I think the way that kevlar and other ballistic fabrics work is that the impact of the projectile splits the fibers into a bunch of little fibrils, and this splitting consumes enough of the kinetic energy of the projectile to reduce the damage it does to the body behind the fabric. I guess if you dropped a helmet from a high enough distance on a sharp enough object, that might split some fibrils and decrease the energy absorption of the fabric, but I really doubt that a few casual drops onto the ground would render the helmet useless, even over a small region. This is especially true if there are multiple layers of fabric in the helmet.
across the country, movie theater projectionists are being arrested for wanking off in projection booth while using night vision goggles to watch high school couples copulate in back row.
Re:Nothing to See Here, Folks, Move Along...
on
SCO Volleys to Red Hat
·
· Score: 4, Informative
IAAL too, and I think your comment goes too far. It is NOT malpractice to not file a motion to dismiss in nearly every lawsuit. In fact, many motions to dismiss are unsupported and unsupportable; filing one of these in a federal lawsuit risks getting the movant and his counsel sanctioned under Rule 11. THAT is probably malpractice.
The key here is that Redhat filed a declaratory judgment action. Jurisdiction under the Declaratory Judgment Act is ALWAYS discretionary with the judge, even if the plaintiff is reasonably apprehensive that he's about to be sued. That gives SCO a better chance of succeeding than if Redhat were suing under a different jurisdictional basis.
No, actually, I don't believe that I am biased. We're talking about people who are unlikely to be able to afford my services in any event. The point of my post was simply to point out that it's unreasonable to expect to be sufficiently expert in patent drafting and prosecution to undertake such a task when people are going to invest money in a business built around any resulting patent.
To the contrary, many of the attorneys that I know spend a substantial amount of their time doing "due diligence" on patent portfolios for VC's and corporations who are considering investing in, merging with the patent owner, or otherwise acquiring the patent rights. It's so much easier, and less risky, to be able to pick up a patent that's been prepped and prosecuted pro se, point out all the defects, and recommend that the investor find another investment. The client thinks the attorney is a hero for saving him from investing in an endeavor where the critical IP has not been properly protected, and he's much less unhappy about paying my fee. My point is, just because someone is a patent attorney does not mean that they have a vested interest in small inventors getting legal advice.
Moreover, if you review some of the IANAL posts, you'll find a lot of the same advice that I have given. You'll get the same advice from the PTO as well. In fact, they have a form paragraph that is required to be sent to all pro se inventors that says, in effect, "get a lawyer, dumbass."
If its primary purpose is to decorate the wall of your den and impress people at Superbowl parties, then by all means, do it yourself. If you actually intend to base a company around the technology covered by the patent, then you're deluding yourself if you try to draft and prosecute the patent yourself. I can tell you, as a former patent examiner and as a practicing patent attorney, it's a very few lucky inventors (or those who have had lots of involvement in the patenting process at the corporate level) who get any type of claim coverage worth having.
In fact, there are so many potential pitfalls and minefields, the Patent Office will generally recommend that you get an attorney or agent once they realize that you're pro se (doing it yourself). It's just too easy to draft a specification that is nonenabling (in which case you've wasted your filing fee), to draft claims that are too narrow or exclude the commercial embodiment of the invention, or narrow the claims during prosecution in a way that creates an estoppel (stops you from claiming that someone who makes insubstantial changes to his device to avoid you claims nevertheless is an infringer).
Try working with smaller firms, and look for firms that use patent agents, rather than attorneys. These are people who have passed the exam qualifying them to prosecute patent applications, but generally are paid less (and billed out for less per hour) than attorneys. Then let an attorney do the actual prosecution, since they tend to be more familiar with issues that relate to litigation, like file history estoppel, etc.
Moffitt's concern is legitimate. Patent owners sometimes attempt (with varying degrees of success) to restrict the ability of purchasers of products covered by the patent claims to use/modify/dispose of the products that have been purchased.
For example, there is something called the "doctrine of permissible repair", which I believe attempts to draw a line between a purchaser's repair of a patented device, and the unauthorized "making" of the device (and resulting patent infringement).
There is also a case where Company A sold a nebulizer (a device for administering medication in aerosolized form) with an imprint "for single use only". Company B began a business of refurbishing the nebulizers (stripping off unsterilizable parts, sterilizing the rest, and adding replacement parts) that allowed hospitals to reuse the devices at a fraction of the cost. Company A sued Company B for patent infringement and won.
