I installed a whitelist app. If you're in my contacts, your call gets through. Otherwise, you go directly to voice mail. If it's important, I'll call back at my convenience. Most of the time, it's not.
Wow. That seems crazy.
I hate telemarketers as much as the next guy. But when I get a call from a number not in my contacts sometimes it's very important (such as my grandmother in the hospital and such).
The hospital will leave a voice mail. Robocallers don't.
I'm reminded of a story I heard somewhere (book, movie, sorry can't remember) were some people were on their way to work and they where discussing the fact that if they were late the punishment was death. Somewhere along the way they were delayed and were going to be late for their work and one guy asks another one what is the punishment for revolting, and the answer was death. So faced with the same punishment if they revolted or late for work and they were already late for work, they decided to revolt instead.
While the current punishment for piracy isn't death, it's the same if you pirate a movie that would of been in the public domain vs. something that is current and wouldn't be in the public domain; then to the pirate, what is the difference?
Of course to the pirate, nothing, but if the purpose of the piracy is civil disobedience (which the OP was talking about and you responding to) then it does matter because it would be to express the idea that Copyright is broken.
Ah, but it's not exactly the same. Sure, the charge - copyright infringement - is the same, but there's a difference between Disney asking a jury for huge statutory damages for you distributing a copy of Wreck-it Ralph, and Disney asking a jury for huge statutory damages for you distributing a copy of Steamboat Willie. It's that credibility thing I mentioned. The jury is going to side with the person making an obvious political stand over the one who looks greedy and is trying to claim a political point as a post hoc explanation.
Similarly, let's use your story - the penalty for revolting, or being late for work is death - but bring it closer to the current suggestion: they aren't late yet. Instead, they're making a conscious decision to be late in civil disobedience because they believe that law is stupid, and they wait outside their work with signs protesting the law.
And then there's one guy who kills a government official and claims after the fact that he was really doing it in protest about the lateness law.
Now, which ones do you think a jury will side with and either find not liable, or (and the analogy deviates a bit here since juries don't determine sentences, but they do determine damages) apply only the tiniest slap on the wrist?
"It is the fault of the users." Are you just trolling? Because if you're not, you don't have the slightest understanding of this situation.
If you want to switch to a different carrier, you DO, in fact, have to pay a large fee to get out of the original contract. If you don't pay it, it's handled like any other legitimate debt.
Yeah - they chase after you with letters, bills, collection agencies, etc., to hopefully collect 5% of what you owe... if they're lucky.
If you paid full price for a phone, and don't have a contract, why would a corporation get to tell you what you can and can't do with the phone after you've paid for it?
Please re-read the summary: "On January 26th, unlocking a cell phone that is under contract became illegal in the U.S. Just before that went into effect..."
Do you know why their doing this?It's because of the problem of so many people getting cells/droids under a contarcted agreement then deciding they want to switch to a diferent carrier without having to pay a large fe to get out of the original contract so I can understand why the major company's want this law.The people themselves are the reason this is happening,it is not the fault of the providers whatsoever,it is the fault of the users
If you get out of your contract agreement, you're going to pay a fee which is dependent on how long you have to go on your contract, regardless of whether you can unlock your phone or not. The fee is for breaking the contract, not to unlock your phone.
And what about when the people doing this purchase a dozen subsidized phones, unlock them and resell them, and then simply refuse to pay the fee for breaching the contract? Or what if they use a fake credit card for the initial purchase? Or use a valid credit card, then simply stop paying it and leave the CC company and the carrier to try to chase after them with collection agencies to get, at most, pennies on the dollar?
Someone wanting an unlocked phone can simply buy an unlocked phone. All of the carriers happily sell them. This is just about people wanting a free discount.
but it should be particularly when the industry comes knocking in 2019 to ask for life + 90 to keep Steamboat Willy from entering the public domain.
I feel it's important to have a good copyright system. At the same time, this whole life + 70 nonsense is, as we've discussed, counterproductive. To that end, I propose a national day of piracy every year. Perhaps on April 1st, although I'm open to other ideas (September 19th?). The goal being to declare a specific day of civil disobediance where we openly pirate something that should be public domain and then declare what you pirated on a social network.
And if you openly pirate, say, Steamboat Willie, on the grounds that it should have passed into the public domain, I think that's a reasonable and arguably justifiable protest. But if you openly pirate, say, Wreck-it Ralph, or Brave, or (shortly) Monsters University - movies that have been out for less than a year - then your alleged argument that copyright should have a shorter, 20-30 year term is unsupported by your actions.
And therein lies the problem... How many people are pirating Steamboat Willie, the Seven Year Itch, To Catch a Thief, etc., as opposed to recent movies, music, games, and software? The Top 10 most pirated movies chart for this week lists Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, Skyfall, Django Unchained, Argo, The Hobbit, Here Comes the Boom, Flight, Zero Dark Thirty, and Robot and Frank, every one of which is less than a year old. Similarly, the top pirated games (for 2011, I can't find 2012 numbers) were all released that year.
