What a judge has seen is that this particular patent was unenforceable under the patent system.
What is ridiculous, is that it is often more cost effective to pay licensing fees for these kinds of patents, than to defeat them in the court system.
Completely agreed with both points. But it's not for the first time: patent judges often find bad patents invalid, and it's not even the first time that undue delay has been cited as a reason for unenforceability. On the other hand, the cost of getting the court system to reach the point of making a useful decision is out of the reach of many, there is a big unsolved problem of access to justice.
The District court opinion in the Lemelson case is online here. (Beware of size, it's a 33-page image-scan pdf.) The defendants won on three independent bases -- the asserted patent claims were "unenforceable under the doctrine of prosecution laches" [undue delay, amounting to decades], the asserted claims were not infringed because use of the accused products did not satisfy one or more of the limitations of each asserted patent claim, and the claims were invalid for lack of written description and enablement. Personally I hope it's got enough supporting fact-finding in it to survive an appeal.
I worked for a company that bought a "WORM" (Write Once Read Many) drive for backup purposes in 1987. We were amazed at a technology that could store over 650 megabytes on a single replacable CD-like platter! It cost something like $10,000.
Well, it could be interesting to recall whether the system for writing the WORM drive in the 1980s allowed for recording data on successive parts of the disk at successive times. If it did that, then was the WORM system also set up so that it ignored old or superseded editions of data (files or directories)? (That is, ignoring the earlier data when something that had been recorded on the disk on one occasion was superseded by a revised version at a later recording session?) The question is put in a way that deliberately avoids referring to 'tracks' etc, because at least some of the patent claims are indifferent to that aspect. One of the features that apparently characterizes the claims in the patent refers, in one way or another, to "entering new information on a recordable CDROM.... [so as to make] any previous versions of said data which are still present on the CDROM... transparent to the operating system."
The US appears to be the only country affected by this particular patent (5666531). The original application was April 7, 1995, so maybe the WORM drive system (if it had the relevant features), or any other relevant material that was printed and published before 7 April 1994, could possibly imply invalidity of this patent.
I saw someone working on something like parsing english as a programming language
I thought English was already a programming language, designed for querying PICK databases.
But seriously, don't patents try to describe a process in a limited subset of the English language?
Seriously, no, patents don't have any linguistic axe to grind. The function of a patent specification is to tell the world, in language that the ordinary specialist in the field will be able to understand, that here is a new and useful thing, this is what its essentials are, and then here is the inventor telling how to make and use it. Many peculiarities of patent drafting are learned as precautionary reactions to some one or other of the pitfalls that await to trap the unwary, especially when it later turns out that amendment is needed: the patent falls into the pit when the desired subject of the amendment is not found in the original document.... it would take far too long to give examples, I'd better stop right here!
"free access to the scientific tools of modern biology and genetics...just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source software movement...
Last time I checked, a computer that gets a new and nasty kind of virus can still be cleaned up and restarted. A human that gets a new and nasty kind of virus may not be so lucky.
It's a big assumption to suppose there is any useful analogy between open source for computer code and for biological materials! It would be a potential human hazard to give 'free access' to all biological research materials.
But if 'free access' is just taken to mean that accredited researchers doing work under fully controlled conditions should not have to pay for research materials that they may want to play with -- then the options are already there, and sometimes used, for researchers (or their institutions) to exchange materials without payment and authorise their use -- at the option of the researcher/institution originating the material.
#1: Has anyone ever proved that implementing any definite number of 'laws' or software conditions can actually add up to security (not crackable except by obtaining/compromising a root password or signature)? If this hasn't been proved, the whole concept of software security itself may be an exaggeration.
#2: What about hardware security? Under current conditions, it might be progressive to reduce the security risks so that any exploit would depend on physical access. If the answer to #1 is 'yes', then security can be implemented by passwords or signatures but it looks like the security of a combination lock. Do we have any computer software security based on a lock that requires a physical key -- (maybe a physical key, or key-guarded switch, that did something like switch an area of memory from writeable to hard-wired non-writeable)? If we do, is it available for use in a crucial installation like a debian server? If we don't, why not?
It's not a win unless the EFF wins the actual case.