I'm reasonably certain that Congress does not legislate whether particular states must have HOV lanes or include certain requirements in their school curricula. In fact, AFAIK, these are areas that are explicitly left up to the states. Moreover, I don't think Congress legislates how the Department of Education or EPA carry out their legislative mandates. This is left up to the executive branch, and occurs through government rulemaking, or disbursements of funds, rather than legislation. Often the rulemaking occurs without any significant opportunity for review and comment by the public.
My point is that the departments of the executive branch use their discretionary authority to disburse funds to accomplish their mandates, and that this discretion is used to effect policy in ways that may or may not be what the legislature had in mind. The same is true of OMB exercising its discretion in how it spends our money running the government.
>>and to consider a number of strategies to use >>the US government's purchasing power to promote >>competition and make Microsoft behave;
> But this, no no no. This is still a judicial matter, and any penalty against MS is going to be determined in court. An executive agency would be way overstepping its bounds here.
The Government already uses its spending power to enforce compliance with the policy set by unelected bureaucrats. For example, if states don't comply with clean air standards by implementing the measures that federal bureaucrats at EPA and DOT think should be implemented (e.g., HOV lanes and the like), the feds don't necessarily sue, but the federal highway funds dry up. If states don't run their public school systems the way that the federal Dept. of Education thinks they should, there's not necessarily a lawsuit, but the state's federal funding for education dries up. Whether or not these uses of the federal budget are appropriate or not, there seems little logical reason to distinguish between them and the use of OMB spending to influence behavior of federal contractors. In fact, this already occurs. The government cannot contract with entities that have been debarred, do not have sufficient diversity, etc. This proscription is nothing more than enforcing federal policy through budgetary spending in the federal procurement system.
I had a similar reaction. I did the default install, which went incredibly smoothly and quickly. Then I went to configure a file using Emacs, and it wasn't there. A default installation without emacs, but with pico, joe, etc.? Disappointing. Not to mention all the time I spent shaking the box upside down trying to figure out where the stickers were.
Apparently you've not been exposed to government budgeting concepts. Preeminent among them is the notion that if you didn't spend all of your budget last year, you must not have needed it, so we (the gummint) will take the money we previously allocated to you and allocate it to someone else this year. Nevermind that you might need it this year, or that you saved it up with the notion of using it this year.
School district officials are quite familiar with this concept, as well as the concept that it spending adequately on primary and secondary public school education in the United States just doesn't happen. I can totally understand why they would take the money that they saved and immediately spend it on something else. They're allocating scarce resources and trying to keep them from getting scarcer.
Why is that so shocking? Read the previous postings where it's suggested that the whiner at issue is the son of a Washington Post editor. If that's true, would you be surprised at all that one of the editor's employees hears what he wants to hear (and what, coincidentally, makes for a more sensational story)?
The bottom line is that this kid knew what the rules were upfront, he broke them (by copying code, not by talking to his peers), he got caught, and his story (and he's sticking to it) is that he cheated because he was trying to "learn the material." And the Post reporter spins his bullshit story in the most positive light, and waves his arms about how the University won't discuss the situation because other cases are pending (making the whole thing seem sinister).
The exercise of critical thinking and healthy skepticism is useful in assessing pronouncements from the media, as well as those from the government.
I would certainly hesitate to be an early adopter of this. I'm still waiting on LASIK surgery until there are more studies of the long term effects on early adopters and the procedures become more sophisticated (I know that this extends into an argument for never adopting the technology, but when it comes to my eyesight, my expected value calculation mandates that the risk of damage be vanishingly small). Besides, why not just have the laser display the information on a screen in front of the eyes, rather than go into the retina? That would seem to me to be a LOT safer.
Re:The Patents Occur in the U.S.
on
Patent Nonsense
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Finland DOES have a patent system (I know because I lectured to a room full of Finnish patent agents in 1995, who were worried that because Finland was becoming part of the European Patent system (you file once in Europe and designate a bunch of European countries, and once the EP patent is issued, you file translations in each country where you want protection INCLUDING SWITZERLAND, THE NETHERLANDS AND SWEDEN).