Now, I get that people will claim that they pirate newly released (or not even released yet) movies and games "because they disagree with overly long copyright terms, and so think any copyright term under the current regime is invalid," but: (i) they lack credibility, since they sure look like people who don't want to pay for entertainment and are trying to come up with a believable post hoc justification;
(ii) the ones who claim there should be a 20 or 30 year term look no different from the ones who claim that copyright should be abolished, since they're taking the exact same actions; and
(iii) because of i and ii, no legislator is going to consider them anything more than a greedy, selfish crackpot.
Your suggestion isn't bad, except that people shouldn't be pirating just anything, but specifically things that would have fallen into the public domain but-for the last extension. Things that are currently 60 years past the life of the author, say. That would be a meaningful, and credible, protest.
How do you prove that something wasn't obvious? Prove that no one, anywhere in the world, in the entirety of history, had that idea before? Should we conduct surveys using our time machine?
It depends on the threshold. I'm not asking for "beyond reasonable doubt here", but rather something more akin to "preponderance of evidence". This is something that could be solved by a panel of industry experts, for example.
The problem there is that the application sits in a backlog for a couple years before it gets examined, and in that time, the inventor may have released product, given lectures, shown around white papers, taught classes, etc. explaining the invention. It may be common knowledge to those experts and obvious years later - just like you or I could probably sketch a model of an internal combustion engine on a napkin right now - but that doesn't mean that it was when the application was filed. You need a panel of "experts" that aren't actually experts now, but have been in isolation from the state of the art for several years.
There's a reason the burden of proof is on the patent examiner, just like there's a reason the burden of proof is on the prosecution.
As noted, the difference is night and day. In patent cases, the patent owner is really a defender - rather, we all (the society) are, because he is seeking to limit our freedom for the sake of his profit. I think it's a good idea to make it so that any such limit has to be proven to be reasonable, as opposed to us having to prove every time that the limit is unreasonable. After all, we have been practicing the latter for a long time, and look what a mess the patent system has become today.
What mess? And it's actually pretty easy to show something is obvious - you just have to find each of the elements in the prior art, even if they're not in the same reference. Like, if A, B, and C are known, then a patent claiming A+B+C is obvious. But if no one's ever heard of C before, then how can that patent be obvious?
Translation: "I have no actual response to your substantive comments, so I'll cut off your post at the second word and quibble about that one word. Hopefully, no one will notice."
Would your second comment come with a rectification of the misuse of FUD (I don't know... probably some apologies for misusing it) maybe I'd be inclined to consider what comes after the offending word.
Clearly, you're the real victim here. Forget your threadjacking and obfuscation of our topic, your refusal to address the substantive points in the post- no, you've been offended!
Well, my utmost apologies to you, Sir. I feel shamed for using a three letter acronym in a way that you felt was offensive. Your pearl clutching, swooning collapse due to those three letters is not unnoticed, and I will try to remedy my behavior in the future, should we ever meet again. I hope your blood pressure eventually returns to normal, and my condolences to your ulcer.
I'm not a patent examiner, so I can use my common sense and industry experience to make this conclusion. It's obvious that it's obvious.
I disagree. But that aside, my point is that the PTO and the courts are bound by the constitution and the requirements of due process, so they can't merely decide a patent is invalid without evidence.
Also, this is not a court of law, and we're not debating whether we should stick Google into prison for murder; quite the opposite, we're debating giving them the privilege to prevent other people from using something. If anything, they should be the ones to prove that everything is in order, including that it's not obvious, if anyone claims otherwise.
How do you prove that something wasn't obvious? Prove that no one, anywhere in the world, in the entirety of history, had that idea before? Should we conduct surveys using our time machine?
There's a reason the burden of proof is on the patent examiner, just like there's a reason the burden of proof is on the prosecution. Justice, as well as logic, demands it.
If you actually read the patent, it is specifically for a similar method, but designed for Distributed File Systems.
Ahhhh... that's good.
You see, I was scared shitless that we are still quibbling over patents granted with the only claimed difference over some old methods (patented or not) being "on a computer".
I see now how wrong I was: we stepped in the glorious era of the "in the cloud" claims.
More FUD
FUD? FUD you say? "You Keep Using That Word, I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means"
I'm trying to scare nobody from nothing and neither cast any doubt on the patents on software (to me, it's clear: they are crap. You believe what you want about them).
I'd see acceptable for you to say about my post "That's shit... and of a bull origin!"; at least you'd be entitled to your own opinion and I'd try to see how you argue it. But FUD? That's so wrong, I stopped reading there.
Translation: "I have no actual response to your substantive comments, so I'll cut off your post at the second word and quibble about that one word. Hopefully, no one will notice."
The current system encourages greed by allowing the patent holder to wait years before filing against a company. This actually prevents the company from stopping the infringement since they aren't made aware of the problem. The system doesn't need to be scrapped it needs to be fixed and reasonable rules and limitations brought in.
The current system has already fixed this. It's called the Laches doctrine. You can't sit, knowing that there's an infringer, and wait for years before every contacting them or filing suit, or else equity will prevent you from going after them.
The other part of this, submarine patents, were done away with in an amendment in 2000 that requires all applications to be published, and expire 20 years from the priority date. No more filing secret continuations for decades to stretch out a 17-year-from-grant term.
