Is it possible these lawsuit all stem from having too many lawyers on retainer and trying to justify the cost of a legal department?
No, it comes from a Prisoner's Dilemma. It would be better if no one had dubious patents than if everyone had dubious patents. But it's much much worse for me than either of those alternatives if my competitors have dubious patents and I don't.
This shows very well why companies feel the need to get dubious patents.
"Our competitor has dubious patent A. We know it won't stand up in court and we'd like to do A. Now we can either 1) go ahead and do A, and fight the inevitable lawsuit--even though we'll win, this will cost us half a million dollars, minimum; or 2) we can get dubious patent B--then when they sue us for A, we sue them for B, and we settle out-of-court with a cross-licensing agreement."
This is why I don't blame Amazon for the one-click patent and won't boycott them (well, at least not for that)--that's just a symptom, and treating the symptom does not cure the disease. The root cause is that these patents are being granted in the first place.
Patent examiners are overworked (given an entirely unreasonable quota of patents they have to examine in a given time) and underpaid (making significantly less than their counterparts in industry). Of course, it doesn't help that the House of Representatives has voted to take away $295M in patent fees from the USPTO in FY2001. The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.
Funny? Funny???!! More like -218 Redundant. Oh gee, it's the first time in this thread this comment has appeared. It's only appeared about 500 times in previous "stupid patent" articles.
<meta>
I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent something obvious" stupid comments on/.
</meta>
Judging from informal polling of some acquaintances of mine, I'd say only 50% of those who start a 300 page Steven King novel bother to read past page 100, and only 25% bother to read past page 200.
It must be decades since King's written a novel of only 300 pages.
We are getting very close to the point where there will be lots of people creating things that have never existed before in nature and for which there is no natural protection.
"Very close????" They've created a molecule of 22 atoms (not at all complex, by organic chemistry standards) which occurs in nature.
The potential for accidental or intentional mass distruction is enormous.
A hundred years down the road, maybe. Not at today's level of technology.
Think about the paranioa of genetically modified food,
"Paranoia" is a particularly appropriate word choice.
Who knows what will happen to Molecule X when you weld a new Oxegen [sic] atom to it!
Actually, organic chemists understand this very well.
Well, you can't just go out and say you are going to kill the president. Freedom of speech does need to be protected, but so do children. If you were a mother, you'd understand.
How does arresting people who say they're going to kill the president protect your children? Are you Bill Clinton's mother?
I'd like to coin a new phrase: slashdot arrogance. Definition: the belief that, because one is very knowledgeable in one field (esp. computers), one is therefore very knowledgeable in all fields.
(I don't mean to pick solely on you. This is something I see over and over again on/. Yours was just the straw that broke the camel's back.)
It's demonstrated every time a/.er posts some misinformed comment on a legal, biotech, political, etc. issue. (Disclaimer: not all/. comments on non-computer issues are badly misinformed. Just most of them. How I long for a "-1 Misinformative" in moderating.)
To address this post specifically:
Geeks should be smarter. We should be able to hack the political system.
I have news for you: everyone's trying to hack the political system. And your "geek" intelligence (actually knowledge about computers & engineering) won't help you. On the other hand, an understanding of human psychology would go a long way.
Just because you know more about computers than the average person does not make you smarter than the average person.
The information age has created a new type of cyber-criminal. The false information broker.
Nope, that sort of criminal has been around for quite awhile. The classic example is the "blue book" purporting to give average market values of used cars. In fact, the blue book is put out by the used car industry with higher-than-market prices, solely for the purpose of allowing used car dealers to advertise that their prices are "below blue book", and/or convincing consumers to agree to artificially high prices for used vehicles. (There are other used car price guides which are more accurate in their values.)
The reality is that the net is full of stuff some people shouldn't see. My daughters, 2 & 4, are already on the net playing games at zoogdisney.com, mamamedia.com, etc.
That's fine for your kids. Please don't dictate to my children what they may or may not see.
A simple solution to the problem is a hardware key that is issued to adults at the library desk. If your ID says your over 18, you get the dongle that tells the computer to let you see what you want on the terminal. If you are underage, you get censorship. Sorry but that's the breaks.
Why is it that so many people seem to believe that minors have absolutely no intellectual freedom rights at all?? Less than adults, yes, but the courts have repeatedly ruled that even children have some intellectual freedom rights. Why do you want to take those away?
But at 7 years old, should my children be confronted with full frontal internet?
