That could be relevant. It would be easy to test. Hook up a bench power supply to the rails of the circuit board. See if it works better than with the wall wart.
Yep, or hang a nice scope on the rails of one of the amps with the wall wart supplying power, filter out the DC, and look for high frequency noise.
That said, it's a $50 wifi router... it'd be more expensive time-wise to locate and replace degrading caps than to simply buy a different wall wart and test it.
"It used to just be speculation, but the numbers are now in — patent trolls are costing America jobs and economic growth.
Really? Wow, let's see!
Newly-published research using data commissioned by Congress shows big rises in patent troll activity over the last five years — from 22% to 40% of all patent suits filed, with 4 out of five litigants being patent trolls.
Well, that's a start... it doesn't really show that trolls are "costing America jobs and economic growth," but it shows that there are a lot of trolls.
And then suddenly we get a bunch of weasel words:
Other papers show that jobs are being lost and startups threatened, while VC money is just making things worse by making startups waste money filing more patents. Worst of all, it's clear this is just the tip of the iceberg; there's evidence that unseen pre-lawsuit settlements with patent trolls represent a much larger threat than anything the research can easily measure."
... in other words, the numbers are not actually in and this is all just unsupported speculation and vague mention of uncited papers and alleged evidence.
>cheap electroytic capacitors have a tendency to degrade and fail over time.
Not significantly over 2 years and you don't use electrolytics in the in IF/RF signal path in a 2.4 & 5.8GHz radios.
True, but you do use them in your cheap switch-mode power supply, and as they degrade, you get additional AC noise on the rails of your amplifiers that are in the IF/RF signal path. Particularly in cheap routers that are operating near the limits of their amplifiers, voltage drops on the rails could cause clipping of the high frequency signal, which will result in dropped packets, required rebroadcasting, etc.
That's what I was thinking. Technically, the copyright owner owns the rights to derivative works. I don't see this as hypocrisy on the part of Netflix, Netflix owns very little content. If the studios did it, then OK, I see that as hypocrisy in a way.
It's actually the other way around, for the reason you note... The studios own the copyrights, so if you make an unauthorized derivative work, they could claim that as copyright owner, they have implied rights in that work too. Netflix doesn't own the content, but is just a licensee, so the studios would have to grant them a license to the implied third-party derivative work, which starts getting a little sticky.
Lets not forget which party started the lawsuit here.
You think it'd be fair for Apple to just be able to walk away after falsely (proven in court) accusing Samsung of patent infringement and causing negative publicity for Samsung?
Except that they successfully (proven in court) accused Samsung of patent infringement in Germany. That's why this ruling is a little odd. Sure, jurisdictions have different standards and the patents involved here are slightly different, but requiring a public statement that can be interpreted to be cross-jurisdictional is unusual.
Problem there is that evidence was (considering the source) almost certainly obtained through illegal action. (hacking) This cause three immediate problems. 1. most legal systems spoil evidence that has been obtained through illegal actions,
Interestingly, most legal systems only spoil evidence that has been obtained through illegal actions of the police (or other government agents). If a detective breaks into your apartment and sees a bunch of cocaine on your living room table, that evidence will get excluded. However, if a burglar breaks into your apartment, sees the cocaine, and calls 911 saying "help, I'm having a heart attack. I'm in the living room, come break down the door," and the cops do and find the cocaine, that evidence will not be excluded, because technically, they neither did anything illegal nor induced someone else to do anything illegal (they only learned about it after the fact).
And yes, this leads to a huge potential loophole that works in the government's favor, but it should be obvious why they aren't in a hurry to close it.
"...they had the idea 5 minutes before the other person."
And that is what needs to be fixed in the patent system, short of abolishing altogether. Why do patents have to winner-takes-all when the historical record is full of examples of parallel inventions and discoveries, like the wheel, caculus or the theory of evolution? Why can't patents be awarded like the winners of sports competiton or American Idol, where even those who didn't place first gets a diminishing share of the prize money?
Because patents aren't an award or reward for winning a competition. You're thinking Nobel prizes. Patents are a temporary monopoly granted in exchange for an inventor disclosing their invention. Once it's disclosed, we don't care about any other inventors, because the public now has access to it (which is also why you can't disclose an invention publicly, and then get a patent on it later, after the one year grace period). So, only the first to file gets the monopoly.
basically you obviously will bring your life experience to your role as a juror, but would you be able to set that aside, your previous experience with patents, and decide this case based solely on the law as you're instructed and the evidence that's admitted during the trial?
The "but" in the judges sentence is important because it qualifies the previous clause. In other words, the juror will bring their life experience to the trial, BUT they must "set aside" or not consider their patent experience.
Actually, it's not the "but", but the "that" that qualifies the following clause: "... but would you be able to set that aside, [i.e.] your previous experience with patents..."
The judge then explains what she means by setting that aside - not a full frontal lobotomy, unable to use their life experience, but instead "decide this case based solely on the law as you're instructed and the evidence that's admitted during the trial."
all three should have been rejected with cause. Therefore, that's not the right interpretation.
So, your counter argument is that the judge didn't really mean what she said?!
No?!11one (what's with your hysterics?)
No, my counter argument is that you're parsing the sentence incorrectly, and specifically that if the sentence is parsed the way you are, then the judge would have had to excuse all three jurors with cause. Because she didn't, then she didn't intend the sentence to be parsed that way.
There is nothing in the '381 patent being discussed (7469381 if your interested in reading it for yourself) indicating the processor architecture (except to say "one or more processors." In fact, the technical requirements of the patent are a touchscreen, a processor, and memory. The entire rest of the patent describes the movement of the item on the screen, which Mr. Hogan says is "similar".
... similar to? We have to know what the prior art reference is in order to compare them. But we have some clues - Hogan says "the hardware was different," and the patent claims "a device with a touch screen display". Maybe the prior art reference didn't have a touch screen display? Accordingly, if you put this software, with claimed steps of "detecting a movement of an object on or near the touch screen display" on a device with no touch screen, you'd get errors.
