Look at another technology that the FCC did
approve long ago - UHF television. The technology wasn't ready, no matter what the applicants said.
Tuners weren't selective enough, and thus channels had to be spaced 5 apart! The same old modulation as VHF TV was used, there was no improvement in bandwidth.
The FCC did a bad enough job on Cellular in the 80's and 90's. There are at least between 4 redundant cellular systems (AMPS, "PCS", GSM, Nextel) on different bands, wasting lots of bandwidth, mostly due to the auction scheme.
FCC needs to abandon the auction method and go back to being a spectrum manager.
Remember that the Berkeley System Distribution was an ARPA project. ARPA is the Advanced Research and Projects Agency of the U.S. Army. Thus, the Army paid for BSD's development.
Since the U.S. Army paid for the BSD development, they might even understand its capabilities and no doubt they've made use of it somewhere. People who have ARPA grants send a copy of their software to Fort Huachuka. I have no idea if anyone there reads it, though.
Read your own links, please. UWB and Spread Spectrum are two different modes. Spread spectrum is commonly used for military communications and its very high usefullness is proven over about half a century. In contrast, UWB has a much smaller potential application space and a ton of hype.
The patent application in this case used language so similar to Karn's that one might conclude that the applicant had seen Karn's paper. If that's what really happened, the applicant would have committed a felony in swearing to the various things required when one signs a patent application. I'll stop short of making an accusation.
This announcement was completely blown because Salon got told too early, and did not understand that the announcement was embargoed until a release date. It was not pretty to watch what happened on Slashdot today. Foresight's plan was to announce it to the Free Software community in a way that would have made all of your points clear. I'm sorry it did not happen that way.
If your invention is in a "fixed" medium such as CD-ROM, and is distributed publicly, it should be applicable as prior art. Also, preceding the patent application by more than one year is not required, you need only precede the conception of the invention by the patent applicant. So, we already have a large prior art repository in the form of those Linux CDs, especially the source ones. Save those old Yggdrasil discs from 1996.
What we do not have is any form that could be searched by a patent examiner. They do text searches of computer disclosure databases, which means that you have to (a) percieve that you have made an invention and (b) write the disclosure, to be of use to the patent examiner. What we have on those source CDs is more useful in court, but it would be better to block the patent from ever being issued.
The rule in the U.S. is that an invention can not be patented if:
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or
patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign
country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent,or(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in
this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country
more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United
States . ..
In other words, if the invention existed before the applicant conceived of it,
a patent would not be granted. The one-year rule actually applies to what
you publish before you apply, not what others publish before you conceive of
an invention.
Of course, the applicant can lie about their date of conception, and thus
these things go to court and the court has to find if there is sufficient
proof regarding the date of invention. If you want to win in court, you make
a confidential disclosure to a third party who would later testify about the
disclosure, like a notary or an attorney. I have received one such disclosure for a possible future Open Patent,
and gave the inventor a PGP-signed proof of disclosure that he can later use
in court and verify against my public key. If that ever got to court, I'd
probably be called upon to testify as well.
In most other nations, once an invention is published, including by the inventor, it can immediately no
longer be patented.
Public disclosure by the inventor within a year before filing is also an
option to establish priority under U.S. law, but prevents the grant of a patent
under non-US law, and thus is not much used.
We have, so far, not effectively mounted an offensive to fight patents with patents. There will be a summit Open Source and The Law in August, organized by yours truly, and patent defense will be a full-day topic. If you are going to LinuxWorld and want to be a community representative, write me.
Well, today they can look over any source CD from a Linux distribution and patent everything they find in it, because we already publish all of our work. I don't think this would actually place us at greater risk.
But I agree that I'd rather eliminate software patents. That's going to be a pretty big fight.
No. You can actually block enforcement of a patent by showing that prior art existed. Go on patents.ibm.com and search for "Perens". You will see that ATT cited the existence of Electric Fence as prior art even though I didn't patent it, and they won't ever be able to enforce patent claims that overlap what Electric Fence did when I published it.
They aren't providing patents for Open Source! They are providing a prior-art database that is available to Open Source folks for free (if you go through Foresight) and that the patent office will search.
I agree that software patents are bad, but this will help fight them.
They are not trying to provide patents to Open Source authors! They are providing Open Source folks with the ability to put our art in a prior-art database that patent office folks will search. For free if you go through Foresight, for less than $20 if you go directly to IP.com.
I agree that software patents are bad. As someone whose Open Source project appears as prior art in a patent, reducing its scope (search for "Perens" in the patent database), I do think this might help us a bit.
