"In re Biliski" does not require something to be "a product" to patent it. There is no commercial success or commercialization requirement to get a patent. What Biliski requires is that the actual claim language for a process claim (1) is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.
technically... sue them and either get a "reasonable royalty" or "lost profits." Lost profits being the profits that the plaintiff lost due to the infringement. Thus, IPAT will likely want a "reasonable royalty." See 35 USC 284. Damages only go back six years from the date the complaint is filed. See 35 USC 286. Thus, only damages for infringement going back to Dec 30, 2002 can be recovered if IPAT prevails.
There are also equitable defenses of laches and estoppel etc but usually there has to be unreasonable delay and reliance on the delay.
I have not researched this case in particular but it could be that the infringement recently started to occur, or started a handful of years ago and IPAT had tried to do this "nicely" but did not have luck. Maybe IPAT is in the wrong.
In any case, hopefully whoever is in the right will come out on top here.
People who are good at business get paid. People who are good at programming get screwed?
My time, knowledge, and skill are not worthless and I would want to be paid. The GPL is great but FOSS programmers could exclude companies that use their software from the license and require an that those companies take an additional license so the programmer can get paid.
Also... a software patent would be useful here... and potentially beyond:)
The addition of "a shopping cart model" in the first clause of the claim necessitated the change of "a" to "the" in the last clause to make sure it had the correct "antecedent basis."
In claim drafting, you must first introduce a word or concept with "a" or "an" and then you refer back to it with "the" or "said." If you do not the claim will not be allowed.
The change from "a" to "the" did not magically change the claim from being invalid to allowable.
Waiving tuition is one way... or you could just pay competitive salaries to attract more and better teachers in math/engineering/science. Not that there is anything wrong or bad about hiring students fresh out of college to teach, but there may be a benefit to hiring a mathmatician/engineer/scientist who has spent some time in the filed/industry to teach children because they may not only have a better grasp of the subject matter but also interesting and illustrative experiences that will draw students in and engage them.
1) I agree - it should be harder to get a patent. It will drive the quality of patents up and make patents more valueable for those that get them.
2) They do give adequate notice. Search google for "USPTO Public Pair". Anyone can submit relevant art on any pending application.
3) You do not need to build the thing being patented. You can - but the patent application itself is a constructive reduction to practice and that is the way it should be. If an inventor can tell someone how to build a rocketship that can transport people to pluto in a weeks time but does not have the factory to make it - then by disclosing to the world the information so that someone with the means to produce the thing can make and practice the invention is valuable even though the inventor did not himself build the rocket ship.
4) If I buy your house without knowing that you own it should I be able to live in it too? I promise I wont sell it to someone else but you can - Ill just keep living there - sorry for the impact it will have on the value of your house.
5) Any lawyer in his right mind would do this - easier to settle out of court.
6) Go back to my comment on (3). I did not willingly buy your house knowing you lived there - so you would have no remedy against me.
7) Back to my comment on (3) but it is your vacation cabin - you don't use it much and I live there or am homeless - your damages should be reduced or eliminated. If the patented invention is only a small part of the device - then there should be alternatives that would be sufficient to replace the small part of the device to avoid paying licensing fees.
8) Can the patentee use the patent by licensing it? I think that is a fair use, go back to my rocket ship example. The inventor disclosed his brilliant ideas to the world so that it could become a reality even though he could not do it himself. For being a website full of scientists and engineers everyone seems to want to f**k themselves out of the ability to innovate on their own. I am sure many of you are capable of generating great and patentable subject matter that would improve the world - yet the general opinion seems to be that patents are evil and all of the suggested proposals promote policies that favor the large corporations that many of us work for. Most scientists and engineers work at companies that get all of the IP they produce in exchange for $50-$150 grand a year while the shareholders and management get the majority of the revenue genrated. I think it is great when a scientist or engineer can go off on their own, invent something and patent it, and then get what is rightfully theirs.