His justification for not being anticipatory is that it wasn't physically "interchangeable" because the software couldn't be "loaded onto the older example and be run without error."
If he said that the movements described in the patent did not match the Diamondtouch device, there might be some truth to your claims, but that is not his rationale.
Are you going to claim that complete interchangeability is required for something to be anticipatory prior art?
To be anticipatory, a prior art reference has to disclose, either inherently or expressly, each and every element in the claims. If it's missing an element, then it doesn't anticipate, by definition. Now, the prior art reference could also have more, so they wouldn't be interchangeable, but it can't have less. For example, a chair with a seat, four legs, and a back anticipates a patent on a stool having four legs and a seat, even though they aren't interchangeable.
You mention the Diamondtouch - are you referring to the multi-touch table? I thought this was supposedly a piece of Samsung prior art. I may be confused, though.
First, I simply can't understand how you come to your reading of Judge Koh's statement to the jurors pertaining to patent experience. In my reading it could not be more clear, the juror must put aside their experience on patents even though they may use the remainder of their personal experience.
But the judge expressly stated that obviously they would bring their experience with the patent system to the table. If the judge said that was verboten, then since they "obviously" would still do it, all three should have been rejected with cause. Therefore, that's not the right interpretation.
Actually, that was presented in court. Legally, patents are presumed valid. They can be invalidated only by a showing of clear and convincing evidence.
The concern of the jurors was invalidation by prior art, not whether patents are presumed valid. Mr. Hogan's anecdote changed other juror's definition of prior art.
Uh, I have no idea where you got that? Not to dispute, but can you provide a quote of some juror saying they changed their definition of prior art?
It is true that we do not know the exact words used in Mr. Hogan's sharing of his patent experience. We do know that some jurors were confused about prior art before Mr. Hogan's story. We know that those jurors felt comfortable with prior art after the story. We also know that Mr. Hogan has an erroneous view of prior art.
Yes, until this last one... We don't actually know that, since he hasn't actually stated a definition. He talked about how he could apply it, in a general sense, and I think it was poorly phrased but it still could be accurate - it's not about whether an iOS system can run on an Android system, but if some piece of prior art requires physical movement of something (e.g. the bathroom door sliding lock), it could not work on Apple's touch screen, and vice versa. The two are not interchangeable, and therefore, the sliding lock doesn't anticipate the slide-to-unlock patent.
Is it obvious? Perhaps, but that's a second question not reached by the anticipation question.
Does this all add up to a smoking gun that should immediately invalidate the verdict? No. However, I think there is enough here for Judge Koh to conduct an inquiry in order to determine if the foreman acted improperly.
Sure, but there's a question of how far such an inquiry can go... Our system doesn't allow deep inquiry into jury verdicts because of the potential chilling effect, unless there's a major indication of wrongdoing. While there may be questions that might make us go "huh," I don't think it's at the level at which we need to depose each and every juror.
Mr. Hogan is talking about an older Samsung device with the same functionality as the Apple device, but that uses a different microprocessor. He even goes so far as to discuss that the computer code that enacts the functionality (submitted by Samsung) is different from the computer code on the Apple device and, therefore, cannot be considered prior art. According to Mr. Hogan, the rest of the jury was swayed by this legal definition of prior art.
I believe that he's referring to anticipatory prior art there, not "prior art" in general. If so, he's likely correct. It would depend on the specific claim limitations that were lacking or not performed by the older Samsung device. Just by way of example, if Apple's claims included a step of encoding something in BigEndian, and the Samsung device was LittleEndian, it couldn't be considered anticipatory prior art. It could still be used in an obviousness rejection, but it would require another device.
Now, I could be wrong - he may think that if something is different, it's not prior art and couldn't even be used in an obviousness rejection - but I don't see that supported in his quote, plus I can't believe that no one on the jury was paying attention duri
No, my point is that when someone is giving an interview, they're paraphrasing and not quoting directly. If I told you that yesterday I had a conversation with someone about the Mars Rover, that doesn't tell you what was actually said, just what we talked about. See?
then here is an quote from another juror, Manuel Ilagan, claiming that Hogan's analysis swayed the jury:
"It didn't dawn on us [that we agreed that Samsung had infringed] on the first day," Ilagan said. "We were debating heavily, especially about the patents on bounce-back and pinch-to-zoom. Apple said they owned patents, but we were debating about the prior art [about similar technology that Samsung said existed before the iPhone debuted]. [Velvin] Hogan was jury foreman. He had experience. He owned patents himself...so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art."
Note here that it was Hogan, not the judge or lawyer, that explained the definition of prior art.
That quote doesn't say that. It says Hogan "took them through his experience". It doesn't say "Hogan told us what the definition of prior art was." You're reading words into it that aren't there... which is my point about these quotes. None of them say what was actually said, so we can read almost anything into them - Hogan threatened to eat the plaintiff's lawyer's face! Hogan pulled additional prior art out of his back pocket! - but we have no idea what actually was said.
He says he talked about his life experiences, which the judge said they obviously would bring to the table
As mentioned repeatedly, the judge expressly instructed Hogan to not use his knowledge of patent law.
I feel like we're talking at cross purposes, in which I'm using the actual words quoted in the transcript, and you're using made up quotes. The judge said the jurors would obviously bring their life experiences to the table, but should use the evidence and instructions on the law presented at trial. You somehow have interpreted that as Hogan must forget everything he's ever known or done. That's simply not true - if it were, all three of the jurors with patents would have been kicked off by the judge, for cause. They weren't - the judge knew that all three of them would and could bring their life experiences to the table.
Telling is the fact that the judge didn't even tell them "you can't stop yourself from thinking about your past experience, but you are not allowed to discuss it with anyone else on the jury." That wasn't in the instructions, so why are you acting like it was?
I'm not sure exactly what "aspects of the law not presented during the court proceedings" you're talking about.