At 7 years old, should you be the one to decide whether my children are "confronted with full frontal internet?"
So, you wouldn't mind if your library carried a newspaper, but before putting it out on display the librarians cut out all the editorials they disagreed with? After all, the libary is not obligated to provide access to the newspaper at all.
You're absolutely right, this is a common theme on/. I guess now that it's gotten boring, we can safely ignore it. UCITA and DMCA and RIAA and MPAA are getting boring too. I'm tired of reading about them; let them do what they want, as long as we don't have to hear about it.
Excellent points. Another thing that makes a library is a library catalog. A library isn't just a pile of books, it's arranged in an orderly fashion (usually by subject) and with a catalog allowing access by subject, title, author, type of document, etc.
Kahle touches on this a bit in the interview, noting that human cataloging in infeasible for such a large collection. Perhaps. But without it, I don't think it can really be called a library. Cataloging librarians apply subject headings--some much more specific than anything you will find in Yahoo or the ODP. (And some less specific too. One valid criticism of library cataloging as it's practiced today is that it's too slow to keep up with emerging subjects. Subject headings in computer books, for example, are currently much less diverse than they ought to be. But I digress.)
It's not just subject cataloging where humans still do a better job than computers. Even titles and authors--which seem simple and straightforward at first glance--need that human element. Here is a book by "John Smith." Is this John Smith from Ohio, born in 1956, or John Smith from California, born in 1963? If it doesn't say on the book itself, a cataloging librarian will research this, so that the library catalog can differentiate between the two authors. Here's a videotape of "Star Wars". Will the automated cataloging system recognize that people might also search for it by the title "A New Hope"?
I'm pretty sure that all publications count as prior art, even if the author/publisher is the one applying for the patent. At least, that's the way it is in most countries. Apparently it wasn't always like this in the US though... I've heard that RSA was published before it was patented.
Yep, all publications (released to the public, e.g., not an internal company memo) count as prior art. In the U.S., however, an inventor does have a 1-year grace period after publication in which he can still file for a patent. (Irrelevant in this particular case, since the RFC was published in May '94 and the application was filed in Nov. '95.) Most countries don't have this grace period, and publication even one day before filing will invalidate the patent (at least in theory).
...which no one will read since I'm entering this discussion so late.
I can't fathom why Apple would do this.
I guarantee you, there's three things they took into consideration:
1. How much the license cost
2. How much a lawsuit would cost (as a rule of thumb, that's half a million dollars, minimum)
3. Probability of winning the lawsuit.
They simply decided that (1)
Second point: I'm stunned at all the posters (too many to count by now) who whine "Oh no, they're giving legitimacy/validity to Amazon's patent!"
If you are not a lawyer, please do not play one on/. (Now watch me be a hypocrite.:)
Licensing Amazon's patent does not make it one iota more valid than it was before. If someone sues Amazon, or vice versa, over the patent, the fact that it has been licensed once, or a thousand times, is completely irrelevant.
Perhaps people meant that licensing the patent gives the patent legitimacy in the court of public opinion, but the discussion here itself shows that that is not so.
. If both parties come out of this with licencees for their silly e-patents, they will have a stronger cases in court.
YAONAL. (You are obviously not a lawyer.) I'm not either, but I do work with them frequently.
Whether/how often a patent has been licensed is completely irrelevant, legally, to any question of the validity of a patent. If I'm trying to invalidate your patent, it doesn't matter if a thousand other companies have licensed the technology.
Interesting you should bring up history. Here's another bit of history: the U.S. publishing industry was built on "pirated" works.
In the early days of the U.S., only works written in the U.S. were covered by copyright laws. Thus, publishers could freely publish works written in other countries--even if they were covered by copyright in their original countries. Foreign authors/publishers frequently complained that this was piracy, to no avail.
people don't want filtering to stop political views, they want it to stop "inappropriate" material
Yes, that's what the filtering proponents often say. If I believed they were sincere in that, I wouldn't be bothered so much by the prospect of filtering. But you'd never know it to look at some of the political sites which are commonly blocked by filters.
Who said internet access was a right? This is new to me.
Fair enough. But then, access to newspapers and books for free isn't a right either. Indeed, there was no such thing as a public library for the first 50-100 years of the existence of the U.S.
