I want to know what your proposals are for reform? How thorough should the USPTO be when investigating patents?
The USPTO employs around 5,000 full time staff which equates to around 10 million man hours (8 hour days, 250 work days). In 2000 there were over 315,000 patent applications. That would come to about 31 hours per application (assuming that all employees were researching patents which they aren't).
In that time they would have to read and understand the very technical document, evaluate that it qualifies for a patent in the first place (not too obvious or too broad), and check to make sure that it isn't already patented. You want to add looking the world over for what they deem to be previous art?
To me, the burden rests on the company applying for the patent to find previous art. They are the ones who will waste time and money applying and receiving a patent just to have it overturned in court.
I also believe that the Justice Department is the right group to be making the final decision on patents. The US was built on checks and balances. This is why we have three branches of government. I think it would be dangerous to put that much power in the hands of the USPTO.
everything is based off of something thats already been done
Well you just succesfully bashed everything. I mean every modern OS, every modern programming language, every piece of modern hardware. Dammit you even bashed every modern language and even staplers.
Everything we make is based off of something that was created earlier going back throughout history. The trick is to take something and make it better. That is the definition of innovation. Now has Microsoft made anything better? That is not an argument I am about to make one way or the other.
Now Compaq took two huge charges against income (Q4,00 and Q3,01) so they have been royally f'ed.
So, in summary, yes Apple has been doing well since it huge billion dollar losses of the past but I would hardly say that it is doing better than PC manufacturers. Now we could talk about other Financial indicators such as gross margin, EPS, Debt to Equity but you did mention profits.
I think that if they win it will be more of a problem with our legal system than our patent law. The patent as it is written is obviously not nearly like what we would call hyperlinks (dummy terminals over phone lines using special keys). It is up to a judge to make that determination.
While you are correct that both are ridiculous, they are, however, entirely different stories. KPMG was trying to stop somebody from linking to their site. No lawsuit was ever involved and it died fairly quickly. BT, on the other hand, is suing Prodigy for the technology that has become known as hyperlinking based on an old, vague patent from 1980. They have no problem with you linking to them, as long as you pay a royalty.
Apple is not actually shipping the machines with Titanium yet though. According to their site it will be 6-8 weeks. The Nvidia press release actually states:
OEM systems featuring GeForce4 MX are already shipping, with retail board availability in the next two weeks. OEM systems featuring GeForce4 Ti will be available in 60 days, with retail boards available in 30 days. GeForce4-based notebook computers will be available in February.
I also notice that they seem buddy-buddy with HP since they have a link on Nvidia's home page.
That is very true but few people can be informed in all of those areas. Most people find something they enjoy and master that. I know my father enjoys using the computer and he knows a good deal about it but he doesn't have any interest in taking it apart and is very happy with Windows XP. When it comes to carpentry and woodworking, however, you will not find anybody better than him (and this is not just father/son hubris - he really is amazing) and you will never see him touch an amateur tool like Sears Craftsman.
comptres [sic] are still mystical boxes not to be tampered with
Do you have to be able to tamper with your computer in order to be online? Do you have to know how to use Gopher, FTP, Newsgroups, and Telnet to be online?
How about another approach? Do I have to be a musician to enjoy music? Do I have to be a chef to enjoy food? Do I have to be a mechanic to drive my car? Do I have to hunt if I want to eat meat? Do I have to be a carpenter to sit on my chair?
I think you get the idea. Just because people are not technically inclined it does not make them any less online. Your elitist attitude will not serve you well when dealing with regular people.
You really have the moderators fooled. You do not need an explicit contract. All you have to do is prove that they were doing "work for hire" and that's it. If you gave them free copies of the software and all they did was test it and provide feedback then they have no rights on the final product. If your company got screwed by this then they should find some better lawyers.
You are compensated by (hopefully) getting a solution that improves the software. And if you consider yourself an employee than you just gave up all rights because anything done as "work for hire" is considered the copyright of the employer.
I've seen a few of your posts and I have come to the conclusion that you are a troll and an idiot. Besides the fact that you are comparing patents and copyrights you are also overstating the US Copyright laws. You can't just claim a copyright on anything.
First of all, if you work for a company then what you create for the company is that copyright of the company, not you. Now if you read section 101 of the copyright law you will see that "work for hire" can include work commissioned for use as a contribution. Obe could say that beta testers are commissioned to test software, are compensated by receiving a product of value for free, and therefore are doing work for hire.
Second, copyrights within derivative and compilation works only applies to material contributed by the author of such work. In other words, if I put your short story in my book you don't have a copyright for the whole book. Now I do have to get permission to publish your short story.