Did you also inspect the quota for the user owning the file to determine if you should delete it?
Obvious enough that it's not patent-worthy.
In hindsight, sure. But to show it was obvious at the time the application was filed, you need to show that that element exists in one or more prior art references.
Think of it like convicting someone for murder. You can't just look at them and say "they look guilty", you have to provide evidence to support that conclusion. Saying the claim is "obvious" is a conclusion, too, that has to be supported by evidence.
If the patent process were anything like the peer review process, a bunch of distributed filesystem engineers would have been asked how to implement file expiration, and their answer, within five minutes, would sound something very close to this.
If the patent process were anything like the peer review process, patents would name dozens of "inventors" based on their seniority and tenure, and would be granted for political reasons rather than their novelty.
If you actually read the patent, it is specifically for a similar method, but designed for Distributed File Systems.
Ahhhh... that's good.
You see, I was scared shitless that we are still quibbling over patents granted with the only claimed difference over some old methods (patented or not) being "on a computer".
I see now how wrong I was: we stepped in the glorious era of the "in the cloud" claims.
More FUD. There are no patents that claim "[old method], on a computer". You can paraphrase some patents that way, as the Summary does where it says this is "essentially a kludgy variation." However, by definition, when you paraphrase something to explain it, you are explicitly replacing some of its terms with known, simple, easy to understand terms. For example, if I were to paraphrase a Tesla Model S to someone in 1950, I'd describe it as a sedan, but with electricity instead of gas. Does that mean that suddenly that's all a Tesla is? Could that 1950s person build one? Is a patent covering its power train suddenly trivial, because it's just "car, on electricity"? Of course not.
Paraphrasing is not the patent. The title is not the patent. Even the abstract is not the patent. The claim is the patent, and unless you can find a claim that says "1. A method, comprising doing a known method, but on a computer", then this is all just FUD and misdirection.
Can we please have an end to the stupid articles where someone intentionally mis-interprets the abstract or even just the title of a patent and pretends it's some simple thing that's been done for decades to try to drum up anti-patent sentiment? There seems to be one a week or so.
Unlikely.
Nonetheless, anti-patent sentiment is a good thing. Far too many people assume there's some sort of fairness or justice to the whole mess, and there isn't.
But unfortunately, when the anti-patent crowd goes screaming to their legislators that we need patent reform because all software is obvious, or because Apple patented rounded corners, or because Google patented a 1970s mainframe, those legislators roll their eyes, nod politely, and call for security. There are some reasonable arguments for patent reform, but they get lost under all this FUD, discrediting anyone who tries to bring up those arguments.
Honestly, it makes you wonder if some of the anti-patent crowd on Slashdot is secretly pro-patent.
If companies keep things as trade secrets, they run the risk that those same things could be "invented" and patented by another.
"Invented" and kept as trade secrets by another - remember, you disincentivized patents. Plus, if everyone is keeping trade secrets, no one cares if someone else gets a patent - good luck proving you infringed, considering you do it in a locked-down back room with no one except a few high-level employees allowed access.
Basically, the patent system could be tweaked so that anything that hasn't been patented and has been kept secret can be patented by another. Prior art would only count for published inventions. This way, companies can decide to keep things secret (more power to them) but anything can be reverse engineered.
That's how trade secrets and patents work now, except that patents aren't disincentivized to the point that no one wants them. Trade secrets currently don't count as prior art, because they're not known to the public - or rather, they're prior art, but can't be used to invalidate the patent since no one knows about them.
And finally, there's a philosophical point - you say companies can keep things secret, and "more power to them". That's bad for the public. Trade secrets are harmful and stifle innovation, because the inventions never get published. Other inventors can't piggy-back on them or come up with improvements, and companies waste thousands of man-hours re-inventing the same things, since none of them can share or license their trade secret inventions, by definition. Sure, companies have the power to keep things secret, but we want to discourage them from doing so as much as possible.
I would go further than the patent office though with its discount for small entities.
I would have annual application and maintenance fees of $100,000 per patent. (This would stop companies hoarding patents, especially the like of IBM who are awarded on the order of 6000 patents per year.)
To make this easier, I would have a discount on the 1st 100 patents owned per individual or corporate entity, e.g. $100 per patent.
I would base this on beneficial ownership, so basically, if you own the patent, or license it exclusively, then you pay the fee. If companies wilfully violate this, I would take their patents of them and put them in the public domain.
Basically, companies have an incentive to patent lots of things because it is so incredibly cheap to do so, especially on the off chance that someone independently thinks of something similar enough, but more useful. COmpanies should only patent things they want to make, and having hefty fees would ensure that companies do not patent too many things speculatively.
... and then companies would still invent things, but keep them internally as trade secrets, only letting them trickle out when they make something that includes the thing or when they drop a different patent and get a new one covering it, and there would be non-disclosure agreements attached to everything you purchase. Innovation would stagnate, at least as far as the public domain was concerned. Brilliant idea.