Scientists and engineers get too little respect in this country and patents are one tool that they can use to gain a posture of power in a system that oppresses them under management that often does not know what is going on, downsizing, and outsourcing.
I am no expert on the 911 system, but I am assuming that local PSAPs have local telephone numbers that they could be called at instead of through 911. Couldn't Vonage just create a little database linking zip codes to the appropriate PSAPs number and bypass the bastards holding them up? This would be incredibly simple to do... as long as they could get the phone numbers for all the PSAPs.
Answer: In the past, before it was obvious. This patent was filed in 1994... there were prepaid systems but theirs was superior not requireing long access codes.
From a WSJ Article:
Court Play
Aggressive Patent Litigants Pose
Growing Threat to Big Business
Unlikely Phoenix Duo Push
A Rival Near Bankruptcy
In Prepaid-Cellphone Case
A Deposition on Car Thievery
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 14, 2005; Page A1
... In 1994 Mr. Fougnies and Jack Harned, a Phoenix software engineer, filed for a patent covering a prepaid cellphone system. The patent describes in general terms a method for setting up such a system so that it can keep track of how many minutes users have left on their phones without requiring them to punch in a special access code. The system would be able to shut down cellphones that had run out of minutes....
Over the summer and last semester I worked in a nano-satellite lab at ASU. The most recent satellite of ours that was launched was Three Corner Sat and one of its primary mission objective was sterio imaging.
Unfortunately, the two of our satellites that got launched were released at 50,000 km instead of 100,000 km so they burnt up before they could power up.
From the research that I have done, it seems like Best Buy was obligated to accept the payment because they had already provided the service and he was paying a debt.
As laid down in the United States Coinage Act of 1965, all coins and currencies of the United States, regardless of when coined or issued, shall be legal-tender for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties and dues.
However, US federal law does not restrict private businesses, persons or organisations in what methods of payment they choose to accept or refuse. Businesses are therefore free to insist on payment by credit card, for example, or to refuse larger denomination banknotes. Even further though, legal tender laws do not preclude businesses from choosing to reject U.S. dollars for payment altogether. In this regard legal tender laws do not pertain to voluntary transactions.
However, when the transactions are non voluntary such as in the payment of a debt, any legal tender must be accepted.
Another excerpt from the previous webpage
As legal tender can be refused until a person is in debt, vending machines and transport staff do not have to accept the largest denomination of banknote for a single bus fare or bar of chocolate, and even shopkeepers can reject large banknotes. However, restaurants that do not collect money until after a meal is served would have to accept any legal tender, though they would not be obliged to provide change - the restaurant is not in debt, it has been given a gift.
Most of my friends use AOL Instant Messenger at home and most of them have it on their phones, so this is my preferred text message format on my cell phone, if you dont have sprint some of my friends were able to get AOL IM on their phones by going to wim.aol.com on their wireless web.
I'm in high school and my district uses a webfiltering software on their gateway server, and it often blocks sites that are not or should not be objectionable (not porn or stuff similar to goatse.cx) and that really pisses me off because the filters are overly strict. However if you just use a webproxy like the http://www.anonymizer.com/ it tricks the filter on the proxy and you can go to any site you want. So basically what im trying to say is that webfilter software sucks at both filtering objectionable material and making sure what it is trying to filter is actually filtered.
The Democrats Have done this Already .... Kind of
on
Online Voting?
·
· Score: 1
In Arizona, democrats could cast their vote over the Internet for the primary election.