Finally, you can not hold copyright on information that is common property. So obvious knowledge can not be copyrighted just because you wrote it down.
This is actually fairly backwards. Ever hear of Alexander Graham Bell? You probably think he invented the telephone. Well you are right and wrong. Philipp Reis invented the first telephone almost a decade before Bell but it wasn't very good and he never patented it. There is no proof that Bell knew of Reis's telephone but he did develop a much better version and founded what would become AT&T.
History is actually full of stories like this where credit went to the person who perfected the product and brought it to market.
The guy may have quoted out of context but you are an absolute moron.
First of all, you can host virtual domains unders Windows. Second, the site itself states that webhosts prefer Apache which drives its site numbers up signficantly. It doesn't state why they prefer it but I would guess that cost comes into play there. Finally, there is absolute no support for any of your assumptions except spreading your FUD.
Companies should be checking domain name availability before coming up with names
I agree with you on new companies but this wasn't the case here. This is a case of a company with a poor sense of timing. According to their site the have existed since 1981 but they didn't register a trademark until 1997? (Although they did mention something about a prior trademark that was abandoned in the suit). Then after registering a trademark they decide to register their domain name, find it exists, get pissed off and sue.
Apache may have more sites hosted but if you look here you will see that more servers run Windows that all other *nix combined. Apache is very popular with hosting companies.
If you did want motion detection you could get HomeWatcher. It's Windows only but it works real well. Even uploads to a remote server using FTP so you can still catch a crook even if he steals the computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I want to know what your proposals are for reform? How thorough should the USPTO be when investigating patents?
The USPTO employs around 5,000 full time staff which equates to around 10 million man hours (8 hour days, 250 work days). In 2000 there were over 315,000 patent applications. That would come to about 31 hours per application (assuming that all employees were researching patents which they aren't).
In that time they would have to read and understand the very technical document, evaluate that it qualifies for a patent in the first place (not too obvious or too broad), and check to make sure that it isn't already patented. You want to add looking the world over for what they deem to be previous art?
To me, the burden rests on the company applying for the patent to find previous art. They are the ones who will waste time and money applying and receiving a patent just to have it overturned in court.
I also believe that the Justice Department is the right group to be making the final decision on patents. The US was built on checks and balances. This is why we have three branches of government. I think it would be dangerous to put that much power in the hands of the USPTO.
There should be a higher governing body than the patent office that has half a clue and reason to be able to judge and justify such stupid patents.
That would be the Justice Department and the Judicial system.
everything is based off of something thats already been done
Well you just succesfully bashed everything. I mean every modern OS, every modern programming language, every piece of modern hardware. Dammit you even bashed every modern language and even staplers.
Everything we make is based off of something that was created earlier going back throughout history. The trick is to take something and make it better. That is the definition of innovation. Now has Microsoft made anything better? That is not an argument I am about to make one way or the other.
Hey remember me? We seem to always meet over Financial discussions (and I know this will cost me Karma but I have it to burn).
So let's see Net Profit (in $millions):
Apple
1998 - $309
1999 - $601
2000 - $786
2001 - ($25) - How curious, a loss.
Dell
1998 - $1,460
1999 - $1,860
2000 - $2,310
2001 - $790 (9 months only - Fiscal YE is February)
HP
1998 - $2,945
1999 - $3,491
2000 - $3,697
2001 - $408 (yikes)
Now Compaq took two huge charges against income (Q4,00 and Q3,01) so they have been royally f'ed.
So, in summary, yes Apple has been doing well since it huge billion dollar losses of the past but I would hardly say that it is doing better than PC manufacturers. Now we could talk about other Financial indicators such as gross margin, EPS, Debt to Equity but you did mention profits.
I think that if they win it will be more of a problem with our legal system than our patent law. The patent as it is written is obviously not nearly like what we would call hyperlinks (dummy terminals over phone lines using special keys). It is up to a judge to make that determination.
While you are correct that both are ridiculous, they are, however, entirely different stories. KPMG was trying to stop somebody from linking to their site. No lawsuit was ever involved and it died fairly quickly. BT, on the other hand, is suing Prodigy for the technology that has become known as hyperlinking based on an old, vague patent from 1980. They have no problem with you linking to them, as long as you pay a royalty.
They are suing Prodigy which back in the early days it was ISP, host and content provider.
I'm not sure how they are ahead of the game since as I noted in a post above they aren't shipping for 6-8 weeks.
Apple is not actually shipping the machines with Titanium yet though. According to their site it will be 6-8 weeks. The Nvidia press release actually states:
OEM systems featuring GeForce4 MX are already shipping, with retail board availability in the next two weeks. OEM systems featuring GeForce4 Ti will be available in 60 days, with retail boards available in 30 days. GeForce4-based notebook computers will be available in February.