I found it interesting that the two companies mentioned in the article (CIBA and Unilever) are not at all shy of obtaining and enforcing patent rights throughout the world (including in their home countries), although their existence is, in some measure, due to their ability to knock off the innovations of others with impunity.
I guess it helps to have a sense of irony when dealing with large corporations.
Ah. Thank you for clarifying. So you post anonymously because you are such an out-of-the-box, radical free thinker, and are afraid of being shouted down by the masses, so to speak. Yet, if you are the same AC that I responded to, your comments are in sync with 99% of the rest of the postings on this topic. Perhaps there is a herd of radical free thinkers like you.
Do they also grow out of being condescending? Or does that only occur when they grow up enough to take responsibility for their opinions by not posting anonymously?
I agree, this guy is probably a script kiddie, and in this particular instance, he may deserve to be prosecuted. But you paint with a broad brush.
For one thing, not all anarchists are out building bombs and assassinating archdukes. Anarchism is not idiocy. It may not be viable, because it presumes that people will act as mature adults. But it does provide a useful counterpoint to the totalitarian police state that the U.S. is becoming.
Why is it foolish to defend someone's right to advocate violent overthrow of the government? Isn't that exactly what was advocated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence? Is the current government of the U.S., led by a President whose election was of questionable legitimacy, any more overbearing, unresponsive, and corrupt than that of George III?
Go to Cryptome.org and search for Jim Bell. You'll find out what happens when a citizen tries to surveil law enforcement. The citizen winds up in jail.
This is an important point. The mere fact that two assignments are highly similar (as determined by this program) is simply an indication that something naughty MIGHT have occurred. The software can't determine whether all the parties involved colluded, or whether, as an earlier poster mentioned, one student's trash can was raided and and his code spread to a number of individuals, or whether those individuals knew where the code came from, etc.
This kind of screen, when coupled with very harsh penalties, such as expulsion or failing a class, is likely to result in overcompensation by essentially honest students to ensure that no one else sees their code.
A more rational approach is a "two strikes and your out" rule. For the first offense, everybody whose work matches up (according to whatever degree of correspondence is determined to indicate that someone cheated) gets a zero. If you get 2 zeros for cheating then you fail the course. It's unlikely that an innocent student, stung once, will allow themselves to be stung again. It's very likely, however, that someone who's handle on the material is so tenuous that they've cheated once, will be desperate enought to cheat again.
All the inventor need do is tell the companies patent attorneys about any art that you are aware of. If it is material, they are then obligated to bring it to the patent examiner's attention or face an inequitable conduct defense later when they try to enforce it.
Of course, a non-signing inventor CAN file a prior art statement on your own, assuming that you know the application serial number. But once you have signed the application and assigned it to the company, the Examiner will only deal with the company's attorneys.
And that oral hearing is for the company in the event that the examiner rejects their application and they go to appeal. It's not for non-signing inventors to get their views in front of the examiner.
it is only necessary that you have contributed to the conception of at least one claim in the patent application. It is NOT necessary that you have contributed to conception of every claim in the patent application. Typically these things are drafted with claims ranging from broad to narrow. If the application contains a narrow claim and you have contributed to the conception of the invention defined by THAT claim, then there is essentially no problem with your being named as an inventor.
If there are statements in the specification that you believe to be untrue, or the application contains claims that you believe to be unpatentable, bring this to the attention of the patent attorneys. Their incentives should be to submit a document that is factually correct. If you are aware of prior art that potentially invalidates one or more claims, bring that to the attention of the patent attorneys as well (doing so satisfies your duty of disclosure to the PTO -- see 37 C.F.R. 1.56).
If you can't arrive at a document that you believe to be factually correct, and the patent attorneys can't persuade you that there is at least a good faith argument that the full scope of the claims is patentable, then you're on the horns of a dilemma. In effect, you're caught between your obligations under your employment agreement (which frequently contain provisions requiring you to assign any inventions made during employment, and execute any necessary paperwork, even after your employment has ended) and the obligations placed on you by the "jail paragraph" in the oath/declaration accompanying the patent application. Personally, I'd rather face a company trying to get an injunction forcing me to execute a declaration when I think the document is counterfactual than take a chance with the federal criminal statute. But either way, if you can't convince the patent attorneys and they can't convince you, you're going to need legal counsel.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the way that kevlar and other ballistic fabrics work is that the impact of the projectile splits the fibers into a bunch of little fibrils, and this splitting consumes enough of the kinetic energy of the projectile to reduce the damage it does to the body behind the fabric. I guess if you dropped a helmet from a high enough distance on a sharp enough object, that might split some fibrils and decrease the energy absorption of the fabric, but I really doubt that a few casual drops onto the ground would render the helmet useless, even over a small region. This is especially true if there are multiple layers of fabric in the helmet.
across the country, movie theater projectionists are being arrested for wanking off in projection booth while using night vision goggles to watch high school couples copulate in back row.