If the judge allows dismissal [...]
Yes -- and I was just now trying to puzzle out just where the two recent papers leave this case (transcript of hearing for an injunction, and Diebold's new document, see links in the main article).
Hopefully somebody with better insight into the procedure here will say more, but first it looks to me as if the parties had been waiting for the judge to decide, after a hearing, whether to grant an injunction against Diebold. (Was I the only one that found the hearing transcript obviously garbled in places, and the dialogue hard to decipher? I wonder how the judge manages to make use of such scrambled text?!)
It looked as if Diebold tried to pre-empt the next step, and the upcoming decision, by filing the paper with its concessions -- as if Diebold privately reckoned after the hearing that it would likely be on the losing side.
It looks as if the ball is now at least partly with EFF on what step to try next. The Diebold paper attempts to deal with the possibility that EFF might try to find a basis on which to persist in the suit for its 'test case' value, in spite of Diebold's concessions. Clearly Diebold hopes that its concessions took away enough of the 'sting' of injury caused by its DMCA activities, to leave the plaintiffs with nothing more to sue about, and to 'kill' the case before there is an adjudication that would likely make life harder in future for Diebold and other potential DMCA claimants.
I would guess EFF is now busy in legal conference and research to see if the case really is effectively dead beyond recall. (Go EFF!) Maybe we can still hope they will identify a way to take the case forward to an adjudication that could be of value, as a precedent to limit the scope for mischievous abuse of the DMCA in future. But I suppose it is possible no way will be found.
What kind of idiot would outlaw stealing 'horses'? And who would be surprised when, quite rightly, people realize they can steal a single horse?
Well the topic is about politically correct usages, and the point came up about singulars and plurals. It was only a (shortened) example. Yes, there was a corresponding example, a very old act prescribing a death-penalty for horse-stealing, and yes, they did say 'horses', and yes, people did spend time arguing whether that meant death for stealing only one horse (solution: another act to deal with the case of the singular horse!!).
All that came from a time well before legislatures were fully packed with lawyers. I expect they would be more careful now. But all in all, do you mean to say that you think having all the lawyers is an improvement?:)
Act of parliment (1890? about then) made it illegal to use "they" for singular
It's wonderful to see how these things get garbled. There was an Interpretation Act around 1889. One of the things it did was to make it officially unimportant whether a singular or plural word is used in (UK) legislation. The aim there was to get rid of one kind of lawyers' delight (like arguing that if a law makes it illegal to steal horses, then could it still be legal to steal only one horse?). It had nothing to do with making the use of singulars or plurals illegal!!
Machiavelli was pulling half of it out of his arse. The problem with the Prince...
Well, the 'Prince' only represents part of Machiavelli's output on the subject of government (read management), and IMO he's much underrated by treating him only as author of the 'Prince'. In the 'Discourses' he gives dispassionate analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of different types of government/management -- especially the ways in which each type tends to decay -- a close point of contact with the current topic -- and also he makes it clear that princes/autocrats are not his preferred style anyway.
The easiest thing in the world is to look back and deride the losers while applauding the winners and point out why each is what it is. It's a little harder to pick them in advance.
What do you get out of reading this book? Unless it is some tools for making predictions, you might as well rip out the pages and wipe your ass with them.
I agree, and even before you look for tools to make predictions, it's important to have truthful data on which to use those tools.
This raises the question what relationship do business anecdotes have to truthful data? The truth-content of what management wiseacres say is often not that great: some of them are masters of spin and disguise.
I would nominate, as anyhow one among several tools to predict success or failure, any good measure of how much the organisation can accept and deal with unpalatable messages and truthful criticisms, especially without firing the messenger: in short, its relationship with the truth.
Trust can't be 'implemented': it has to be _earned_.
The parent post lists some good points on how to earn it. It's important to describe the aim as 'earning' rather than 'implementing', because the opponents of this can 'implement' plenty of things ok but not those that are wanted here.
EVERY corporation, public or private, is "legally bound to do what is in the best financial interests of their shareholders." The point is that they have shareholders, hence the responsibility
Not true. There are corporations that exist with not-for-profit/public interest/charitable purposes. Some of them are legally bound to prevent their shareholders having any financial interest in them. Needless to say, investment is not one of the reasons for being a shareholder in such a corporation.
