It usually goes something like this. Entrepreneur can't wait to tell you about his idea that wil "literally" change the world. It's the biggest thing since the big bang and he can't wait to get started on it and start raking in the combined GNP of all the countries on earth combined. The idea is so big you just HAVE to sign an NDA because if you didn't you would for sure steal it because it's so great.
So you sign the NDA.
Then you get the pitch: it's a website called myfreediscussionsite.biz where people can go and have discussion with each other on any topic. No, it's not just a forum because you only see discussions and profile of people you are friends with. Also, you can post status updates about what you're doing and people can comment on them or give them a thumbs up. No, it's not like Facebook because this one has a red theme instead of a blue theme. Also, Google is really successful so myfreediscussionsite.biz.co.uk also has a search engine where you can search for other discussions taking place on the internet and you can post on those discussions and invite people to continue them on myfreediscussionsite.org.co.uk.net.
Once users begin using the site, users are charged a small fee for each post - just a few cents. Facebook has a billion users, and the entrepreneur is sure that we can take at least half of them away to our new service within the first month. Also, pinterest and instagram are pretty cool so you will be able to pin things from around the web and add hipster filters to them. There's something that resembles twitter in there as well, but it's better because it gives you 150 characters instead of 140 and is therefore better. The best part is you don't have to do any of the design because the entrepreneurs buddy has a son who is a "design whiz" and even got the web design merit badge in boy scouts.
Also, the guy doesn't really have any money NOW to pay you, but you'll totally own a piece of the company and you'll get a a fleet of gold-plated Ferraris as soon as they go public which will be in under 18 months for sure, unless they get purchased first for ten trillionz(tm) of dollars by god almighty himself.
Huh. I didn't realize that signing an NDA meant you (a) had to stick around through a long, boring pitch; (b) had to program for free or for mythical equity; or (c) can't just wander off. Maybe you're confusing them with some other document?
Honestly, you're saying that you sign a non-disclosure agreement and then hear an idea that you'd never disclose to anyone, because it's total shiat. So what's the problem with the agreement?
Most of these claims by Nest are poppycock. For example in US 7,634,504 is cited 5,065,813 which NEST claims was not shown to the PTO by Honeywell.
Nice catch there. From the article:
#7,634,504, which is Honeywell's wild patent for using natural language prompts to program a thermostat. Nest says this is a retread of patent #5,065,813, which was filed 15 years earlier and not shown to the PTO by Honeywell.
And here is the '813 patent cited on the '504 patent (10th one down on page 2).
Duty of disclosure means that if you are aware of relevant prior art when applying for a patent in the US, you are obligated to inform the USPTO about it. Nest is saying that Honeywell should have at least known about its own prior patents, and that not disclosing them violated the duty of disclosure. This is grounds for the patent being found invalid.
Honeywell's response won't be that they didn't know about their own patents, but that they weren't relevant - that they didn't teach or suggest everything in the claims, and that there was better prior art on the record. In which case, there was no duty to disclose.
Patents are almost never thrown out over inequitable conduct. It has to be really egregious, like lying in an affidavit. Usually, it's better to simply give the earlier references to the jury and let them decide if the patent is invalid for obviousness.
And when the patent applicant LIES on the IDS, because they know they have perfectly applicable prior art in the form of their own prior expired patent, but they know the patent examiner won't be able to find his own ass with both hands without clear directions on the IDS.... the patent examiner is doing exactly what he's supposed to do in this situation. Fail.
I take it you've never seen an IDS. It's just a list of references. There's no room for "LIES" or "clear directions". Here's an example.
Anyway, what Nest is saying is that Honeywell failed to disclose materially relevant prior art that they knew of, and therefore committed inequitable conduct. The obvious response from Honeywell will be that those prior art references fail to teach or suggest all of the claimed features and therefore are not materially relevant, and there was better or more relevant prior art on the record, and therefore, disclosing these references would just end up wasting the Examiner's time.
The court will almost certainly not throw out the patents for a finding of inequitable conduct, but instead will let the jury review the earlier patents and figure out if they teach or suggest everything in the claims. And honestly, that's the better answer... Nest says these earlier patents teach everything in the claims, Honeywell says they don't, so let the jury figure it out. That's better than throwing out patents based just one party's statements - it'd be like convicting someone based on what the prosecutor says, without ever letting the jury listen to the defendant.
That's not in the U.S., which I assume the GP was asking about. That said, it's yes here, too, under 17 U.S.C. 506:
(a) Criminal Infringement. —
(1) In general. — Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed —
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
Mod parent up please. Also the relatives of the victim will successfully sue the perp for wrongful death.
