I too saw the trailer before LOTR. But what I saw was Padme/Amadalla in a corset.
Honestly, if the walk through cameo is as short as some here seem to be suggesting (walk, walk, *BOOM*), I for one, wouldn't have recognised that Nsync was even there. (I probably would have wondered about the the young girl swooning in the next row, however.)
Of course, if you allow a trademark to become a generic word, you lose your trademark rights. Kleenex, Vaseline, Xerox, Monopoly (the game) have all been faced with having to try to avoid having their trademarks become generic nouns.
Given the current patent practices, none of us will be able to touch this for 17 years. Even longer (70 + life) if they can claim that this is a copyright + content control (ala DMCA) technology.
Must be one of the low end Rolexes. I was looking at a Breitling at the store a couple of months ago at it ran $10K. (about 9.75K too much for my wallet!)
The only Rolex I have personally ever handled was diamond encrusted and valued at approx. $250K. I know, that was a custom job, but I still can't imaging wearing the value of my house on my wrist!
Ummm.... actually John Denver was flying a (poorly) modified LongEZ. As in many things, if people don't follow the directions, things break.
Burt Rutan has been sued many times for people crashing one of his designs. In every case it has been proved to have been due to a poorly applied modification to the original design.
Kinda like I probably shouldn't hack the linux kernal if I am going to have to trust my life to it. I am admittedly not a very experienced programmer; just enough to make me dangerous.
In fact the boomerang (asymetric twin aircraft) has a complete data acquisition system run by a Powerbook (at least last time I saw it... he may have upgraded by now)
Just in case anybody is interested, you can get the complete plans for 5 of Rutan's aircraft on CD-ROM at www.wicks.com
Full Disclosure: Yes, I had something to do with producing this CD, but I don't make anything from these sales. I just thought somebody might find these interesting, if rather pricy...
Basically the article has the RIAA saying 'Our customers don't like us, so we need to beat them back into line, otherwise they won't be our customers any more.'
The concept that MP3.com was probably the right direction (until the RIAA caught them playing napster with my.mp3.com); distribute music from independant artists. The only problem is getting people to look for these new artists instead of the RIAA sponsored Metalica et al.
This is where the radio stations come in. Where do poeple hear new music? Most often on the Radio. They have a station tuned in, and rather than change channels they listen to whatever gets played, thereby exposing them to new music. When they hear something they like, people say "Who is that? I like it!" and then look for other things that artist made. What we need therefore is to have some independant radio stations, playing music which is distributed only (or mostly) over the web.
Catch people in their cars, but give them a convienient way to link in when they get home and have web access. Or with the increasing inclusion of telematics in cars, perhaps eventually "push this button on your radio and download the song now!" (that is a bit in the future, but perhaps not as far as one might think!)
When the laptop is stolen, if the thief tries to log in, perhaps it could let them continue a bit while it sends the fingerprint to the police for identification.
Damn, I should've patented this instead of releasing it to public domain by posting in a public forum!
At least when I attended college as long as you weren't being disruptive it was your choice to pay attention or not. After all, you were paying to attend the class, if you didn't want to get your money's worth that was your choice. The prof. wasn't expected to hold your hand, but rather s/he simply dispensed a grade at the end of the term. If you got a bad one, perhaps you should have been paying closer attention.
On page 33 of the transcript Monsterhut's lawyer admits that if one opts-in for "more information on sports" that one's address becomes part of the "common source of addresses that people can barter by exchange". So, asking for targeted information gets you put in a general opt-in for everything under the sun. I am surprised that nobody asked Mosterhut for the database that says that the people looking for "marrage enhancers" opted-in for that target!
Sports mail, in the example given, might be ok, but last time I checked marrage isn't a recognized sport (I could be wrong;-)
One idea that I have for a spam law would be that the opt-in source and date must be included in the header of commercial bulk mail, and that the spammer must have on file auditable opt-in records that expire after one year. This way if you opted-in and forgot, or are no longer interested, the record would time-out and be removed. If it wasn't, you could then have recouse to sue/prosecute etc. Set some small number of identical/similar messages without this info to allow for legitimate sales contacts, but if the info wasn't included in the headers, organizations such as SpamCop could seek procecution upon collecting some similarly small number of complaints.
This would permit limited, targeted, legitimate mailings while outlawing the ones that comprise the majority of what winds up in my mailbox.
The problem is that, with today's legal atmosphere, as soon as you reverse engineer something that a company such as Trident didn't want you to, you get slapped with a law suit. Even worse, criminal procecution if there is any way to claim that the info was "encrypted" (ie like the weakly encoded CueCat barcode data).
Either way, whether you are right or wrong, you will wind up spending your time and money dealing with lawyers. (or worse, your new 'friend' Bubba!)
I think I can top that one...
