I would offer the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals as a counterpoint. This court has consistently held that software patents are valid despite the opinion of the USPTO (before 1994) and the Supreme Court. I encourage you to take a look at their recent ruling on Myriad Genetics (not a software patent, but a bad patent ruling nonetheless). Bad things can happen with "expert" courts as well.
Courts in the Netherlands, the UK, and Korea found that Samsung devices were not in violation of Apple's designs. So, whether or not Samsung copied appears to depend on where you live.
My point was that other courts have considered the design similar enough to conclude that Apple should not have received the patent. Courts in both the Netherlands and the UK cited the Neonode in ruling against Apple on slide to unlock.
I do wonder how many of the changes in form had to do with advancing technology. Take the capacitive touchscreen for example. The first phone with a capacitive touchscreen was the LG Prada ( a Korean company like Samsung), so the idea of moving away from the stylus was clearly being considered by at least two companies (and probably everyone was looking into it at some level). The reason LG didn't release such a device earlier was because capacitive touchscreens had not been feasible.
While I think Apple did a great job with the implementation of their devices, I just don't see anything new. Thin rectangular phone with rounded corners and a capacitive touchscreen perfectly describes the Prada. Phones with third party app repositories existed at least as early as 2004. Phones that were also media players and had internet browsers existed even earlier (I was surfing the net on my phone in 2001). Apple deserves to profit from its superior implementation of these ideas and bringing it to the masses, but I do not believe they deserve credit for inventing these ideas.
Considering that Samsung had about $15 billion in profits last year (16.3 trillion won according to their annual report), I would say they are getting a pretty big piece already.
I am not Korean, but I am suspicious of the verdict. 22 hours to read over 100 pages of instructions and fill out a 700 question form. Did they deliberate at all?
Samsung is the largest seller of phones in the United States by a large margin (about 26% to Apple's 14% marketshare). Even if Samsung had to pay this verdict, it would amount to less than a fourteenth of Samsung's annual profits (16.3 trillion won in 2011).
If you read the ruling, it become clear that this is a patent on the gene sequence itself. It applies whether or not it is in the human body. It also applies to most variations of the sequence without limit. This means that no one else is allowed to isolate and work on the naturally occurring genes without paying royalties, even if the genes are present in your own body.
A few quotes from the dissent: "From a genetic perspective, that claim covers one "composition of matter" --the BRCA1 gene. The isolated chromosomes 13 and 17. They have the same sequence, they code for the same proteins, and they represent the same units of heredity."
"...its composition claims are not defined by any particular chemical formula. For example, claim 1 of the '282 patent covers all isolated DNAs coding for the BRCA1 protein, with the protein being defined by the amino acid sequence encoded by the naturally occurring BRCA1 gene... And the patent does not identify the upper end of that range because the patent does not identify a unique nucleotide sequence... Instead, the patent contains a sequence that is just 24,000 nucleotides longs with numerous gaps denoted by "vvvvvvvvvv." An almost incalculably large number of new molecules could be created by filling in those gaps with almost any nucleotide sequence."
Personally, I don't think NASA (or any government agency) should be turning a profit. The purpose of government should be to do things the private sector can't, won't, or shouldn't. If the activity is profitable, chances are it can be done by private industry.
NASA exists to further fundamental research and exploration (which sometimes results in profitable creations). Private enterprises don't like to conduct fundamental research because there is not always a clear path to something useful and it costs a lot of money with little expectation of immediate gains. So, government steps in and provides this unprofitable, but necessary, service.
Good job. I think you make a strong argument against software patents. If software patents are indeed the patenting of ideas rather than concrete implementations, then they should not be issued.
While I support the premise that Android suffers from greater fragmentation than iOS, the purchase numbers don't support an argument that Apple is being favored over Android.
Apple's position is most dominant in the U.S., but the second quarter numbers indicate that even in their largest market, Android accounted for nearly 55% of U.S. sales in the second quarter, compared to just over 36% for iOS. The numbers worldwide are even more in Android's favor. This gap is continuing to widen.
If your premise is correct, it would appear that people do not highly value updates when making a smartphone purchasing decision.