IAAL too, and I think your comment goes too far. It is NOT malpractice to not file a motion to dismiss in nearly every lawsuit. In fact, many motions to dismiss are unsupported and unsupportable; filing one of these in a federal lawsuit risks getting the movant and his counsel sanctioned under Rule 11. THAT is probably malpractice.
The key here is that Redhat filed a declaratory judgment action. Jurisdiction under the Declaratory Judgment Act is ALWAYS discretionary with the judge, even if the plaintiff is reasonably apprehensive that he's about to be sued. That gives SCO a better chance of succeeding than if Redhat were suing under a different jurisdictional basis.
No, actually, I don't believe that I am biased. We're talking about people who are unlikely to be able to afford my services in any event. The point of my post was simply to point out that it's unreasonable to expect to be sufficiently expert in patent drafting and prosecution to undertake such a task when people are going to invest money in a business built around any resulting patent.
To the contrary, many of the attorneys that I know spend a substantial amount of their time doing "due diligence" on patent portfolios for VC's and corporations who are considering investing in, merging with the patent owner, or otherwise acquiring the patent rights. It's so much easier, and less risky, to be able to pick up a patent that's been prepped and prosecuted pro se, point out all the defects, and recommend that the investor find another investment. The client thinks the attorney is a hero for saving him from investing in an endeavor where the critical IP has not been properly protected, and he's much less unhappy about paying my fee. My point is, just because someone is a patent attorney does not mean that they have a vested interest in small inventors getting legal advice.
Moreover, if you review some of the IANAL posts, you'll find a lot of the same advice that I have given. You'll get the same advice from the PTO as well. In fact, they have a form paragraph that is required to be sent to all pro se inventors that says, in effect, "get a lawyer, dumbass."
Actually, the type of firm that I recommended using is the opposite of the firm that I work for.
If its primary purpose is to decorate the wall of your den and impress people at Superbowl parties, then by all means, do it yourself. If you actually intend to base a company around the technology covered by the patent, then you're deluding yourself if you try to draft and prosecute the patent yourself. I can tell you, as a former patent examiner and as a practicing patent attorney, it's a very few lucky inventors (or those who have had lots of involvement in the patenting process at the corporate level) who get any type of claim coverage worth having.
In fact, there are so many potential pitfalls and minefields, the Patent Office will generally recommend that you get an attorney or agent once they realize that you're pro se (doing it yourself). It's just too easy to draft a specification that is nonenabling (in which case you've wasted your filing fee), to draft claims that are too narrow or exclude the commercial embodiment of the invention, or narrow the claims during prosecution in a way that creates an estoppel (stops you from claiming that someone who makes insubstantial changes to his device to avoid you claims nevertheless is an infringer).
Try working with smaller firms, and look for firms that use patent agents, rather than attorneys. These are people who have passed the exam qualifying them to prosecute patent applications, but generally are paid less (and billed out for less per hour) than attorneys. Then let an attorney do the actual prosecution, since they tend to be more familiar with issues that relate to litigation, like file history estoppel, etc.
Moffitt's concern is legitimate. Patent owners sometimes attempt (with varying degrees of success) to restrict the ability of purchasers of products covered by the patent claims to use/modify/dispose of the products that have been purchased.
For example, there is something called the "doctrine of permissible repair", which I believe attempts to draw a line between a purchaser's repair of a patented device, and the unauthorized "making" of the device (and resulting patent infringement).
There is also a case where Company A sold a nebulizer (a device for administering medication in aerosolized form) with an imprint "for single use only". Company B began a business of refurbishing the nebulizers (stripping off unsterilizable parts, sterilizing the rest, and adding replacement parts) that allowed hospitals to reuse the devices at a fraction of the cost. Company A sued Company B for patent infringement and won.