Hogan presented two defenses for Apple's patents (though curiously used different criteria on the Samsung patents) that were not presented in the court by either party. The first is that because of the nature of the patent process itself, Apple's patents would already have been examined for prior art and, therefore, likely valid.
Actually, that was presented in court. Legally, patents are presumed valid. They can be invalidated only by a showing of clear and convincing evidence.
The second was that if a piece of code will not run on the same system, they are not prior art (which is erroneous).
Sure, but I'm not sure that was actually said at any point, or whether someone is mischaracterizing a statement about "these two pieces of prior art couldn't be combined and run effectively," which is the law. For example, take slide to unlock: bathroom doors usually have slide latches. Smart phones exist. Therefore, we can put a physical sliding latch from a bathroom door o
No, we don't. We have an interview after the fact with Hogan describing his thought processes and paraphrasing the discussion. We don't have a recording, a transcript, a third party report, etc.
And even then, the paraphrasing isn't damning at all... Hogan never said he educated the jury on aspects of the law. He says he talked about his life experiences, which the judge said they obviously would bring to the table. I'm not sure exactly what "aspects of the law not presented during the court proceedings" you're talking about.
but would you be able to set that aside, your previous experience with patents, and decide this case based solely on the law as you're instructed and the evidence that's admitted during the trial?
Mr. Hogan educating the jury on his experience with registering his patents and his understanding of the finer points of patent law would not violate this?
Depends on what exactly was said in the jury room. If he said "here's my life experience and I can talk about the process I went through, but those are different facts from this, so don't assume that what I went through was the same," then yeah, that's that's the "obviously, you will bring your life experience to your role as juror" part. If he said, "the judge is wrong, here's the right law," then that's not deciding the case on the law as they're instructed. Without a record of exactly what was said in the jury room, it could be either.
It doesn't seem like the voire dire transcript entirely agrees with you. He was specifically instructed to not bring his patent experience into the jury room.
I see the exact opposite: "you obviously will bring your life experience to your role as a juror." The question was whether he could set the facts of that matter aside and decide the case on the evidence presented at trial and the jury instructions, not whether he could lobotomize himself and never think about his past experiences.
Given that there was some serious misconduct with respect to the Jury Forman and his "creative" opinions about prior art and patent law, this case will be appealed and start all over.
Not necessarily. First, the "misconduct" appears to be regarding his disclosure of prior litigation. Whether that's enough for a full mistrial is questionable, and even moreso if Samsung knew about it prior to trial. Second, jurors are allowed to bring their life experiences into the jury room - that's why they have voir dire in the first place. He brought in his patent experience, the programmer on the jury brought in his experience, etc. If Samsung was so concerned about someone with patent knowledge being on the jury, they could have had him kicked off pre-trial. And finally, as others have noted, it's really hard to get a unanimous jury verdict thrown out over questions about the jury's conduct.
except that the entire document was presented to the court and the jury. [...]. That's how trials work. The jury gets to see the entire document, hear both interpretations, and figure out who they think is more credible.
Given how quickly the jury returned with a verdict, it's pretty clear the jury didn't actually look at the entire document, and based their judgment solely on the interpretations. So yeah, that's how trials are supposed to work. But obviously it wasn't how it actually worked in this case.
How quickly compared to what? The musings of media analysts in a vacuum on how long it "should" have taken? The jury in the previous-"biggest patent law case", Microsoft v. i4i, took only a couple days. Do you have any comparable trials to this one that you can point do with juries taking longer?
Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance.
... except that the entire document was presented to the court and the jury. Apple made arguments presenting it in a light favorable to them, and I'm sure Samsung made counterarguments presenting it in a light favorable to them. That's how trials work. The jury gets to see the entire document, hear both interpretations, and figure out who they think is more credible.
The problem with that is that according to the transcript he was asked a question over and above the "court instructions".
Where do you get that? It's not in the article or Samsung's brief, which merely states:
The jury foreman, Velvin Hogan, failed to answer truthfully during voir dire. Asked by
the Court whether “you or a family member or someone very close to you [has] ever been
involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?” (Reporter’s Transcript
(“RT”) 148:18-21), he disclosed one such lawsuit but failed to disclose two others, including one
in which he was sued by his former employer, Seagate, for breach of contract after he failed to
repay a promissory note (RT 148:22-150:12; Seagate Tech., Inc. v. Hogan, Case No. MS-93-0919
(Santa Cruz Mun. Ct. June 30, 1993), Declaration of Susan Estrich (“Estrich Decl.”) Ex. A), and
filed for personal bankruptcy six months later (In re Velvin R. Hogan and Carol K. Hogan, Case
No. 93-58291-MM (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Dec. 27, 1993); Estrich Decl., Ex. B).
It doesn't say anything there about court instructions, or additional questions beyond them. Do you have a different source?
He was asked if he was involved in any lawsuits within the last ten years, which he answered. The lawsuit with Seagate occurred in 1993 which is beyond ten years ago. Thus, he did not disclose it because it wasn't asked of him. But let's pretend he attempted to deceive the system in order to screw over Samsung because that sounds better, right?
(emphasis mine)
Where do you get "within the last ten years", it is not in the summary, the article, or the unredacted filing, which says:
“you or a family member or someone very close to you [has] ever been
involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?” (Reporter’s Transcript
(“RT”) 148:18-21), he disclosed one such lawsuit but failed to disclose two others, including one
in which he was sued by his former employer, Seagate, for breach of contract after he failed to
repay a promissory note (RT 148:22-150:12; Seagate Tech., Inc. v. Hogan, Case No. MS-93-0919
(Santa Cruz Mun. Ct. June 30, 1993), Declaration of Susan Estrich (“Estrich Decl.”) Ex. A), and
filed for personal bankruptcy six months later (In re Velvin R. Hogan and Carol K. Hogan, Case
No. 93-58291-MM (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Dec. 27, 1993); Estrich Decl., Ex. B).
