As I always say (to be roundly ignored on each of these threads) is that the _claims_ define the invention, not the abstract. You can't sue someone for practicing the abstract--only what's in the claims. And because you typically amend the claims and legally _cannot_ amend the abstract, the abstract is typically much, much broader than the claimed invention.
Have you read the claims of the patent, to determine what is claimed as the invention and may be enforced on others, and to determine if is really is "ridiculous" to one "in the field"? You likely know the state of science and legal reporting both (pathetic). Getting upset about patent scope based on some interview doesn't make any sense.
Sovereign corporations? Your post itself acknowledges that these corporations have to use the power of the government (e.g., contacts in law enforcement") to accomplish their goals. Doesn't sound much like sovereignty to me.
There is a huge group of geeks at the PTO, called patent examiners. Just because you don't agree with their analysis of an application doesn't mean they "know nothing about existing technology."
I am a patent attorney and have to deal with this situatio a couple of times a year. When a company laid off or fired an inventor before he/she could sign the declaration, inevitably that person doesn't want to sign it, for obvious reasons. In that case, there is a simple petition to waive the requirement for signature by that inventor; the petition is filed on behalf of the owner of the invention, which is the former employer. By not signing the declaration, you accomplish 0% of your goal of interfering with the examination of the patent.
While I don't ordinarily respond to flames, I am perfectly capable of reading the name given by the poster. As you undoubtedly know, it is very easy to claim to be someone else on the Internet. As you may not know, professors typically work as consultants and expert witnesses in patent litigation. Thus, a professor could easily post as a sock puppet for Microsoft or Rambus or any other/. enemy of the week.
At the risk of baiting, who's the damn fool now?:)
Delaware has the largest body of case law relating to corporate matters of any state in the US, hands down. Therefore, if you incorporate in Delaware, you will know what the law is going to be with a good degree of certainty. If you incorporate in Wyoming, there is going to be a lot less case law, putting you at the mercy of a judge flying blind at trial with little or no precedent to guide him.
You do not understand correctly. The claims, not the abstract, define the scope of the patent. The abstract simply gives you a general idea of the field of technology covered to facilitate patent searching.
I am amused to watch everyone rush around to locate prior art that will benefit an anonymous entity. What if it turns out to be Microsoft? Or some other less-powerful Enemy of the Week (TM)? Perhaps that is why the beneficiary of all this free footwork must remain anonymous.
He is a patent searcher. Most of his criticism of the patent system can be boiled down to "inventors should have searched more prior art." While this is often true, it is self-serving promotion of his own search business, and PATNEWS should be read in that light.
Until we see the claims of this patent, all of the "sky is falling" discussion here is meaningless. I doubt the claims in this patent are particularly broad, and I especially doubt they are as broad as the owner wants to read them.
The claims define the scope of the patent, not the abstract, not the description. Let's see them before we get too worked up.
Jurisdiction is dead. We are simply watching the corpse lurch around like a zombie that's taken the fatal arrow through the heart (or whatever kills zombies these days). The concept of jurisdiction came from a world where people had to drive around in horse-drawn carriages and it would take weeks or months to get to a courthouse in another state. That world is gone. In its place there is the internet, cheap airfare, and imperial courts that routinely apply US law to people and entities around the world, much less within the US. Don't be surprised to see the entire idea of jurisdiction collapse in the next ten years.
At the risk of being a little off topic, referring to one of the joke headlines above, I wonder how many open-source and FSF people support Buchanan. As a guy who seems like a populist, I would think he is the most likely candidate to diminish IP protection or jettison it altogether. Thoughts?
Global warming is indeed propaganda of mythic proportions. However, reasoning from a cold summer to no trend of global warming is a titanic logical fallacy of the worst sort. It's just as bad as the local weatherman referring to global warming whenever there's a hot day.
It's irrelevant to patentability whether the calculations were done on your box, other people's boxes or an abacus. Those calculations are part of reducing an invention to practice. An inventor has to participate in conceiving the invention, which Grandma running ____@home is not going to do. She's not even going to be aware of what kind of data is running on her 1GHz AMD Linux box...