Why doesn't NOAA put all the data for public consumption so that anyone can see who is right and who is wrong?
Well, it was said that the data have been online since 2000. The recent paper cites to here as a source for the original data. The original authors cite to a lot of data here. They also cite to a doubtful/dead link (http://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/TREE/ ITRDB/NOAMER/), and a list of their papers is here.
Personally I'm not sure how to make anything of the data, but I hope independent reviewers who can will weigh in on it.... ?!
... if you read the reply of Professor Mann who aims to discredit the work of the authors of this study with quite apparent anger,...
I'm not sure that comment is quite fair to the author of the original paper under criticism, who alleges (with quite a lot of supporting detail), that the new paper gives a 'gross misrepresentation' of the original work that is criticized, and he also says that contrary to normal practice of scientific journals, the authors of the original paper under criticism were not given an opportunity to respond.
I'm not an expert in this field but I did try to read the recent paper. The point on which it is all said to be based is data integrity. I wondered how all of the alleged data errors had been verified, and more importantly, how the outside world could repeat that verification. To me, the original author's reply certainly reinforces those concerns about verification of the alleged errors, in part because it raises issues about what makes for the difference in the conclusions -- is the difference significantly due to data errors, or was it due to intentional re-selection of data which appears to be a matter of judgement rather than of error.
Either way, it may all be a local squabble, the content of the 1998 paper under criticism clearly has not been the only evidence for climate change.
The USPTO definition of prior art is a prior patent. If nobody has filed a patent on something, there is no prior art and they consider it patentable.
Nonononono. Wrong bug report. The problem is elsewhere. The USPTO definition of prior art is the same as the one in the US patent code (35 USC sec. 102), and this includes _much_ more than prior patents and non-patent literature. (E.g., prior inventions of other inventors in the USA are also part of the prior art even if not published, but unpublished material is quite hard to bring into the process and hard to prove.) Novelty searches in the patent office could be more thorough than they are, and sometimes are careless. But the examiners do sometimes look at non-patent publications.
The USPTO issues a patent if it doesn't find relevant prior art. This means that a careless USPTO search is likely to result in the issue of a patent with claims that should not be patentable, or at least are too broad.
Currently, there are access-to-justice issues (the law does not yet provide enough, or effective, opportunities for third parties to challenge issued patents). That means correcting mistakes like this is usually an uphill struggle, slow, and likely very expensive. So in the meantime, the beneficiary of the USPTO mistake, the owner of the patent, may be able to cash in on it.
The Federal Trade Commission recently made proposals aimed at correcting these defects of the system. The FTC proposals might or might not go far enough, but either way, between now and possibly getting them adopted, there would be another hard slow struggle ahead for their advocates:(.
But the bug in the system is not the one diagnosed by the parent poster (inadequate definition of prior art)! It lies in either or both of two other places (a) the skill/thoroughness of patent examination before patent issue and (b) lack of proper opportunities to correct mistakes after patent issue.
Could this [3D17]be used on/. to fix spelling mistakes and other obvious errors?:)
Maybe, but please, not before the weaknesses of 3D17 have been fixed. (Like, how did somebody manage to plug the famous g**ts*** image into a version of the 3D17 FAQ?)
The only thing for certain is that people reading and posting to slashdot generally lack the slightest clue on the inner workings of the US Patent System. I believe that Slashdot needs to have some sort of informational session teaching readers how the system works. Until then, posts regarding failure of the US Patent system should be halted.
Contrary to the parent, it's the opposite of "generally lack the slightest clue" that is certain. You only have to read the posts to see that posters come from a vast range. The range certainly includes at least a few lawyers and PTO examiners and their equivalents outside the USA, as well as folk with a wide range of business experiences of patents, and yes, many folk with none, too.
To me, this breadth of points-of-view seems like a wonderful plus in any discussion. One of the things that can come out of it is some balance, sorely needed in an area where opposite interests really should be balanced out together. The USPTO experts/examiners alone can't produce balance. Most of them really don't know what is done/misdone with the patents they issue.