Slashdot article about it
To vote on-line from home, voters would fill out a form they could download from the party's Web site, choose a personal identification code, sign it and mail it to the party. Once the signature is verified, confirmation would be sent to the voter by e-mail. On election day, the voter would open the party's Web site, enter the identification code and cast the electronic ballot. that is how abcnews.go.com said they did it. Article on abcnews
Slashdot Mirror
"In re Biliski" does not require something to be "a product" to patent it. There is no commercial success or commercialization requirement to get a patent. What Biliski requires is that the actual claim language for a process claim (1) is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.
technically ... sue them and either get a "reasonable royalty" or "lost profits." Lost profits being the profits that the plaintiff lost due to the infringement. Thus, IPAT will likely want a "reasonable royalty." See 35 USC 284. Damages only go back six years from the date the complaint is filed. See 35 USC 286. Thus, only damages for infringement going back to Dec 30, 2002 can be recovered if IPAT prevails.
There are also equitable defenses of laches and estoppel etc but usually there has to be unreasonable delay and reliance on the delay.
I have not researched this case in particular but it could be that the infringement recently started to occur, or started a handful of years ago and IPAT had tried to do this "nicely" but did not have luck. Maybe IPAT is in the wrong.
In any case, hopefully whoever is in the right will come out on top here.
People who are good at business get paid.
... a software patent would be useful here ... and potentially beyond :)
People who are good at programming get screwed?
My time, knowledge, and skill are not worthless and I would want to be paid. The GPL is great but FOSS programmers could exclude companies that use their software from the license and require an that those companies take an additional license so the programmer can get paid.
Also
The addition of "a shopping cart model" in the first clause of the claim necessitated the change of "a" to "the" in the last clause to make sure it had the correct "antecedent basis."
In claim drafting, you must first introduce a word or concept with "a" or "an" and then you refer back to it with "the" or "said." If you do not the claim will not be allowed.
The change from "a" to "the" did not magically change the claim from being invalid to allowable.
Waiving tuition is one way ... or you could just pay competitive salaries to attract more and better teachers in math/engineering/science. Not that there is anything wrong or bad about hiring students fresh out of college to teach, but there may be a benefit to hiring a mathmatician/engineer/scientist who has spent some time in the filed/industry to teach children because they may not only have a better grasp of the subject matter but also interesting and illustrative experiences that will draw students in and engage them.
1) I agree - it should be harder to get a patent. It will drive the quality of patents up and make patents more valueable for those that get them.
2) They do give adequate notice. Search google for "USPTO Public Pair". Anyone can submit relevant art on any pending application.
3) You do not need to build the thing being patented. You can - but the patent application itself is a constructive reduction to practice and that is the way it should be. If an inventor can tell someone how to build a rocketship that can transport people to pluto in a weeks time but does not have the factory to make it - then by disclosing to the world the information so that someone with the means to produce the thing can make and practice the invention is valuable even though the inventor did not himself build the rocket ship.
4) If I buy your house without knowing that you own it should I be able to live in it too? I promise I wont sell it to someone else but you can - Ill just keep living there - sorry for the impact it will have on the value of your house.
5) Any lawyer in his right mind would do this - easier to settle out of court.
6) Go back to my comment on (3). I did not willingly buy your house knowing you lived there - so you would have no remedy against me.
7) Back to my comment on (3) but it is your vacation cabin - you don't use it much and I live there or am homeless - your damages should be reduced or eliminated. If the patented invention is only a small part of the device - then there should be alternatives that would be sufficient to replace the small part of the device to avoid paying licensing fees.
8) Can the patentee use the patent by licensing it? I think that is a fair use, go back to my rocket ship example. The inventor disclosed his brilliant ideas to the world so that it could become a reality even though he could not do it himself. For being a website full of scientists and engineers everyone seems to want to f**k themselves out of the ability to innovate on their own. I am sure many of you are capable of generating great and patentable subject matter that would improve the world - yet the general opinion seems to be that patents are evil and all of the suggested proposals promote policies that favor the large corporations that many of us work for. Most scientists and engineers work at companies that get all of the IP they produce in exchange for $50-$150 grand a year while the shareholders and management get the majority of the revenue genrated. I think it is great when a scientist or engineer can go off on their own, invent something and patent it, and then get what is rightfully theirs.