The first computer I worked on was a CommodorePET! It had a tape drive, small keys laid out like graph paper (not staggered like a standard KBD), and took about 10 minutes to load a small basic program like "lemonade stand". After that, the Trash80 seemed powerfull!
You have a year from the date of first disclosure to patent your invention. Disclosure ranges from offering to sell the invention or a product containing the invention to mentioning it to someone at a cocktail party. (If your opponant could find that person to testify against you)
Therefore, if soneone held art prior to 1996, their year is already up.
Maybe. I know that if one discloses the idea of ones patent, even at something as trivial as a cocktail party, you have only one year to file the patent from that point. If you publish the idea in a scholarly article I think you don't even get the one year.
I think it would be a hard sell, claiming a work of fiction as prior art, otherwise Star Trek would invalidate many many patents. (Such as automatic doors which slide open etc.)
I recall a news item about 4 or 5 years ago about Michigan State Univ. (which is a big agricultural school) developing a potato which instead of producing starch like most potatos developed plastic. It too was readily biodegradible.
I wonder if this would constitute prior art?
BTW, I think the potato was also not digestable, which poses interesting prospects for diet food.
While it is true that you have to activly defend your trademark, it is possible to have said mark pass into common usage.
I believe this was the case with using the words "a monopoly type board game." Although I am not positive, I believe Parker Brothers lost because it was deemed that, in the descriptive sense, the term monopoly game has become common.
I am sure there are better examples (Vasilene, Kleenex, etc.) but I can't think of them at the moment.
Unfortunately you can only manufacture your improvement on the original patent if you wait until the first patent runs out, or if you can get the first patent-holder to licence the earlier technology to you (good-luck is you are REALLY trying to run them out of business).
Your improvement patent will however keep the original company from using YOUR improvement ideas without paying you.
More than likely they would just come up with some other improvement to work around your idea, while you still have to wait for the prior patent to expire.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps Cray computer should sue crayon for dilution of their trademark.
--McFly
I too saw the trailer before LOTR. But what I saw was Padme/Amadalla in a corset.
Honestly, if the walk through cameo is as short as some here seem to be suggesting (walk, walk, *BOOM*), I for one, wouldn't have recognised that Nsync was even there. (I probably would have wondered about the the young girl swooning in the next row, however.)
Which would of course be pronounced Won-dows.
Of course, if you allow a trademark to become a generic word, you lose your trademark rights. Kleenex, Vaseline, Xerox, Monopoly (the game) have all been faced with having to try to avoid having their trademarks become generic nouns.
Given the current patent practices, none of us will be able to touch this for 17 years. Even longer (70 + life) if they can claim that this is a copyright + content control (ala DMCA) technology.
--McFly777
Must be one of the low end Rolexes. I was looking at a Breitling at the store a couple of months ago at it ran $10K. (about 9.75K too much for my wallet!)
The only Rolex I have personally ever handled was diamond encrusted and valued at approx. $250K. I know, that was a custom job, but I still can't imaging wearing the value of my house on my wrist!
I am thinking of developing a new OS with the aim of making everybody happy.
I think I will call it CheeriOS.
Hmmm... you don't think General Mills will mind do you?
Ummm.... actually John Denver was flying a (poorly) modified LongEZ. As in many things, if people don't follow the directions, things break.
Burt Rutan has been sued many times for people crashing one of his designs. In every case it has been proved to have been due to a poorly applied modification to the original design.
Kinda like I probably shouldn't hack the linux kernal if I am going to have to trust my life to it. I am admittedly not a very experienced programmer; just enough to make me dangerous.
In fact the boomerang (asymetric twin aircraft) has a complete data acquisition system run by a Powerbook (at least last time I saw it... he may have upgraded by now)
Who knows? He may even be running OSX by now!
http://www.wicksaircraft.com/showPage.phtml?pagenu m=88
Just in case anybody is interested, you can get the complete plans for 5 of Rutan's aircraft on CD-ROM at www.wicks.com
Full Disclosure: Yes, I had something to do with producing this CD, but I don't make anything from these sales. I just thought somebody might find these interesting, if rather pricy...
Basically the article has the RIAA saying 'Our customers don't like us, so we need to beat them back into line, otherwise they won't be our customers any more.'
The concept that MP3.com was probably the right direction (until the RIAA caught them playing napster with my.mp3.com); distribute music from independant artists. The only problem is getting people to look for these new artists instead of the RIAA sponsored Metalica et al.
This is where the radio stations come in. Where do poeple hear new music? Most often on the Radio. They have a station tuned in, and rather than change channels they listen to whatever gets played, thereby exposing them to new music. When they hear something they like, people say "Who is that? I like it!" and then look for other things that artist made. What we need therefore is to have some independant radio stations, playing music which is distributed only (or mostly) over the web.