Saying "posts regarding failure of the US Patent system should be halted" (until everyone has learned from the USPTO people about their part of the system, which will be never) is like saying we should stop trying to learn from mistakes. Sheesh!
One of the pluses, to me, of the FTC recommendations is that they look like a move in the right direction to reduce current imbalances.
If there had been a patent for this type of tool, it would have been enough (and ok) to say, in a notice that the customer could see before purchase, that 'purchase of this tool does not carry with it any licence to make tools according to the patent'.
But if there is no patent, then there is no right to restrict public use of the unpatented but pubicly-known technology.
Copyright law doesn't restrict use of technology, e.g. reproducing a 3-d object which is a physical tool. The original tool (presumably no artistic work involved in the tool itself) was not one of the statutory 'works of authorship' in US copyright law.
The article's author repeats something that I guess sounds like an idealistic misconception of the 'trust' that supposedly would be 'implemented' by 'trusted computing'.
He says "users are also protected against corruption of data on their own computers". I haven't seen anywhere any account of how 'trusted computing' would actually improve reliability.
The most it appears to promise, is simply to block any material that the 'trust' mechanism diagnoses to be unreliable.
If that's right, then it sounds as if (e.g.) the slightest corruption of a word-processor document would render it unreadable and unprocessable.
Which would you rather have, a lawyer who sued who you told her to sue, or a lawyer who used her own judgement on who was worth sueing. You want a lawyer who follows orders. In fact, I'd rather have a lawyer who won a case against a 12-year-old than one who lost it because that's probably a damn good lawyer.
I'd rather have a lawyer that gives well-rounded as well as legally correct advice -- and gives it so clearly, that I couldn't fail to see from the advice what is in my best long-term interests, whatever my prejudices may be.
If a lawyer tells me that I have prospects of winning a case against a 12-year-old, that is much less than half the answer -- whatever the question may have been.
Two likely reasons why more near-earth rocks are reported found these days: plenty of funds to pay astronomers to go looking for them, and more sensitive electronic toys to play with and help to look for them. No evidence for any increase in the number of space objects themselves.
(btw I'm not negatively criticising any of this --it's fun to play with telescopes, and if one of those things does turn out to be heading our way, we might get to make some luck if its route is roundabout enough that there could be time (a few centuries, maybe?) for folk to develop a techie solution before it gets here:)
I don't think a court would consider this a very good example of prior art.
A debate like this inevitably is just going around the houses until it deals with the two different effective levels of prior art, according to patent law.
The first level of prior art is complete anticipation: but to qualify at this level, the alleged prior art has to have completely described something that falls under the patent claims, or, put another way, what was sold or used or described in print before has to have fully corresponded to the patent claims. Just providing a tool that could be so used is not enough to qualify as anticipatory prior art against a later patent for the use of the tool.
The second level of prior art concerns proof by obviousness, and this arises e.g. where the prior art actually provides a tool or the like, and the later patent claims in effect a way to use the tool, but that use was not itself described in the prior art source of early date. In that case, the prior art is only effective if there is additional proof that it was obvious to use the prior art tool in the way claimed by the later patent. Under US patent law, it is generally not enough for obviousness to prove that the tool 'could' have been used in the later patented way, but what needs proof is that it 'would' have been so used. Put another way, in the USA 'obvious to try it like that' doesn't equal obvious, only 'obvious to actually put it to effective or commercial use like that' is obvious, and the difference between these levels of proof is not always easy to assess. In Europe, on the other hand, 'obvious to try' = obvious and unpatentable, and the position can be a bit simpler in practice.
(btw, I am not good enough technically in this area to even try to identify which of these levels of proof Ray Ozzie's example belongs to.)
coupled with assurance that the RIAA is acting as agent for the relevant copyright owners
(... forgot to add, that if they were trying to do things properly it's reasonable to expect they would have organized an ok from their members before launching the program. )
Slashdot Mirror
What a judge has seen is that this particular patent was unenforceable under the patent system.
What is ridiculous, is that it is often more cost effective to pay licensing fees for these kinds of patents, than to defeat them in the court system.