No. Nor have I ever heard anyway claim that as being their primary function. Let's adjust that to say that patent laws are designed to promote innovation and invention by disproportionately reward the production of ideas compared to the actual work and creation being done. This, in theory, helps any size of inventor put in R&D monies to chase a high reward.
Common misconception, but not true - patents aren't a reward for anything. You want a reward, go chase a Nobel. Rather, patents are a limited monopoly grudgingly given in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. That's why there are all sorts of written description and enablement requirements on patent applications, rather than just a voting committee deciding whether your invention was sufficiently awesome to deserve a reward.
It's always been this way, too. Almost 600 years ago, Brunelleschi invented an improved ship loading/unloading system. He would have kept it secret, loading his ships only under cover of night with armed guards watching for spies, but the lords of Florence felt that this idea was something so important that the public needed access to it. So, because he "refuse[d] to make such machine available to the public" unless "he enjoyed some prerogative concerning this" they gave him a three year limited monopoly, in exchange for disclosing it.
Patents really aren't a reward, but an exchange that destroys trade secrets.
They've also been applied to things that probably shouldn't be patentable like genes and software.
Why should something be patentable if hardwired but not patentable if emulated?
Man, I wish PJ would deconstruct this so I knew what was going on. So what that tells me is that the novel part of his invention was the spring that generated power directly to the radio? And when the company found a different way to do that, they cut him out?
Not even cut him out - his patent covered a specific mechanical implementation of storing power in a tightly wound spring. They stopped using springs and started using cheap batteries, which his patent didn't cover. He also sold his shares in the company. If he was screwed by anything, it was that latter decision.
Patent reform is badly needed. To tailor it to this poor unfortunate soul's anecdotal evidence might just make the situation worse. I am suspicious of this piece because it relies on soft journalism describing how human Mr. Baylis is in his grandfatherly estate and stays away from the hard numbers or specific details of precisely just how he was wronged by the patent system.
Agreed... Also note that his suggested reform includes criminal penalties for infringing a patent. Oh, sorry, Apple has that patent on a slide to unlock mechanism, so because you used it, you're going to jail.
Yes, it's true that the patent is only on the isolated gene, and not the gene in the form as it exists naturally in the body.
However, the process for isolating this gene is something that has already been done for years with other genes, so there is nothing patentworthy in isolating this gene.
But it's not a patent on the process, so the fact that the process has been done before is irrelevant. This is a patent covering a new composition of matter.
It's like a patent on vulcanized rubber. You can't say that vulcanized rubber is not patent worthy, merely because heating things has been done for years.
This is another example of where the patenting system (around the World it seems) has just gone completely stupid. A gene is a naturally occuring entity and should not be patentable.
The isolated gene, however, is not naturally occurring. You can't possibly infringe the patent by having the gene in you.
There are other reasons why this might be a bad idea and other arguments for why genes shouldn't be patentable, but that's not one of them.
And that's the thing though isn't it? "Doing math on a computer"? Is that worthy of a patent? After all, it can be ANY computer. Windows, Linux, Android, Mac or other? Any processor can be used, nearly any hardware configuration can be used. The idea of a software patent as much as they would like to deny it, is in the same ballpark as "on the internet" types of patents.
Doesn't it depend on what the math involved is? If you have an invention claiming A+B+C, you don't need each of A, B, and C to be independently patentable, novel, and nonobvious. In fact, if you had them, you'd then just claim A, B, and C separately.
More concretely, if you claim [an automobile chassis] (known)+[4 wheels] (known)+[a micro sized cold fusion-based electric power plant] (unknown), why is that not "worthy of a patent"? After all, it can be ANY wheels. Goodyear, Michelin, BF Goodrich, or other? Any chassis can be used, nearly any hardware configuration for those other two elements. So therefore, cold fusion power plants shouldn't be patentable, because they're in the same ballpark as "on the internet" types of patents?
Of course not. And yet, for some reason, this gets thrown out the window when we talk about software.
Running software on a computer is pretty much using a computer for its intended purpose -- executing instructions. By changing the instructions, are you really inventing something new? That's a really tough argument to make.
What's tough about that? Had someone else come up with those instructions or that cold fusion based engine before? Then what does it matter if the wheels of the car or the processor of the computer already existed? You're not relying on those elements for patentability, but the new stuff that you invented.
The more light that comes to software patents, the less likely they will survive in the future.
Unlikely. Forget your desire to see them abolished and think pragmatically about the amount of money involved. They're not going anywhere, and arguments that they should be abolished are going to fall on deaf ears in Congress. It would be more fruitful to focus arguments on how to reform the patent system to address trolls, poor quality of examination, etc.
another good recent example of this is glenn beck, who wanted WIPO to sieze the rhetorical domain "GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com" - not because it was defamatory, but because of trademark violation.
Not a good recent example, though - the UDRP decision did indicate that it was a possible trademark violation because visitors could confuse it with the Glenn Beck mark. Eiland-Hall won on the other two factors - lack of bad faith, and that he had legitimate interests in the name.
Slashdot Mirror
Nation that HAS built a bomb = target
What nation with a nuclear bomb has ever been invaded?
Wow. That seems crazy.
I hate telemarketers as much as the next guy. But when I get a call from a number not in my contacts sometimes it's very important (such as my grandmother in the hospital and such).