Catch people in their cars, but give them a convienient way to link in when they get home and have web access. Or with the increasing inclusion of telematics in cars, perhaps eventually "push this button on your radio and download the song now!" (that is a bit in the future, but perhaps not as far as one might think!)
When the laptop is stolen, if the thief tries to log in, perhaps it could let them continue a bit while it sends the fingerprint to the police for identification.
Damn, I should've patented this instead of releasing it to public domain by posting in a public forum!
At least when I attended college as long as you weren't being disruptive it was your choice to pay attention or not. After all, you were paying to attend the class, if you didn't want to get your money's worth that was your choice. The prof. wasn't expected to hold your hand, but rather s/he simply dispensed a grade at the end of the term. If you got a bad one, perhaps you should have been paying closer attention.
On page 33 of the transcript Monsterhut's lawyer admits that if one opts-in for "more information on sports" that one's address becomes part of the "common source of addresses that people can barter by exchange". So, asking for targeted information gets you put in a general opt-in for everything under the sun. I am surprised that nobody asked Mosterhut for the database that says that the people looking for "marrage enhancers" opted-in for that target!
;-)
Sports mail, in the example given, might be ok, but last time I checked marrage isn't a recognized sport (I could be wrong
One idea that I have for a spam law would be that the opt-in source and date must be included in the header of commercial bulk mail, and that the spammer must have on file auditable opt-in records that expire after one year. This way if you opted-in and forgot, or are no longer interested, the record would time-out and be removed. If it wasn't, you could then have recouse to sue/prosecute etc. Set some small number of identical/similar messages without this info to allow for legitimate sales contacts, but if the info wasn't included in the headers, organizations such as SpamCop could seek procecution upon collecting some similarly small number of complaints.
This would permit limited, targeted, legitimate mailings while outlawing the ones that comprise the majority of what winds up in my mailbox.
The problem is that, with today's legal atmosphere, as soon as you reverse engineer something that a company such as Trident didn't want you to, you get slapped with a law suit. Even worse, criminal procecution if there is any way to claim that the info was "encrypted" (ie like the weakly encoded CueCat barcode data).
Either way, whether you are right or wrong, you will wind up spending your time and money dealing with lawyers. (or worse, your new 'friend' Bubba!)
I think I can top that one...
The first computer I worked on was a CommodorePET! It had a tape drive, small keys laid out like graph paper (not staggered like a standard KBD), and took about 10 minutes to load a small basic program like "lemonade stand". After that, the Trash80 seemed powerfull!
You have a year from the date of first disclosure to patent your invention. Disclosure ranges from offering to sell the invention or a product containing the invention to mentioning it to someone at a cocktail party. (If your opponant could find that person to testify against you)
Therefore, if soneone held art prior to 1996, their year is already up.
"Can you claim fiction as prior art?"
Maybe. I know that if one discloses the idea of ones patent, even at something as trivial as a cocktail party, you have only one year to file the patent from that point. If you publish the idea in a scholarly article I think you don't even get the one year.
I think it would be a hard sell, claiming a work of fiction as prior art, otherwise Star Trek would invalidate many many patents. (Such as automatic doors which slide open etc.)
Why would you want to patent something narrow?
You can tie your opponants up in court for a while , while they have to try and prove why they aren't infringing on your patent.
If your opponant has a patent that you want to "infringe" upon, you can offer to cross licence eachother.
Vanity. (I am probably guilty of this one myself)
I am sure that there are other good reasons that I haven't thought of but these three are a start.
So.... If the bees collect pollen from the plastic plants do we get plastic honey? If the larval bees eat the plastic honey do we get plastic bees?
Never Mind...
I recall a news item about 4 or 5 years ago about Michigan State Univ. (which is a big agricultural school) developing a potato which instead of producing starch like most potatos developed plastic. It too was readily biodegradible.
I wonder if this would constitute prior art?
BTW, I think the potato was also not digestable, which poses interesting prospects for diet food.
--McFly777 (the number is the answer)
While it is true that you have to activly defend your trademark, it is possible to have said mark pass into common usage.
I believe this was the case with using the words "a monopoly type board game." Although I am not positive, I believe Parker Brothers lost because it was deemed that, in the descriptive sense, the term monopoly game has become common.
I am sure there are better examples (Vasilene, Kleenex, etc.) but I can't think of them at the moment.
Unfortunately you can only manufacture your improvement on the original patent if you wait until the first patent runs out, or if you can get the first patent-holder to licence the earlier technology to you (good-luck is you are REALLY trying to run them out of business).
Your improvement patent will however keep the original company from using YOUR improvement ideas without paying you.
More than likely they would just come up with some other improvement to work around your idea, while you still have to wait for the prior patent to expire.