Good idea. Unfortunately, the article says the code was released in 2008. In the US, you have one year after publication to file a patent application. After that year runs, no one can get a patent on whatever was disclosed.
If you are alleging that Tandberg copied the idea from the x264 project, that is a very serious allegation. Title 35 of the US Code, Section 102(g) prohibits anyone from getting a patent on something that he (or she) did not themselves invent. It would also violate Rule 56 of the Rules of Practice of the USPTO which requires those involved with the preparation and prosecution of a patent application to disclose to the USPTO any reason known why a patent should not issue. Failure to do so is called "inequitable conduct" and is a basis for finding the patent permanently unenforceable. In some cases it can also be a federal crime.
The US is not a first-to-file country but a first-to-invent country. That means that it is possible for an inventor to get a patent even thought they were not the first one to file an application at the USPTO but were the first to invent and were diligent in efforts to obtain a patent. Copying of this type is serious indeed. Theoretically, conduct of this type could also be a copyright infringement.
I for one would like to see a *lot* more proof before reading about allegations like this. The mere fact that one event happened after another is far from sufficient. These are *very* serious accusations.
If a reference is listed in the prior art section of a patent, that means that a patent examiner felt that the reference was pertinent, but that the *claimed invention* was sufficiently *different* from the prior art reference so as to be patentable. God was the only one who ever created something from nothing. Everyone else has had to build off what was already here - including previous versions of software.
The phrase *claimed invention* is key here. To properly evaluate a patent, you must focus on the claims at the end. If a patent issued over prior art, the general rule is that there is some feature recited in the claims that is not disclosed in the prior art. You can argue whether the examiner was wrong, but it is virtually never the case that someone saw someone else's invention and then decided to get a patent on the exact same thing.
I question the intelligence of those who do not take appropriate steps to safeguard their personal information. I have *NO* doubts, however, about the intelligence of someone who would commit almost 50 violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (each one of those violations a felony) and then blog about it.
Go to your University's legal aid office and talk to an attorney. If your University doesn't have a legal aid/legal affairs office that helps students, go to the community's legal aid office to see if you qualify for free legal services. Even if you do not, you may still be able to get the name of an attorney who will be willing to help.
See if you can file a civil replevin action against John Doe to recover the laptop. That will give you the ability to issue subpoenas to trace the IP address. Once you have the identity of the thief, report the information to both the campus police (for the theft) and to the local police (for possession of stolen property).
Good luck!
Strictly speaking, this is access control, not censorship. Censorship is prohibiting access based upon some moral or other judgment about the content itself. Access control is restricting the ability to obtain content based upon permissions.
... welcome our new registration overlords. I feel safer already.
Why didn't the federal government think of this? We could have already had a beowulf cluster of airport security checkpoint imaging machines matching pre-flight body scans with names from the registration list.
I wanted to read the actual court opinion so I logged into PACER, the official web site of the US federal courts. I was unable to find any opinion (or even any docketed case) for a Paul Little or Max Hardcore dealing with obscenity in ANY federal appeals court.
Does anyone have the docket number or a copy of the opinion?
The same thing happened to me - I ended up talking to the manager and explaining that if the system didn't allow paper signatures then he needed to get in touch with his VAR because the system was installed incorrectly or was missing a necessary feature because all the other stores I frequent have no problem doing it.
Telling a retailer that they are going to lose sales if the capture pad breaks because the whole lane will be closed (as opposed to open and taking paper signatures) gets their attention. There is nothing worse than closed lanes when customer check-out lines are growing longer and longer. Eventually some people put items on nearby shelves and leave the store without purchasing despite being ready willing and able to give the retailer money.
1. Testimony that I never gave an electronic signature in connection with a credit card because it is my normal practice / habit (yes, you can admit evidence of habit in court); and
2. Copies of all the sales receipts subpoenaed from all the retailers - Target, Wal-Mart, grocery store, Walgreens, - I even do it at the Apple Store.
Sorry, but your legal conclusions about attaching signatures and enforceability are incorrect; and
You can always do what I do - ask to sign on paper. Those capture pads have paper backups in case the pad malfunctions so the retailer does not have to close a lane. Target, WalMart, and many other retailers do not even blink when I ask to sign on paper. They cheerfully print out a signature copy just like on the olden days of 2006. If anyone ever claims to have an electronic signature for me, I have mountains of proof that it is a forgery because my practice is not to provide electronic signatures.