The hospital will leave a voice mail. Robocallers don't.
I'm reminded of a story I heard somewhere (book, movie, sorry can't remember) were some people were on their way to work and they where discussing the fact that if they were late the punishment was death. Somewhere along the way they were delayed and were going to be late for their work and one guy asks another one what is the punishment for revolting, and the answer was death. So faced with the same punishment if they revolted or late for work and they were already late for work, they decided to revolt instead.
While the current punishment for piracy isn't death, it's the same if you pirate a movie that would of been in the public domain vs. something that is current and wouldn't be in the public domain; then to the pirate, what is the difference?
Of course to the pirate, nothing, but if the purpose of the piracy is civil disobedience (which the OP was talking about and you responding to) then it does matter because it would be to express the idea that Copyright is broken.
Ah, but it's not exactly the same. Sure, the charge - copyright infringement - is the same, but there's a difference between Disney asking a jury for huge statutory damages for you distributing a copy of Wreck-it Ralph, and Disney asking a jury for huge statutory damages for you distributing a copy of Steamboat Willie. It's that credibility thing I mentioned. The jury is going to side with the person making an obvious political stand over the one who looks greedy and is trying to claim a political point as a post hoc explanation.
Similarly, let's use your story - the penalty for revolting, or being late for work is death - but bring it closer to the current suggestion: they aren't late yet. Instead, they're making a conscious decision to be late in civil disobedience because they believe that law is stupid, and they wait outside their work with signs protesting the law.
And then there's one guy who kills a government official and claims after the fact that he was really doing it in protest about the lateness law.
Now, which ones do you think a jury will side with and either find not liable, or (and the analogy deviates a bit here since juries don't determine sentences, but they do determine damages) apply only the tiniest slap on the wrist?
Prosecute them for fraud, or stop offering such discounts on phones.
You want criminal investigations, charges, and penalties for breaching a contract? O.o
Are there any examples of a "We the people" petition actually doing anything even if successful?
We got the beer recipe. Hooray.
"It is the fault of the users." Are you just trolling? Because if you're not, you don't have the slightest understanding of this situation.
If you want to switch to a different carrier, you DO, in fact, have to pay a large fee to get out of the original contract. If you don't pay it, it's handled like any other legitimate debt.
Yeah - they chase after you with letters, bills, collection agencies, etc., to hopefully collect 5% of what you owe... if they're lucky.
If you paid full price for a phone, and don't have a contract, why would a corporation get to tell you what you can and can't do with the phone after you've paid for it?
Please re-read the summary: "On January 26th, unlocking a cell phone that is under contract became illegal in the U.S. Just before that went into effect..."
Do you know why their doing this?It's because of the problem of so many people getting cells/droids under a contarcted agreement then deciding they want to switch to a diferent carrier without having to pay a large fe to get out of the original contract so I can understand why the major company's want this law.The people themselves are the reason this is happening,it is not the fault of the providers whatsoever,it is the fault of the users
If you get out of your contract agreement, you're going to pay a fee which is dependent on how long you have to go on your contract, regardless of whether you can unlock your phone or not. The fee is for breaking the contract, not to unlock your phone.
And what about when the people doing this purchase a dozen subsidized phones, unlock them and resell them, and then simply refuse to pay the fee for breaching the contract? Or what if they use a fake credit card for the initial purchase? Or use a valid credit card, then simply stop paying it and leave the CC company and the carrier to try to chase after them with collection agencies to get, at most, pennies on the dollar?
Someone wanting an unlocked phone can simply buy an unlocked phone. All of the carriers happily sell them. This is just about people wanting a free discount.
but it should be particularly when the industry comes knocking in 2019 to ask for life + 90 to keep Steamboat Willy from entering the public domain.
I feel it's important to have a good copyright system. At the same time, this whole life + 70 nonsense is, as we've discussed, counterproductive. To that end, I propose a national day of piracy every year. Perhaps on April 1st, although I'm open to other ideas (September 19th?). The goal being to declare a specific day of civil disobediance where we openly pirate something that should be public domain and then declare what you pirated on a social network.
And if you openly pirate, say, Steamboat Willie, on the grounds that it should have passed into the public domain, I think that's a reasonable and arguably justifiable protest. But if you openly pirate, say, Wreck-it Ralph, or Brave, or (shortly) Monsters University - movies that have been out for less than a year - then your alleged argument that copyright should have a shorter, 20-30 year term is unsupported by your actions.
And therein lies the problem... How many people are pirating Steamboat Willie, the Seven Year Itch, To Catch a Thief, etc., as opposed to recent movies, music, games, and software? The Top 10 most pirated movies chart for this week lists Life of Pi, Silver Linings Playbook, Skyfall, Django Unchained, Argo, The Hobbit, Here Comes the Boom, Flight, Zero Dark Thirty, and Robot and Frank, every one of which is less than a year old. Similarly, the top pirated games (for 2011, I can't find 2012 numbers) were all released that year.