Completely agreed with both points. But it's not for the first time: patent judges often find bad patents invalid, and it's not even the first time that undue delay has been cited as a reason for unenforceability. On the other hand, the cost of getting the court system to reach the point of making a useful decision is out of the reach of many, there is a big unsolved problem of access to justice.
The District court opinion in the Lemelson case is online here. (Beware of size, it's a 33-page image-scan pdf.) The defendants won on three independent bases -- the asserted patent claims were "unenforceable under the doctrine of prosecution laches" [undue delay, amounting to decades], the asserted claims were not infringed because use of the accused products did not satisfy one or more of the limitations of each asserted patent claim, and the claims were invalid for lack of written description and enablement. Personally I hope it's got enough supporting fact-finding in it to survive an appeal.
-wb-
I worked for a company that bought a "WORM" (Write Once Read Many) drive for backup purposes in 1987. We were amazed at a technology that could store over 650 megabytes on a single replacable CD-like platter! It cost something like $10,000.
.... [so as to make] any previous versions of said data which are still present on the CDROM ... transparent to the operating system."
Well, it could be interesting to recall whether the system for writing the WORM drive in the 1980s allowed for recording data on successive parts of the disk at successive times. If it did that, then was the WORM system also set up so that it ignored old or superseded editions of data (files or directories)? (That is, ignoring the earlier data when something that had been recorded on the disk on one occasion was superseded by a revised version at a later recording session?) The question is put in a way that deliberately avoids referring to 'tracks' etc, because at least some of the patent claims are indifferent to that aspect. One of the features that apparently characterizes the claims in the patent refers, in one way or another, to "entering new information on a recordable CDROM
The US appears to be the only country affected by this particular patent (5666531). The original application was April 7, 1995, so maybe the WORM drive system (if it had the relevant features), or any other relevant material that was printed and published before 7 April 1994, could possibly imply invalidity of this patent.
-wb-
I saw someone working on something like parsing english as a programming language
.... it would take far too long to give examples, I'd better stop right here!
I thought English was already a programming language, designed for querying PICK databases.
But seriously, don't patents try to describe a process in a limited subset of the English language?
Seriously, no, patents don't have any linguistic axe to grind. The function of a patent specification is to tell the world, in language that the ordinary specialist in the field will be able to understand, that here is a new and useful thing, this is what its essentials are, and then here is the inventor telling how to make and use it. Many peculiarities of patent drafting are learned as precautionary reactions to some one or other of the pitfalls that await to trap the unwary, especially when it later turns out that amendment is needed: the patent falls into the pit when the desired subject of the amendment is not found in the original document
-wb-
The guy wants
"free access to the scientific tools of modern biology and genetics...just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source software movement...
Last time I checked, a computer that gets a new and nasty kind of virus can still be cleaned up and restarted. A human that gets a new and nasty kind of virus may not be so lucky.
It's a big assumption to suppose there is any useful analogy between open source for computer code and for biological materials! It would be a potential human hazard to give 'free access' to all biological research materials.
But if 'free access' is just taken to mean that accredited researchers doing work under fully controlled conditions should not have to pay for research materials that they may want to play with -- then the options are already there, and sometimes used, for researchers (or their institutions) to exchange materials without payment and authorise their use -- at the option of the researcher/institution originating the material.
-wb-
Two questions:
#1: Has anyone ever proved that implementing any definite number of 'laws' or software conditions can actually add up to security (not crackable except by obtaining/compromising a root password or signature)? If this hasn't been proved, the whole concept of software security itself may be an exaggeration.
#2: What about hardware security? Under current conditions, it might be progressive to reduce the security risks so that any exploit would depend on physical access. If the answer to #1 is 'yes', then security can be implemented by passwords or signatures but it looks like the security of a combination lock. Do we have any computer software security based on a lock that requires a physical key -- (maybe a physical key, or key-guarded switch, that did something like switch an area of memory from writeable to hard-wired non-writeable)? If we do, is it available for use in a crucial installation like a debian server? If we don't, why not?
It's not a win unless the EFF wins the actual case.
If the judge allows dismissal [...]