But then, why have libraries at all? As you correctly point out, there is no right to free internet access or free newspapers or free books. I'll tell you why: because democracy works best when everyone has access to information. Some people cannot afford to pay for books or newspapers or internet access, so democracy is served especially well if information is provided to them for free. It's not merely a question of political influence, either; people can best manage their own lives if they have access to information about the things which affect them.
Thus, even though no right to free information is enshrined in the consitution, our country is much stronger for having it.
governments (including local governments made up of local citizens) should be allowed to control what thier resources are being used for - including what purpose internet connections in public libraries are used for.
So, would I be correct in saying that you believe, if a majority of people in a community didn't want internet connections in public libraries to be used to access web pages about, say, Linux, they would be justified in banning such pages from being viewed on public library computers?
Slashdot Mirror
No, it comes from a Prisoner's Dilemma. It would be better if no one had dubious patents than if everyone had dubious patents. But it's much much worse for me than either of those alternatives if my competitors have dubious patents and I don't.
"Our competitor has dubious patent A. We know it won't stand up in court and we'd like to do A. Now we can either 1) go ahead and do A, and fight the inevitable lawsuit--even though we'll win, this will cost us half a million dollars, minimum; or 2) we can get dubious patent B--then when they sue us for A, we sue them for B, and we settle out-of-court with a cross-licensing agreement."
This is why I don't blame Amazon for the one-click patent and won't boycott them (well, at least not for that)--that's just a symptom, and treating the symptom does not cure the disease. The root cause is that these patents are being granted in the first place.
Patent examiners are overworked (given an entirely unreasonable quota of patents they have to examine in a given time) and underpaid (making significantly less than their counterparts in industry). Of course, it doesn't help that the House of Representatives has voted to take away $295M in patent fees from the USPTO in FY2001. The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.
<meta> /.
I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent something obvious" stupid comments on
</meta>
<sarcasm>Well, you just go right down to the patent office and tell them that and I'm sure they'll take your word for it.</sarcasm>
It must be decades since King's written a novel of only 300 pages.
"Very close????" They've created a molecule of 22 atoms (not at all complex, by organic chemistry standards) which occurs in nature.
The potential for accidental or intentional mass distruction is enormous.
A hundred years down the road, maybe. Not at today's level of technology.
Think about the paranioa of genetically modified food,
"Paranoia" is a particularly appropriate word choice.
Who knows what will happen to Molecule X when you weld a new Oxegen [sic] atom to it!
Actually, organic chemists understand this very well.
"Either?" There's more than two, you know.
Why can't there be an option on the ballot paper for a 'No Vote'.
Because "None of the above" merely encourages laziness like yours where people refuse to look past the first two choices.
Perhaps you think that if you say it enough times, it will become true.
Oh, OK. I'll just set my preferences to display comments at "1, except 2 for people with a +1 bonus."
Moderators: If I had a +1, I wouldn't have used it on this comment. Consider this post already modded down.
How does arresting people who say they're going to kill the president protect your children? Are you Bill Clinton's mother?
Sounds to me like he fits in perfectly with the rest of /.
(I don't mean to pick solely on you. This is something I see over and over again on /. Yours was just the straw that broke the camel's back.)
It's demonstrated every time a /.er posts some misinformed comment on a legal, biotech, political, etc. issue. (Disclaimer: not all /. comments on non-computer issues are badly misinformed. Just most of them. How I long for a "-1 Misinformative" in moderating.)
To address this post specifically:
Geeks should be smarter. We should be able to hack the political system.
I have news for you: everyone's trying to hack the political system. And your "geek" intelligence (actually knowledge about computers & engineering) won't help you. On the other hand, an understanding of human psychology would go a long way.
Just because you know more about computers than the average person does not make you smarter than the average person.
Nope, that sort of criminal has been around for quite awhile. The classic example is the "blue book" purporting to give average market values of used cars. In fact, the blue book is put out by the used car industry with higher-than-market prices, solely for the purpose of allowing used car dealers to advertise that their prices are "below blue book", and/or convincing consumers to agree to artificially high prices for used vehicles. (There are other used car price guides which are more accurate in their values.)
And they all charge for it.
I suppose you didn't like it either 40 years ago when libraries provided typewriters for free public usage.
That's fine for your kids. Please don't dictate to my children what they may or may not see.
A simple solution to the problem is a hardware key that is issued to adults at the library desk. If your ID says your over 18, you get the dongle that tells the computer to let you see what you want on the terminal. If you are underage, you get censorship. Sorry but that's the breaks.