It is not a format. CD's (and DVD's) you buy in the store are not made the same way as CD's you burn at home. Professionally made CD's have the disk image physically pressed into the media, whereas with home burning a laser is discoloring a dye to produce the same effect. Unfortunately, the dye will eventually fade and the disk will become unreadable. So, CD's are not the same as CD-R or CD-RW and the same holds true for DVD's.
They can be separated and are in many countries. You were not paid $50 from your phone company. You received a loan from your phone company for the cost of the phone plus the fifty dollars. You will repay the loan over the next few years in the form of inflated rates for your service. If you continue to use the phone on their network beyond your contract terms then you will still be paying the subsidy without getting any benefit.
Upon further consideration, after the 2011 Supreme Court ruling, this provision may have more teeth. Either way, it is still a gamble for the companies and it seems highly unlikely any ISP or content provider would win in court with no system in place to review fair use.
My ISP, Comcast, does have a no class action clause, but the courts invalidated the clause in 2007 and a class action lawsuit was allowed to proceed against them.
A woman sued Universal for issuing a DMCA takedown request to Youtube for a video of her baby dancing to Prince (see, Lenz v Universal). The EFF took on the case and she has won nearly every argument so far (The case started in 2007 and has a summary judgment hearing scheduled for October 2012). So, yes, I think someone will sue. The bigger question is could it be turned into a class action suit. If they win a test case, then lawyers will be salivating at the deep pockets involved.
How can any ISP determine whether or not I have received the rights to any given copyrighted item? What if the items I am downloading are fair use productions using copyrighted material? Nobody really knows what fair use is and is not (it is very subjective), how can you write an algorithm to detect it? I just don't understand how this is technologically possible.
Courts have already ruled that you can sue for DMCA requests that don't consider fair use. It doesn't seem a stretch to apply that to "strikes" as well (and strikes are probably easier to demonstrate harm). The ISP's are going to have to tread very carefully to avoid class action lawsuits.
The reason there wasn't the tit or tat fighting back then is because the USPTO had spent decades fighting against software and business process patents. While they frequently lost in court, the battle itself was enough to dissuade many companies from filing ridiculous patent applications. This all ended in 1994, when Clinton appointed Bruce Lehman, a former IP lobbyist, to run the patent office. Lehman changed the course of the USPTO to simply become the rubber stamp it is today. It takes time for such changes to be felt though. It took many years for companies to figure out how to game the new system and for the frivolous patents to reach critical mass.
People have always been conniving, greedy, and underhanded, the difference is that patents were not as potent of a weapon as they are now, so people didn't employ them as often.
Where I live, they can't build light rail fast enough. Every time a new line opens, its usage massively exceeds predictions. Americans like trains and train networks within cities are highly utilized.
The problem is that long distance travel is faster and cheaper by air much of the time. This is a result of a rail network that prioritizes and caters to freight over passengers. Therefore, high speed lines haven't been built and Amtrak is incredibly slow (and expensive for the service they provide). If the U.S. built a rail network like much of Europe or Japan, Korea, etc. I think Americans would use it.
Of course, it is impossible to say what the world would be like today without the U.S., WWII is an interesting choice. The United States entrance into WWI turned a likely, but limited, German victory into a massive Allied route. This is turn allowed France to exact revenge on Germany, both for WWI and for the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War, less than 50 years earlier. It could be argued that the harsh terms of the peace led to extreme nationalism in German, giving rise to Hitler and eventually WWII. So, in this case, the United States could be seen as having caused WWII in the first place.
Personally, I cannot understand anyone who could not answer "Perhaps" on a question with so many variables and unknowns.
He is not being accused of rape as it is popularly defined in the U.S. He is being accused of not using a condom after he told two women he would. Both women willingly had sex with him (one women woke up during the night to Assange having sex with her without a condom). Not using a condom when you are asked to is a crime in Sweden. The women only wanted to force Assange to get an STD test (they were both Assange supporters). I don't like the guy, but something is not right here.
Slashdot Mirror
I would offer the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals as a counterpoint. This court has consistently held that software patents are valid despite the opinion of the USPTO (before 1994) and the Supreme Court. I encourage you to take a look at their recent ruling on Myriad Genetics (not a software patent, but a bad patent ruling nonetheless). Bad things can happen with "expert" courts as well.