Hogan, in a phone interview yesterday, denied that there was any misconduct, saying the court instructions for potential jurors required disclosure of any litigation they were involved in within the last 10 years -- and that the 1993 bankruptcy and related litigation involving Seagate fell well outside that time range.
“Had I been asked an open-ended question with no time constraint, of course I would’ve disclosed that,” Hogan said, referring to the bankruptcy and related litigation. “I’m willing to go in front of the judge to tell her that I had no intention of being on this jury, let alone withholding anything that would’ve allowed me to be excused.”
Note: I'm not saying he's right and the Samsung brief is wrong - just that that's where the 10 year claim comes from.
If you have a PACER account, you should be able to pull up the Court Reporter's transcript from voir dire, and see what question was asked.
You seem to think somebody is giving points on debate technique. No one is. And I kind of like a little fist pounding now and again.
You're just argumentative like so many others here. When you have something to add, some hair to split, some fine distinction you think cries out for elaboration, you don't have to start out with stuff like "not quite." There's also "another aspect is," "also" or even just "."
Patents are supposed to be what I said and also what you said. There's no argument. There's just you, pursuing your strange little hobby.
Funny how you responded to my first point saying that you should make a substantive argument rather than fist pounding, and never bothered responding to my second substantive point. You're trolling, not trying to have a discussion, so there's no point talking to you.
Well that's just crazy talk. Patents are obviously a reward for motivation and they obviously encourage innovation. You're saying a second effect (publishing) negates the first-mentioned effect (reward, incentive).
1. Saying something is "crazy" and "obvious" doesn't actually support your argument. It's merely fist pounding.
2. We're talking about the intent (i.e. "patents are supposed to be...", the first sentences in both of our posts), not the effect. Patents are intended to encourage disclosure of what would otherwise be kept trade secrets, by (i) requiring public disclosure in the patent, and (ii) removing the penalty from other public disclosures in white papers and functional specifications. The fact that some people feel that the patent is a reward is a secondary effect, and I'd argue that it's an undesirable one: it leads people to think that patents should only be granted to "sufficiently award-worthy" inventions... a term that is always left undefined.
Patents are supposed to be a (time-limited) barrier to competition. They're supposed to be the way the inventor gets payed for his invention. Without patents there's little incentive to develop inventions into technologies --- technologies that would be quickly copied.
Not quite - patents are supposed to be a time-limited payment in exchange for public disclosure. The inventor would get paid for his invention either way - just one way would be exclusive public use to commercial advantage and/or licensing to competitors, while the other way would be trade secrets, massive contractual liabilities, non-disclosure agreements, heavily restrictive licenses, etc. If I invent a valuable new floor polish, either I'm going to protect it by getting a patent, or I'm going to protect it by only selling it under very strict contracts, but I'm not going to walk away from income from my invention because patents don't exist.
Patents are not a reward for innovation, nor do they encourage innovation by being a reward. They encourage innovation in others by requiring public disclosure of an invention, so that others can see it and freely improve upon it.
The really crazy part is that after this first bastardization of patents to apply to consumer technology, that then they (recently started to) allow insignificant changes in materials to usher in a new patent, such as software patents being renewed for "..on a mobile device." While the first bastardization is almost debatable, this second bastardization is so way over the top that its very hard to debate its justification with a straight face.
It's also hard to debate with a straight face because it never happened... There's no such thing as "renewing a patent," at least not in the way you describe, nor are there any patent owners who have a patent on [x] and then get a patent on "[x]... on a mobile device" with the latter patent having a longer term than the original. It doesn't happen. Look up double patenting rejections and terminal disclaimers.
So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff. A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
Someone has never, ever taken an AI class. Or even an algorithm class dealing with risk. Here's how the calculation actually works (and by the way, that approach is about 20-30 years old).
Every situation is assessed an impact value: driving into oncoming traffic, 0 (very bad); driving into the right ditch, 10; swerving into a legal lane, 50; etc. Every situation is given a set of possible actions, with each action having a probability of being completed successfully. The algorithm multiplies the outcome with the odds of achieving that outcome, and picks the highest value. You can set it up in different ways, but the idea is the same: multiply outcome severity with odds of achieving outcome, pick lowest combined risk/outcome. In your situation, driving off the cliff (which is assumed to be very bad, since the car can see a very steep drop-off with no bottom) is going to have a much worse outcome than hitting the car in front of it. Hitting the car in front of it is guaranteed, but so is driving off the cliff. As a result, the algorithm will make the automated car hit the car in front of it, rather than drive off the cliff.
Not to mention that cars don't sleep, always behave optimally (according to the algorithms in place), and have no blind spots.
Although I agree with your analysis, the question itself is flawed... It presumes that the self driving car is in a situation where (i) there's a truck immediately ahead, (ii) a truck immediately behind with failing brakes, and (iii) a motorcycle in the next lane (the question doesn't actually specify whether the motorcycle is pacing the car and traveling in the same direction or oncoming, but it's mostly irrelevant*). In order to face the dilemma of (a) crash off the cliff, (b) get smooshed between the trucks, and (c) kill the motorcyclist, the car has to be tailgating the truck and being tailgated by the other truck. Why did the AI let that happen? Why was it tailgating in the first place such that it can't speed up any to avoid the truck behind it, allowing it to pass the motorcycle and change lanes? Why was it content to be tailgated by the other truck without slowing down for safety reasons?
The question sets up a situation in which the AI has already failed, and then asks whether the AI will fail. That seems misleading at best, and circular at worst.
*only mostly: if the motorcycle is in an oncoming lane, then the car will be able to change lanes in a few seconds anyway. And if it's not tailgating the front truck, which it shouldn't be, then the car will have room to speed up to avoid the rear truck while waiting those few seconds.
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That could be relevant. It would be easy to test. Hook up a bench power supply to the rails of the circuit board. See if it works better than with the wall wart.