Now, I get that people will claim that they pirate newly released (or not even released yet) movies and games "because they disagree with overly long copyright terms, and so think any copyright term under the current regime is invalid," but:
(i) they lack credibility, since they sure look like people who don't want to pay for entertainment and are trying to come up with a believable post hoc justification;
(ii) the ones who claim there should be a 20 or 30 year term look no different from the ones who claim that copyright should be abolished, since they're taking the exact same actions; and
(iii) because of i and ii, no legislator is going to consider them anything more than a greedy, selfish crackpot.
Your suggestion isn't bad, except that people shouldn't be pirating just anything, but specifically things that would have fallen into the public domain but-for the last extension. Things that are currently 60 years past the life of the author, say. That would be a meaningful, and credible, protest.
How do you prove that something wasn't obvious? Prove that no one, anywhere in the world, in the entirety of history, had that idea before? Should we conduct surveys using our time machine?
It depends on the threshold. I'm not asking for "beyond reasonable doubt here", but rather something more akin to "preponderance of evidence". This is something that could be solved by a panel of industry experts, for example.
The problem there is that the application sits in a backlog for a couple years before it gets examined, and in that time, the inventor may have released product, given lectures, shown around white papers, taught classes, etc. explaining the invention. It may be common knowledge to those experts and obvious years later - just like you or I could probably sketch a model of an internal combustion engine on a napkin right now - but that doesn't mean that it was when the application was filed. You need a panel of "experts" that aren't actually experts now, but have been in isolation from the state of the art for several years.
There's a reason the burden of proof is on the patent examiner, just like there's a reason the burden of proof is on the prosecution.
As noted, the difference is night and day. In patent cases, the patent owner is really a defender - rather, we all (the society) are, because he is seeking to limit our freedom for the sake of his profit. I think it's a good idea to make it so that any such limit has to be proven to be reasonable, as opposed to us having to prove every time that the limit is unreasonable. After all, we have been practicing the latter for a long time, and look what a mess the patent system has become today.
What mess? And it's actually pretty easy to show something is obvious - you just have to find each of the elements in the prior art, even if they're not in the same reference. Like, if A, B, and C are known, then a patent claiming A+B+C is obvious. But if no one's ever heard of C before, then how can that patent be obvious?
Translation: "I have no actual response to your substantive comments, so I'll cut off your post at the second word and quibble about that one word. Hopefully, no one will notice."
Would your second comment come with a rectification of the misuse of FUD (I don't know... probably some apologies for misusing it) maybe I'd be inclined to consider what comes after the offending word.
Clearly, you're the real victim here. Forget your threadjacking and obfuscation of our topic, your refusal to address the substantive points in the post- no, you've been offended!
Well, my utmost apologies to you, Sir. I feel shamed for using a three letter acronym in a way that you felt was offensive. Your pearl clutching, swooning collapse due to those three letters is not unnoticed, and I will try to remedy my behavior in the future, should we ever meet again. I hope your blood pressure eventually returns to normal, and my condolences to your ulcer.
I'm not a patent examiner, so I can use my common sense and industry experience to make this conclusion. It's obvious that it's obvious.
I disagree. But that aside, my point is that the PTO and the courts are bound by the constitution and the requirements of due process, so they can't merely decide a patent is invalid without evidence.
Also, this is not a court of law, and we're not debating whether we should stick Google into prison for murder; quite the opposite, we're debating giving them the privilege to prevent other people from using something. If anything, they should be the ones to prove that everything is in order, including that it's not obvious, if anyone claims otherwise.
How do you prove that something wasn't obvious? Prove that no one, anywhere in the world, in the entirety of history, had that idea before? Should we conduct surveys using our time machine?
There's a reason the burden of proof is on the patent examiner, just like there's a reason the burden of proof is on the prosecution. Justice, as well as logic, demands it.
If you actually read the patent, it is specifically for a similar method, but designed for Distributed File Systems.
Ahhhh... that's good.
You see, I was scared shitless that we are still quibbling over patents granted with the only claimed difference over some old methods (patented or not) being "on a computer". I see now how wrong I was: we stepped in the glorious era of the "in the cloud" claims.
More FUD
FUD? FUD you say? "You Keep Using That Word, I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means"
I'm trying to scare nobody from nothing and neither cast any doubt on the patents on software (to me, it's clear: they are crap. You believe what you want about them). I'd see acceptable for you to say about my post "That's shit... and of a bull origin!"; at least you'd be entitled to your own opinion and I'd try to see how you argue it. But FUD? That's so wrong, I stopped reading there.
Translation: "I have no actual response to your substantive comments, so I'll cut off your post at the second word and quibble about that one word. Hopefully, no one will notice."
The current system encourages greed by allowing the patent holder to wait years before filing against a company. This actually prevents the company from stopping the infringement since they aren't made aware of the problem. The system doesn't need to be scrapped it needs to be fixed and reasonable rules and limitations brought in.
The current system has already fixed this. It's called the Laches doctrine. You can't sit, knowing that there's an infringer, and wait for years before every contacting them or filing suit, or else equity will prevent you from going after them.
The other part of this, submarine patents, were done away with in an amendment in 2000 that requires all applications to be published, and expire 20 years from the priority date. No more filing secret continuations for decades to stretch out a 17-year-from-grant term.