A decent gun safety course will teach you that every bullet you send down range has a lawyer attached to
it hoping it damages something it should not.
Normally true, but Florida's Stand Your Ground law explicitly creates immunity for wrongful death suits.
Women have the same opportunity to get degrees and certifications in IT-related fields that men do. They CHOOSE not to of their OWN ACCORD. It was that way when I was in junior college, and again when I was in a 4-year university. The distribution would always look something like 27 men, 3 women.
That's because women were CHOOSING to have NOTHING to do with YOU.
If the US government wants to spur innovation and competition, it needs to fix the broken patent system. To see how bad the problem is, one need look no further than the morass of patent litigation that has beset the cell phone industry.
... as opposed to how the cell phone industry was innovating prior to patents, in the 1500s.
Are you sure you're not taking your already-existing animus towards the patent system and using it as a post hoc explanation for everything related to technology?
What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
What's wrong with it? Their work is ineffective and almost meaningless. They burned $600k to earn $2k in five years for their clients.
If they worked on the case for 15 years spending 2 millions USD and earning just few $ for their clients, would you still call it OK? If not, where is the border line?
How much did their clients pay? $0? So their clients made an INFINITE amount times what they spent? What a return on investment!
What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
The thing that's wrong is that the company who couldn't keep their damned systems secure could have probably made the whole thing go away and saved a lot of money by settling for $2,000 with each of the 290 original claimants which would have cost only $580,000 instead of fighting for 5 years and ending up with 11 people only getting $200 each.
Exactly right. Absent class action suits, the company could have "made the whole thing go away" with a pittance and non-disclosure agreements, and they never would have any incentive to actually fix their systems. You've persuasively argued for immunity from liability for corporations, no matter how evil they are.
I don't know... I think the article summed it up pretty nice:
Actual victims got: $1925
Heartland spent $1.5 million to find the people to give out that $1925.
Somewhere around $998,075 goes to non-profits
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit? They got $606,192.50. For helping 11 people get less than $200 each.
Nice work if you can get it.
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit got $606k for helping 11 people get $2k and helping nonprofits get $1000k. Oh, and those lawyers spent 5 years doing it. And they had to pay all the costs up front, so don't forget the compound interest. And they have to pay their paralegals, staff, IT guy, rent, etc. for those 5 years. The individual lawyers probably ended up making about $20-30k per year. Not nearly as nice work, unless you can take on five or six of these at once.
If they didn't think the odds of them making a reasonable return on the suit were good they wouldn't start it in the first place. There is something distinctly wrong with people being able to start a legal action, with me as a plaintiff without my permission. Yes it is possible that they are representing the interests of all plaintiffs to the best of their ability, not abusing the huge leeway to put their own interest first. The opposite is also patently true.
What's distinctly wrong about it? Consider, your state attorney general may bring an action against a company doing, say, illegal dumping. The attorney general isn't representing himself, he's representing the interests of all of the people in the state. In fact, the full title of these actions are frequently "the People of the State of X v. EvilCorp." Is that distinctly wrong, even though the attorney general didn't knock on your door and get you to sign on? Or is it somehow different and only distinctly wrong when the government's not involved?
Class action suits are not about compensation, they're about deterring the company from being evil. So the plaintiffs get a $20 check... would they have brought suit on their own for that $20? Or even $50? What about even $2000, as in this article? Would you take weeks off of work to spend those same weeks flying across the country to visit EvilCorp and spend hours taking depositions of their corporate board, digging through thousands of pages of emails looking for one smoking gun, hiring experts to investigate, filing repeated motions in court to oppose their motions, arguing for several days at trial, etc., for $2000? Hell, no. And so, absent class action suits, EvilCorp would get away with screwing you out of $2000, screwing me out of $2000, screwing Bob and Joe and Fred and John out of $2000 each, etc. A couple thousand here and a couple thousand there, and suddenly you're talking real money. Because none of us have the time or money to pursue such a small payout individually, they get away with screwing consumers out of millions and millions of dollars.
In a class action suit, however, the attorneys are acting as private attorneys general. The point is not getting everyone compensated with a $2000 check, the point is punishing the company for screwing their customers and making it so costly that they won't do it again.
What is wrong IMHO is that the lawyers get to put people in the Class by default. You have to specifically sign a document to be removed from the class. Most people just throw those away because they are long and confusing. It would be different if the lawyers had to advertise and convince you to be a part of the class. This could be handled much easier by people taking these companies to small claims court.
Except that it couldn't... The damages for any individual person may be only that $2k... Are you willing to spend two or three weeks producing documents, responding to delaying motions from the other side, attending depositions, arguing in court, filing motions of your own, etc. for $2k? Or, where could you find a lawyer to do that work for you for those weeks for 33% of your $2k compensation?