Melcher Media, Inc.
55 Vandam Street, Suite 805
New York, NY 10013
I'm reasonably certain that Congress does not legislate whether particular states must have HOV lanes or include certain requirements in their school curricula. In fact, AFAIK, these are areas that are explicitly left up to the states. Moreover, I don't think Congress legislates how the Department of Education or EPA carry out their legislative mandates. This is left up to the executive branch, and occurs through government rulemaking, or disbursements of funds, rather than legislation. Often the rulemaking occurs without any significant opportunity for review and comment by the public.
My point is that the departments of the executive branch use their discretionary authority to disburse funds to accomplish their mandates, and that this discretion is used to effect policy in ways that may or may not be what the legislature had in mind. The same is true of OMB exercising its discretion in how it spends our money running the government.
>>and to consider a number of strategies to use >>the US government's purchasing power to promote
>>competition and make Microsoft behave;
> But this, no no no. This is still a judicial matter, and any penalty against MS is going to be determined in court. An executive agency would be way overstepping its bounds here.
The Government already uses its spending power to enforce compliance with the policy set by unelected bureaucrats. For example, if states don't comply with clean air standards by implementing the measures that federal bureaucrats at EPA and DOT think should be implemented (e.g., HOV lanes and the like), the feds don't necessarily sue, but the federal highway funds dry up. If states don't run their public school systems the way that the federal Dept. of Education thinks they should, there's not necessarily a lawsuit, but the state's federal funding for education dries up. Whether or not these uses of the federal budget are appropriate or not, there seems little logical reason to distinguish between them and the use of OMB spending to influence behavior of federal contractors. In fact, this already occurs. The government cannot contract with entities that have been debarred, do not have sufficient diversity, etc. This proscription is nothing more than enforcing federal policy through budgetary spending in the federal procurement system.
I had a similar reaction. I did the default install, which went incredibly smoothly and quickly. Then I went to configure a file using Emacs, and it wasn't there. A default installation without emacs, but with pico, joe, etc.? Disappointing. Not to mention all the time I spent shaking the box upside down trying to figure out where the stickers were.
Apparently you've not been exposed to government budgeting concepts. Preeminent among them is the notion that if you didn't spend all of your budget last year, you must not have needed it, so we (the gummint) will take the money we previously allocated to you and allocate it to someone else this year. Nevermind that you might need it this year, or that you saved it up with the notion of using it this year.
School district officials are quite familiar with this concept, as well as the concept that it spending adequately on primary and secondary public school education in the United States just doesn't happen. I can totally understand why they would take the money that they saved and immediately spend it on something else. They're allocating scarce resources and trying to keep them from getting scarcer.
Why is that so shocking? Read the previous postings where it's suggested that the whiner at issue is the son of a Washington Post editor. If that's true, would you be surprised at all that one of the editor's employees hears what he wants to hear (and what, coincidentally, makes for a more sensational story)?
The bottom line is that this kid knew what the rules were upfront, he broke them (by copying code, not by talking to his peers), he got caught, and his story (and he's sticking to it) is that he cheated because he was trying to "learn the material." And the Post reporter spins his bullshit story in the most positive light, and waves his arms about how the University won't discuss the situation because other cases are pending (making the whole thing seem sinister).
The exercise of critical thinking and healthy skepticism is useful in assessing pronouncements from the media, as well as those from the government.
Check out their GVU pages (some profs hold appointments in both psych and CS)
GaTechGVU
Did you land on your head? Because every time I've had a concussion, it's always made everything seem to go slower.
I would certainly hesitate to be an early adopter of this. I'm still waiting on LASIK surgery until there are more studies of the long term effects on early adopters and the procedures become more sophisticated (I know that this extends into an argument for never adopting the technology, but when it comes to my eyesight, my expected value calculation mandates that the risk of damage be vanishingly small). Besides, why not just have the laser display the information on a screen in front of the eyes, rather than go into the retina? That would seem to me to be a LOT safer.
Finland DOES have a patent system (I know because I lectured to a room full of Finnish patent agents in 1995, who were worried that because Finland was becoming part of the European Patent system (you file once in Europe and designate a bunch of European countries, and once the EP patent is issued, you file translations in each country where you want protection INCLUDING SWITZERLAND, THE NETHERLANDS AND SWEDEN).