I also notice that they seem buddy-buddy with HP since they have a link on Nvidia's home page.
That is very true but few people can be informed in all of those areas. Most people find something they enjoy and master that. I know my father enjoys using the computer and he knows a good deal about it but he doesn't have any interest in taking it apart and is very happy with Windows XP. When it comes to carpentry and woodworking, however, you will not find anybody better than him (and this is not just father/son hubris - he really is amazing) and you will never see him touch an amateur tool like Sears Craftsman.
comptres [sic] are still mystical boxes not to be tampered with
Do you have to be able to tamper with your computer in order to be online? Do you have to know how to use Gopher, FTP, Newsgroups, and Telnet to be online?
How about another approach? Do I have to be a musician to enjoy music? Do I have to be a chef to enjoy food? Do I have to be a mechanic to drive my car? Do I have to hunt if I want to eat meat? Do I have to be a carpenter to sit on my chair?
I think you get the idea. Just because people are not technically inclined it does not make them any less online. Your elitist attitude will not serve you well when dealing with regular people.
They are not reverse engineering MS technology. They are using the technologies that have already been submitted to the ECMA for standardization.
All the info about the Mono project is available here and it is not slashdotted.
You really have the moderators fooled. You do not need an explicit contract. All you have to do is prove that they were doing "work for hire" and that's it. If you gave them free copies of the software and all they did was test it and provide feedback then they have no rights on the final product. If your company got screwed by this then they should find some better lawyers.
You are compensated by (hopefully) getting a solution that improves the software. And if you consider yourself an employee than you just gave up all rights because anything done as "work for hire" is considered the copyright of the employer.
I've seen a few of your posts and I have come to the conclusion that you are a troll and an idiot. Besides the fact that you are comparing patents and copyrights you are also overstating the US Copyright laws. You can't just claim a copyright on anything.
First of all, if you work for a company then what you create for the company is that copyright of the company, not you. Now if you read section 101 of the copyright law you will see that "work for hire" can include work commissioned for use as a contribution. Obe could say that beta testers are commissioned to test software, are compensated by receiving a product of value for free, and therefore are doing work for hire.
Second, copyrights within derivative and compilation works only applies to material contributed by the author of such work. In other words, if I put your short story in my book you don't have a copyright for the whole book. Now I do have to get permission to publish your short story.
Finally, you can not hold copyright on information that is common property. So obvious knowledge can not be copyrighted just because you wrote it down.
This is actually fairly backwards. Ever hear of Alexander Graham Bell? You probably think he invented the telephone. Well you are right and wrong. Philipp Reis invented the first telephone almost a decade before Bell but it wasn't very good and he never patented it. There is no proof that Bell knew of Reis's telephone but he did develop a much better version and founded what would become AT&T.
History is actually full of stories like this where credit went to the person who perfected the product and brought it to market.
I also forgot to mention that your like is from 2000 wheras the link I provided in the original thread is from 2001.
The guy may have quoted out of context but you are an absolute moron.
First of all, you can host virtual domains unders Windows. Second, the site itself states that webhosts prefer Apache which drives its site numbers up signficantly. It doesn't state why they prefer it but I would guess that cost comes into play there. Finally, there is absolute no support for any of your assumptions except spreading your FUD.
Are you talking about me? I provided the link. Why would I be "blind, braindead, payed by microsoft"?
Next time be more careful about which reply button you hit dumbass.
Companies should be checking domain name availability before coming up with names
I agree with you on new companies but this wasn't the case here. This is a case of a company with a poor sense of timing. According to their site the have existed since 1981 but they didn't register a trademark until 1997? (Although they did mention something about a prior trademark that was abandoned in the suit). Then after registering a trademark they decide to register their domain name, find it exists, get pissed off and sue.
Was netcraft slashdotted? I could have cut and paste from the site too but I chose to just link to it.
The original poster is actually talking about Linux's market share and uses Apache as an example. Linux is only at 29% versus 49% for Windows.
Either way, that isn't the point. The point is that Windows is a lot more prolific as a web server than is apparent from the regular netcraft survey.
The article also states that the error margin is probably under +-10%.
I love when people read comments and not threads. Read the thread again, ok?
Your troll observations don't deserve the effort of a reply.
Apache may have more sites hosted but if you look here you will see that more servers run Windows that all other *nix combined. Apache is very popular with hosting companies.
If you did want motion detection you could get HomeWatcher. It's Windows only but it works real well. Even uploads to a remote server using FTP so you can still catch a crook even if he steals the computer.