Worse information, faster -- this neatly sums it up, and I'm a huge proponent of social media and its benefits, including to government.
Although I agree that social media provides worse information, faster, it also provides good information, equally fast. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff, or the signal from the noise.
But, that's well understood - we know that a large portion of what we see on social media is going to be rumor and speculation, and we take it with a significant grain of salt and skepticism. The problem here is when traditional media forgoes investigation and simply reposts the same rumors and speculation, but with the imprimatur of broadcast or print journalism: someone on Reddit IDs the kid in the blue jacket, and we all go "mmmhmm, maybe, I don't know." The New York Post puts his picture on the front page saying the FBI is seeking him, and suddenly it's official and real... but of course, it never was. And this failure was repeated over and over with the media attempting to keep up with Twitter, and as a result constantly having to correct themselves, withdraw prior statements.
In other words, it's not crowdsourcing that failed - the entire point of crowdsourcing is that you get hundreds of answers, most of which are wrong, but a few of which will be correct - but the media taking the results of that crowdsourcing and rebroadcasting it as true and official without any verification.
Pure unabashed speculation on your part. I can't believe you posted that. You clearly don't apply the methods of rationality in your thinking processes. I mean, really, are you daft? You are blinded by your profession to the point you don't even realize YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE to support your beliefs, and are merely parroting whatever bullshit means your life hasn't been wasted harming society. I feel bad for you. You should quit your job before you wake up one day, realize I'm right, and kill yourself. Your kind (the willfully ignorant) disgusts me.
Hi, troll. If you want to have a rational debate, go back and remove all of the above and its ilk from your post. I don't waste my time with assholes.
IMO, all of the comments and discussion about whether genes are inventions or discoveries or natural or artificial are completely irrelevant.
The purpose of the patent system is to advance the useful arts and sciences. Given that there is obviously a lot of scientific (and commercial) value in identifying the functions of particular parts of our genetic code, that's something we want to encourage. Patents are supposed to do this by encouraging research results to be published so that other researchers can use them for inspiration and as building blocks. If that's not happening, then patents aren't providing any value.
So, a very simple test: If researchers routinely use the patent database as a source of inspiration and a place to find tools to solve specific problems, and are very willing to look for and license patents that help them make progress, then they're good and useful. If, however, patents are an obstruction, if researchers actively avoid looking at patents to avoid possible treble damages from willful infringement, or if they block useful avenues of research, then they're not providing any value and should be discarded.
That's only a good test if researchers never published anywhere else. As you note, patents encourage research results to be published, but there's nothing that says that the publication must be the patent. Rather, patents eliminate the necessity of keeping trade secrets, where you wouldn't publish anywhere. By getting the patent, you are free to publish as much as you want, without losing any exclusive rights to the invention.
Specifically, without patents, researchers at pharma companies wouldn't be publishing white papers or scientific articles, since their employers would have them under highly restrictive NDAs. So, the very simple test would be whether researchers use any database that includes information that is also covered by one or more patents for inspiration or as a place to find tools to solve specific problems - or, conversely, how often do people get a patent and publish the information elsewhere, and how often are those "elsewhere" locations mined by others?
I am a patent attorney (and yes, I realize that you're going to claim I'm biased, but realize that doesn't change the validity of my argument). The latter happens constantly - in fact, we're frequently asked to draft and file a patent application quickly because the inventor is about to publish a paper, submit something to a journal, give a public talk at a convention, etc. Without patents, their employers would prevent all of those public releases.
All the arguments in the summary are economic ones. Creating monopolies, raising prices, and market distortions are what patents are for. It's a reward to the creator that is supposed to drive creativity and innovation.
No, it's not. Patents have nothing to do with a reward - the invention is likely commercially valuable anyway, which is their reward for it. Rather, patents are a grant in exchange for public disclosure, as an incentive to destroy trade secrets. For example, here, they could've set up a lab that tested for the gene as a service, with you shipping DNA to them and them responding with a "yes, you're susceptible to this type of cancer" or "no, you're not", without ever letting on which sequence they were actually looking for. With sufficient security and NDAs in place, that trade secret could last for decades. Other researchers would have to waste time searching for the same sequence... and many of them would also set up competing labs, also maintaining the sequence as a trade secret. That's inefficient, both from the constant re-researching, and because the secret could be out of the public domain for much longer than a mere 20 years.
The real argument against gene patents is that they shouldn't be patentable in the first place. They are natural phenomena, not inventions.
However, the gene doesn't exist in nature on its own, but only as part of a full strand of RNA. It's like if they figured out how to make a monopole - should that be patentable? Sure, magnetic poles exist in nature and magnetism is a natural phenomenon, but you can't ever find just a north pole or just a south pole in a material, and making one would be an incredible advance.
I never understood how they could allow this to happen in the first place. Clearly finding out the purpose of a gene will always be a discovery and not an invention. Discoveries are not patentable.
35 USC 101: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
If something can replicate/reproduce naturally it can't be patented.
Says who? What about Diamond v. Chakrabarty, in which the Supreme Court said that genetically modified oil-eating bacteria (which can replicate naturally) were patentable?
Sadly the Federal Appeals courts have been more than a bit ignorant in their rulings. But then most of them have never taken any science after high school. Forget jury trials, you don't have to have graduated HS to serve on a jury.
Of the judges on the Federal Circuit, (aside from their JDs) there are:
Rader - B.A. in English
Newman - Ph.D. in Chemistry
Lourie - Ph.D. in Chemistry
Dyk - B.A. in English
Prost - B.S. in something sciencey
Moore - M.S. in EE
O'Malley - B.A.
Reyna - B.A.
Wallach - B.A.
Taranto - B.A.
So, while not science heavy, at 4/9, it's actually a more technical pool of judges than most other panels, including the Supreme Court.
Find me a case where one of these copyright demand letters was sent to binding arbitration. Go ahead, I'll wait.
And if I could make you wait until you dropped over dead, I'd do it, for being a pentulant little bastard. But a cursory google will quickly show I am right, and you are annoying. Good day, sir.
I am an IP attorney (though not your IP attorney) and with all due respect, he, not you, is correct.
Get a lawyer. Countersue for $100,000 for the complainant filing false affidavits with the court. When they try to toss out the claims, say you will settle for $10,000 plus legal fees, otherwise it's off to fucking court.
And then they countersue you for filing a false complaint for $100k in damages, which is significantly easier to over false. At best, the court throws out both your and their claims, but more likely, you're paying their attorney's fees for responding to your stupid countersuit.
If someone is filing false affidavits, notify the court and let the DA get involved. Don't file a false damages claim in response.
The sort algorithm would contain enough detail to be something of actual value that the software development community would probably like to know, but I believe that would be considered a mathematical formula which does not enjoy patent protection.
Depends how it's written. You can write it as a method executed by a computing device, and it's no longer just a mathematical formula. That a claim recites a non-patentable formula doesn't make the claim unpatentable, if it has other patentable elements. But that's a whole nother discussion.
Besides that, the problem in general with patenting improvements to invents is that the patent on the existing invention is so broad that it covers all implementations of that invention (hence the reason software patents are counter-productive).
You're arguing two different things here... Improvements are always patentable (see 35 USC 101), and it's the utmost hubris to pretend that every invention is entirely new and revolutionary and doesn't stand on the shoulders of what came before. You make a flying car, and, well, it wouldn't be there without the car, no? But it shouldn't be patentable, because it's an improvement? No...
Second, if the patent is so broad that it covers all implementations, then either (i) it's an incredibly awesome invention that really lays the groundwork for an entire field, in which case, shouldn't that be patentable; or (ii) it's not actually covering all implementations and people can still work around it, by inventing the next thing?
And third, why is this specific to software? Improvements (and field-blocking patents) exist in every industry, so why do you think it's a software-specific issue?
Pseudocode and flow charts are nice, but they fall far short of the documentation necessary to make the invention "able to be trivially implemented by another person in the same field." I have seen developers that were handed documentation more detailed than any software patent and watched them create something that matched the documentation but did nothing of value. By the time you start providing documentation detailed enough to create your own useful implementation, you are practically at the code level already.
The test is actually "without undue experimentation by a person of ordinary skill in the art", and I'd argue that a skilled developer should be able to write code from a detailed flow chart. Now, yes, I readily agree that many patents have sucky flowcharts and don't have enough description. But on the other hand, with a good functional spec, you should be able to code it, even with no source code in hand... and that should be the measure for compliance with 35 USC 112.
Believe me, I'm not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but software patents just don't make sense. They are frequently written before the software is even implemented so that they are filed before everyone else.