Utility, novelty, and non-obviousness. This patent clearly fails at least one of these conditions.
"Guilty. The defendant clearly is guilty, because I say so."
You've presented a conclusion... how about some evidence to support it?
Did you also inspect the quota for the user owning the file to determine if you should delete it?
Obvious enough that it's not patent-worthy.
In hindsight, sure. But to show it was obvious at the time the application was filed, you need to show that that element exists in one or more prior art references.
Think of it like convicting someone for murder. You can't just look at them and say "they look guilty", you have to provide evidence to support that conclusion. Saying the claim is "obvious" is a conclusion, too, that has to be supported by evidence.
If the patent process were anything like the peer review process, a bunch of distributed filesystem engineers would have been asked how to implement file expiration, and their answer, within five minutes, would sound something very close to this.
If the patent process were anything like the peer review process, patents would name dozens of "inventors" based on their seniority and tenure, and would be granted for political reasons rather than their novelty.
If you actually read the patent, it is specifically for a similar method, but designed for Distributed File Systems.
Ahhhh... that's good.
You see, I was scared shitless that we are still quibbling over patents granted with the only claimed difference over some old methods (patented or not) being "on a computer". I see now how wrong I was: we stepped in the glorious era of the "in the cloud" claims.
More FUD. There are no patents that claim "[old method], on a computer". You can paraphrase some patents that way, as the Summary does where it says this is "essentially a kludgy variation." However, by definition, when you paraphrase something to explain it, you are explicitly replacing some of its terms with known, simple, easy to understand terms. For example, if I were to paraphrase a Tesla Model S to someone in 1950, I'd describe it as a sedan, but with electricity instead of gas. Does that mean that suddenly that's all a Tesla is? Could that 1950s person build one? Is a patent covering its power train suddenly trivial, because it's just "car, on electricity"? Of course not.
Paraphrasing is not the patent. The title is not the patent. Even the abstract is not the patent. The claim is the patent, and unless you can find a claim that says "1. A method, comprising doing a known method, but on a computer", then this is all just FUD and misdirection.
Can we please have an end to the stupid articles where someone intentionally mis-interprets the abstract or even just the title of a patent and pretends it's some simple thing that's been done for decades to try to drum up anti-patent sentiment? There seems to be one a week or so.
Unlikely. Nonetheless, anti-patent sentiment is a good thing. Far too many people assume there's some sort of fairness or justice to the whole mess, and there isn't.
But unfortunately, when the anti-patent crowd goes screaming to their legislators that we need patent reform because all software is obvious, or because Apple patented rounded corners, or because Google patented a 1970s mainframe, those legislators roll their eyes, nod politely, and call for security. There are some reasonable arguments for patent reform, but they get lost under all this FUD, discrediting anyone who tries to bring up those arguments.
Honestly, it makes you wonder if some of the anti-patent crowd on Slashdot is secretly pro-patent.
If companies keep things as trade secrets, they run the risk that those same things could be "invented" and patented by another.
"Invented" and kept as trade secrets by another - remember, you disincentivized patents. Plus, if everyone is keeping trade secrets, no one cares if someone else gets a patent - good luck proving you infringed, considering you do it in a locked-down back room with no one except a few high-level employees allowed access.
Basically, the patent system could be tweaked so that anything that hasn't been patented and has been kept secret can be patented by another. Prior art would only count for published inventions. This way, companies can decide to keep things secret (more power to them) but anything can be reverse engineered.
That's how trade secrets and patents work now, except that patents aren't disincentivized to the point that no one wants them. Trade secrets currently don't count as prior art, because they're not known to the public - or rather, they're prior art, but can't be used to invalidate the patent since no one knows about them.
And finally, there's a philosophical point - you say companies can keep things secret, and "more power to them". That's bad for the public. Trade secrets are harmful and stifle innovation, because the inventions never get published. Other inventors can't piggy-back on them or come up with improvements, and companies waste thousands of man-hours re-inventing the same things, since none of them can share or license their trade secret inventions, by definition. Sure, companies have the power to keep things secret, but we want to discourage them from doing so as much as possible.
I would go further than the patent office though with its discount for small entities.
I would have annual application and maintenance fees of $100,000 per patent. (This would stop companies hoarding patents, especially the like of IBM who are awarded on the order of 6000 patents per year.)
To make this easier, I would have a discount on the 1st 100 patents owned per individual or corporate entity, e.g. $100 per patent.
I would base this on beneficial ownership, so basically, if you own the patent, or license it exclusively, then you pay the fee. If companies wilfully violate this, I would take their patents of them and put them in the public domain.
Basically, companies have an incentive to patent lots of things because it is so incredibly cheap to do so, especially on the off chance that someone independently thinks of something similar enough, but more useful. COmpanies should only patent things they want to make, and having hefty fees would ensure that companies do not patent too many things speculatively.
... and then companies would still invent things, but keep them internally as trade secrets, only letting them trickle out when they make something that includes the thing or when they drop a different patent and get a new one covering it, and there would be non-disclosure agreements attached to everything you purchase. Innovation would stagnate, at least as far as the public domain was concerned. Brilliant idea.
Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors?
No. Nor have I ever heard anyway claim that as being their primary function. Let's adjust that to say that patent laws are designed to promote innovation and invention by disproportionately reward the production of ideas compared to the actual work and creation being done. This, in theory, helps any size of inventor put in R&D monies to chase a high reward.
Common misconception, but not true - patents aren't a reward for anything. You want a reward, go chase a Nobel. Rather, patents are a limited monopoly grudgingly given in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. That's why there are all sorts of written description and enablement requirements on patent applications, rather than just a voting committee deciding whether your invention was sufficiently awesome to deserve a reward.
It's always been this way, too. Almost 600 years ago, Brunelleschi invented an improved ship loading/unloading system. He would have kept it secret, loading his ships only under cover of night with armed guards watching for spies, but the lords of Florence felt that this idea was something so important that the public needed access to it. So, because he "refuse[d] to make such machine available to the public" unless "he enjoyed some prerogative concerning this" they gave him a three year limited monopoly, in exchange for disclosing it.
Patents really aren't a reward, but an exchange that destroys trade secrets.
They've also been applied to things that probably shouldn't be patentable like genes and software.
Why should something be patentable if hardwired but not patentable if emulated?
Man, I wish PJ would deconstruct this so I knew what was going on. So what that tells me is that the novel part of his invention was the spring that generated power directly to the radio? And when the company found a different way to do that, they cut him out?
Not even cut him out - his patent covered a specific mechanical implementation of storing power in a tightly wound spring. They stopped using springs and started using cheap batteries, which his patent didn't cover. He also sold his shares in the company. If he was screwed by anything, it was that latter decision.
Patent reform is badly needed. To tailor it to this poor unfortunate soul's anecdotal evidence might just make the situation worse. I am suspicious of this piece because it relies on soft journalism describing how human Mr. Baylis is in his grandfatherly estate and stays away from the hard numbers or specific details of precisely just how he was wronged by the patent system.
Agreed... Also note that his suggested reform includes criminal penalties for infringing a patent. Oh, sorry, Apple has that patent on a slide to unlock mechanism, so because you used it, you're going to jail.
Yes, it's true that the patent is only on the isolated gene, and not the gene in the form as it exists naturally in the body.
However, the process for isolating this gene is something that has already been done for years with other genes, so there is nothing patentworthy in isolating this gene.
But it's not a patent on the process, so the fact that the process has been done before is irrelevant. This is a patent covering a new composition of matter.
It's like a patent on vulcanized rubber. You can't say that vulcanized rubber is not patent worthy, merely because heating things has been done for years.
This is another example of where the patenting system (around the World it seems) has just gone completely stupid. A gene is a naturally occuring entity and should not be patentable.
The isolated gene, however, is not naturally occurring. You can't possibly infringe the patent by having the gene in you.
There are other reasons why this might be a bad idea and other arguments for why genes shouldn't be patentable, but that's not one of them.
And that's the thing though isn't it? "Doing math on a computer"? Is that worthy of a patent? After all, it can be ANY computer. Windows, Linux, Android, Mac or other? Any processor can be used, nearly any hardware configuration can be used. The idea of a software patent as much as they would like to deny it, is in the same ballpark as "on the internet" types of patents.
Doesn't it depend on what the math involved is? If you have an invention claiming A+B+C, you don't need each of A, B, and C to be independently patentable, novel, and nonobvious. In fact, if you had them, you'd then just claim A, B, and C separately.
More concretely, if you claim [an automobile chassis] (known)+[4 wheels] (known)+[a micro sized cold fusion-based electric power plant] (unknown), why is that not "worthy of a patent"? After all, it can be ANY wheels. Goodyear, Michelin, BF Goodrich, or other? Any chassis can be used, nearly any hardware configuration for those other two elements. So therefore, cold fusion power plants shouldn't be patentable, because they're in the same ballpark as "on the internet" types of patents?
Of course not. And yet, for some reason, this gets thrown out the window when we talk about software.
Running software on a computer is pretty much using a computer for its intended purpose -- executing instructions. By changing the instructions, are you really inventing something new? That's a really tough argument to make.
What's tough about that? Had someone else come up with those instructions or that cold fusion based engine before? Then what does it matter if the wheels of the car or the processor of the computer already existed? You're not relying on those elements for patentability, but the new stuff that you invented.
The more light that comes to software patents, the less likely they will survive in the future.
Unlikely. Forget your desire to see them abolished and think pragmatically about the amount of money involved. They're not going anywhere, and arguments that they should be abolished are going to fall on deaf ears in Congress. It would be more fruitful to focus arguments on how to reform the patent system to address trolls, poor quality of examination, etc.
another good recent example of this is glenn beck, who wanted WIPO to sieze the rhetorical domain "GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com" - not because it was defamatory, but because of trademark violation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck_v._Eiland-Hall
Not a good recent example, though - the UDRP decision did indicate that it was a possible trademark violation because visitors could confuse it with the Glenn Beck mark. Eiland-Hall won on the other two factors - lack of bad faith, and that he had legitimate interests in the name.