You can't. Which is why these small suits would almost never (and, prior to class action suits, did never) get filed. And the companies know this - they know if they do something slightly evil and take a few pennies or dollars from each customer, those customers aren't going to spend the time or money to bring suit, so they'll just let it slide... and with enough customers, that company can make millions upon millions. Call it the Superman III tactic.
And incidentally, elsewhere in the comments, people mention the one woman who took Toyota to small claims court over her Prius mileage, and how, since she won, there's no need for lawyers and everyone can do the same thing. What they don't mention is that she was an unemployed lawyer with plenty of time to sit in court.
Most of them end up with the actual aggrieved getting $20 and the lawyers getting the six-figure payout.
Most of them take years and the lawyers don't get paid until the end. What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work? Particularly when that six figure payout is divided among all of the lawyers on the team, their paralegals, their secretaries, their IT guy, etc.? You think IT guys should have to work for free?
That might be the most idiotic thing I have ever read. What constitutes justice about paying money to a infinitesimal minority of the total affected people?
Because the total affected people were barely affected, and none of them would have been able to get a lawyer to fight this individually for them.
What is justified about paying lawyers a salary for this boondoggle?
They fronted the expense for the lawsuit and fought it... for 5 years. They managed to catch the company doing something really, really wrong, fought them in court, and won, forcing the company to change their ways. What isn't justified about paying them for that 5 years of work?
You're trying to imply there was nothing better that could have been done with millions of dollars?
I'm sure the company's CEO would have liked to buy another jet with it.
The courts shouldn't care about costs. Right. That's a pretty stupid attitude.
Thinking lawyers shouldn't get paid when they force a company to stop being evil is a pretty stupid attitude, too.
You can come up with something brilliant, truly innovative on the tech front, but be devastated on the patent front. Thus, rendering your research worthless.
You're looking at it backwards... If you've come up with something brilliant and truly innovative, you can get a patent on it. Maybe you can't practice without infringing someone else's patent, but they can't practice your improvement without infringing yours, thus leading to potential cross-licensing opportunities.
For example, say I invent a stool comprising a horizontal sitting surface connected to at least three legs. You come along and realize that adding a back and arms would be great, and invent a chair. You can't make your chair without infringing my stool patent, but if you patent your chair, I can't make one either. If it's really a brilliant, truly innovative idea, then it'll be commercially valuable, so I'll be likely to want a license for your chair patent, and will be willing to give a license to my stool patent in exchange. And if it's really a brilliant idea, then you may get may to pay you too, meaning you get access to the technology and a revenue stream. Your research isn't worthless at all. It's very valuable, just not necessarily in the way you think.
A settlement involves an agreement between two parties. Nothing of the sort happened here.
The Australian court said this woman had to pay the money. Thats a "judgment".
Its quite irritating that immediately after this verdict, the relisted trailer on YouTube got blocked by the same person again...
Not really... If you dig a bit deeper, you find that the original decision was a default judgement because Steele failed to fly all the way to the other side of the world to appear in Australia... First, she may never even heard of the suit - Bell swears that he mailed papers to her, but he apparently has no signed receipt or any other documentation that she received them. Second, Australia has no jurisdiction over her - she lives in New York and has never been there. Additionally, all the events occurred in New York, the witnesses are in New York, the contract between them is under New York law, and Vimeo (who hosted and then took down the video) is a New York company. There's no reason for her to have to fly all of the relevant people to the other side of the world. And finally, she's filed suit in federal court in New York against him.
Basically, this judgement was a rubber stamp default judgement, has no precedential value, has no enforcement ability, and would be thrown out on appeal if she mailed a letter to the court saying she never got the papers and that they have no jurisdiction. It's a bit premature for Slashdot to be shooting its wad in joy.
Now THAT is how copyright law is supposed to work! So refreshing to see it actually properly applied.
Not really. If you go back to the original decision, you find that Tanya Steele never appeared in court, never communicated with the court, and the plaintiff totally swears that he mailed her two letters demanding that she appear in Australia, to which she never responded. This was a default judgement, and those almost always get reversed if the defendant later appeals. Bell may still win eventually, but this judgement is just a rubber stamp and has no actual precedential value.
Additionally, there are jurisdiction and venue problems. The events took place in New York. The defendant lives in New York. Any witnesses are in New York, and the real subject of the dispute - whether this was a contractual work for hire or what - is under New York state law. So why was this case filed on literally the other side of the world? The court may have jurisdiction over the plaintiff, but it has none over the defendant. She has no need to appear, and this judgement is unenforceable.