When 'scope technology gets too good, the CIA stops by and makes sure the tech gets classified. When I was at U of AZ in the mid-80s, the astronomy/optics department put out its monthly newsletter with a picture of the Mir lab as clear as if it was across the street. Some CIA types showed up very soon after and dropped the hammer, immediately classifying the technology. So, the government, not optics, is really the limiting factor in what we're allowed to image.
Give the patent indignation a pass this time and read the article. Cobalt is suing for _trademark_ infringement, not patent infringement. No one is asserting that anyone "invented" the cube case.
The issue in a trademark case boils down to whether there is a likelihood of confusion between Apple's cube and Cobalt's cube. This further boils down to whether a member of the purchasing public, when seeing a computer in a cube, thinks, "Ah! Cobalt!" I don't known if the purchasing public thinks that or not. That will be established by surveys, etc. used at trial. This case seems a little weak, given that 95% of tech people upon seeing a cube think NExT or Borg, but it's not frivolous.
Prgrammers have no god-given right to compensation. If there's no money in writing code, the market will adjust and fewer people will write code. Boo-hoo. How many programmers write code you actually use? There must be millions. The market is saturated to sickness. Many programmers write code because they love to do it, not because they expect to be compensated. I write code because I like doing it, I like what I create, and I want others to see it. If I make money off of it, cool, but that's not why I do it. If you were trying to make a living as a programmers, you had to expect hard times to begin with. Well, the market is changing, adapt. Finally. What are the implications of fewer programmers? Well guess who we're weeding out? The ones who are in it for the money alone. again, Boo-hoo.
"The public" couldn't care less about copyright infringement suits./. readers may have this perception, but/. readers are about as far from the general public as you're going to get, and I mean that in a good way.
Why is 17 years ridiculous? Why should an inventor in the software world be discriminated against as compared to an inventor in the hardware world? (If the invention is novel, as you postulate.)
Of course, if there is such a disparity in patent terms, then patentees will simply phrase their claims in terms of "a device for performing the steps of", thereby magically converting their software inventions into hardware. Software/biz method patents are around simply because courts got tired of the convoluted claiming people were already doing to patent software and business methods.
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As I always say (to be roundly ignored on each of these threads) is that the _claims_ define the invention, not the abstract. You can't sue someone for practicing the abstract--only what's in the claims. And because you typically amend the claims and legally _cannot_ amend the abstract, the abstract is typically much, much broader than the claimed invention.
A patent is only applicable in its issuing jurisdiction.
Have you read the claims of the patent, to determine what is claimed as the invention and may be enforced on others, and to determine if is really is "ridiculous" to one "in the field"? You likely know the state of science and legal reporting both (pathetic). Getting upset about patent scope based on some interview doesn't make any sense.
Um, these have been the three pillars of patentability since the 19th century. The 01/01 rules are updates to some of the details.
Sovereign corporations? Your post itself acknowledges that these corporations have to use the power of the government (e.g., contacts in law enforcement") to accomplish their goals. Doesn't sound much like sovereignty to me.
You are not only advocating selling content, but asking people on /. how to do it! I am surprised there haven't been more flames.
There is a huge group of geeks at the PTO, called patent examiners. Just because you don't agree with their analysis of an application doesn't mean they "know nothing about existing technology."
I am a patent attorney and have to deal with this situatio a couple of times a year. When a company laid off or fired an inventor before he/she could sign the declaration, inevitably that person doesn't want to sign it, for obvious reasons. In that case, there is a simple petition to waive the requirement for signature by that inventor; the petition is filed on behalf of the owner of the invention, which is the former employer. By not signing the declaration, you accomplish 0% of your goal of interfering with the examination of the patent.
While I don't ordinarily respond to flames, I am perfectly capable of reading the name given by the poster. As you undoubtedly know, it is very easy to claim to be someone else on the Internet. As you may not know, professors typically work as consultants and expert witnesses in patent litigation. Thus, a professor could easily post as a sock puppet for Microsoft or Rambus or any other /. enemy of the week.
:)
At the risk of baiting, who's the damn fool now?
Delaware has the largest body of case law relating to corporate matters of any state in the US, hands down. Therefore, if you incorporate in Delaware, you will know what the law is going to be with a good degree of certainty. If you incorporate in Wyoming, there is going to be a lot less case law, putting you at the mercy of a judge flying blind at trial with little or no precedent to guide him.