Courts in the Netherlands, the UK, and Korea found that Samsung devices were not in violation of Apple's designs. So, whether or not Samsung copied appears to depend on where you live.
My point was that other courts have considered the design similar enough to conclude that Apple should not have received the patent. Courts in both the Netherlands and the UK cited the Neonode in ruling against Apple on slide to unlock.
I do wonder how many of the changes in form had to do with advancing technology. Take the capacitive touchscreen for example. The first phone with a capacitive touchscreen was the LG Prada ( a Korean company like Samsung), so the idea of moving away from the stylus was clearly being considered by at least two companies (and probably everyone was looking into it at some level). The reason LG didn't release such a device earlier was because capacitive touchscreens had not been feasible.
While I think Apple did a great job with the implementation of their devices, I just don't see anything new. Thin rectangular phone with rounded corners and a capacitive touchscreen perfectly describes the Prada. Phones with third party app repositories existed at least as early as 2004. Phones that were also media players and had internet browsers existed even earlier (I was surfing the net on my phone in 2001). Apple deserves to profit from its superior implementation of these ideas and bringing it to the masses, but I do not believe they deserve credit for inventing these ideas.
A court in the Netherlands ruled against Apple on the slide to unlock patent. The Dutch judge cited the Neonode N1m as prior art.
Considering that Samsung had about $15 billion in profits last year (16.3 trillion won according to their annual report), I would say they are getting a pretty big piece already.
I am not Korean, but I am suspicious of the verdict. 22 hours to read over 100 pages of instructions and fill out a 700 question form. Did they deliberate at all?
Samsung is the largest seller of phones in the United States by a large margin (about 26% to Apple's 14% marketshare). Even if Samsung had to pay this verdict, it would amount to less than a fourteenth of Samsung's annual profits (16.3 trillion won in 2011).
Or how about just calling it "Three Stars"?
If you read the ruling, it become clear that this is a patent on the gene sequence itself. It applies whether or not it is in the human body. It also applies to most variations of the sequence without limit. This means that no one else is allowed to isolate and work on the naturally occurring genes without paying royalties, even if the genes are present in your own body.
A few quotes from the dissent:
"From a genetic perspective, that claim covers one "composition of matter" --the BRCA1 gene. The isolated chromosomes 13 and 17. They have the same sequence, they code for the same proteins, and they represent the same units of heredity."
"...its composition claims are not defined by any particular chemical formula. For example, claim 1 of the '282 patent covers all isolated DNAs coding for the BRCA1 protein, with the protein being defined by the amino acid sequence encoded by the naturally occurring BRCA1 gene ... And the patent does not identify the upper end of that range because the patent does not identify a unique nucleotide sequence ... Instead, the patent contains a sequence that is just 24,000 nucleotides longs with numerous gaps denoted by "vvvvvvvvvv." An almost incalculably large number of new molecules could be created by filling in those gaps with almost any nucleotide sequence."
Personally, I don't think NASA (or any government agency) should be turning a profit. The purpose of government should be to do things the private sector can't, won't, or shouldn't. If the activity is profitable, chances are it can be done by private industry.
NASA exists to further fundamental research and exploration (which sometimes results in profitable creations). Private enterprises don't like to conduct fundamental research because there is not always a clear path to something useful and it costs a lot of money with little expectation of immediate gains. So, government steps in and provides this unprofitable, but necessary, service.
Good job. I think you make a strong argument against software patents. If software patents are indeed the patenting of ideas rather than concrete implementations, then they should not be issued.
While I support the premise that Android suffers from greater fragmentation than iOS, the purchase numbers don't support an argument that Apple is being favored over Android.
Apple's position is most dominant in the U.S., but the second quarter numbers indicate that even in their largest market, Android accounted for nearly 55% of U.S. sales in the second quarter, compared to just over 36% for iOS. The numbers worldwide are even more in Android's favor. This gap is continuing to widen.
If your premise is correct, it would appear that people do not highly value updates when making a smartphone purchasing decision.