Yes -- and I was just now trying to puzzle out just where the two recent papers leave this case (transcript of hearing for an injunction, and Diebold's new document, see links in the main article).
Hopefully somebody with better insight into the procedure here will say more, but first it looks to me as if the parties had been waiting for the judge to decide, after a hearing, whether to grant an injunction against Diebold. (Was I the only one that found the hearing transcript obviously garbled in places, and the dialogue hard to decipher? I wonder how the judge manages to make use of such scrambled text?!)
It looked as if Diebold tried to pre-empt the next step, and the upcoming decision, by filing the paper with its concessions -- as if Diebold privately reckoned after the hearing that it would likely be on the losing side.
It looks as if the ball is now at least partly with EFF on what step to try next. The Diebold paper attempts to deal with the possibility that EFF might try to find a basis on which to persist in the suit for its 'test case' value, in spite of Diebold's concessions. Clearly Diebold hopes that its concessions took away enough of the 'sting' of injury caused by its DMCA activities, to leave the plaintiffs with nothing more to sue about, and to 'kill' the case before there is an adjudication that would likely make life harder in future for Diebold and other potential DMCA claimants.
I would guess EFF is now busy in legal conference and research to see if the case really is effectively dead beyond recall. (Go EFF!) Maybe we can still hope they will identify a way to take the case forward to an adjudication that could be of value, as a precedent to limit the scope for mischievous abuse of the DMCA in future. But I suppose it is possible no way will be found.
What kind of idiot would outlaw stealing 'horses'? And who would be surprised when, quite rightly, people realize they can steal a single horse?
:)
Well the topic is about politically correct usages, and the point came up about singulars and plurals. It was only a (shortened) example. Yes, there was a corresponding example, a very old act prescribing a death-penalty for horse-stealing, and yes, they did say 'horses', and yes, people did spend time arguing whether that meant death for stealing only one horse (solution: another act to deal with the case of the singular horse!!).
All that came from a time well before legislatures were fully packed with lawyers. I expect they would be more careful now. But all in all, do you mean to say that you think having all the lawyers is an improvement?
Act of parliment (1890? about then) made it illegal to use "they" for singular
It's wonderful to see how these things get garbled. There was an Interpretation Act around 1889. One of the things it did was to make it officially unimportant whether a singular or plural word is used in (UK) legislation. The aim there was to get rid of one kind of lawyers' delight (like arguing that if a law makes it illegal to steal horses, then could it still be legal to steal only one horse?). It had nothing to do with making the use of singulars or plurals illegal!!
Machiavelli was pulling half of it out of his arse. The problem with the Prince ...
Well, the 'Prince' only represents part of Machiavelli's output on the subject of government (read management), and IMO he's much underrated by treating him only as author of the 'Prince'. In the 'Discourses' he gives dispassionate analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of different types of government/management -- especially the ways in which each type tends to decay -- a close point of contact with the current topic -- and also he makes it clear that princes/autocrats are not his preferred style anyway.
The easiest thing in the world is to look back and deride the losers while applauding the winners and point out why each is what it is. It's a little harder to pick them in advance.
What do you get out of reading this book? Unless it is some tools for making predictions, you might as well rip out the pages and wipe your ass with them.
I agree, and even before you look for tools to make predictions, it's important to have truthful data on which to use those tools.
This raises the question what relationship do business anecdotes have to truthful data? The truth-content of what management wiseacres say is often not that great: some of them are masters of spin and disguise.
I would nominate, as anyhow one among several tools to predict success or failure, any good measure of how much the organisation can accept and deal with unpalatable messages and truthful criticisms, especially without firing the messenger: in short, its relationship with the truth.
Trust can't be 'implemented': it has to be _earned_.
The parent post lists some good points on how to earn it. It's important to describe the aim as 'earning' rather than 'implementing', because the opponents of this can 'implement' plenty of things ok but not those that are wanted here.
Drawbacks of the internal gear-train tended to be increased friction -> less efficiency of converting rider's power-input to forward motion.
EVERY corporation, public or private, is "legally bound to do what is in the best financial interests of their shareholders." The point is that they have shareholders, hence the responsibility
Not true. There are corporations that exist with not-for-profit/public interest/charitable purposes. Some of them are legally bound to prevent their shareholders having any financial interest in them. Needless to say, investment is not one of the reasons for being a shareholder in such a corporation.