I don't agree with that. I am a patent attorney, and much of my work is software (and I realize this immediately opens up entire arguments based on ad hominems and accusations of bias, and I trust in your good faith to keep the debate on a civil and substantive level rather than collapse to name calling). Almost everything I get is after the software is implemented, at least at an alpha level. The very few where it hasn't been, those disclosures have been detailed enough that I could code it - and did, in one case, to check my math.
Now, this is all just anecdotal, and as I said, I agree that many patents may have problems with insufficient disclosure, but I don't think specific source code should be required. And how would you choose a language? Should all patents have code in C#? Or can they each have their native languages? And what do you do when languages change, or the inventor writes a new language? Not to mention, what if they write code in
I fully agree with everything you have said for every industry except software. In industries other than software, engineers invent technologies that push limitations imposed by the physics and chemistry that make up our universe. In software, the only limitation placed on the software itself is the limits of the developer's imagination. I have never once read the headline to a software patent and wondered how the developer managed to push the boundaries to accomplish the task at hand. The challenge in software development is not how to find a way to get the software to do what you wish: the challenge is finding the best way to accomplish the task given all of the options at your disposal. While it may seem reasonable to grant a patent on the latter, the problem is that the best solution differs depending on your client and varies wildly on a case-by-case basis.
Sure, but you aren't patenting the "best" mousetrap (or software equivalent), but an "improved" one. Maybe your new state machine-based sort algorithm works better in some instances where it can utilize a priori knowledge, but doesn't work well with completely random data. If you've still improved upon known sorts, isn't that the type of thing that we, the public, want you to tell us about, even if it isn't the best possible one?
And if you don't like that argument, then how about the fact that software patents contain no useful information about how the "invention" works, a.k.a. disclosing the trade secret. Instead, the "inventor" gets to keep the trade secret in the form of the source code. So they get the benefit of the patent protection on a very broad concept and they get to keep the specifics about how the invention actually works protected under trade secret.
They shouldn't require the source code, because you shouldn't need the source to understand the invention. They should, however, have pseudocode and/or flow charts - and they're required to do so under 35 USC 112 currently. But, I agree, there should be more disclosure and better flow charts. Most patents are written in ways that I, personally, find questionable from a written description and enablement perspective. But that's not just software patents - I think pharma patents have huge problems in that area.
I think the problem (at least for software) is on the litigation side of things... litigators want patents to be as vague as possible so that, in litigation, they can make the patent say whatever they want. It might be a tough fight to change that, but you could probably make good headway by including a rule that patents must include a clear description of an exemplary implementation that, while not being considered to limit the invention, still is helpful to explain it.
This whole bit of FUD is based on taking two words out of context in a list of features that Samsung could have changed to not infringe in the German design patent infringement case. Specifically, Apple said that their patent claimed A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H, etc. with one of those things being rounded corners.
Look at the patent, which, by the way, has 1 content-free claim (you didn't know that?), and a few crude pictures. I remember drawing things like that in high school.
It's a design patent - all design patents have only one claim, by law. However, it's not content free at all - rather, the claim is claiming exactly what's shown in the figures, which are not crude by any mention. And kudos for your high school for having an engineering drafting class. Mine did, too, and it has been very useful through several careers.
All I claim is that it's been thought of before, but nice trolling.
Nope, you did nothing of the sort. You asked a rhetorical question about Apple patenting rounded corners, and as I pointed out, they did nothing of the sort nor ever claimed to. And really, calling someone else a troll when anyone in here can scroll up and see what's been actually posted is laughable.
Note that Stallman's solution doesn't include either of those requirements, and therefore lacks the same moral justification.
So his argument is flawed because he didn't chew it up for you like I did? Try again.
Glad you agree that Stallman's solution lacks the moral justification you suggested.
Unless you disagree? It's not clear from your post. Maybe you're just trolling rather than wanting to have an actual discussion?
To which invention are you referring? perspective? That silly barge thing? Some feature of architecture? I find it unlikely that not one other person could look at the works and figure out how it was done. Methinks they were dabbling a little much with their leaded paint, and held a little too much belief in the mystical arts to be doing any real thinking anyways...
If you don't even know what invention they're talking about, then are you really qualified to opine that they too busy thinking about the mystical arts? As a tip, Google exists nowadays. Invented in the past 20 years, too.
Otherwise I cant understand why duplicating any of those would be so difficult. If I put a block and tackle arrangement in front of my 5 year old and told him to make something similar, I'm sure he could, it just isn't that hard.
Then how come it took until 1500 for any of that stuff? Why did the Romans have it, or the Greeks, or the Neanderthals? A steam engine or internal combustion engine is pretty straightforward, once you've seen one. I bet most any engineer could sketch one out on a napkin if you asked... Most any engineer now that is. Amazing how everything looks obvious in hindsight, eh?
When each little incremental improvement costs 20 years, then progress is being impeded.
Actually, it sounds like progress is proceeding quite well with a series of incremental improvements. Your argument requires utter stagnation.
Furthermore, it is not the "cost of damages" that stopped competitors in the field, it was the massive legal costs associated with defending against BS patent trolling. The offending company was started and owned by two attorneys who used their knowledge of the patent process to get patents, and then litigated themselves.
Actually, the offending company was started and owned by two inventors who used their knowledge of engineering to get patents. They happened to also be attorneys.
The legal cost of defending was prohibitive, even if they were going to win, they couldn't survive long enough to get to that point, so they simply did not use the electronic triggers. This rendered the vast majority of other incremental improvements impossible. All because of two lawyers, and a badly flawed patent system.
All because of poor economic and legal advice, as I said. As noted in the previous post, they could have used the triggers and paid a reasonable royalty and pocket the rest of the profit. You don't have to go court to pay royalties. In fact, most people do so without ever setting foot in court. But apparently, the paintball manufacturers got some bad advice and missed out on a bunch of free money selling an invention that they didn't even have to research.
Perhaps people understand intuitively that patents are bad because they believe in false histories like "patents were designed so that novel inventions would end up being cataloged", as opposed to the real reasons involving trade secrets.
A patent (/pætnt/ or/petnt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention.
Sounds to me like patents were designed to allow public cataloging of inventions in exchange for limited monopolies. Not sure what part of that you feel is a "false history", but perhaps you're not speaking the same English the rest of us are.
Considering that you admit you don't even know what invention was involved in the origin of patents, and you're basing the extent of your knowledge on one sentence in Wiki, I can see why you would think that. The truth is in that phrase "public disclosure". This isn't about making some giant catalog of novelty - and for what purpose? Historical significance? - but about giving an incentive to inventors to publicly disclose their inventions rather than keeping them trade secrets.
Note that Stallman's solution doesn't include either of those requirements, and therefore lacks the same moral justification.
If you want to defend a law that prevents someone from creating, manufacturing, distributing, or selling a good, then the onus is on you to provide the moral justification for the existence of that law. Otherwise, the law is an unnecessary impediment to our freedom and should be promptly abolished.
Sounds reasonable. The justification is that trade secrets are bad because they stifle innovation by requiring constant re-invention of the same concepts over and over, and prevent people from being able to improve others' work. Patents give an incentive to people to destroy trade secrets, by giving a time-limited monopoly in exchange for required public disclosure.
Okay, your turn to rebut that. Plus, while you're at it, quit dodging the question and answer why Stallman's solution, lacking any of the "free" or "gratis" requirements of the grandparent poster, still is morally justified. Frankly, this whole "I don't have to answer, you do" bullshiat is not a valid debate tactic.
It is sickening in the extreme to think that it's possible to deny other people access to information, simply because you thought of it first.
The default is to deny other people access to information because you thought of it first.
The patent system exists to help get the information into the public domain quickly, instead of having it kept as a trade secret for decades.
So when you're trolling on the patent system, try to understand its primary function first.
The problem is patent holders have forgotten the monopoly is supposed to be temporary, and then it's publicly available
You may be confusing patents with copyright. Copyright is the one that keeps getting more and more extensions. Patent term has only been extended twice, and the latter was just to comply with an international treaty and changed "17 years from issue (plus a 3 year backlog)" to "20 years from filing". That latter one was actually a really good thing - it killed submarine patents in one fell swoop, because you couldn't delay and delay and delay and have a patent get issued decades later on something that had then become the standard and then still have another 17 year term to exploit.
The basic fundamental problem is that the patent office receives money to grant patents. Instead, it must receive money to evaluate patents. They get a small amount of money when you file, and a larger amount when they grant.
