain 1 or 2 good tracks and a bunch of bad tracks.
I own about 400 cds and a fair sized collection of vinyl and there are only a few songs in the whole collection that I will actually skip over.
Completely agree. I picked up a gamecube largely for Ikargua. Great game.
Would it help if I clarified that to mean independent freeform radio stations and not clear channel controlled radio statiosn?
I also reccomend finding radio stations which have shows that play music you like, and see what else they play.
For example, WFMU has a nice playlist search where you can look for shows which have played certain artists. They also have all of their shows archived back to ~2000, so you can find a show that plays stuff that you like and listen to a few of the archives to see if they play anything else you like.
They also have a genre finder that allows you to search for shows by genre.
Both are still illegal, their use still requires some kind of Robin Hood/civil disobedience line of reasoning to properly operate.
On top of that the EULA that you sign when purchasing DRM'd songs limits you to certain uses, efectively signing away any fair use right you may have had.
Allmusic is a good starting point for reccomendations. You can search an artist and it will give you similar artists along with artists who influenced that artists and artists who were influenced by that artist. It also is a good source for biographical and discography information.
The Yahoo subscription service also has a neat feature where you can queue up songs which are similar to a song/album/artist and listen to those songs, plus at $60 a year it is a pretty cheap way to find new music. I wouldn't reccomend it for building a music library due to the subscriptionyness of it though.
Slashdot is the Fox News of the Patent System
LOL... That is perhaps the funniest thing I've ever read in a Slashdot patent story. It's a shame that its also incredibly accurate, for both Fox News and Slashdot.