Why doesn't NOAA put all the data for public consumption so that anyone can see who is right and who is wrong?
/ ITRDB/NOAMER/), and a list of their papers is here.
.... ?!
Well, it was said that the data have been online since 2000. The recent paper cites to here as a source for the original data. The original authors cite to a lot of data here. They also cite to a doubtful/dead link (http://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/TREE
Personally I'm not sure how to make anything of the data, but I hope independent reviewers who can will weigh in on it
... if you read the reply of Professor Mann who aims to discredit the work of the authors of this study with quite apparent anger, ...
I'm not sure that comment is quite fair to the author of the original paper under criticism, who alleges (with quite a lot of supporting detail), that the new paper gives a 'gross misrepresentation' of the original work that is criticized, and he also says that contrary to normal practice of scientific journals, the authors of the original paper under criticism were not given an opportunity to respond.
I'm not an expert in this field but I did try to read the recent paper. The point on which it is all said to be based is data integrity. I wondered how all of the alleged data errors had been verified, and more importantly, how the outside world could repeat that verification. To me, the original author's reply certainly reinforces those concerns about verification of the alleged errors, in part because it raises issues about what makes for the difference in the conclusions -- is the difference significantly due to data errors, or was it due to intentional re-selection of data which appears to be a matter of judgement rather than of error.
Either way, it may all be a local squabble, the content of the 1998 paper under criticism clearly has not been the only evidence for climate change.
Most of the general public has never heard of them.
I think it's just beginning to percolate into the news -- for example here
The USPTO definition of prior art is a prior patent. If nobody has filed a patent on something, there is no prior art and they consider it patentable.
:( .
Nonononono. Wrong bug report. The problem is elsewhere. The USPTO definition of prior art is the same as the one in the US patent code (35 USC sec. 102), and this includes _much_ more than prior patents and non-patent literature. (E.g., prior inventions of other inventors in the USA are also part of the prior art even if not published, but unpublished material is quite hard to bring into the process and hard to prove.) Novelty searches in the patent office could be more thorough than they are, and sometimes are careless. But the examiners do sometimes look at non-patent publications.
The USPTO issues a patent if it doesn't find relevant prior art. This means that a careless USPTO search is likely to result in the issue of a patent with claims that should not be patentable, or at least are too broad.
Currently, there are access-to-justice issues (the law does not yet provide enough, or effective, opportunities for third parties to challenge issued patents). That means correcting mistakes like this is usually an uphill struggle, slow, and likely very expensive. So in the meantime, the beneficiary of the USPTO mistake, the owner of the patent, may be able to cash in on it.
The Federal Trade Commission recently made proposals aimed at correcting these defects of the system. The FTC proposals might or might not go far enough, but either way, between now and possibly getting them adopted, there would be another hard slow struggle ahead for their advocates
But the bug in the system is not the one diagnosed by the parent poster (inadequate definition of prior art)! It lies in either or both of two other places (a) the skill/thoroughness of patent examination before patent issue and (b) lack of proper opportunities to correct mistakes after patent issue.
Could this [3D17]be used on /. to fix spelling mistakes and other obvious errors? :)
Maybe, but please, not before the weaknesses of 3D17 have been fixed. (Like, how did somebody manage to plug the famous g**ts*** image into a version of the 3D17 FAQ?)
The only thing for certain is that people reading and posting to slashdot generally lack the slightest clue on the inner workings of the US Patent System. I believe that Slashdot needs to have some sort of informational session teaching readers how the system works. Until then, posts regarding failure of the US Patent system should be halted.
Contrary to the parent, it's the opposite of "generally lack the slightest clue" that is certain. You only have to read the posts to see that posters come from a vast range. The range certainly includes at least a few lawyers and PTO examiners and their equivalents outside the USA, as well as folk with a wide range of business experiences of patents, and yes, many folk with none, too.