USPTO Fee Schedule:
Basic filing fee: $280
Size fee (if applicable: $400
Search fee: $600
Examination fee: $720
Publication fee: $300
Issue fee: $1780
Total USPTO receives to evaluate patents: $2300
Total USPTO receives to grant patents: $1780
... there's a flaw in your math.
Additionally, if you read the article or study, one of the things they're complaining about is that an application can be examined multiple times with multiple rejections, through the filing of requests for continued examination... which cost $1200 for the first request and $1700 for each subsequent request. And, so, on average, the PTO is receiving somewhere between $3500 and ~$7000 to evaluate patents and only a mere $1780 to grant patents.
Sorry, but no: when you look at the actual fees involved rather than the ones you imagine exist, if economic concerns were behind this, then the allowance rate would be plummeting, not rising.
It is sickening in the extreme to think that it's possible to deny other people access to information, simply because you thought of it first.
It's worse than that. Patents don't deny access to information, but they curtail our freedom to help each other. And those who register patents almost never think of it first. Did Apple think first of a rectangular device with rounded corners?
Of course not, but then, they never patented "a rectangular device with rounded corners". This whole bit of FUD is based on taking two words out of context in a list of features that Samsung could have changed to not infringe in the German design patent infringement case. Specifically, Apple said that their patent claimed A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H, etc. with one of those things being rounded corners. If Samsung changed any of them - not having rounded corners, but having every other bit; or having rounded corners, but not having a flush bezel - then they wouldn't infringe. And that latter one is exactly what they did with the Galaxy Tab 10.1N: a device with rounded corners that does not infringe Apple's patent... so therefore, the patent clearly cannot cover "a device with rounded corners".
As usual, Richard Stallman has a great solution:
We should legislate that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement.
This will work because a very similar law already works in the medical field. Just like surgeons, who can safely ignore procedural patents to save lives, programmers and distributors of free software deserve complete patent immunity because their work is entirely gratis, and benefits the whole world.
Note that Stallman's solution doesn't include either of those requirements, and therefore lacks the same moral justification.
I call BS. If there were no patent system, then inventors would bring their products to market anyways. Inventors don't bring products to market because the patent system protects them, they do it because if they don't, they are guaranteed not to make any money. Patents, like copyright are an archaic solution to a problem that doesn't really exist anymore, and possibly never did. A company that brings a novel product to market, will have at least a year before a competitor can copy it and bring the copies to market.
What industry do you work in? Because in software, you can get a team to reverse engineer a product and crank out a copy within 3-6 weeks. And if you think that the first-mover advantage is all anyone needs, go talk to NimbleBit about Tiny Tower, or Slashkey about Farmville. And copyright doesn't protect those, because the copyrightable assets - the sprites, the textures, etc. - are all new.
But you're both right and wrong - the problem is not that inventors would sit with their thumbs up their butts and make no money if they couldn't have patent protection. The problem is that, instead, they would keep everything under NDA and trade secret protection, with more DRM and harsh licensing systems to prevent copies from ever falling into the hands of a competitor. And that problem was the specific reason for the existence of patents: the rulers of Florence granted the first patent to Brunelleschi in exchange for him publicly disclosing his invention. All of the merchants wanted access to it, and this was in the era where you hire mercenary guards to protect your stuff and/or raid your competitors' warehouses. Rather than have a bloody and expensive conflict, Florence gave him a time-limited monopoly, in exchange for teaching everyone else how to do his invention.
So, yeah, it's not an incentive to get people to invent. It's an incentive to get people to destroy trade secrets, because those really stifle innovation.
On the other side of the coin, I can think of at least a few products which have not made it to market because of patents, and the inventors will not even try until the offending patents expire in another 10 years. For example, Touch sensitive trigger for paintball guns would be a very neat idea, but until recently were not viable because they required the paintball gun to use an electronic triggering mechanism, the patent for which was granted almost 20 years ago. The company that owned the patent was charging outrageous fees to use their technology, which was obvious technology to virtually every engineer that ever touched a paintball gun. Because of that one company and the patent system that supported them, paintball guns have remained largely in the dark ages for 20 years.
Oh, no, 20 years! We might as well all go back to living in caves, because, clearly we are in a dark age of invention.
Also, if true, then your story is really about bad legal and economic advice, not patents. Damages for patent infringement are limited to a reasonable royalty, which, by definition couldn't ever be more than your profits. As you correctly noted at the beginning of your post, people do things that make them money. If you can bring a product to market and pay an outrageous 10% royalty on your profits, you're still making profits. If you don't bring the product to market, as an intelligent commenter stated, you "are guaranteed not to make any money". So, the reason for not bringing the tech to market was, at most, bad legal and economic advice, or much more likely, other reasons such as market size, cost of parts, etc.
Patents are bad. Most people with an IQ in the triple digits understand this intuitively, even if they cant put an explanation to it. They were designed so that novel inventions would end up being cataloged in such a way that the designs could be used for further development, but now they are used as a weapon to prevent companies from ha
It looks to me like a confusing use of 'the x administration' to designate a particular division of time, even when the subject at hand has little connection to event separating time periods.
Yes and no - it may still reflect a legitimate difference between John Dudas (PTO director appointed by Bush) and David Kappos (PTO director appointed by Obama). While Bush/Obama may not care about the specifics (and may be more beholden to their corporate interests anyway), Dudas and Kappos had different concepts about how Examination should be funded, what the timelines should be, etc.
Yes, I definitely should have phrased my first reply differently and checked the actual history, apologies for phrasing that was misleading from my intent.
I believe the crux of the issue is that Hogan _should_ have mentioned the prior lawsuits when questioned in voir dire. I don't blame the judge, and have mixed feelings about Samsung's culpability if Hogan withheld information after being explicitly asked. Kudos for the Boston Legal reference, I really liked that show.
No worries. Yeah, Hogan probably should have mentioned the prior lawsuits. The problem is that bit about Samsung's culpability... If they really and truly had no way of knowing about it, then they're not penalized and could have raised it and gotten a mistrial. For example, if Hogan had changed his name since that trial, particularly in another state, and so they couldn't just search for "Hogan" in their records and in the court records.
Basically, what it comes down to is that, if Samsung really didn't know, they shouldn't be penalized, but if Samsung they did know and were holding it as an ace up their sleeve, that's dastardly and we won't stand for it. But we can't prove whether they knew or not, without requiring all sorts of disclosure of internal litigation notes, breaching confidentiality and attorney-client privilege, etc., etc. So, instead, the court uses a "reasonable due diligence" standard that, by definition, is going to be somewhat subjective and vague and not at all satisfying to engineers, and says that if Samsung's attorneys acted with reasonable due diligence, would they have found out about the Hogan-Seagate connection? The resulting conclusion is that either yes, they did know and concealed it, or no, they didn't know because they're incompetent. But we won't assume they're incompetent unless they want to volunteer that explanation, but even if they do, that's between Samsung and Samsung's attorneys in a malpractice suit, and doesn't involve Apple.
Hogan's patent, in my admittedly amateur reading, seems broad. It reads like a small computer with hardware and software and functions for downloading, retrieving, and managing video. The only thing that seems specific is the disk head reading portion, but I would love clarification on what would distinguish this patent from a general DVR device.
Well, the claim is:
1. A video system comprising:
a system controller module, consisting of one tuner, wherein the tuner is configured to receive a process one or more input signals and provide one or more video signals,
with at least one processor module coupled to the tuner, wherein the at least one processor module is configured to receive and process the one or more video signals from the tuner and to provide at least one output video signal,
with a decoder coupled to the tuner, wherein the decoder is configured to receive and decode the one or more video signals from the tuner to provide at least one decoded video file, and
a memory unit configured to store the at least one decoded video file, wherein the system controller module is operative to receive and process the one or more input signals to provide the one or more video files,
wherein the system controller module provides a user-selectable option of editing one or more sections of the one or more video files, and
wherein the system controller module does not include a separate program information receiver;
an internal fixed storage device operatively coupled to the system controller module, wherein the internal fixed storage device is configured to store the one or more video files from the system controller module; and
an internal removable media storage device operatively coupled to the system controller module, wherein the internal removable media storage device is configured to store the one or more video files from the system controller module or the internal fixed storage device.
Note - I blame poor journalism for these, not the study authors. Also, as a disclaimer, I am a patent attorney (as a further disclaimer, I am not your patent attorney, and this is not legal advice).
First, the incorrect or misleading:
But in the last four years there's been a sharp reversal, with a 2012 allowance rate about 20 percent higher than it was in 2009.
It can also be looked at as 12% higher, since it went from about 58% to about 70% in that time. "20 percent higher" is misleading. "120 percent of the 2009 rate" would be correct.
