Nothing Mentioned here is out of the ordinary. All applications are rejected at least once...if it is not rejected your council has done something terribly wrong and drawn narrow-scope claims that will not yield any protection or competitive advantage. Cancellation and continuation are standard strategy as well. It would be more interesting to find that they were given a divisional; implying validity.
I thought the one-click patent was brought to its knees by the/. community riding on the back of an old ski-lift ticket system as prior art.
I like reading about people complaining about their $15 per month and how it is OUTRAGEOUS that Blizzard could treat them this way etc. etc.
It strikes me as odd that we constantly compare MMOGs to other games or services regardless of the validity of the comparison.
MMOGs are Entertainment. There are very few other services that one may purchase for "only" $15 per month that will provide the volume and quality (yes, quality) of entertainment that a MMOG will.
One night at the movies - easily $20 for ~2 hours. A night out drinking/dancing >$40? for 4 hours? Any concert >$40 for a few hours. A date? (I know this is/. just trust me, they are expensive).
My point is that it's not a waste of time. It's entertainment. We choose to play them. We choose not to watch TV. MMOGs are actually social behavior (we chat and make friends). If you play MMOGs instead of watching cable/direcTV/TiVo you are paying considerably less per month and interacting with more people while you are doing it.
I consider myself a casual gamer (maybe an hour or two every-other day, more on the weekends) and per-hour I pay about 20 cents/hour to play WoW. If I was hard-core, it would be considerably less.
Relax, and let the silent majority have their fun.
RIM took a $450M reserve prior to settlement. The Balance is a comparatively small amount. Initially, I believed that they were not responsible for Royalties going forward (in which case RIM should STFU and pat themselves on the back for getting away with robbery) but I believe that there are some royalty stipulations in the settlement.
With the success of the Blackberry, and RIM's strategy for bringing it to market, RIM is certainly not done as a company.
Just a cursory review of the top level comments, but most of us are missing a big piece here....
RIM already took a $450M reserve against the settlement. They only owe another $160M which should be no problem over the next few quarters for them to finance...
Here is the Kicker: The settlement does NOT obligate RIM to pay royalties.
-A
Better update my mtach.com profile
on
Halo 2 Goes Gold
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· Score: 5, Funny
If they can show that during the patent process the applicants knowingly omitted prior art, they might be subject to triple penalties for defrauding the patent office.
It is an applicant's duty to supply all known Prior art to the examiner. Those poor examiners can't be expected to know everything.
Just to clarify: Dependant Claims do not limit the scope of their Independant Claims. They are separate entities that have a more limited scope than the Independant claim to which they referr.
Also: If it is not in the Claims, they have no Claim to it...litigation-wise, it matters very little what is written in the Specification.
Fun discussion =)
-A
w0000000T! I worked on this project........
on
Force Field. No, Really
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· Score: 5, Informative
And it IS Awesome!
I worked on the pre-cursor to the plasma valve at BNL, the Vaunted "Plasma Window" (ooooh, ahhh)
The thing really is incredible, and yes, I accepted the project because I read the description, and went..."Holy C*ap! That is just like the shuttle bay!" And it is, well...if the shuttle bay were ~4-6mm in diameter =)
And about the 15K Kelvin thing, yes plasmas do get that hot, but lets get real here, the thing is tiny...I bet the lights above your head get just as hot in the middle of their plasmas.
Anyway, the project I worked on was very robust and partially scaleable, just would require a boatload of power. It was very "loud" but not "noisy" as we could put very sensitive equipment right next to it and there would be no interference (you physics types should get this) and when you take a collimated beam of light...in one case a green laser, it will shine clear through it with next to no loss, which is a huge improvement over any other method of separating Atmosphere from Vacuum.
Mind you, this would be only the first stage in a series of differential pumping to get down to UHVacuum.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing Mentioned here is out of the ordinary. All applications are rejected at least once...if it is not rejected your council has done something terribly wrong and drawn narrow-scope claims that will not yield any protection or competitive advantage. Cancellation and continuation are standard strategy as well. It would be more interesting to find that they were given a divisional; implying validity.
/. community riding on the back of an old ski-lift ticket system as prior art.
I thought the one-click patent was brought to its knees by the
-A
Coward ;)
I searched all the way down here to find the Doc Oc comment... /. is losing it's edge ;)
-A
It strikes me as odd that we constantly compare MMOGs to other games or services regardless of the validity of the comparison.
MMOGs are Entertainment. There are very few other services that one may purchase for "only" $15 per month that will provide the volume and quality (yes, quality) of entertainment that a MMOG will.
One night at the movies - easily $20 for ~2 hours. A night out drinking/dancing >$40? for 4 hours? Any concert >$40 for a few hours. A date? (I know this is /. just trust me, they are expensive).
My point is that it's not a waste of time. It's entertainment. We choose to play them. We choose not to watch TV. MMOGs are actually social behavior (we chat and make friends). If you play MMOGs instead of watching cable/direcTV/TiVo you are paying considerably less per month and interacting with more people while you are doing it.
I consider myself a casual gamer (maybe an hour or two every-other day, more on the weekends) and per-hour I pay about 20 cents/hour to play WoW. If I was hard-core, it would be considerably less.
Relax, and let the silent majority have their fun.
-A
Not at all.
RIM took a $450M reserve prior to settlement. The Balance is a comparatively small amount. Initially, I believed that they were not responsible for Royalties going forward (in which case RIM should STFU and pat themselves on the back for getting away with robbery) but I believe that there are some royalty stipulations in the settlement.
With the success of the Blackberry, and RIM's strategy for bringing it to market, RIM is certainly not done as a company.
-C
Just a cursory review of the top level comments, but most of us are missing a big piece here....
RIM already took a $450M reserve against the settlement. They only owe another $160M which should be no problem over the next few quarters for them to finance...
Here is the Kicker: The settlement does NOT obligate RIM to pay royalties.
-A
won't have any time for the GF soon...
If they can show that during the patent process the applicants knowingly omitted prior art, they might be subject to triple penalties for defrauding the patent office.
It is an applicant's duty to supply all known Prior art to the examiner. Those poor examiners can't be expected to know everything.
-A
Just to clarify: Dependant Claims do not limit the scope of their Independant Claims. They are separate entities that have a more limited scope than the Independant claim to which they referr.
Also: If it is not in the Claims, they have no Claim to it...litigation-wise, it matters very little what is written in the Specification.
Fun discussion =)
-A
And it IS Awesome!
I worked on the pre-cursor to the plasma valve at BNL, the Vaunted "Plasma Window" (ooooh, ahhh)
The thing really is incredible, and yes, I accepted the project because I read the description, and went..."Holy C*ap! That is just like the shuttle bay!" And it is, well...if the shuttle bay were ~4-6mm in diameter =)
And about the 15K Kelvin thing, yes plasmas do get that hot, but lets get real here, the thing is tiny...I bet the lights above your head get just as hot in the middle of their plasmas.
Anyway, the project I worked on was very robust and partially scaleable, just would require a boatload of power. It was very "loud" but not "noisy" as we could put very sensitive equipment right next to it and there would be no interference (you physics types should get this) and when you take a collimated beam of light...in one case a green laser, it will shine clear through it with next to no loss, which is a huge improvement over any other method of separating Atmosphere from Vacuum.
Mind you, this would be only the first stage in a series of differential pumping to get down to UHVacuum.
Gratz to Ady, he is one helluv a guy!
-Chris