Why is it that so many people seem to believe that minors have absolutely no intellectual freedom rights at all?? Less than adults, yes, but the courts have repeatedly ruled that even children have some intellectual freedom rights. Why do you want to take those away?
But at 7 years old, should my children be confronted with full frontal internet?
At 7 years old, should you be the one to decide whether my children are "confronted with full frontal internet?"
So, you wouldn't mind if your library carried a newspaper, but before putting it out on display the librarians cut out all the editorials they disagreed with? After all, the libary is not obligated to provide access to the newspaper at all.
(For the humor-impaired, the above is sarcasm.)
Kahle touches on this a bit in the interview, noting that human cataloging in infeasible for such a large collection. Perhaps. But without it, I don't think it can really be called a library. Cataloging librarians apply subject headings--some much more specific than anything you will find in Yahoo or the ODP. (And some less specific too. One valid criticism of library cataloging as it's practiced today is that it's too slow to keep up with emerging subjects. Subject headings in computer books, for example, are currently much less diverse than they ought to be. But I digress.)
It's not just subject cataloging where humans still do a better job than computers. Even titles and authors--which seem simple and straightforward at first glance--need that human element. Here is a book by "John Smith." Is this John Smith from Ohio, born in 1956, or John Smith from California, born in 1963? If it doesn't say on the book itself, a cataloging librarian will research this, so that the library catalog can differentiate between the two authors. Here's a videotape of "Star Wars". Will the automated cataloging system recognize that people might also search for it by the title "A New Hope"?
Yep, all publications (released to the public, e.g., not an internal company memo) count as prior art. In the U.S., however, an inventor does have a 1-year grace period after publication in which he can still file for a patent. (Irrelevant in this particular case, since the RFC was published in May '94 and the application was filed in Nov. '95.) Most countries don't have this grace period, and publication even one day before filing will invalidate the patent (at least in theory).
(1) < (2)/(3)
I can't fathom why Apple would do this.
I guarantee you, there's three things they took into consideration:
1. How much the license cost
2. How much a lawsuit would cost (as a rule of thumb, that's half a million dollars, minimum)
3. Probability of winning the lawsuit.
They simply decided that (1) Second point: I'm stunned at all the posters (too many to count by now) who whine "Oh no, they're giving legitimacy/validity to Amazon's patent!"
If you are not a lawyer, please do not play one on /. (Now watch me be a hypocrite. :)
Licensing Amazon's patent does not make it one iota more valid than it was before. If someone sues Amazon, or vice versa, over the patent, the fact that it has been licensed once, or a thousand times, is completely irrelevant.
Perhaps people meant that licensing the patent gives the patent legitimacy in the court of public opinion, but the discussion here itself shows that that is not so.
If not, it's not prior art. Forget it.
YAONAL. (You are obviously not a lawyer.) I'm not either, but I do work with them frequently.
Whether/how often a patent has been licensed is completely irrelevant, legally, to any question of the validity of a patent. If I'm trying to invalidate your patent, it doesn't matter if a thousand other companies have licensed the technology.
In the early days of the U.S., only works written in the U.S. were covered by copyright laws. Thus, publishers could freely publish works written in other countries--even if they were covered by copyright in their original countries. Foreign authors/publishers frequently complained that this was piracy, to no avail.
Yes, that's what the filtering proponents often say. If I believed they were sincere in that, I wouldn't be bothered so much by the prospect of filtering. But you'd never know it to look at some of the political sites which are commonly blocked by filters.
Who said internet access was a right? This is new to me.
Fair enough. But then, access to newspapers and books for free isn't a right either. Indeed, there was no such thing as a public library for the first 50-100 years of the existence of the U.S.
But then, why have libraries at all? As you correctly point out, there is no right to free internet access or free newspapers or free books. I'll tell you why: because democracy works best when everyone has access to information. Some people cannot afford to pay for books or newspapers or internet access, so democracy is served especially well if information is provided to them for free. It's not merely a question of political influence, either; people can best manage their own lives if they have access to information about the things which affect them.
Thus, even though no right to free information is enshrined in the consitution, our country is much stronger for having it.
governments (including local governments made up of local citizens) should be allowed to control what thier resources are being used for - including what purpose internet connections in public libraries are used for.
So, would I be correct in saying that you believe, if a majority of people in a community didn't want internet connections in public libraries to be used to access web pages about, say, Linux, they would be justified in banning such pages from being viewed on public library computers?