Given the amount of time spent, I suspect that this was largely a manual (or should I say "ocular"?) process. Had it been computer pattern matching, I would have expected the task to have run in a month at maximum, after all they are expected to handle terestrial images within hours and they must have some reserve capacity. Finding it in a month would tell us little about how fast they can process images, so I don't think they would have held off publishing the data, had they found it.
I think this was people, not computers, going over images for a long time.
I find it difficult to imagine having the patience to do that, but no doubt such people are employed by the government.
Well, consider it this way. Debian is a contraction of Deborah and Ian. Ian is the CEO of Progeny, Deb is his wife. So, who is using whose name:-)
But quite seriously, I wrote the trademark rules back when I was Debian project leader, and this sort of usage was not only allowed but encouraged. We did not at that time realize that years later Ian and I would actually get money to form our own company.
It's Debian with commercial support. I can think of some cases where volunteer support really won't work - like when large companies are using it for thousands of seats. It doesn't really seem fair, as others have pointed out, for the volunteers to be the first line of support for that. So Progeny is there to handle that. I agree that there is some danger of having Progeny users pop up on the volunteer support list and not really understand how to work with the volunteers, but I'd hope that this could be handled by having Progeny monitor those lists.
The posterboard is the cover of the old Open Sources book. In an HP promotion at LinuxWorld, I gave away a few hundred copies. Kirk and I both wrote chapters, so we both got our names on the front. I have had my name on the same program with President Aristide of Hati and Prime Minister Kim Campbell of Canada. I guess that one was less deserved:-)Bruce
You can update it from Debian. In fact, to get Progeny, you can add one line to your apt-sources file, and it will upgrade in-place from Debian, keeping the unmodified packages in place. I have once tested the corresponding downgrade back to pure Debian, it worked.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC did a bad enough job on Cellular in the 80's and 90's. There are at least between 4 redundant cellular systems (AMPS, "PCS", GSM, Nextel) on different bands, wasting lots of bandwidth, mostly due to the auction scheme.
FCC needs to abandon the auction method and go back to being a spectrum manager.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
I considered this in writing the OSD and decided that I could not prohibit it without reducing some important freedoms.Bruce
Read your own links, please. UWB and Spread Spectrum are two different modes. Spread spectrum is commonly used for military communications and its very high usefullness is proven over about half a century. In contrast, UWB has a much smaller potential application space and a ton of hype.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
What we do not have is any form that could be searched by a patent examiner. They do text searches of computer disclosure databases, which means that you have to (a) percieve that you have made an invention and (b) write the disclosure, to be of use to the patent examiner. What we have on those source CDs is more useful in court, but it would be better to block the patent from ever being issued.
Thanks
BrucE
In other words, if the invention existed before the applicant conceived of it, a patent would not be granted. The one-year rule actually applies to what you publish before you apply, not what others publish before you conceive of an invention.
Of course, the applicant can lie about their date of conception, and thus these things go to court and the court has to find if there is sufficient proof regarding the date of invention. If you want to win in court, you make a confidential disclosure to a third party who would later testify about the disclosure, like a notary or an attorney. I have received one such disclosure for a possible future Open Patent, and gave the inventor a PGP-signed proof of disclosure that he can later use in court and verify against my public key. If that ever got to court, I'd probably be called upon to testify as well.
In most other nations, once an invention is published, including by the inventor, it can immediately no longer be patented.
Public disclosure by the inventor within a year before filing is also an option to establish priority under U.S. law, but prevents the grant of a patent under non-US law, and thus is not much used.
Thanks
Bruce
But I agree that I'd rather eliminate software patents. That's going to be a pretty big fight.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
I agree that software patents are bad, but this will help fight them.
Bruce
I agree that software patents are bad. As someone whose Open Source project appears as prior art in a patent, reducing its scope (search for "Perens" in the patent database), I do think this might help us a bit.
Thanks
Bruce
And yes, this doesn't make patents any nicer. Just a little easier to fight.
Thanks
Bruce
What about an optical interferometer?
Thanks
Bruce
I think this was people, not computers, going over images for a long time.
I find it difficult to imagine having the patience to do that, but no doubt such people are employed by the government.
Bruce
But quite seriously, I wrote the trademark rules back when I was Debian project leader, and this sort of usage was not only allowed but encouraged. We did not at that time realize that years later Ian and I would actually get money to form our own company.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
The posterboard is the cover of the old Open Sources book. In an HP promotion at LinuxWorld, I gave away a few hundred copies. Kirk and I both wrote chapters, so we both got our names on the front. I have had my name on the same program with President Aristide of Hati and Prime Minister Kim Campbell of Canada. I guess that one was less deserved :-)Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Yes.