And finally, she's filed a suit in federal court in New York. If Bell fails to show up for that one, she'll get the exact same summary judgement, but with one difference - Vimeo, Inc., who hosted the video, is based in New York, too, and she could get an enforceable court order to keep them from reposting it.
The Supreme Court recently invalidated patents on natural things. All Monsanto has done so far, is move various natural genes around, from one life-form to another. That is, there are no synthetic genes in the seeds that were patented.
How is that different than Diamond v. Chakrabarty? Chakrabarty modified existing crude-oil eating bacteria by combining their plasmid genes and producing a new stable species capable of consuming oil "one to two orders of magnitude faster." The Supreme Court liked that patent, and has since repeatedly affirmed that decision, even though there were no synthetic genes there.
I dissagree... the police are fine to talk to when you go to talk to them about something... a basic (but not legally binding) opinion/clarification of a specific criminal law, a break in in your home, a stalker, reporting unsafe drivers, a lost purse you found on a sidewalk (all things I've done... including #5 yesterday)... it's when they come knocking at your door and you are in their sights you alas have to be extra careful due to the whole "Anything you say can and will be used against you" bit.
Don't forget that "filing a complaint against an officer" counts as putting you in their sights.
Actually, the claims only have a certain level of legal weight. The actual patent is granted on the "Description of Invention" -- the main body of the patent. That's the part the PTO reads and analyzes against prior art. The claims are generally only checked against the body, to ensure they're supported by the body, and I'm sure, not written too outlandishly.
I'm sorry, but that's simply incorrect. And, yes, I am a US patent attorney. The PTO skims the description, but prior art searches are performed explicitly on the claim limitations. In fact, if your description includes material that's not in the claims (and you file no divisional or continuation applications claiming said material), it's considered to be dedicated to the public.
Now, once you're in court, it's the claims that are used to prosecute infringement. But they'll be challenged, or even tossed out, if they aren't properly backed up by the body of the patent, once you get to trial.
It is correct that the claims must have proper support in the specification (35 USC 112), but novelty (35 USC 102), obviousness (35 USC 103), utility (35 USC 101), and infringement (35 USC 271 et seq) are all based on the claims. See, for example, MPEP 2131 regarding rejections based on lack of novelty ("A claim is anticipated only if each and every element as set forth in the claim is found, either expressly or inherently described, in a single prior art reference." Verdegaal Bros. v. Union Oil Co. of California, 814 F.2d 628, 631, 2 USPQ2d 1051, 1053 (Fed. Cir. 1987)... "The identical invention must be shown in as complete detail as is contained in the... claim." Richardson v. Suzuki Motor Co., 868 F.2d 1226, 1236, 9 USPQ2d 1913, 1920 (Fed. Cir. 1989).).
32 bits is obvious. The half precision floating point format was actually quite neat. It's pretty much useless for anything except graphics, but with 16 bit floats you can represent a far more useful range of colours (for humans) than with 16 bit integers and get a rendering quality that is much closer to 32-bit floats than to 8-bit integers. Maybe not deserving of a patent, but it was considered pretty clever at the time.
The latter is the standard, though. Patents aren't granted to innovative, nonobvious solutions that are sufficiently awesome to be "deserving," because that would be an arbitrary standard and would violate the requirements of due process (the PTO being a quasi-judicial body). Instead, the question is just whether they're novel and nonobvious, and if something is pretty clever, then it doesn't matter whether it cures cancer, renders better fog, or makes an online shopping experience slightly faster. Such questions of worthiness are better left for the market to decide - if I patent a machine that twiddles my fingers for me, not only is no one going to buy a license, no one's going to infringe.
Here's the abstract! Look at how unpatentable it is!
You have to read the claims. Not just the abstract, but the claims.
Oh, yeah? Here's the summary! Look at how unpatentable it is!
Once more... The claims - they're the numbered paragraphs starting a few pages before the abstract. Only the claims have any legal weight. The rest - including the summary you quoted - is merely to provide context.
There is some language in the patent law that the details of your innovation must be "non-obvious to a person skilled in the art".
Once you know the sequence of the gene involved, the mechanics of doing a test is pretty much something you could do yourself in a high school biology lab.
But that's an argument that these should be invalid under 35 USC 103, not under 35 USC 101. While I don't disagree with your post, I feel that these arguments about patent-eligible fields (including whether even the most novel, innovative, nonobvious software in the world should be patentable) seem to be looking at the wrong solution to the problem of too many obvious patents being granted.
Slashdot Mirror
It usually goes something like this. Entrepreneur can't wait to tell you about his idea that wil "literally" change the world. It's the biggest thing since the big bang and he can't wait to get started on it and start raking in the combined GNP of all the countries on earth combined. The idea is so big you just HAVE to sign an NDA because if you didn't you would for sure steal it because it's so great.