To me, this breadth of points-of-view seems like a wonderful plus in any discussion. One of the things that can come out of it is some balance, sorely needed in an area where opposite interests really should be balanced out together. The USPTO experts/examiners alone can't produce balance. Most of them really don't know what is done/misdone with the patents they issue.
Saying "posts regarding failure of the US Patent system should be halted" (until everyone has learned from the USPTO people about their part of the system, which will be never) is like saying we should stop trying to learn from mistakes. Sheesh!
One of the pluses, to me, of the FTC recommendations is that they look like a move in the right direction to reduce current imbalances.
EULA restriction on a new woodworking tool
If there had been a patent for this type of tool, it would have been enough (and ok) to say, in a notice that the customer could see before purchase, that 'purchase of this tool does not carry with it any licence to make tools according to the patent'.
But if there is no patent, then there is no right to restrict public use of the unpatented but pubicly-known technology.
Copyright law doesn't restrict use of technology, e.g. reproducing a 3-d object which is a physical tool. The original tool (presumably no artistic work involved in the tool itself) was not one of the statutory 'works of authorship' in US copyright law.
The article's author repeats something that I guess sounds like an idealistic misconception of the 'trust' that supposedly would be 'implemented' by 'trusted computing'.
He says "users are also protected against corruption of data on their own computers". I haven't seen anywhere any account of how 'trusted computing' would actually improve reliability.
The most it appears to promise, is simply to block any material that the 'trust' mechanism diagnoses to be unreliable.
If that's right, then it sounds as if (e.g.) the slightest corruption of a word-processor document would render it unreadable and unprocessable.
Data loss at a stroke? Some trust!
Which would you rather have, a lawyer who sued who you told her to sue, or a lawyer who used her own judgement on who was worth sueing. You want a lawyer who follows orders. In fact, I'd rather have a lawyer who won a case against a 12-year-old than one who lost it because that's probably a damn good lawyer.
I'd rather have a lawyer that gives well-rounded as well as legally correct advice -- and gives it so clearly, that I couldn't fail to see from the advice what is in my best long-term interests, whatever my prejudices may be.
If a lawyer tells me that I have prospects of winning a case against a 12-year-old, that is much less than half the answer -- whatever the question may have been.
last week we had one in India. Now this.
:)
Two likely reasons why more near-earth rocks are reported found these days: plenty of funds to pay astronomers to go looking for them, and more sensitive electronic toys to play with and help to look for them. No evidence for any increase in the number of space objects themselves.
(btw I'm not negatively criticising any of this --it's fun to play with telescopes, and if one of those things does turn out to be heading our way, we might get to make some luck if its route is roundabout enough that there could be time (a few centuries, maybe?) for folk to develop a techie solution before it gets here
I don't think a court would consider this a very good example of prior art.
A debate like this inevitably is just going around the houses until it deals with the two different effective levels of prior art, according to patent law.
The first level of prior art is complete anticipation: but to qualify at this level, the alleged prior art has to have completely described something that falls under the patent claims, or, put another way, what was sold or used or described in print before has to have fully corresponded to the patent claims. Just providing a tool that could be so used is not enough to qualify as anticipatory prior art against a later patent for the use of the tool.
The second level of prior art concerns proof by obviousness, and this arises e.g. where the prior art actually provides a tool or the like, and the later patent claims in effect a way to use the tool, but that use was not itself described in the prior art source of early date. In that case, the prior art is only effective if there is additional proof that it was obvious to use the prior art tool in the way claimed by the later patent. Under US patent law, it is generally not enough for obviousness to prove that the tool 'could' have been used in the later patented way, but what needs proof is that it 'would' have been so used. Put another way, in the USA 'obvious to try it like that' doesn't equal obvious, only 'obvious to actually put it to effective or commercial use like that' is obvious, and the difference between these levels of proof is not always easy to assess. In Europe, on the other hand, 'obvious to try' = obvious and unpatentable, and the position can be a bit simpler in practice.
(btw, I am not good enough technically in this area to even try to identify which of these levels of proof Ray Ozzie's example belongs to.)
coupled with assurance that the RIAA is acting as agent for the relevant copyright owners
(... forgot to add, that if they were trying to do things properly it's reasonable to expect they would have organized an ok from their members before launching the program. )