I can potentially recognize some values in monopolies, but I don't recognize value in enforced deprivations. If these copyright holders hold the exclusive right to provide a certain good (aka the copyright) then I consider them simultaneously obliged to actually provide it.
That is a valid position. It just isn't the law. Also, I'd ask you to question the proposition you just made - is it right to force someone to provide a good even if it means they incur a cost (loss) to do so?
Did you spell-check your post before you submitted? I am not trolling - the question was about ETHICS - right v. wrong. No harm-no foul is not a rule of ethics.
With a used book, the copyright holder has already been compensated - when the copy of the work was first sold. At that point, the copyright holder's ability to control further distribution of that exact copy has been exhausted. HOWEVER, the copyright holder can still prevent additional copies, in any format, from being made from that first copy.
Did you read my post? If you did, you should have picked up on the fact that it is wholly up to the copyright holder whether to commercialize a copyrighted work. The copyright holder is completely within its rights to withhold the work from the world until the copyright term expires. You don't have to like it, but that is the way it is.
Whether you think there has been a "harm" is not the issue - the copyright holder is harmed in a legal and moral sense because its absolute right to govern the copying of the work has been violated. This is not simply the law in the US but also in every country that is a party to the Berne Convention.
If cars could be duplicated as easily as copyrighted works, they would be licensed, not sold. In spite of the difficulty, you cannot simply duplicate your friend's car without dealing with someone's copyrights and design patents - all major auto makers use and enforce them.
With Print On Demand so easily available they have to seriously not want to sell any more copies of this book for profit. To me that has thrown it into the Public Domain unless the author can wrest the copyright back to market it him/herself.
That does not put a work into the public domain. Works are put into the public domain either by an explicit abandonment of the copyright (dedication to the public) or by the expiration of the term of the copyright. There is no obligation on a copyright holder to make copyrighted works available. Agree or disagree with the wisdom of that rule and the policies behind it, but that is the rule.
On a side note, under certain circumstances and after certain time periods, in the US an author who assigned copyrights to another can in fact reclaim those copyrights.
The right thing to do is to get it in your non-preferred form and deal with the inconvenience of not having access to a "modern" format. The author was the original copyright holder and he or she probably assigned the copyright to a publisher. Whomever holds the copyright gets to control distribution of the work. If the copyright holder doesn't want to distribute in electronic form, it is their choice to make.
The mere fact that you as a consumer have a strong desire to obtain something does not impose an obligation on another to make the thing you desire available to you. Unless licensed (and that is likely the case because if a license existed you would be able to get the work electronically), whomever created the electronic version created an unauthorized derivative work under the copyright laws and is an infringer.
And In Other News ....
on
Evolving Rocks
·
· Score: 2, Funny
... coconuts have been found to migrate with the aid of African Swallows. Apparently the coconut grows long tendrils that resemble a line that the sparrows can use to carry the coconut during flights along newly-discovered coconut migration paths.
*
Scientists are still unsure whether the common European Swallow has a sufficient airspeed velocity to assist in coconut migration.
Don't forget - willful infringers are also on the hook for the OTHER SIDE'S attorneys' fees as well. Attorneys' fees in patent cases can easily be several million dollars - for each party.
And if you did your work properly, the patent shouldn't have many legs to stand on, should they go ahead.
Actually, if you do that work properly AND the patent attorney does their job properly, it becomes more likely that a valid patent will issue and that patent will be stronger for having gone through that process.
Slashdot Mirror
Good idea. Unfortunately, the article says the code was released in 2008. In the US, you have one year after publication to file a patent application. After that year runs, no one can get a patent on whatever was disclosed.
The US is not a first-to-file country but a first-to-invent country. That means that it is possible for an inventor to get a patent even thought they were not the first one to file an application at the USPTO but were the first to invent and were diligent in efforts to obtain a patent. Copying of this type is serious indeed. Theoretically, conduct of this type could also be a copyright infringement.
I for one would like to see a *lot* more proof before reading about allegations like this. The mere fact that one event happened after another is far from sufficient. These are *very* serious accusations.
If a reference is listed in the prior art section of a patent, that means that a patent examiner felt that the reference was pertinent, but that the *claimed invention* was sufficiently *different* from the prior art reference so as to be patentable. God was the only one who ever created something from nothing. Everyone else has had to build off what was already here - including previous versions of software. The phrase *claimed invention* is key here. To properly evaluate a patent, you must focus on the claims at the end. If a patent issued over prior art, the general rule is that there is some feature recited in the claims that is not disclosed in the prior art. You can argue whether the examiner was wrong, but it is virtually never the case that someone saw someone else's invention and then decided to get a patent on the exact same thing.