Calculating the real allowance rate is tricky because inventors can submit the same application multiple times. "From the perspective of the patent office, a 'final rejection' doesn't get rid of an application," Quillen told Ars in a December phone interview. If an application is rejected, the inventor can make minor changes to the application and file it again. "The only way you can reduce your numbers and get rid of somebody is to allow the case," Quillen said.
There are a number of different ways to re-file applications, with names like File Wrapper Continuations, Continued Prosecution Applications, Requests for Continued Examination and Continuation-In-Part Applications. But in all cases, the upshot is the same: the applicant gets another shot at convincing examiners to grant him a patent.
These are talking about two different things, mainly because the journalist doesn't understand the distinction:
1) An application can be "finally rejected" by the USPTO (meaning that it was rejected on specific grounds, the applicant replied, and the Examiner wasn't persuaded and "finally" rejected the application on those grounds), and the Applicant can amend to narrow the claims and file a request for continued examination or a continued prosecution application (the same thing, but for design patents). For example, say you were Toyota and were patenting the Prius, and you originally had a claim of "1. A car, comprising: four wheels, an engine, and a battery" and the Examiner comes back and says "duh, that's every car." If you tried to argue that you meant a battery running the engine, but the Examiner wasn't persuaded since that distinction isn't in your claims (and there's other prior art with electric engines), they'd finally reject it. If you then amended your claims to recite your novel planetary engine dual-powered transmission, you'd have to file a request for continued examination so that it could be considered.
It's not really "submitting the same application multiple times" but several iterations of narrowing the application and arguing that as narrowed, it's patentable, until it finally is narrow enough to be allowed.
2) New applications can be filed as continuation applications or continuation-in-part applications, but they're not the "same application" by definition. Continuations and continued prosecution applications have the same specification, but different claims. Like, say, to save money, you wrote a patent application that described two separate, but related inventions. Like say, a new machine for more efficiently turning horses into glue, and a new offset gearing system for use in that machine or others that has increased torque with reduced tension. You could file a single application describing both, but only claiming the horse part. Later, you could file a continuation application using the same specification and claiming the gearing system part.
This helps small inventors by not requiring them to file dozens of applications on day one, when they might be short of cash, but file one big one, then later file additional continuations as they're able to raise capital. Importantly, all of the applications have the same effective priority date for prior art, and any patents coming from the applications expire on the same d
That's not correct. Samsung brought this up in their appeal.
Jury foreman Velvin Hogan failed to disclose truthfully during voir dire that he had sued and been sued by his former employer, Seagate, despite the Court’s express question asking him whether he had ever been a party to any litigation.
In the jury selection Hogan failed to mention the seagate lawsuit, but rather deflected by citing a smaller lawsuit that wasn't actually brought to court. link to pdf of questioning
Maybe I misunderstood your original statement... You said "From what I could tell, the jury foreman lied by omission when he was being questioned about his previous relationships with Samsung/Seagate." He was questioned about whether he had any relationships to the parties in the case, Samsung and Apple, which is what I thought you were referring to. He was never questioned about his relationship with Seagate. From the opinion denying juror misconduct:
Despite [the Seagate/Samsung] relationship, counsel for Samsung did not ask Mr. Hogan about this relationship with Seagate, and did not seek to elicit any information about whether that relationship might influence Mr. Hogan’s view in any way.
He was also asked if he had been in any litigation, and as you note, he failed to mention the prior trial... However, during voir dire, Samsung looked into Hogan's file and saw the bankruptcy proceeding, and then ignored it:
Samsung has waived its claim for an evidentiary hearing and a new trial based on Mr. Hogan’s alleged dishonesty during voir dire. Prior to the verdict, Samsung could have discovered Mr. Hogan’s litigation with Seagate, had Samsung acted with reasonable diligence based on information Samsung acquired through voir dire, namely that Mr. Hogan stated during voir dire that he had worked for Seagate.
As I said earlier, it's likely that Samsung did know of Hogan's relationship to Seagate and kept that information secret so that they could bring it up, as they did, in the event of an adverse jury decision. I'm sure they would have kept it silent if he had been biased the other way, filled with loyal feelings for Seagate/Samsung, and the jury came back with a decision of non-infringement. That's not allowed in real court, though, even if it's standard fare for Boston Legal.
Notice I used the word "dubious". I was referring specifically to Hogan's seemingly weak patent on a tivo-like technology, and how that could be seen to bias him towards defending flimsy or overly broad patents. As you say, Samsung should have taken this into consideration.
(i) What makes that "seemingly weak"? I mean, check out that independent claim - it's huge, and really narrow. It's a weak patent from an enforcement perspective, but less so from a validity perspective. Plus, it's not even a software patent - it's only claiming a hardware machine.
(ii) In my experience, many inventors think that their patents are strong and valid, while others are flimsy or overly broad. Nothing leads to the conclusion that an inventor must think their own patent is flimsy and therefore want to defend other flimsy patents, as opposed to the conclusion that the inventor thinks their own patent is strong and wants to get rid of flimsy patents to clear the chaff from the wheat.
Honestly, jury selection is complicated, with factors on both sides. Samsung may have kept Hogan on the jury because, being an engineer, they thought he was like many Slashdotters and would be anti-software patents (particularly wit
From what I could tell, the jury foreman lied by omission when he was being questioned about his previous relationships with Samsung/Seagate.
They only asked him about Samsung. It's not clear that he knew at the time that Seagate had been bought by Samsung... But on the other hand, Samsung should have been able to do a simple search through their files and say "hey, we sued this guy once... maybe we shouldn't have him on the jury?" Additionally, Samsung's lawyers should have done a simple records search to see if he had ever been in court before, since at the very least they'd want to know if he was a juror in a related trial, if he was involved in a related trial as a witness, etc., so that they could get some idea of which way he would vote. Researching the members of the jury is like litigation 101. That would've turned up the prior suit, too.
Regardless, he should have been outed by _someone_ as having a conflict of interest in the outcome as the holder of a dubious intellectual property patent.
So should no one who's an inventor on a patent be involved in a patent trial? That seems to be the opposite of what people say on Slashdot, where people wish that juries weren't lay idiots but actually had some relevant technical background.
It's also a huge stretch to call it a conflict of interest. It's like saying you can't have a doctor on a jury in any medical malpractice case, because they have an interest in seeing doctors not be liable. That's silly - they may equally have a strong interest in seeing bad doctors punished.
What if there was an open source advocate on the jury, who believed that software shouldn't be patentable... Would you say he should be kicked off as having a conflict of interest too?
Anyway, Samsung had the opportunity to remove him during voir dire before the trial started. They knew he was a patent owner and decided not to use a challenge to remove him. Apparently, they didn't think that "any patent owner" would be automatically biased against them.
The obvious conflict of interest of the patent troll wannabe serving as jury foreman. The moment he started he started running his mouth off, the whole thing should have been declared a mistrial.
He didn't run his mouth off until after the trial was over and judgement was settled. Are you saying juries should never be able to talk about their experience after the fact? How does that not violate their first amendment rights?
As for the potential conflict of interest, as I said, Samsung had notice of that well in advance. They can't keep that as an ace up their sleeve and only play it if the jury finds against them. Contrary to popular belief, trials don't work like they do on TV or in the movies: you don't get to bring in surprise witnesses or evidence, or suddenly bring up a conflict of interest after the trial has already started. Instead, if you want to use that stuff, you have to raise it at the beginning.
No, the judge's decision was exactly right. The fail was on the part of Samsung's attorneys, either for not investigating the jury and finding out that one of them had been in a suit against Seagate, or - more likely, since attorneys always investigate the jury - for finding out about it and keeping it secret to raise in the case of an adverse judgement, which was too-clever-by-half, since it's not actually allowed.
The judge made one truly epic level bad decision with the Apple Samsung case, is anyone surprised she did the same thing with another case? The whole situation is deplorable and needs a significant legal remedy to prevent it from ever happening again.
What "truly epic level bad decision"? And what appellate or Supreme Court precedents can you point to as evidence of her error? Or is this just really "something happened that you disagree with"?
For example, if you're referring to the Hogan thing where Samsung may have concealed evidence of potential bias until they had a decision against them, that's not going to be enough. Or if you're referring to Apple not getting a preliminary injunction since money damages could be enough to compensate them, then that's going to be enough. Or if you're referring to Samsung not getting to introduce new evidence at trial that they didn't produce as required during discovery, when they knew about it since it was their own prototypes, then that's not going to be enough either.
Frankly, the judge didn't make any bad decisions - Samsung's attorneys blew the case.