You do not understand correctly. The claims, not the abstract, define the scope of the patent. The abstract simply gives you a general idea of the field of technology covered to facilitate patent searching.
I am amused to watch everyone rush around to locate prior art that will benefit an anonymous entity. What if it turns out to be Microsoft? Or some other less-powerful Enemy of the Week (TM)? Perhaps that is why the beneficiary of all this free footwork must remain anonymous.
He is a patent searcher. Most of his criticism of the patent system can be boiled down to "inventors should have searched more prior art." While this is often true, it is self-serving promotion of his own search business, and PATNEWS should be read in that light.
Until we see the claims of this patent, all of the "sky is falling" discussion here is meaningless. I doubt the claims in this patent are particularly broad, and I especially doubt they are as broad as the owner wants to read them.
The claims define the scope of the patent, not the abstract, not the description. Let's see them before we get too worked up.
Jurisdiction is dead. We are simply watching the corpse lurch around like a zombie that's taken the fatal arrow through the heart (or whatever kills zombies these days). The concept of jurisdiction came from a world where people had to drive around in horse-drawn carriages and it would take weeks or months to get to a courthouse in another state. That world is gone. In its place there is the internet, cheap airfare, and imperial courts that routinely apply US law to people and entities around the world, much less within the US. Don't be surprised to see the entire idea of jurisdiction collapse in the next ten years.
At the risk of being a little off topic, referring to one of the joke headlines above, I wonder how many open-source and FSF people support Buchanan. As a guy who seems like a populist, I would think he is the most likely candidate to diminish IP protection or jettison it altogether. Thoughts?
Global warming is indeed propaganda of mythic proportions. However, reasoning from a cold summer to no trend of global warming is a titanic logical fallacy of the worst sort. It's just as bad as the local weatherman referring to global warming whenever there's a hot day.
It's irrelevant to patentability whether the calculations were done on your box, other people's boxes or an abacus. Those calculations are part of reducing an invention to practice. An inventor has to participate in conceiving the invention, which Grandma running ____@home is not going to do. She's not even going to be aware of what kind of data is running on her 1GHz AMD Linux box...
When 'scope technology gets too good, the CIA stops by and makes sure the tech gets classified. When I was at U of AZ in the mid-80s, the astronomy/optics department put out its monthly newsletter with a picture of the Mir lab as clear as if it was across the street. Some CIA types showed up very soon after and dropped the hammer, immediately classifying the technology. So, the government, not optics, is really the limiting factor in what we're allowed to image.
Guess I should take my own advice about thoroughly reading the article...
The issue in a trademark case boils down to whether there is a likelihood of confusion between Apple's cube and Cobalt's cube. This further boils down to whether a member of the purchasing public, when seeing a computer in a cube, thinks, "Ah! Cobalt!" I don't known if the purchasing public thinks that or not. That will be established by surveys, etc. used at trial. This case seems a little weak, given that 95% of tech people upon seeing a cube think NExT or Borg, but it's not frivolous.
Prgrammers have no god-given right to compensation. If there's no money in writing code, the market will adjust and fewer people will write code. Boo-hoo. How many programmers write code you actually use? There must be millions. The market is saturated to sickness. Many programmers write code because they love to do it, not because they expect to be compensated. I write code because I like doing it, I like what I create, and I want others to see it. If I make money off of it, cool, but that's not why I do it. If you were trying to make a living as a programmers, you had to expect hard times to begin with. Well, the market is changing, adapt. Finally. What are the implications of fewer programmers? Well guess who we're weeding out? The ones who are in it for the money alone. again, Boo-hoo.
Nah, it doesn't make any sense this way either.
"The public" couldn't care less about copyright infringement suits. /. readers may have this perception, but /. readers are about as far from the general public as you're going to get, and I mean that in a good way.
Why is 17 years ridiculous? Why should an inventor in the software world be discriminated against as compared to an inventor in the hardware world? (If the invention is novel, as you postulate.)
Of course, if there is such a disparity in patent terms, then patentees will simply phrase their claims in terms of "a device for performing the steps of", thereby magically converting their software inventions into hardware. Software/biz method patents are around simply because courts got tired of the convoluted claiming people were already doing to patent software and business methods.
This is a good idea that should be modded up! RFCs are not hard to find and read.