I question the intelligence of those who do not take appropriate steps to safeguard their personal information. I have *NO* doubts, however, about the intelligence of someone who would commit almost 50 violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (each one of those violations a felony) and then blog about it.
Ummm.. and what if the thief is not a student?
See if you can file a civil replevin action against John Doe to recover the laptop. That will give you the ability to issue subpoenas to trace the IP address. Once you have the identity of the thief, report the information to both the campus police (for the theft) and to the local police (for possession of stolen property). Good luck!
Strictly speaking, this is access control, not censorship. Censorship is prohibiting access based upon some moral or other judgment about the content itself. Access control is restricting the ability to obtain content based upon permissions.
Thanks! I wish I could figure out why I could not get this from PACER.
Why didn't the federal government think of this? We could have already had a beowulf cluster of airport security checkpoint imaging machines matching pre-flight body scans with names from the registration list.
Does anyone have the docket number or a copy of the opinion?
Telling a retailer that they are going to lose sales if the capture pad breaks because the whole lane will be closed (as opposed to open and taking paper signatures) gets their attention. There is nothing worse than closed lanes when customer check-out lines are growing longer and longer. Eventually some people put items on nearby shelves and leave the store without purchasing despite being ready willing and able to give the retailer money.
2. Copies of all the sales receipts subpoenaed from all the retailers - Target, Wal-Mart, grocery store, Walgreens, - I even do it at the Apple Store.
I can potentially recognize some values in monopolies, but I don't recognize value in enforced deprivations. If these copyright holders hold the exclusive right to provide a certain good (aka the copyright) then I consider them simultaneously obliged to actually provide it.
That is a valid position. It just isn't the law. Also, I'd ask you to question the proposition you just made - is it right to force someone to provide a good even if it means they incur a cost (loss) to do so?
With a used book, the copyright holder has already been compensated - when the copy of the work was first sold. At that point, the copyright holder's ability to control further distribution of that exact copy has been exhausted. HOWEVER, the copyright holder can still prevent additional copies, in any format, from being made from that first copy.
Did you read my post? If you did, you should have picked up on the fact that it is wholly up to the copyright holder whether to commercialize a copyrighted work. The copyright holder is completely within its rights to withhold the work from the world until the copyright term expires. You don't have to like it, but that is the way it is.
Whether you think there has been a "harm" is not the issue - the copyright holder is harmed in a legal and moral sense because its absolute right to govern the copying of the work has been violated. This is not simply the law in the US but also in every country that is a party to the Berne Convention.
If cars could be duplicated as easily as copyrighted works, they would be licensed, not sold. In spite of the difficulty, you cannot simply duplicate your friend's car without dealing with someone's copyrights and design patents - all major auto makers use and enforce them.
With Print On Demand so easily available they have to seriously not want to sell any more copies of this book for profit. To me that has thrown it into the Public Domain unless the author can wrest the copyright back to market it him/herself.
That does not put a work into the public domain. Works are put into the public domain either by an explicit abandonment of the copyright (dedication to the public) or by the expiration of the term of the copyright. There is no obligation on a copyright holder to make copyrighted works available. Agree or disagree with the wisdom of that rule and the policies behind it, but that is the rule.
On a side note, under certain circumstances and after certain time periods, in the US an author who assigned copyrights to another can in fact reclaim those copyrights.
The mere fact that you as a consumer have a strong desire to obtain something does not impose an obligation on another to make the thing you desire available to you. Unless licensed (and that is likely the case because if a license existed you would be able to get the work electronically), whomever created the electronic version created an unauthorized derivative work under the copyright laws and is an infringer.
*
Scientists are still unsure whether the common European Swallow has a sufficient airspeed velocity to assist in coconut migration.
Actually, had I been properly caffeinated at the time I posted, I would have cited to this article instead.
Actually, 6 is the first perfect number so they missed it.
The same way the fireworks at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics were broadcast "live" ?
Hear hear!
Younger than me, apparently.
Don't forget - willful infringers are also on the hook for the OTHER SIDE'S attorneys' fees as well. Attorneys' fees in patent cases can easily be several million dollars - for each party.
And if you did your work properly, the patent shouldn't have many legs to stand on, should they go ahead.
Actually, if you do that work properly AND the patent attorney does their job properly, it becomes more likely that a valid patent will issue and that patent will be stronger for having gone through that process.