Smmary's incorrect, too. NPR's TOS bars people under 18 from registering accounts, shopping, or participating in contests. It explicitly allows under 18 year olds to read the site.
Slashdot Mirror
Worse information, faster -- this neatly sums it up, and I'm a huge proponent of social media and its benefits, including to government.
Although I agree that social media provides worse information, faster, it also provides good information, equally fast. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff, or the signal from the noise.
But, that's well understood - we know that a large portion of what we see on social media is going to be rumor and speculation, and we take it with a significant grain of salt and skepticism. The problem here is when traditional media forgoes investigation and simply reposts the same rumors and speculation, but with the imprimatur of broadcast or print journalism: someone on Reddit IDs the kid in the blue jacket, and we all go "mmmhmm, maybe, I don't know." The New York Post puts his picture on the front page saying the FBI is seeking him, and suddenly it's official and real... but of course, it never was. And this failure was repeated over and over with the media attempting to keep up with Twitter, and as a result constantly having to correct themselves, withdraw prior statements.
In other words, it's not crowdsourcing that failed - the entire point of crowdsourcing is that you get hundreds of answers, most of which are wrong, but a few of which will be correct - but the media taking the results of that crowdsourcing and rebroadcasting it as true and official without any verification.
Pure unabashed speculation on your part. I can't believe you posted that. You clearly don't apply the methods of rationality in your thinking processes. I mean, really, are you daft? You are blinded by your profession to the point you don't even realize YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE to support your beliefs, and are merely parroting whatever bullshit means your life hasn't been wasted harming society. I feel bad for you. You should quit your job before you wake up one day, realize I'm right, and kill yourself. Your kind (the willfully ignorant) disgusts me.
Hi, troll. If you want to have a rational debate, go back and remove all of the above and its ilk from your post. I don't waste my time with assholes.
IMO, all of the comments and discussion about whether genes are inventions or discoveries or natural or artificial are completely irrelevant.
The purpose of the patent system is to advance the useful arts and sciences. Given that there is obviously a lot of scientific (and commercial) value in identifying the functions of particular parts of our genetic code, that's something we want to encourage. Patents are supposed to do this by encouraging research results to be published so that other researchers can use them for inspiration and as building blocks. If that's not happening, then patents aren't providing any value.
So, a very simple test: If researchers routinely use the patent database as a source of inspiration and a place to find tools to solve specific problems, and are very willing to look for and license patents that help them make progress, then they're good and useful. If, however, patents are an obstruction, if researchers actively avoid looking at patents to avoid possible treble damages from willful infringement, or if they block useful avenues of research, then they're not providing any value and should be discarded.
That's only a good test if researchers never published anywhere else. As you note, patents encourage research results to be published, but there's nothing that says that the publication must be the patent. Rather, patents eliminate the necessity of keeping trade secrets, where you wouldn't publish anywhere. By getting the patent, you are free to publish as much as you want, without losing any exclusive rights to the invention.
Specifically, without patents, researchers at pharma companies wouldn't be publishing white papers or scientific articles, since their employers would have them under highly restrictive NDAs. So, the very simple test would be whether researchers use any database that includes information that is also covered by one or more patents for inspiration or as a place to find tools to solve specific problems - or, conversely, how often do people get a patent and publish the information elsewhere, and how often are those "elsewhere" locations mined by others?
I am a patent attorney (and yes, I realize that you're going to claim I'm biased, but realize that doesn't change the validity of my argument). The latter happens constantly - in fact, we're frequently asked to draft and file a patent application quickly because the inventor is about to publish a paper, submit something to a journal, give a public talk at a convention, etc. Without patents, their employers would prevent all of those public releases.
All the arguments in the summary are economic ones. Creating monopolies, raising prices, and market distortions are what patents are for. It's a reward to the creator that is supposed to drive creativity and innovation.
No, it's not. Patents have nothing to do with a reward - the invention is likely commercially valuable anyway, which is their reward for it. Rather, patents are a grant in exchange for public disclosure, as an incentive to destroy trade secrets. For example, here, they could've set up a lab that tested for the gene as a service, with you shipping DNA to them and them responding with a "yes, you're susceptible to this type of cancer" or "no, you're not", without ever letting on which sequence they were actually looking for. With sufficient security and NDAs in place, that trade secret could last for decades. Other researchers would have to waste time searching for the same sequence... and many of them would also set up competing labs, also maintaining the sequence as a trade secret. That's inefficient, both from the constant re-researching, and because the secret could be out of the public domain for much longer than a mere 20 years.
The real argument against gene patents is that they shouldn't be patentable in the first place. They are natural phenomena, not inventions.
However, the gene doesn't exist in nature on its own, but only as part of a full strand of RNA. It's like if they figured out how to make a monopole - should that be patentable? Sure, magnetic poles exist in nature and magnetism is a natural phenomenon, but you can't ever find just a north pole or just a south pole in a material, and making one would be an incredible advance.
I never understood how they could allow this to happen in the first place. Clearly finding out the purpose of a gene will always be a discovery and not an invention. Discoveries are not patentable.
35 USC 101: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
If something can replicate/reproduce naturally it can't be patented.
Says who? What about Diamond v. Chakrabarty, in which the Supreme Court said that genetically modified oil-eating bacteria (which can replicate naturally) were patentable?
Sadly the Federal Appeals courts have been more than a bit ignorant in their rulings. But then most of them have never taken any science after high school. Forget jury trials, you don't have to have graduated HS to serve on a jury.
Of the judges on the Federal Circuit, (aside from their JDs) there are:
Rader - B.A. in English
Newman - Ph.D. in Chemistry
Lourie - Ph.D. in Chemistry
Dyk - B.A. in English
Prost - B.S. in something sciencey
Moore - M.S. in EE
O'Malley - B.A.
Reyna - B.A.
Wallach - B.A.
Taranto - B.A.
So, while not science heavy, at 4/9, it's actually a more technical pool of judges than most other panels, including the Supreme Court.
Find me a case where one of these copyright demand letters was sent to binding arbitration. Go ahead, I'll wait.
And if I could make you wait until you dropped over dead, I'd do it, for being a pentulant little bastard. But a cursory google will quickly show I am right, and you are annoying. Good day, sir.
I am an IP attorney (though not your IP attorney) and with all due respect, he, not you, is correct.
Get a lawyer. Countersue for $100,000 for the complainant filing false affidavits with the court. When they try to toss out the claims, say you will settle for $10,000 plus legal fees, otherwise it's off to fucking court.
And then they countersue you for filing a false complaint for $100k in damages, which is significantly easier to over false. At best, the court throws out both your and their claims, but more likely, you're paying their attorney's fees for responding to your stupid countersuit.
If someone is filing false affidavits, notify the court and let the DA get involved. Don't file a false damages claim in response.
The sort algorithm would contain enough detail to be something of actual value that the software development community would probably like to know, but I believe that would be considered a mathematical formula which does not enjoy patent protection.
Depends how it's written. You can write it as a method executed by a computing device, and it's no longer just a mathematical formula. That a claim recites a non-patentable formula doesn't make the claim unpatentable, if it has other patentable elements. But that's a whole nother discussion.
Besides that, the problem in general with patenting improvements to invents is that the patent on the existing invention is so broad that it covers all implementations of that invention (hence the reason software patents are counter-productive).
You're arguing two different things here... Improvements are always patentable (see 35 USC 101), and it's the utmost hubris to pretend that every invention is entirely new and revolutionary and doesn't stand on the shoulders of what came before. You make a flying car, and, well, it wouldn't be there without the car, no? But it shouldn't be patentable, because it's an improvement? No...
Second, if the patent is so broad that it covers all implementations, then either (i) it's an incredibly awesome invention that really lays the groundwork for an entire field, in which case, shouldn't that be patentable; or (ii) it's not actually covering all implementations and people can still work around it, by inventing the next thing?
And third, why is this specific to software? Improvements (and field-blocking patents) exist in every industry, so why do you think it's a software-specific issue?
Pseudocode and flow charts are nice, but they fall far short of the documentation necessary to make the invention "able to be trivially implemented by another person in the same field." I have seen developers that were handed documentation more detailed than any software patent and watched them create something that matched the documentation but did nothing of value. By the time you start providing documentation detailed enough to create your own useful implementation, you are practically at the code level already.
The test is actually "without undue experimentation by a person of ordinary skill in the art", and I'd argue that a skilled developer should be able to write code from a detailed flow chart. Now, yes, I readily agree that many patents have sucky flowcharts and don't have enough description. But on the other hand, with a good functional spec, you should be able to code it, even with no source code in hand... and that should be the measure for compliance with 35 USC 112.