So you sign the NDA.
Then you get the pitch: it's a website called myfreediscussionsite.biz where people can go and have discussion with each other on any topic. No, it's not just a forum because you only see discussions and profile of people you are friends with. Also, you can post status updates about what you're doing and people can comment on them or give them a thumbs up. No, it's not like Facebook because this one has a red theme instead of a blue theme. Also, Google is really successful so myfreediscussionsite.biz.co.uk also has a search engine where you can search for other discussions taking place on the internet and you can post on those discussions and invite people to continue them on myfreediscussionsite.org.co.uk.net.
Once users begin using the site, users are charged a small fee for each post - just a few cents. Facebook has a billion users, and the entrepreneur is sure that we can take at least half of them away to our new service within the first month. Also, pinterest and instagram are pretty cool so you will be able to pin things from around the web and add hipster filters to them. There's something that resembles twitter in there as well, but it's better because it gives you 150 characters instead of 140 and is therefore better. The best part is you don't have to do any of the design because the entrepreneurs buddy has a son who is a "design whiz" and even got the web design merit badge in boy scouts.
Also, the guy doesn't really have any money NOW to pay you, but you'll totally own a piece of the company and you'll get a a fleet of gold-plated Ferraris as soon as they go public which will be in under 18 months for sure, unless they get purchased first for ten trillionz(tm) of dollars by god almighty himself.
Huh. I didn't realize that signing an NDA meant you (a) had to stick around through a long, boring pitch; (b) had to program for free or for mythical equity; or (c) can't just wander off. Maybe you're confusing them with some other document?
Honestly, you're saying that you sign a non-disclosure agreement and then hear an idea that you'd never disclose to anyone, because it's total shiat. So what's the problem with the agreement?
Most of these claims by Nest are poppycock. For example in US 7,634,504 is cited 5,065,813 which NEST claims was not shown to the PTO by Honeywell.
Nice catch there. From the article:
#7,634,504, which is Honeywell's wild patent for using natural language prompts to program a thermostat. Nest says this is a retread of patent #5,065,813, which was filed 15 years earlier and not shown to the PTO by Honeywell.
And here is the '813 patent cited on the '504 patent (10th one down on page 2).
Duty of disclosure means that if you are aware of relevant prior art when applying for a patent in the US, you are obligated to inform the USPTO about it. Nest is saying that Honeywell should have at least known about its own prior patents, and that not disclosing them violated the duty of disclosure. This is grounds for the patent being found invalid.
Honeywell's response won't be that they didn't know about their own patents, but that they weren't relevant - that they didn't teach or suggest everything in the claims, and that there was better prior art on the record. In which case, there was no duty to disclose.
Patents are almost never thrown out over inequitable conduct. It has to be really egregious, like lying in an affidavit. Usually, it's better to simply give the earlier references to the jury and let them decide if the patent is invalid for obviousness.
And when the patent applicant LIES on the IDS, because they know they have perfectly applicable prior art in the form of their own prior expired patent, but they know the patent examiner won't be able to find his own ass with both hands without clear directions on the IDS.... the patent examiner is doing exactly what he's supposed to do in this situation. Fail.
I take it you've never seen an IDS. It's just a list of references. There's no room for "LIES" or "clear directions". Here's an example.
Anyway, what Nest is saying is that Honeywell failed to disclose materially relevant prior art that they knew of, and therefore committed inequitable conduct. The obvious response from Honeywell will be that those prior art references fail to teach or suggest all of the claimed features and therefore are not materially relevant, and there was better or more relevant prior art on the record, and therefore, disclosing these references would just end up wasting the Examiner's time.
The court will almost certainly not throw out the patents for a finding of inequitable conduct, but instead will let the jury review the earlier patents and figure out if they teach or suggest everything in the claims. And honestly, that's the better answer... Nest says these earlier patents teach everything in the claims, Honeywell says they don't, so let the jury figure it out. That's better than throwing out patents based just one party's statements - it'd be like convicting someone based on what the prosecutor says, without ever letting the jury listen to the defendant.
But it begs the question if anyone has ever been jailed for copyright infringement.
Yep: Kino.to Admin Gets 2,5 Years Prison Sentence.
That's not in the U.S., which I assume the GP was asking about. That said, it's yes here, too, under 17 U.S.C. 506:
(a) Criminal Infringement. —
(1) In general. — Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed —
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
And for a recent case, see NinjaVideo.net.
Mod parent up please. Also the relatives of the victim will successfully sue the perp for wrongful death. A decent gun safety course will teach you that every bullet you send down range has a lawyer attached to it hoping it damages something it should not.