Yep, or hang a nice scope on the rails of one of the amps with the wall wart supplying power, filter out the DC, and look for high frequency noise.
That said, it's a $50 wifi router... it'd be more expensive time-wise to locate and replace degrading caps than to simply buy a different wall wart and test it.
"It used to just be speculation, but the numbers are now in — patent trolls are costing America jobs and economic growth.
Really? Wow, let's see!
Newly-published research using data commissioned by Congress shows big rises in patent troll activity over the last five years — from 22% to 40% of all patent suits filed, with 4 out of five litigants being patent trolls.
Well, that's a start... it doesn't really show that trolls are "costing America jobs and economic growth," but it shows that there are a lot of trolls.
And then suddenly we get a bunch of weasel words:
Other papers show that jobs are being lost and startups threatened, while VC money is just making things worse by making startups waste money filing more patents. Worst of all, it's clear this is just the tip of the iceberg; there's evidence that unseen pre-lawsuit settlements with patent trolls represent a much larger threat than anything the research can easily measure."
... in other words, the numbers are not actually in and this is all just unsupported speculation and vague mention of uncited papers and alleged evidence.
>cheap electroytic capacitors have a tendency to degrade and fail over time.
Not significantly over 2 years and you don't use electrolytics in the in IF/RF signal path in a 2.4 & 5.8GHz radios.
True, but you do use them in your cheap switch-mode power supply, and as they degrade, you get additional AC noise on the rails of your amplifiers that are in the IF/RF signal path. Particularly in cheap routers that are operating near the limits of their amplifiers, voltage drops on the rails could cause clipping of the high frequency signal, which will result in dropped packets, required rebroadcasting, etc.
That's what I was thinking. Technically, the copyright owner owns the rights to derivative works. I don't see this as hypocrisy on the part of Netflix, Netflix owns very little content. If the studios did it, then OK, I see that as hypocrisy in a way.
It's actually the other way around, for the reason you note... The studios own the copyrights, so if you make an unauthorized derivative work, they could claim that as copyright owner, they have implied rights in that work too. Netflix doesn't own the content, but is just a licensee, so the studios would have to grant them a license to the implied third-party derivative work, which starts getting a little sticky.
Lets not forget which party started the lawsuit here. You think it'd be fair for Apple to just be able to walk away after falsely (proven in court) accusing Samsung of patent infringement and causing negative publicity for Samsung?
Except that they successfully (proven in court) accused Samsung of patent infringement in Germany. That's why this ruling is a little odd. Sure, jurisdictions have different standards and the patents involved here are slightly different, but requiring a public statement that can be interpreted to be cross-jurisdictional is unusual.
Problem there is that evidence was (considering the source) almost certainly obtained through illegal action. (hacking) This cause three immediate problems. 1. most legal systems spoil evidence that has been obtained through illegal actions,
Interestingly, most legal systems only spoil evidence that has been obtained through illegal actions of the police (or other government agents). If a detective breaks into your apartment and sees a bunch of cocaine on your living room table, that evidence will get excluded. However, if a burglar breaks into your apartment, sees the cocaine, and calls 911 saying "help, I'm having a heart attack. I'm in the living room, come break down the door," and the cops do and find the cocaine, that evidence will not be excluded, because technically, they neither did anything illegal nor induced someone else to do anything illegal (they only learned about it after the fact).
And yes, this leads to a huge potential loophole that works in the government's favor, but it should be obvious why they aren't in a hurry to close it.
Grandparent is being snarky, satirizing all of the patents for "X on a computer!" or "X on the internet!", where X is a well-known thing.
The ones that don't exist?
"...they had the idea 5 minutes before the other person."
And that is what needs to be fixed in the patent system, short of abolishing altogether. Why do patents have to winner-takes-all when the historical record is full of examples of parallel inventions and discoveries, like the wheel, caculus or the theory of evolution? Why can't patents be awarded like the winners of sports competiton or American Idol, where even those who didn't place first gets a diminishing share of the prize money?
Because patents aren't an award or reward for winning a competition. You're thinking Nobel prizes. Patents are a temporary monopoly granted in exchange for an inventor disclosing their invention. Once it's disclosed, we don't care about any other inventors, because the public now has access to it (which is also why you can't disclose an invention publicly, and then get a patent on it later, after the one year grace period). So, only the first to file gets the monopoly.
basically you obviously will bring your life experience to your role as a juror, but would you be able to set that aside, your previous experience with patents, and decide this case based solely on the law as you're instructed and the evidence that's admitted during the trial?
The "but" in the judges sentence is important because it qualifies the previous clause. In other words, the juror will bring their life experience to the trial, BUT they must "set aside" or not consider their patent experience.
Actually, it's not the "but", but the "that" that qualifies the following clause: "... but would you be able to set that aside, [i.e.] your previous experience with patents..."
The judge then explains what she means by setting that aside - not a full frontal lobotomy, unable to use their life experience, but instead "decide this case based solely on the law as you're instructed and the evidence that's admitted during the trial."
all three should have been rejected with cause. Therefore, that's not the right interpretation.
So, your counter argument is that the judge didn't really mean what she said?!
No?!11one (what's with your hysterics?)
No, my counter argument is that you're parsing the sentence incorrectly, and specifically that if the sentence is parsed the way you are, then the judge would have had to excuse all three jurors with cause. Because she didn't, then she didn't intend the sentence to be parsed that way.
There is nothing in the '381 patent being discussed (7469381 if your interested in reading it for yourself) indicating the processor architecture (except to say "one or more processors." In fact, the technical requirements of the patent are a touchscreen, a processor, and memory. The entire rest of the patent describes the movement of the item on the screen, which Mr. Hogan says is "similar".
... similar to? We have to know what the prior art reference is in order to compare them. But we have some clues - Hogan says "the hardware was different," and the patent claims "a device with a touch screen display". Maybe the prior art reference didn't have a touch screen display? Accordingly, if you put this software, with claimed steps of "detecting a movement of an object on or near the touch screen display" on a device with no touch screen, you'd get errors.