Believe me, I'm not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but software patents just don't make sense. They are frequently written before the software is even implemented so that they are filed before everyone else.
I don't agree with that. I am a patent attorney, and much of my work is software (and I realize this immediately opens up entire arguments based on ad hominems and accusations of bias, and I trust in your good faith to keep the debate on a civil and substantive level rather than collapse to name calling). Almost everything I get is after the software is implemented, at least at an alpha level. The very few where it hasn't been, those disclosures have been detailed enough that I could code it - and did, in one case, to check my math.
Now, this is all just anecdotal, and as I said, I agree that many patents may have problems with insufficient disclosure, but I don't think specific source code should be required. And how would you choose a language? Should all patents have code in C#? Or can they each have their native languages? And what do you do when languages change, or the inventor writes a new language? Not to mention, what if they write code in
I fully agree with everything you have said for every industry except software. In industries other than software, engineers invent technologies that push limitations imposed by the physics and chemistry that make up our universe. In software, the only limitation placed on the software itself is the limits of the developer's imagination. I have never once read the headline to a software patent and wondered how the developer managed to push the boundaries to accomplish the task at hand. The challenge in software development is not how to find a way to get the software to do what you wish: the challenge is finding the best way to accomplish the task given all of the options at your disposal. While it may seem reasonable to grant a patent on the latter, the problem is that the best solution differs depending on your client and varies wildly on a case-by-case basis.
Sure, but you aren't patenting the "best" mousetrap (or software equivalent), but an "improved" one. Maybe your new state machine-based sort algorithm works better in some instances where it can utilize a priori knowledge, but doesn't work well with completely random data. If you've still improved upon known sorts, isn't that the type of thing that we, the public, want you to tell us about, even if it isn't the best possible one?
And if you don't like that argument, then how about the fact that software patents contain no useful information about how the "invention" works, a.k.a. disclosing the trade secret. Instead, the "inventor" gets to keep the trade secret in the form of the source code. So they get the benefit of the patent protection on a very broad concept and they get to keep the specifics about how the invention actually works protected under trade secret.
They shouldn't require the source code, because you shouldn't need the source to understand the invention. They should, however, have pseudocode and/or flow charts - and they're required to do so under 35 USC 112 currently. But, I agree, there should be more disclosure and better flow charts. Most patents are written in ways that I, personally, find questionable from a written description and enablement perspective. But that's not just software patents - I think pharma patents have huge problems in that area.
I think the problem (at least for software) is on the litigation side of things... litigators want patents to be as vague as possible so that, in litigation, they can make the patent say whatever they want. It might be a tough fight to change that, but you could probably make good headway by including a rule that patents must include a clear description of an exemplary implementation that, while not being considered to limit the invention, still is helpful to explain it.
This whole bit of FUD is based on taking two words out of context in a list of features that Samsung could have changed to not infringe in the German design patent infringement case. Specifically, Apple said that their patent claimed A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H, etc. with one of those things being rounded corners.
Look at the patent, which, by the way, has 1 content-free claim (you didn't know that?), and a few crude pictures. I remember drawing things like that in high school.
It's a design patent - all design patents have only one claim, by law. However, it's not content free at all - rather, the claim is claiming exactly what's shown in the figures, which are not crude by any mention. And kudos for your high school for having an engineering drafting class. Mine did, too, and it has been very useful through several careers.
All I claim is that it's been thought of before, but nice trolling.
Nope, you did nothing of the sort. You asked a rhetorical question about Apple patenting rounded corners, and as I pointed out, they did nothing of the sort nor ever claimed to. And really, calling someone else a troll when anyone in here can scroll up and see what's been actually posted is laughable.
Note that Stallman's solution doesn't include either of those requirements, and therefore lacks the same moral justification.
So his argument is flawed because he didn't chew it up for you like I did? Try again.
Glad you agree that Stallman's solution lacks the moral justification you suggested.
Unless you disagree? It's not clear from your post. Maybe you're just trolling rather than wanting to have an actual discussion?
To which invention are you referring? perspective? That silly barge thing? Some feature of architecture? I find it unlikely that not one other person could look at the works and figure out how it was done. Methinks they were dabbling a little much with their leaded paint, and held a little too much belief in the mystical arts to be doing any real thinking anyways...
If you don't even know what invention they're talking about, then are you really qualified to opine that they too busy thinking about the mystical arts? As a tip, Google exists nowadays. Invented in the past 20 years, too.
Otherwise I cant understand why duplicating any of those would be so difficult. If I put a block and tackle arrangement in front of my 5 year old and told him to make something similar, I'm sure he could, it just isn't that hard.
Then how come it took until 1500 for any of that stuff? Why did the Romans have it, or the Greeks, or the Neanderthals? A steam engine or internal combustion engine is pretty straightforward, once you've seen one. I bet most any engineer could sketch one out on a napkin if you asked... Most any engineer now that is. Amazing how everything looks obvious in hindsight, eh?
When each little incremental improvement costs 20 years, then progress is being impeded.
Actually, it sounds like progress is proceeding quite well with a series of incremental improvements. Your argument requires utter stagnation.
Furthermore, it is not the "cost of damages" that stopped competitors in the field, it was the massive legal costs associated with defending against BS patent trolling. The offending company was started and owned by two attorneys who used their knowledge of the patent process to get patents, and then litigated themselves.
Actually, the offending company was started and owned by two inventors who used their knowledge of engineering to get patents. They happened to also be attorneys.
The legal cost of defending was prohibitive, even if they were going to win, they couldn't survive long enough to get to that point, so they simply did not use the electronic triggers. This rendered the vast majority of other incremental improvements impossible. All because of two lawyers, and a badly flawed patent system.
All because of poor economic and legal advice, as I said. As noted in the previous post, they could have used the triggers and paid a reasonable royalty and pocket the rest of the profit. You don't have to go court to pay royalties. In fact, most people do so without ever setting foot in court. But apparently, the paintball manufacturers got some bad advice and missed out on a bunch of free money selling an invention that they didn't even have to research.
Perhaps people understand intuitively that patents are bad because they believe in false histories like "patents were designed so that novel inventions would end up being cataloged", as opposed to the real reasons involving trade secrets.
From Wikipedia
A patent (/pætnt/ or /petnt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention.
Sounds to me like patents were designed to allow public cataloging of inventions in exchange for limited monopolies. Not sure what part of that you feel is a "false history", but perhaps you're not speaking the same English the rest of us are.
Considering that you admit you don't even know what invention was involved in the origin of patents, and you're basing the extent of your knowledge on one sentence in Wiki, I can see why you would think that. The truth is in that phrase "public disclosure". This isn't about making some giant catalog of novelty - and for what purpose? Historical significance? - but about giving an incentive to inventors to publicly disclose their inventions rather than keeping them trade secrets.
If you want to defend a law that prevents someone from creating, manufacturing, distributing, or selling a good, then the onus is on you to provide the moral justification for the existence of that law. Otherwise, the law is an unnecessary impediment to our freedom and should be promptly abolished.
Sounds reasonable. The justification is that trade secrets are bad because they stifle innovation by requiring constant re-invention of the same concepts over and over, and prevent people from being able to improve others' work. Patents give an incentive to people to destroy trade secrets, by giving a time-limited monopoly in exchange for required public disclosure.
Okay, your turn to rebut that. Plus, while you're at it, quit dodging the question and answer why Stallman's solution, lacking any of the "free" or "gratis" requirements of the grandparent poster, still is morally justified. Frankly, this whole "I don't have to answer, you do" bullshiat is not a valid debate tactic.
It is sickening in the extreme to think that it's possible to deny other people access to information, simply because you thought of it first.
The default is to deny other people access to information because you thought of it first.
The patent system exists to help get the information into the public domain quickly, instead of having it kept as a trade secret for decades.
So when you're trolling on the patent system, try to understand its primary function first.
The problem is patent holders have forgotten the monopoly is supposed to be temporary, and then it's publicly available
You may be confusing patents with copyright. Copyright is the one that keeps getting more and more extensions. Patent term has only been extended twice, and the latter was just to comply with an international treaty and changed "17 years from issue (plus a 3 year backlog)" to "20 years from filing". That latter one was actually a really good thing - it killed submarine patents in one fell swoop, because you couldn't delay and delay and delay and have a patent get issued decades later on something that had then become the standard and then still have another 17 year term to exploit.
The basic fundamental problem is that the patent office receives money to grant patents. Instead, it must receive money to evaluate patents. They get a small amount of money when you file, and a larger amount when they grant.