Normally true, but Florida's Stand Your Ground law explicitly creates immunity for wrongful death suits.
Women have the same opportunity to get degrees and certifications in IT-related fields that men do. They CHOOSE not to of their OWN ACCORD. It was that way when I was in junior college, and again when I was in a 4-year university. The distribution would always look something like 27 men, 3 women.
That's because women were CHOOSING to have NOTHING to do with YOU.
If the US government wants to spur innovation and competition, it needs to fix the broken patent system. To see how bad the problem is, one need look no further than the morass of patent litigation that has beset the cell phone industry.
... as opposed to how the cell phone industry was innovating prior to patents, in the 1500s.
Are you sure you're not taking your already-existing animus towards the patent system and using it as a post hoc explanation for everything related to technology?
What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
What's wrong with it? Their work is ineffective and almost meaningless. They burned $600k to earn $2k in five years for their clients. If they worked on the case for 15 years spending 2 millions USD and earning just few $ for their clients, would you still call it OK? If not, where is the border line?
How much did their clients pay? $0? So their clients made an INFINITE amount times what they spent? What a return on investment!
What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work?
The thing that's wrong is that the company who couldn't keep their damned systems secure could have probably made the whole thing go away and saved a lot of money by settling for $2,000 with each of the 290 original claimants which would have cost only $580,000 instead of fighting for 5 years and ending up with 11 people only getting $200 each.
Exactly right. Absent class action suits, the company could have "made the whole thing go away" with a pittance and non-disclosure agreements, and they never would have any incentive to actually fix their systems. You've persuasively argued for immunity from liability for corporations, no matter how evil they are.
I don't know... I think the article summed it up pretty nice:
Actual victims got: $1925
Heartland spent $1.5 million to find the people to give out that $1925.
Somewhere around $998,075 goes to non-profits
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit? They got $606,192.50. For helping 11 people get less than $200 each.
Nice work if you can get it.
The lawyers who brought the lawsuit got $606k for helping 11 people get $2k and helping nonprofits get $1000k. Oh, and those lawyers spent 5 years doing it. And they had to pay all the costs up front, so don't forget the compound interest. And they have to pay their paralegals, staff, IT guy, rent, etc. for those 5 years. The individual lawyers probably ended up making about $20-30k per year. Not nearly as nice work, unless you can take on five or six of these at once.
If they didn't think the odds of them making a reasonable return on the suit were good they wouldn't start it in the first place. There is something distinctly wrong with people being able to start a legal action, with me as a plaintiff without my permission. Yes it is possible that they are representing the interests of all plaintiffs to the best of their ability, not abusing the huge leeway to put their own interest first. The opposite is also patently true.
What's distinctly wrong about it? Consider, your state attorney general may bring an action against a company doing, say, illegal dumping. The attorney general isn't representing himself, he's representing the interests of all of the people in the state. In fact, the full title of these actions are frequently "the People of the State of X v. EvilCorp." Is that distinctly wrong, even though the attorney general didn't knock on your door and get you to sign on? Or is it somehow different and only distinctly wrong when the government's not involved?
Class action suits are not about compensation, they're about deterring the company from being evil. So the plaintiffs get a $20 check... would they have brought suit on their own for that $20? Or even $50? What about even $2000, as in this article? Would you take weeks off of work to spend those same weeks flying across the country to visit EvilCorp and spend hours taking depositions of their corporate board, digging through thousands of pages of emails looking for one smoking gun, hiring experts to investigate, filing repeated motions in court to oppose their motions, arguing for several days at trial, etc., for $2000? Hell, no. And so, absent class action suits, EvilCorp would get away with screwing you out of $2000, screwing me out of $2000, screwing Bob and Joe and Fred and John out of $2000 each, etc. A couple thousand here and a couple thousand there, and suddenly you're talking real money. Because none of us have the time or money to pursue such a small payout individually, they get away with screwing consumers out of millions and millions of dollars.
In a class action suit, however, the attorneys are acting as private attorneys general. The point is not getting everyone compensated with a $2000 check, the point is punishing the company for screwing their customers and making it so costly that they won't do it again.
What is wrong IMHO is that the lawyers get to put people in the Class by default. You have to specifically sign a document to be removed from the class. Most people just throw those away because they are long and confusing. It would be different if the lawyers had to advertise and convince you to be a part of the class. This could be handled much easier by people taking these companies to small claims court.
Except that it couldn't... The damages for any individual person may be only that $2k... Are you willing to spend two or three weeks producing documents, responding to delaying motions from the other side, attending depositions, arguing in court, filing motions of your own, etc. for $2k? Or, where could you find a lawyer to do that work for you for those weeks for 33% of your $2k compensation?