His justification for not being anticipatory is that it wasn't physically "interchangeable" because the software couldn't be "loaded onto the older example and be run without error."
If he said that the movements described in the patent did not match the Diamondtouch device, there might be some truth to your claims, but that is not his rationale.
Are you going to claim that complete interchangeability is required for something to be anticipatory prior art?
To be anticipatory, a prior art reference has to disclose, either inherently or expressly, each and every element in the claims. If it's missing an element, then it doesn't anticipate, by definition. Now, the prior art reference could also have more, so they wouldn't be interchangeable, but it can't have less. For example, a chair with a seat, four legs, and a back anticipates a patent on a stool having four legs and a seat, even though they aren't interchangeable.
You mention the Diamondtouch - are you referring to the multi-touch table? I thought this was supposedly a piece of Samsung prior art. I may be confused, though.
First, I simply can't understand how you come to your reading of Judge Koh's statement to the jurors pertaining to patent experience. In my reading it could not be more clear, the juror must put aside their experience on patents even though they may use the remainder of their personal experience.
But the judge expressly stated that obviously they would bring their experience with the patent system to the table. If the judge said that was verboten, then since they "obviously" would still do it, all three should have been rejected with cause. Therefore, that's not the right interpretation.
Actually, that was presented in court. Legally, patents are presumed valid. They can be invalidated only by a showing of clear and convincing evidence.
The concern of the jurors was invalidation by prior art, not whether patents are presumed valid. Mr. Hogan's anecdote changed other juror's definition of prior art.
Uh, I have no idea where you got that? Not to dispute, but can you provide a quote of some juror saying they changed their definition of prior art?
It is true that we do not know the exact words used in Mr. Hogan's sharing of his patent experience. We do know that some jurors were confused about prior art before Mr. Hogan's story. We know that those jurors felt comfortable with prior art after the story. We also know that Mr. Hogan has an erroneous view of prior art.
Yes, until this last one... We don't actually know that, since he hasn't actually stated a definition. He talked about how he could apply it, in a general sense, and I think it was poorly phrased but it still could be accurate - it's not about whether an iOS system can run on an Android system, but if some piece of prior art requires physical movement of something (e.g. the bathroom door sliding lock), it could not work on Apple's touch screen, and vice versa. The two are not interchangeable, and therefore, the sliding lock doesn't anticipate the slide-to-unlock patent.
Is it obvious? Perhaps, but that's a second question not reached by the anticipation question.
Does this all add up to a smoking gun that should immediately invalidate the verdict? No. However, I think there is enough here for Judge Koh to conduct an inquiry in order to determine if the foreman acted improperly.
Sure, but there's a question of how far such an inquiry can go... Our system doesn't allow deep inquiry into jury verdicts because of the potential chilling effect, unless there's a major indication of wrongdoing. While there may be questions that might make us go "huh," I don't think it's at the level at which we need to depose each and every juror.
Mr. Hogan is talking about an older Samsung device with the same functionality as the Apple device, but that uses a different microprocessor. He even goes so far as to discuss that the computer code that enacts the functionality (submitted by Samsung) is different from the computer code on the Apple device and, therefore, cannot be considered prior art. According to Mr. Hogan, the rest of the jury was swayed by this legal definition of prior art.
I believe that he's referring to anticipatory prior art there, not "prior art" in general. If so, he's likely correct. It would depend on the specific claim limitations that were lacking or not performed by the older Samsung device. Just by way of example, if Apple's claims included a step of encoding something in BigEndian, and the Samsung device was LittleEndian, it couldn't be considered anticipatory prior art. It could still be used in an obviousness rejection, but it would require another device.
Now, I could be wrong - he may think that if something is different, it's not prior art and couldn't even be used in an obviousness rejection - but I don't see that supported in his quote, plus I can't believe that no one on the jury was paying attention duri
If your point is that Hogan is a lone voice here
No, my point is that when someone is giving an interview, they're paraphrasing and not quoting directly. If I told you that yesterday I had a conversation with someone about the Mars Rover, that doesn't tell you what was actually said, just what we talked about. See?
then here is an quote from another juror, Manuel Ilagan, claiming that Hogan's analysis swayed the jury:
"It didn't dawn on us [that we agreed that Samsung had infringed] on the first day," Ilagan said. "We were debating heavily, especially about the patents on bounce-back and pinch-to-zoom. Apple said they owned patents, but we were debating about the prior art [about similar technology that Samsung said existed before the iPhone debuted]. [Velvin] Hogan was jury foreman. He had experience. He owned patents himself...so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art."
Note here that it was Hogan, not the judge or lawyer, that explained the definition of prior art.
That quote doesn't say that. It says Hogan "took them through his experience". It doesn't say "Hogan told us what the definition of prior art was." You're reading words into it that aren't there... which is my point about these quotes. None of them say what was actually said, so we can read almost anything into them - Hogan threatened to eat the plaintiff's lawyer's face! Hogan pulled additional prior art out of his back pocket! - but we have no idea what actually was said.
He says he talked about his life experiences, which the judge said they obviously would bring to the table
As mentioned repeatedly, the judge expressly instructed Hogan to not use his knowledge of patent law.
I feel like we're talking at cross purposes, in which I'm using the actual words quoted in the transcript, and you're using made up quotes. The judge said the jurors would obviously bring their life experiences to the table, but should use the evidence and instructions on the law presented at trial. You somehow have interpreted that as Hogan must forget everything he's ever known or done. That's simply not true - if it were, all three of the jurors with patents would have been kicked off by the judge, for cause. They weren't - the judge knew that all three of them would and could bring their life experiences to the table.
Telling is the fact that the judge didn't even tell them "you can't stop yourself from thinking about your past experience, but you are not allowed to discuss it with anyone else on the jury." That wasn't in the instructions, so why are you acting like it was?