USPTO Fee Schedule:
Basic filing fee: $280
Size fee (if applicable: $400
Search fee: $600
Examination fee: $720
Publication fee: $300
Issue fee: $1780
Total USPTO receives to evaluate patents: $2300
Total USPTO receives to grant patents: $1780
Additionally, if you read the article or study, one of the things they're complaining about is that an application can be examined multiple times with multiple rejections, through the filing of requests for continued examination... which cost $1200 for the first request and $1700 for each subsequent request. And, so, on average, the PTO is receiving somewhere between $3500 and ~$7000 to evaluate patents and only a mere $1780 to grant patents.
Sorry, but no: when you look at the actual fees involved rather than the ones you imagine exist, if economic concerns were behind this, then the allowance rate would be plummeting, not rising.
It is sickening in the extreme to think that it's possible to deny other people access to information, simply because you thought of it first.
It's worse than that. Patents don't deny access to information, but they curtail our freedom to help each other. And those who register patents almost never think of it first. Did Apple think first of a rectangular device with rounded corners?
Of course not, but then, they never patented "a rectangular device with rounded corners". This whole bit of FUD is based on taking two words out of context in a list of features that Samsung could have changed to not infringe in the German design patent infringement case. Specifically, Apple said that their patent claimed A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H, etc. with one of those things being rounded corners. If Samsung changed any of them - not having rounded corners, but having every other bit; or having rounded corners, but not having a flush bezel - then they wouldn't infringe. And that latter one is exactly what they did with the Galaxy Tab 10.1N: a device with rounded corners that does not infringe Apple's patent... so therefore, the patent clearly cannot cover "a device with rounded corners".
As usual, Richard Stallman has a great solution:
We should legislate that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement.
This will work because a very similar law already works in the medical field. Just like surgeons, who can safely ignore procedural patents to save lives, programmers and distributors of free software deserve complete patent immunity because their work is entirely gratis, and benefits the whole world.
Note that Stallman's solution doesn't include either of those requirements, and therefore lacks the same moral justification.
I call BS. If there were no patent system, then inventors would bring their products to market anyways. Inventors don't bring products to market because the patent system protects them, they do it because if they don't, they are guaranteed not to make any money. Patents, like copyright are an archaic solution to a problem that doesn't really exist anymore, and possibly never did. A company that brings a novel product to market, will have at least a year before a competitor can copy it and bring the copies to market.
What industry do you work in? Because in software, you can get a team to reverse engineer a product and crank out a copy within 3-6 weeks. And if you think that the first-mover advantage is all anyone needs, go talk to NimbleBit about Tiny Tower, or Slashkey about Farmville. And copyright doesn't protect those, because the copyrightable assets - the sprites, the textures, etc. - are all new.
But you're both right and wrong - the problem is not that inventors would sit with their thumbs up their butts and make no money if they couldn't have patent protection. The problem is that, instead, they would keep everything under NDA and trade secret protection, with more DRM and harsh licensing systems to prevent copies from ever falling into the hands of a competitor. And that problem was the specific reason for the existence of patents: the rulers of Florence granted the first patent to Brunelleschi in exchange for him publicly disclosing his invention. All of the merchants wanted access to it, and this was in the era where you hire mercenary guards to protect your stuff and/or raid your competitors' warehouses. Rather than have a bloody and expensive conflict, Florence gave him a time-limited monopoly, in exchange for teaching everyone else how to do his invention.
So, yeah, it's not an incentive to get people to invent. It's an incentive to get people to destroy trade secrets, because those really stifle innovation.
On the other side of the coin, I can think of at least a few products which have not made it to market because of patents, and the inventors will not even try until the offending patents expire in another 10 years. For example, Touch sensitive trigger for paintball guns would be a very neat idea, but until recently were not viable because they required the paintball gun to use an electronic triggering mechanism, the patent for which was granted almost 20 years ago. The company that owned the patent was charging outrageous fees to use their technology, which was obvious technology to virtually every engineer that ever touched a paintball gun. Because of that one company and the patent system that supported them, paintball guns have remained largely in the dark ages for 20 years.
Oh, no, 20 years! We might as well all go back to living in caves, because, clearly we are in a dark age of invention.
Also, if true, then your story is really about bad legal and economic advice, not patents. Damages for patent infringement are limited to a reasonable royalty, which, by definition couldn't ever be more than your profits. As you correctly noted at the beginning of your post, people do things that make them money. If you can bring a product to market and pay an outrageous 10% royalty on your profits, you're still making profits. If you don't bring the product to market, as an intelligent commenter stated, you "are guaranteed not to make any money". So, the reason for not bringing the tech to market was, at most, bad legal and economic advice, or much more likely, other reasons such as market size, cost of parts, etc.
Patents are bad. Most people with an IQ in the triple digits understand this intuitively, even if they cant put an explanation to it. They were designed so that novel inventions would end up being cataloged in such a way that the designs could be used for further development, but now they are used as a weapon to prevent companies from ha
It looks to me like a confusing use of 'the x administration' to designate a particular division of time, even when the subject at hand has little connection to event separating time periods.
Yes and no - it may still reflect a legitimate difference between John Dudas (PTO director appointed by Bush) and David Kappos (PTO director appointed by Obama). While Bush/Obama may not care about the specifics (and may be more beholden to their corporate interests anyway), Dudas and Kappos had different concepts about how Examination should be funded, what the timelines should be, etc.
Yes, I definitely should have phrased my first reply differently and checked the actual history, apologies for phrasing that was misleading from my intent.
I believe the crux of the issue is that Hogan _should_ have mentioned the prior lawsuits when questioned in voir dire. I don't blame the judge, and have mixed feelings about Samsung's culpability if Hogan withheld information after being explicitly asked. Kudos for the Boston Legal reference, I really liked that show.
No worries. Yeah, Hogan probably should have mentioned the prior lawsuits. The problem is that bit about Samsung's culpability... If they really and truly had no way of knowing about it, then they're not penalized and could have raised it and gotten a mistrial. For example, if Hogan had changed his name since that trial, particularly in another state, and so they couldn't just search for "Hogan" in their records and in the court records.
Basically, what it comes down to is that, if Samsung really didn't know, they shouldn't be penalized, but if Samsung they did know and were holding it as an ace up their sleeve, that's dastardly and we won't stand for it. But we can't prove whether they knew or not, without requiring all sorts of disclosure of internal litigation notes, breaching confidentiality and attorney-client privilege, etc., etc. So, instead, the court uses a "reasonable due diligence" standard that, by definition, is going to be somewhat subjective and vague and not at all satisfying to engineers, and says that if Samsung's attorneys acted with reasonable due diligence, would they have found out about the Hogan-Seagate connection? The resulting conclusion is that either yes, they did know and concealed it, or no, they didn't know because they're incompetent. But we won't assume they're incompetent unless they want to volunteer that explanation, but even if they do, that's between Samsung and Samsung's attorneys in a malpractice suit, and doesn't involve Apple.
Hogan's patent, in my admittedly amateur reading, seems broad. It reads like a small computer with hardware and software and functions for downloading, retrieving, and managing video. The only thing that seems specific is the disk head reading portion, but I would love clarification on what would distinguish this patent from a general DVR device.
Well, the claim is:
1. A video system comprising:
a system controller module, consisting of one tuner, wherein the tuner is configured to receive a process one or more input signals and provide one or more video signals,
with at least one processor module coupled to the tuner, wherein the at least one processor module is configured to receive and process the one or more video signals from the tuner and to provide at least one output video signal,
with a decoder coupled to the tuner, wherein the decoder is configured to receive and decode the one or more video signals from the tuner to provide at least one decoded video file, and
a memory unit configured to store the at least one decoded video file, wherein the system controller module is operative to receive and process the one or more input signals to provide the one or more video files,
wherein the system controller module provides a user-selectable option of editing one or more sections of the one or more video files, and
wherein the system controller module does not include a separate program information receiver;
an internal fixed storage device operatively coupled to the system controller module, wherein the internal fixed storage device is configured to store the one or more video files from the system controller module; and
an internal removable media storage device operatively coupled to the system controller module, wherein the internal removable media storage device is configured to store the one or more video files from the system controller module or the internal fixed storage device.
Now, without taking a po
First, the incorrect or misleading:
But in the last four years there's been a sharp reversal, with a 2012 allowance rate about 20 percent higher than it was in 2009.
It can also be looked at as 12% higher, since it went from about 58% to about 70% in that time. "20 percent higher" is misleading. "120 percent of the 2009 rate" would be correct.