You can't. Which is why these small suits would almost never (and, prior to class action suits, did never) get filed. And the companies know this - they know if they do something slightly evil and take a few pennies or dollars from each customer, those customers aren't going to spend the time or money to bring suit, so they'll just let it slide... and with enough customers, that company can make millions upon millions. Call it the Superman III tactic.
And incidentally, elsewhere in the comments, people mention the one woman who took Toyota to small claims court over her Prius mileage, and how, since she won, there's no need for lawyers and everyone can do the same thing. What they don't mention is that she was an unemployed lawyer with plenty of time to sit in court.
Most of them end up with the actual aggrieved getting $20 and the lawyers getting the six-figure payout.
Most of them take years and the lawyers don't get paid until the end. What's wrong with someone getting a six-figure payout for, as in this one, 5 years of work? Particularly when that six figure payout is divided among all of the lawyers on the team, their paralegals, their secretaries, their IT guy, etc.? You think IT guys should have to work for free?
That might be the most idiotic thing I have ever read. What constitutes justice about paying money to a infinitesimal minority of the total affected people?
Because the total affected people were barely affected, and none of them would have been able to get a lawyer to fight this individually for them.
What is justified about paying lawyers a salary for this boondoggle?
They fronted the expense for the lawsuit and fought it... for 5 years. They managed to catch the company doing something really, really wrong, fought them in court, and won, forcing the company to change their ways. What isn't justified about paying them for that 5 years of work?
You're trying to imply there was nothing better that could have been done with millions of dollars?
I'm sure the company's CEO would have liked to buy another jet with it.
The courts shouldn't care about costs. Right. That's a pretty stupid attitude.
Thinking lawyers shouldn't get paid when they force a company to stop being evil is a pretty stupid attitude, too.
You can come up with something brilliant, truly innovative on the tech front, but be devastated on the patent front. Thus, rendering your research worthless.
You're looking at it backwards... If you've come up with something brilliant and truly innovative, you can get a patent on it. Maybe you can't practice without infringing someone else's patent, but they can't practice your improvement without infringing yours, thus leading to potential cross-licensing opportunities.
For example, say I invent a stool comprising a horizontal sitting surface connected to at least three legs. You come along and realize that adding a back and arms would be great, and invent a chair. You can't make your chair without infringing my stool patent, but if you patent your chair, I can't make one either. If it's really a brilliant, truly innovative idea, then it'll be commercially valuable, so I'll be likely to want a license for your chair patent, and will be willing to give a license to my stool patent in exchange. And if it's really a brilliant idea, then you may get may to pay you too, meaning you get access to the technology and a revenue stream. Your research isn't worthless at all. It's very valuable, just not necessarily in the way you think.
A settlement involves an agreement between two parties. Nothing of the sort happened here. The Australian court said this woman had to pay the money. Thats a "judgment". Its quite irritating that immediately after this verdict, the relisted trailer on YouTube got blocked by the same person again...
Not really... If you dig a bit deeper, you find that the original decision was a default judgement because Steele failed to fly all the way to the other side of the world to appear in Australia... First, she may never even heard of the suit - Bell swears that he mailed papers to her, but he apparently has no signed receipt or any other documentation that she received them. Second, Australia has no jurisdiction over her - she lives in New York and has never been there. Additionally, all the events occurred in New York, the witnesses are in New York, the contract between them is under New York law, and Vimeo (who hosted and then took down the video) is a New York company. There's no reason for her to have to fly all of the relevant people to the other side of the world. And finally, she's filed suit in federal court in New York against him.
Basically, this judgement was a rubber stamp default judgement, has no precedential value, has no enforcement ability, and would be thrown out on appeal if she mailed a letter to the court saying she never got the papers and that they have no jurisdiction. It's a bit premature for Slashdot to be shooting its wad in joy.
Now THAT is how copyright law is supposed to work! So refreshing to see it actually properly applied.
Not really. If you go back to the original decision, you find that Tanya Steele never appeared in court, never communicated with the court, and the plaintiff totally swears that he mailed her two letters demanding that she appear in Australia, to which she never responded. This was a default judgement, and those almost always get reversed if the defendant later appeals. Bell may still win eventually, but this judgement is just a rubber stamp and has no actual precedential value.
Additionally, there are jurisdiction and venue problems. The events took place in New York. The defendant lives in New York. Any witnesses are in New York, and the real subject of the dispute - whether this was a contractual work for hire or what - is under New York state law. So why was this case filed on literally the other side of the world? The court may have jurisdiction over the plaintiff, but it has none over the defendant. She has no need to appear, and this judgement is unenforceable.