I found it interesting that the two companies mentioned in the article (CIBA and Unilever) are not at all shy of obtaining and enforcing patent rights throughout the world (including in their home countries), although their existence is, in some measure, due to their ability to knock off the innovations of others with impunity.
I guess it helps to have a sense of irony when dealing with large corporations.
Ah. Thank you for clarifying. So you post anonymously because you are such an out-of-the-box, radical free thinker, and are afraid of being shouted down by the masses, so to speak. Yet, if you are the same AC that I responded to, your comments are in sync with 99% of the rest of the postings on this topic. Perhaps there is a herd of radical free thinkers like you.
Do they also grow out of being condescending? Or does that only occur when they grow up enough to take responsibility for their opinions by not posting anonymously?
I agree, this guy is probably a script kiddie, and in this particular instance, he may deserve to be prosecuted. But you paint with a broad brush.
For one thing, not all anarchists are out building bombs and assassinating archdukes. Anarchism is not idiocy. It may not be viable, because it presumes that people will act as mature adults. But it does provide a useful counterpoint to the totalitarian police state that the U.S. is becoming.
Why is it foolish to defend someone's right to advocate violent overthrow of the government? Isn't that exactly what was advocated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence? Is the current government of the U.S., led by a President whose election was of questionable legitimacy, any more overbearing, unresponsive, and corrupt than that of George III?
Go to Cryptome.org and search for Jim Bell. You'll find out what happens when a citizen tries to surveil law enforcement. The citizen winds up in jail.
This is an important point. The mere fact that two assignments are highly similar (as determined by this program) is simply an indication that something naughty MIGHT have occurred. The software can't determine whether all the parties involved colluded, or whether, as an earlier poster mentioned, one student's trash can was raided and and his code spread to a number of individuals, or whether those individuals knew where the code came from, etc.
This kind of screen, when coupled with very harsh penalties, such as expulsion or failing a class, is likely to result in overcompensation by essentially honest students to ensure that no one else sees their code.
A more rational approach is a "two strikes and your out" rule. For the first offense, everybody whose work matches up (according to whatever degree of correspondence is determined to indicate that someone cheated) gets a zero. If you get 2 zeros for cheating then you fail the course. It's unlikely that an innocent student, stung once, will allow themselves to be stung again. It's very likely, however, that someone who's handle on the material is so tenuous that they've cheated once, will be desperate enought to cheat again.
Don't make me come over there.
All the inventor need do is tell the companies patent attorneys about any art that you are aware of. If it is material, they are then obligated to bring it to the patent examiner's attention or face an inequitable conduct defense later when they try to enforce it.
Of course, a non-signing inventor CAN file a prior art statement on your own, assuming that you know the application serial number. But once you have signed the application and assigned it to the company, the Examiner will only deal with the company's attorneys.
And that oral hearing is for the company in the event that the examiner rejects their application and they go to appeal. It's not for non-signing inventors to get their views in front of the examiner.
it is only necessary that you have contributed to the conception of at least one claim in the patent application. It is NOT necessary that you have contributed to conception of every claim in the patent application. Typically these things are drafted with claims ranging from broad to narrow. If the application contains a narrow claim and you have contributed to the conception of the invention defined by THAT claim, then there is essentially no problem with your being named as an inventor.
If there are statements in the specification that you believe to be untrue, or the application contains claims that you believe to be unpatentable, bring this to the attention of the patent attorneys. Their incentives should be to submit a document that is factually correct. If you are aware of prior art that potentially invalidates one or more claims, bring that to the attention of the patent attorneys as well (doing so satisfies your duty of disclosure to the PTO -- see 37 C.F.R. 1.56).
If you can't arrive at a document that you believe to be factually correct, and the patent attorneys can't persuade you that there is at least a good faith argument that the full scope of the claims is patentable, then you're on the horns of a dilemma. In effect, you're caught between your obligations under your employment agreement (which frequently contain provisions requiring you to assign any inventions made during employment, and execute any necessary paperwork, even after your employment has ended) and the obligations placed on you by the "jail paragraph" in the oath/declaration accompanying the patent application. Personally, I'd rather face a company trying to get an injunction forcing me to execute a declaration when I think the document is counterfactual than take a chance with the federal criminal statute. But either way, if you can't convince the patent attorneys and they can't convince you, you're going to need legal counsel.