I'm not sure exactly what "aspects of the law not presented during the court proceedings" you're talking about.
Hogan presented two defenses for Apple's patents (though curiously used different criteria on the Samsung patents) that were not presented in the court by either party. The first is that because of the nature of the patent process itself, Apple's patents would already have been examined for prior art and, therefore, likely valid.
Actually, that was presented in court. Legally, patents are presumed valid. They can be invalidated only by a showing of clear and convincing evidence.
The second was that if a piece of code will not run on the same system, they are not prior art (which is erroneous).
Sure, but I'm not sure that was actually said at any point, or whether someone is mischaracterizing a statement about "these two pieces of prior art couldn't be combined and run effectively," which is the law. For example, take slide to unlock: bathroom doors usually have slide latches. Smart phones exist. Therefore, we can put a physical sliding latch from a bathroom door o
Fortunately, we know from Hogan what was said.
No, we don't. We have an interview after the fact with Hogan describing his thought processes and paraphrasing the discussion. We don't have a recording, a transcript, a third party report, etc.
And even then, the paraphrasing isn't damning at all... Hogan never said he educated the jury on aspects of the law. He says he talked about his life experiences, which the judge said they obviously would bring to the table. I'm not sure exactly what "aspects of the law not presented during the court proceedings" you're talking about.
The rest of that instructions was
but would you be able to set that aside, your previous experience with patents, and decide this case based solely on the law as you're instructed and the evidence that's admitted during the trial?
Mr. Hogan educating the jury on his experience with registering his patents and his understanding of the finer points of patent law would not violate this?
Depends on what exactly was said in the jury room. If he said "here's my life experience and I can talk about the process I went through, but those are different facts from this, so don't assume that what I went through was the same," then yeah, that's that's the "obviously, you will bring your life experience to your role as juror" part. If he said, "the judge is wrong, here's the right law," then that's not deciding the case on the law as they're instructed. Without a record of exactly what was said in the jury room, it could be either.
It doesn't seem like the voire dire transcript entirely agrees with you. He was specifically instructed to not bring his patent experience into the jury room.
I see the exact opposite: "you obviously will bring your life experience to your role as a juror." The question was whether he could set the facts of that matter aside and decide the case on the evidence presented at trial and the jury instructions, not whether he could lobotomize himself and never think about his past experiences.
Given that there was some serious misconduct with respect to the Jury Forman and his "creative" opinions about prior art and patent law, this case will be appealed and start all over.
Not necessarily. First, the "misconduct" appears to be regarding his disclosure of prior litigation. Whether that's enough for a full mistrial is questionable, and even moreso if Samsung knew about it prior to trial. Second, jurors are allowed to bring their life experiences into the jury room - that's why they have voir dire in the first place. He brought in his patent experience, the programmer on the jury brought in his experience, etc. If Samsung was so concerned about someone with patent knowledge being on the jury, they could have had him kicked off pre-trial. And finally, as others have noted, it's really hard to get a unanimous jury verdict thrown out over questions about the jury's conduct.
Given how quickly the jury returned with a verdict, it's pretty clear the jury didn't actually look at the entire document, and based their judgment solely on the interpretations. So yeah, that's how trials are supposed to work. But obviously it wasn't how it actually worked in this case.
How quickly compared to what? The musings of media analysts in a vacuum on how long it "should" have taken? The jury in the previous-"biggest patent law case", Microsoft v. i4i, took only a couple days. Do you have any comparable trials to this one that you can point do with juries taking longer?
Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance.
... except that the entire document was presented to the court and the jury. Apple made arguments presenting it in a light favorable to them, and I'm sure Samsung made counterarguments presenting it in a light favorable to them. That's how trials work. The jury gets to see the entire document, hear both interpretations, and figure out who they think is more credible.
The problem with that is that according to the transcript he was asked a question over and above the "court instructions".
Where do you get that? It's not in the article or Samsung's brief, which merely states:
The jury foreman, Velvin Hogan, failed to answer truthfully during voir dire. Asked by the Court whether “you or a family member or someone very close to you [has] ever been involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?” (Reporter’s Transcript (“RT”) 148:18-21), he disclosed one such lawsuit but failed to disclose two others, including one in which he was sued by his former employer, Seagate, for breach of contract after he failed to repay a promissory note (RT 148:22-150:12; Seagate Tech., Inc. v. Hogan, Case No. MS-93-0919 (Santa Cruz Mun. Ct. June 30, 1993), Declaration of Susan Estrich (“Estrich Decl.”) Ex. A), and filed for personal bankruptcy six months later (In re Velvin R. Hogan and Carol K. Hogan, Case No. 93-58291-MM (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Dec. 27, 1993); Estrich Decl., Ex. B).
It doesn't say anything there about court instructions, or additional questions beyond them. Do you have a different source?
He was asked if he was involved in any lawsuits within the last ten years, which he answered. The lawsuit with Seagate occurred in 1993 which is beyond ten years ago. Thus, he did not disclose it because it wasn't asked of him. But let's pretend he attempted to deceive the system in order to screw over Samsung because that sounds better, right?
(emphasis mine)
Where do you get "within the last ten years", it is not in the summary, the article, or the unredacted filing, which says:
“you or a family member or someone very close to you [has] ever been involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?” (Reporter’s Transcript (“RT”) 148:18-21), he disclosed one such lawsuit but failed to disclose two others, including one in which he was sued by his former employer, Seagate, for breach of contract after he failed to repay a promissory note (RT 148:22-150:12; Seagate Tech., Inc. v. Hogan, Case No. MS-93-0919 (Santa Cruz Mun. Ct. June 30, 1993), Declaration of Susan Estrich (“Estrich Decl.”) Ex. A), and filed for personal bankruptcy six months later (In re Velvin R. Hogan and Carol K. Hogan, Case No. 93-58291-MM (Bankr. N.D. Cal. Dec. 27, 1993); Estrich Decl., Ex. B).