And finally, she's filed a suit in federal court in New York. If Bell fails to show up for that one, she'll get the exact same summary judgement, but with one difference - Vimeo, Inc., who hosted the video, is based in New York, too, and she could get an enforceable court order to keep them from reposting it.
The Supreme Court recently invalidated patents on natural things. All Monsanto has done so far, is move various natural genes around, from one life-form to another. That is, there are no synthetic genes in the seeds that were patented.
How is that different than Diamond v. Chakrabarty? Chakrabarty modified existing crude-oil eating bacteria by combining their plasmid genes and producing a new stable species capable of consuming oil "one to two orders of magnitude faster." The Supreme Court liked that patent, and has since repeatedly affirmed that decision, even though there were no synthetic genes there.
I dissagree... the police are fine to talk to when you go to talk to them about something... a basic (but not legally binding) opinion/clarification of a specific criminal law, a break in in your home, a stalker, reporting unsafe drivers, a lost purse you found on a sidewalk (all things I've done... including #5 yesterday)... it's when they come knocking at your door and you are in their sights you alas have to be extra careful due to the whole "Anything you say can and will be used against you" bit.
Don't forget that "filing a complaint against an officer" counts as putting you in their sights.
Treyvon was a young 6' 3" muscular basketball player. Zimmerman is 5'9", 250lbs, so unlikely to be able to run away.
Trayvon was 6'3" and 160 pounds. Far cry from "muscular", and unlikely to have been able to push a 250 pound man off of him.
Actually, the claims only have a certain level of legal weight. The actual patent is granted on the "Description of Invention" -- the main body of the patent. That's the part the PTO reads and analyzes against prior art. The claims are generally only checked against the body, to ensure they're supported by the body, and I'm sure, not written too outlandishly.
I'm sorry, but that's simply incorrect. And, yes, I am a US patent attorney. The PTO skims the description, but prior art searches are performed explicitly on the claim limitations. In fact, if your description includes material that's not in the claims (and you file no divisional or continuation applications claiming said material), it's considered to be dedicated to the public.
Now, once you're in court, it's the claims that are used to prosecute infringement. But they'll be challenged, or even tossed out, if they aren't properly backed up by the body of the patent, once you get to trial.
It is correct that the claims must have proper support in the specification (35 USC 112), but novelty (35 USC 102), obviousness (35 USC 103), utility (35 USC 101), and infringement (35 USC 271 et seq) are all based on the claims. See, for example, MPEP 2131 regarding rejections based on lack of novelty ("A claim is anticipated only if each and every element as set forth in the claim is found, either expressly or inherently described, in a single prior art reference." Verdegaal Bros. v. Union Oil Co. of California, 814 F.2d 628, 631, 2 USPQ2d 1051, 1053 (Fed. Cir. 1987)... "The identical invention must be shown in as complete detail as is contained in the ... claim." Richardson v. Suzuki Motor Co., 868 F.2d 1226, 1236, 9 USPQ2d 1913, 1920 (Fed. Cir. 1989).).
32 bits is obvious. The half precision floating point format was actually quite neat. It's pretty much useless for anything except graphics, but with 16 bit floats you can represent a far more useful range of colours (for humans) than with 16 bit integers and get a rendering quality that is much closer to 32-bit floats than to 8-bit integers. Maybe not deserving of a patent, but it was considered pretty clever at the time.
The latter is the standard, though. Patents aren't granted to innovative, nonobvious solutions that are sufficiently awesome to be "deserving," because that would be an arbitrary standard and would violate the requirements of due process (the PTO being a quasi-judicial body). Instead, the question is just whether they're novel and nonobvious, and if something is pretty clever, then it doesn't matter whether it cures cancer, renders better fog, or makes an online shopping experience slightly faster. Such questions of worthiness are better left for the market to decide - if I patent a machine that twiddles my fingers for me, not only is no one going to buy a license, no one's going to infringe.
Here's the abstract! Look at how unpatentable it is!
You have to read the claims. Not just the abstract, but the claims.
Oh, yeah? Here's the summary! Look at how unpatentable it is!
Once more... The claims - they're the numbered paragraphs starting a few pages before the abstract. Only the claims have any legal weight. The rest - including the summary you quoted - is merely to provide context.
There is some language in the patent law that the details of your innovation must be "non-obvious to a person skilled in the art".
Once you know the sequence of the gene involved, the mechanics of doing a test is pretty much something you could do yourself in a high school biology lab.
But that's an argument that these should be invalid under 35 USC 103, not under 35 USC 101. While I don't disagree with your post, I feel that these arguments about patent-eligible fields (including whether even the most novel, innovative, nonobvious software in the world should be patentable) seem to be looking at the wrong solution to the problem of too many obvious patents being granted.