Calculating the real allowance rate is tricky because inventors can submit the same application multiple times. "From the perspective of the patent office, a 'final rejection' doesn't get rid of an application," Quillen told Ars in a December phone interview. If an application is rejected, the inventor can make minor changes to the application and file it again. "The only way you can reduce your numbers and get rid of somebody is to allow the case," Quillen said.
There are a number of different ways to re-file applications, with names like File Wrapper Continuations, Continued Prosecution Applications, Requests for Continued Examination and Continuation-In-Part Applications. But in all cases, the upshot is the same: the applicant gets another shot at convincing examiners to grant him a patent.
These are talking about two different things, mainly because the journalist doesn't understand the distinction:
1) An application can be "finally rejected" by the USPTO (meaning that it was rejected on specific grounds, the applicant replied, and the Examiner wasn't persuaded and "finally" rejected the application on those grounds), and the Applicant can amend to narrow the claims and file a request for continued examination or a continued prosecution application (the same thing, but for design patents).
For example, say you were Toyota and were patenting the Prius, and you originally had a claim of "1. A car, comprising: four wheels, an engine, and a battery" and the Examiner comes back and says "duh, that's every car." If you tried to argue that you meant a battery running the engine, but the Examiner wasn't persuaded since that distinction isn't in your claims (and there's other prior art with electric engines), they'd finally reject it. If you then amended your claims to recite your novel planetary engine dual-powered transmission, you'd have to file a request for continued examination so that it could be considered.
It's not really "submitting the same application multiple times" but several iterations of narrowing the application and arguing that as narrowed, it's patentable, until it finally is narrow enough to be allowed.
2) New applications can be filed as continuation applications or continuation-in-part applications, but they're not the "same application" by definition. Continuations and continued prosecution applications have the same specification, but different claims. Like, say, to save money, you wrote a patent application that described two separate, but related inventions. Like say, a new machine for more efficiently turning horses into glue, and a new offset gearing system for use in that machine or others that has increased torque with reduced tension. You could file a single application describing both, but only claiming the horse part. Later, you could file a continuation application using the same specification and claiming the gearing system part.
This helps small inventors by not requiring them to file dozens of applications on day one, when they might be short of cash, but file one big one, then later file additional continuations as they're able to raise capital. Importantly, all of the applications have the same effective priority date for prior art, and any patents coming from the applications expire on the same d
They only asked him about Samsung
That's not correct. Samsung brought this up in their appeal.
In the jury selection Hogan failed to mention the seagate lawsuit, but rather deflected by citing a smaller lawsuit that wasn't actually brought to court. link to pdf of questioning
Maybe I misunderstood your original statement... You said "From what I could tell, the jury foreman lied by omission when he was being questioned about his previous relationships with Samsung/Seagate." He was questioned about whether he had any relationships to the parties in the case, Samsung and Apple, which is what I thought you were referring to. He was never questioned about his relationship with Seagate. From the opinion denying juror misconduct:
Despite [the Seagate/Samsung] relationship, counsel for Samsung did not ask Mr. Hogan about this relationship with Seagate, and did not seek to elicit any information about whether that relationship might influence Mr. Hogan’s view in any way.
He was also asked if he had been in any litigation, and as you note, he failed to mention the prior trial... However, during voir dire, Samsung looked into Hogan's file and saw the bankruptcy proceeding, and then ignored it:
Samsung has waived its claim for an evidentiary hearing and a new trial based on Mr. Hogan’s alleged dishonesty during voir dire. Prior to the verdict, Samsung could have discovered Mr. Hogan’s litigation with Seagate, had Samsung acted with reasonable diligence based on information Samsung acquired through voir dire, namely that Mr. Hogan stated during voir dire that he had worked for Seagate.
As I said earlier, it's likely that Samsung did know of Hogan's relationship to Seagate and kept that information secret so that they could bring it up, as they did, in the event of an adverse jury decision. I'm sure they would have kept it silent if he had been biased the other way, filled with loyal feelings for Seagate/Samsung, and the jury came back with a decision of non-infringement. That's not allowed in real court, though, even if it's standard fare for Boston Legal.
Notice I used the word "dubious". I was referring specifically to Hogan's seemingly weak patent on a tivo-like technology, and how that could be seen to bias him towards defending flimsy or overly broad patents. As you say, Samsung should have taken this into consideration.
(i) What makes that "seemingly weak"? I mean, check out that independent claim - it's huge, and really narrow. It's a weak patent from an enforcement perspective, but less so from a validity perspective. Plus, it's not even a software patent - it's only claiming a hardware machine.
(ii) In my experience, many inventors think that their patents are strong and valid, while others are flimsy or overly broad. Nothing leads to the conclusion that an inventor must think their own patent is flimsy and therefore want to defend other flimsy patents, as opposed to the conclusion that the inventor thinks their own patent is strong and wants to get rid of flimsy patents to clear the chaff from the wheat.
Honestly, jury selection is complicated, with factors on both sides. Samsung may have kept Hogan on the jury because, being an engineer, they thought he was like many Slashdotters and would be anti-software patents (particularly wit
From what I could tell, the jury foreman lied by omission when he was being questioned about his previous relationships with Samsung/Seagate.
They only asked him about Samsung. It's not clear that he knew at the time that Seagate had been bought by Samsung... But on the other hand, Samsung should have been able to do a simple search through their files and say "hey, we sued this guy once... maybe we shouldn't have him on the jury?" Additionally, Samsung's lawyers should have done a simple records search to see if he had ever been in court before, since at the very least they'd want to know if he was a juror in a related trial, if he was involved in a related trial as a witness, etc., so that they could get some idea of which way he would vote. Researching the members of the jury is like litigation 101. That would've turned up the prior suit, too.
Regardless, he should have been outed by _someone_ as having a conflict of interest in the outcome as the holder of a dubious intellectual property patent.
So should no one who's an inventor on a patent be involved in a patent trial? That seems to be the opposite of what people say on Slashdot, where people wish that juries weren't lay idiots but actually had some relevant technical background.
It's also a huge stretch to call it a conflict of interest. It's like saying you can't have a doctor on a jury in any medical malpractice case, because they have an interest in seeing doctors not be liable. That's silly - they may equally have a strong interest in seeing bad doctors punished.
What if there was an open source advocate on the jury, who believed that software shouldn't be patentable... Would you say he should be kicked off as having a conflict of interest too?
Anyway, Samsung had the opportunity to remove him during voir dire before the trial started. They knew he was a patent owner and decided not to use a challenge to remove him. Apparently, they didn't think that "any patent owner" would be automatically biased against them.
> What "truly epic level bad decision"?
The obvious conflict of interest of the patent troll wannabe serving as jury foreman. The moment he started he started running his mouth off, the whole thing should have been declared a mistrial.
He didn't run his mouth off until after the trial was over and judgement was settled. Are you saying juries should never be able to talk about their experience after the fact? How does that not violate their first amendment rights?
As for the potential conflict of interest, as I said, Samsung had notice of that well in advance. They can't keep that as an ace up their sleeve and only play it if the jury finds against them. Contrary to popular belief, trials don't work like they do on TV or in the movies: you don't get to bring in surprise witnesses or evidence, or suddenly bring up a conflict of interest after the trial has already started. Instead, if you want to use that stuff, you have to raise it at the beginning.
No, the judge's decision was exactly right. The fail was on the part of Samsung's attorneys, either for not investigating the jury and finding out that one of them had been in a suit against Seagate, or - more likely, since attorneys always investigate the jury - for finding out about it and keeping it secret to raise in the case of an adverse judgement, which was too-clever-by-half, since it's not actually allowed.
The judge made one truly epic level bad decision with the Apple Samsung case, is anyone surprised she did the same thing with another case? The whole situation is deplorable and needs a significant legal remedy to prevent it from ever happening again.
What "truly epic level bad decision"? And what appellate or Supreme Court precedents can you point to as evidence of her error? Or is this just really "something happened that you disagree with"?
For example, if you're referring to the Hogan thing where Samsung may have concealed evidence of potential bias until they had a decision against them, that's not going to be enough. Or if you're referring to Apple not getting a preliminary injunction since money damages could be enough to compensate them, then that's going to be enough. Or if you're referring to Samsung not getting to introduce new evidence at trial that they didn't produce as required during discovery, when they knew about it since it was their own prototypes, then that's not going to be enough either.
Frankly, the judge didn't make any bad decisions - Samsung's attorneys blew the case.
Smmary's incorrect, too. NPR's TOS bars people under 18 from registering accounts, shopping, or participating in contests. It explicitly allows under 18 year olds to read the site.