It is not a format. CD's (and DVD's) you buy in the store are not made the same way as CD's you burn at home. Professionally made CD's have the disk image physically pressed into the media, whereas with home burning a laser is discoloring a dye to produce the same effect. Unfortunately, the dye will eventually fade and the disk will become unreadable. So, CD's are not the same as CD-R or CD-RW and the same holds true for DVD's.
They can be separated and are in many countries. You were not paid $50 from your phone company. You received a loan from your phone company for the cost of the phone plus the fifty dollars. You will repay the loan over the next few years in the form of inflated rates for your service. If you continue to use the phone on their network beyond your contract terms then you will still be paying the subsidy without getting any benefit.
Upon further consideration, after the 2011 Supreme Court ruling, this provision may have more teeth. Either way, it is still a gamble for the companies and it seems highly unlikely any ISP or content provider would win in court with no system in place to review fair use.
My ISP, Comcast, does have a no class action clause, but the courts invalidated the clause in 2007 and a class action lawsuit was allowed to proceed against them.
A woman sued Universal for issuing a DMCA takedown request to Youtube for a video of her baby dancing to Prince (see, Lenz v Universal). The EFF took on the case and she has won nearly every argument so far (The case started in 2007 and has a summary judgment hearing scheduled for October 2012). So, yes, I think someone will sue. The bigger question is could it be turned into a class action suit. If they win a test case, then lawyers will be salivating at the deep pockets involved.
How can any ISP determine whether or not I have received the rights to any given copyrighted item? What if the items I am downloading are fair use productions using copyrighted material? Nobody really knows what fair use is and is not (it is very subjective), how can you write an algorithm to detect it? I just don't understand how this is technologically possible.
Courts have already ruled that you can sue for DMCA requests that don't consider fair use. It doesn't seem a stretch to apply that to "strikes" as well (and strikes are probably easier to demonstrate harm). The ISP's are going to have to tread very carefully to avoid class action lawsuits.
The reason there wasn't the tit or tat fighting back then is because the USPTO had spent decades fighting against software and business process patents. While they frequently lost in court, the battle itself was enough to dissuade many companies from filing ridiculous patent applications. This all ended in 1994, when Clinton appointed Bruce Lehman, a former IP lobbyist, to run the patent office. Lehman changed the course of the USPTO to simply become the rubber stamp it is today. It takes time for such changes to be felt though. It took many years for companies to figure out how to game the new system and for the frivolous patents to reach critical mass.
People have always been conniving, greedy, and underhanded, the difference is that patents were not as potent of a weapon as they are now, so people didn't employ them as often.
Where I live, they can't build light rail fast enough. Every time a new line opens, its usage massively exceeds predictions. Americans like trains and train networks within cities are highly utilized.
The problem is that long distance travel is faster and cheaper by air much of the time. This is a result of a rail network that prioritizes and caters to freight over passengers. Therefore, high speed lines haven't been built and Amtrak is incredibly slow (and expensive for the service they provide). If the U.S. built a rail network like much of Europe or Japan, Korea, etc. I think Americans would use it.
While difficult to imagine, I know, there is more to this ruling than the snippet on Slashdot.
Considering the article concerns a British problem in a British court, I think they had a reasonable expectation.
Of course, it is impossible to say what the world would be like today without the U.S., WWII is an interesting choice. The United States entrance into WWI turned a likely, but limited, German victory into a massive Allied route. This is turn allowed France to exact revenge on Germany, both for WWI and for the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War, less than 50 years earlier. It could be argued that the harsh terms of the peace led to extreme nationalism in German, giving rise to Hitler and eventually WWII. So, in this case, the United States could be seen as having caused WWII in the first place.
Personally, I cannot understand anyone who could not answer "Perhaps" on a question with so many variables and unknowns.
He is not being accused of rape as it is popularly defined in the U.S. He is being accused of not using a condom after he told two women he would. Both women willingly had sex with him (one women woke up during the night to Assange having sex with her without a condom). Not using a condom when you are asked to is a crime in Sweden. The women only wanted to force Assange to get an STD test (they were both Assange supporters). I don't like the guy, but something is not right here.