Scientists and engineers get too little respect in this country and patents are one tool that they can use to gain a posture of power in a system that oppresses them under management that often does not know what is going on, downsizing, and outsourcing.
(This is to everyone who is blaming this on LAWYERS in General)
Engineers / Scientists Designed the DRM
Engineers / Scientists Cracked the DRM
Lawyers envoke the DMCA
Lawyers combat the DMCA
I am no expert on the 911 system, but I am assuming that local PSAPs have local telephone numbers that they could be called at instead of through 911. Couldn't Vonage just create a little database linking zip codes to the appropriate PSAPs number and bypass the bastards holding them up? This would be incredibly simple to do ... as long as they could get the phone numbers for all the PSAPs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1
From a WSJ Article:
Court Play
Aggressive Patent Litigants Pose
Growing Threat to Big Business
Unlikely Phoenix Duo Push
A Rival Near Bankruptcy
In Prepaid-Cellphone Case
A Deposition on Car Thievery
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 14, 2005; Page A1
Over the summer and last semester I worked in a nano-satellite lab at ASU. The most recent satellite of ours that was launched was Three Corner Sat and one of its primary mission objective was sterio imaging.
g e=3CS
http://threecornersat.jpl.nasa.gov/
http://nasa.asu.edu/
https://spacegrant.colorado.edu/tiki-index.php?pa
Unfortunately, the two of our satellites that got launched were released at 50,000 km instead of 100,000 km so they burnt up before they could power up.
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2737
I am not a lawyer.
# Legal_tender_in_the_United_States
c ourt=us&vol=110&invol=421
From the research that I have done, it seems like Best Buy was obligated to accept the payment because they had already provided the service and he was paying a debt.
Here is an excerpt from an interesting article I found on
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Legal_tender
Legal tender in the United States
As laid down in the United States Coinage Act of 1965, all coins and currencies of the United States, regardless of when coined or issued, shall be legal-tender for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties and dues.
However, US federal law does not restrict private businesses, persons or organisations in what methods of payment they choose to accept or refuse. Businesses are therefore free to insist on payment by credit card, for example, or to refuse larger denomination banknotes. Even further though, legal tender laws do not preclude businesses from choosing to reject U.S. dollars for payment altogether. In this regard legal tender laws do not pertain to voluntary transactions.
However, when the transactions are non voluntary such as in the payment of a debt, any legal tender must be accepted.
Another excerpt from the previous webpage
As legal tender can be refused until a person is in debt, vending machines and transport staff do not have to accept the largest denomination of banknote for a single bus fare or bar of chocolate, and even shopkeepers can reject large banknotes. However, restaurants that do not collect money until after a meal is served would have to accept any legal tender, though they would not be obliged to provide change - the restaurant is not in debt, it has been given a gift.
Related Court Cases:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?
Most of my friends use AOL Instant Messenger at home and most of them have it on their phones, so this is my preferred text message format on my cell phone, if you dont have sprint some of my friends were able to get AOL IM on their phones by going to wim.aol.com on their wireless web.
I'm in high school and my district uses a webfiltering software on their gateway server, and it often blocks sites that are not or should not be objectionable (not porn or stuff similar to goatse.cx) and that really pisses me off because the filters are overly strict. However if you just use a webproxy like the http://www.anonymizer.com/ it tricks the filter on the proxy and you can go to any site you want. So basically what im trying to say is that webfilter software sucks at both filtering objectionable material and making sure what it is trying to filter is actually filtered.
Slashdot article about it
To vote on-line from home, voters would fill out a form they could download from the party's Web site, choose a personal identification code, sign it and mail it to the party. Once the signature is verified, confirmation would be sent to the voter by e-mail. On election day, the voter would open the party's Web site, enter the identification code and cast the electronic ballot. that is how abcnews.go.com said they did it.
Article on abcnews
Or if your really lazy you can run it into a text to speach program.