It's in several other articles since:
Hogan, in a phone interview yesterday, denied that there was any misconduct, saying the court instructions for potential jurors required disclosure of any litigation they were involved in within the last 10 years -- and that the 1993 bankruptcy and related litigation involving Seagate fell well outside that time range.
“Had I been asked an open-ended question with no time constraint, of course I would’ve disclosed that,” Hogan said, referring to the bankruptcy and related litigation. “I’m willing to go in front of the judge to tell her that I had no intention of being on this jury, let alone withholding anything that would’ve allowed me to be excused.”
Note: I'm not saying he's right and the Samsung brief is wrong - just that that's where the 10 year claim comes from.
If you have a PACER account, you should be able to pull up the Court Reporter's transcript from voir dire, and see what question was asked.
You seem to think somebody is giving points on debate technique. No one is. And I kind of like a little fist pounding now and again.
You're just argumentative like so many others here. When you have something to add, some hair to split, some fine distinction you think cries out for elaboration, you don't have to start out with stuff like "not quite." There's also "another aspect is," "also" or even just " ."
Patents are supposed to be what I said and also what you said. There's no argument. There's just you, pursuing your strange little hobby.
Funny how you responded to my first point saying that you should make a substantive argument rather than fist pounding, and never bothered responding to my second substantive point. You're trolling, not trying to have a discussion, so there's no point talking to you.
Well that's just crazy talk. Patents are obviously a reward for motivation and they obviously encourage innovation. You're saying a second effect (publishing) negates the first-mentioned effect (reward, incentive).
1. Saying something is "crazy" and "obvious" doesn't actually support your argument. It's merely fist pounding.
2. We're talking about the intent (i.e. "patents are supposed to be...", the first sentences in both of our posts), not the effect. Patents are intended to encourage disclosure of what would otherwise be kept trade secrets, by (i) requiring public disclosure in the patent, and (ii) removing the penalty from other public disclosures in white papers and functional specifications. The fact that some people feel that the patent is a reward is a secondary effect, and I'd argue that it's an undesirable one: it leads people to think that patents should only be granted to "sufficiently award-worthy" inventions... a term that is always left undefined.
Patents are supposed to be a (time-limited) barrier to competition. They're supposed to be the way the inventor gets payed for his invention. Without patents there's little incentive to develop inventions into technologies --- technologies that would be quickly copied.
Not quite - patents are supposed to be a time-limited payment in exchange for public disclosure. The inventor would get paid for his invention either way - just one way would be exclusive public use to commercial advantage and/or licensing to competitors, while the other way would be trade secrets, massive contractual liabilities, non-disclosure agreements, heavily restrictive licenses, etc. If I invent a valuable new floor polish, either I'm going to protect it by getting a patent, or I'm going to protect it by only selling it under very strict contracts, but I'm not going to walk away from income from my invention because patents don't exist.
Patents are not a reward for innovation, nor do they encourage innovation by being a reward. They encourage innovation in others by requiring public disclosure of an invention, so that others can see it and freely improve upon it.
The really crazy part is that after this first bastardization of patents to apply to consumer technology, that then they (recently started to) allow insignificant changes in materials to usher in a new patent, such as software patents being renewed for "..on a mobile device." While the first bastardization is almost debatable, this second bastardization is so way over the top that its very hard to debate its justification with a straight face.
It's also hard to debate with a straight face because it never happened... There's no such thing as "renewing a patent," at least not in the way you describe, nor are there any patent owners who have a patent on [x] and then get a patent on "[x]... on a mobile device" with the latter patent having a longer term than the original. It doesn't happen. Look up double patenting rejections and terminal disclaimers.
But IANAL, nor an expert in US or German patent law, or in multi-jurisdiction injunctive relief.
And yet, you've done a very clear and accurate summary of the issues here. Nice job.
So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff. A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
Someone has never, ever taken an AI class. Or even an algorithm class dealing with risk. Here's how the calculation actually works (and by the way, that approach is about 20-30 years old). Every situation is assessed an impact value: driving into oncoming traffic, 0 (very bad); driving into the right ditch, 10; swerving into a legal lane, 50; etc. Every situation is given a set of possible actions, with each action having a probability of being completed successfully. The algorithm multiplies the outcome with the odds of achieving that outcome, and picks the highest value. You can set it up in different ways, but the idea is the same: multiply outcome severity with odds of achieving outcome, pick lowest combined risk/outcome. In your situation, driving off the cliff (which is assumed to be very bad, since the car can see a very steep drop-off with no bottom) is going to have a much worse outcome than hitting the car in front of it. Hitting the car in front of it is guaranteed, but so is driving off the cliff. As a result, the algorithm will make the automated car hit the car in front of it, rather than drive off the cliff.
Not to mention that cars don't sleep, always behave optimally (according to the algorithms in place), and have no blind spots.
Although I agree with your analysis, the question itself is flawed... It presumes that the self driving car is in a situation where (i) there's a truck immediately ahead, (ii) a truck immediately behind with failing brakes, and (iii) a motorcycle in the next lane (the question doesn't actually specify whether the motorcycle is pacing the car and traveling in the same direction or oncoming, but it's mostly irrelevant*). In order to face the dilemma of (a) crash off the cliff, (b) get smooshed between the trucks, and (c) kill the motorcyclist, the car has to be tailgating the truck and being tailgated by the other truck. Why did the AI let that happen? Why was it tailgating in the first place such that it can't speed up any to avoid the truck behind it, allowing it to pass the motorcycle and change lanes? Why was it content to be tailgated by the other truck without slowing down for safety reasons?
The question sets up a situation in which the AI has already failed, and then asks whether the AI will fail. That seems misleading at best, and circular at worst.
*only mostly: if the motorcycle is in an oncoming lane, then the car will be able to change lanes in a few seconds anyway. And if it's not tailgating the front truck, which it shouldn't be, then the car will have room to speed up to avoid the rear truck while waiting those few seconds.