Boy, you don't remember (or more likely, you weren't born early enough to have known) how much federal research was commercialized before the Bayh-Dole Act, do you? (The answer is: not much.)
In the Betamax decision, he voted to find infringement. Stevens, bless his soul, wrote the majority opinion. The case will be heard in March and decided by June, so ideally that curmudgeonly bastard Rehnquist will die in February or so and we don't get a new justice appointed before summer. Cross your fingers.
That's a very strange way of setting out the elements of a patent suit. normally, it's validity, infringement, and enforceability. The notion of a "license" doesn't really have anything to do with patent law - more of a rule 8 civil procedure matter, which could be variously said to be release, waiver, license, payment, etc.
This is perhaps the most insightful comment I've seen on Slashdot in months. I believe what you said about concept v. implementation to be true in practice, but legally, are you aware of a doctrine making this distinction?
I've poked around in Chisum (the leading patent treatise) and not found anything. I would tend to believe that this is not a legal principle, but rather a consequence of the lower standards for software patents generally. (e.g. in the written description requirement)
It would be very useful for one of the law journal articles I'm writing if there were in fact an authority putting forth this principle.
If I understand correctly, you're saying how you would like the system to work. What I am saying is that this change, despite its intuitive appeal, is so radical that it would never be adopted.
Effectively it would kill software patenting (which I'm all for), but if we're trying to do that it's just as easy (nearly impossible) to ban software patents outright. The bottom line is that a lot of big political players make bank on software patents, and this kind of change would never slip past them.
Your example of GCC shows that this would work fine for open-source software, but no closed source vendor would go for it. For closed source vendors to patent anything, under this proposal, they would need to reveal much more than the invention at issue.
I think you understand the enablement and written description requirements (and the former model requirement) of patent law pretty well, but there's no need to rehash it for my benefit. I've worked on both sides of the engineering / patent law fence.
The proper disclosure should be (and used to be) whatever is needed for a reasonably competent peer in the field to duplicate the invention by their own means.
What you say is true. The question is whether mere programming according to a high-level plan is within the ordinary skill of the art. The Federal Circuit in Robotic Vision Systems said that it is. Most developers would disagree with that assessment, including me.
Now your statement is that a developer should submit anything required to make the sample code go. Say the sample code is for a new kind of peephole optimization in a compiler. You say that the developer should make that code runnable.
My contention, which you didn't disagree with, is that complex programs cannot be broken down. This peephole optimization function would rely on the rest of the compiler to work. It would be possible to make it work on its own, but I remarked that neither the patent attorney nor the inventor would have the time or wherewithal to adapt the function to standalone use.
I shouldn't have said the Pentium 4 bus because it confuses things too much, mostly because I was mixing semiconductor patents and software patents (they have effectively the same public policy issues). What I meant by that is: A pentium 4 bus is exceedingly complex to design. If the inventor is required to submit Verilog code to make the Pentium 4 go, the only practical way to do that is to submit a good chunk of code for the Pentium 4 itself, most likely all of it. Not the chip itself - we're talking about a part of the chip, and if we're disclosing plans for someone else to make a chip that can talk the same way as the P4, it doesn't do any good to just tell them to go buy a Pentium 4.
That will never happen. No patent is worth describing all of the internals of a state-of-the-art compiler or CPU.
I must confess my initial response was drawn by the old-fogey grandparent complaining about sequences being published on reams of paper, which hasn't been true for a long time. Either he's not a patent attorney, or he doesn't practice much.
Come on, now. The patent office moved to CD-ROM listings a long time ago. I don't even think you are still allowed to submit reams-long patent specs these days.
I think the greater difficulty is that non-trivial software patents are embedded in the rest of the application. I assume Microsoft has patents on COM/OLE (Apple has some on OpenDoc) -- if they were to disclose that source code, that would involve perhaps millions of lines of code. Patent attorneys charging $10k to come up with 15 pages of text and 5 Visio charts, there's no way any of this would come from the patent attorneys, and with inventors doing nothing more than filling out a two page invention disclosure statement there's sure as heck not going to be any dummy sample code from them either.
What about patents on compiler improvements? What about a patent on the Pentium 4 bus? Would Intel have to disclose the Verilog for the entire chip?
In California it is at least a misdemeanor to have sex with someone under 18, period. (Unless you are the person's spouse.)
It does not matter if you are under 18 or within 3 years of age, although it is only a misdemeanor (meaning up to one year in county jail) if you are within three years. Read the penal code
You are right when you say a person needs standing, but the justice department in this case would be acting on behalf of the U.S. government. You can ask your con law professor why this is different. (Civil actions by the government are very common - securities actions, environmental actions, etc.)
you might want to run this strategy of looking for patents before selling your product by a patent attorney sometime. you're setting yourself up for treble damages from willful infringement.
Was she in the same delegation going to Japan, or was she working in Japan? If it's the latter, I'm really impressed that both of you were able to sense the chemistry so quickly, and that the two of you were willing to make a leap of faith that things would work out.
Absolutely, but non-showstopper bugs will go unfixed to make the scheduled ship date, and those bugs aren't fixed until later versions. The later versions usually have many more features and therefore more bugs. It's not just a matter of finding bugs it's also a matter of fixing them.
It's unlikely you'd get a U.S. patent for a few hundred dollars. The filing and maintenance fees alone even for a small entity can easily exceed a thousand dollars. That's assuming you write the entire patent application yourself. Unless the inventor has a lot of experience with patents he is quite likely to write a very narrow, useless patent. Patent attorneys start at about $200 an hour. Altogether the costs of obtaining a patent are measured in the tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the firm and the complexity of the invention.
On the other hand, defending a patent is not necessarily expensive, because most alleged infringers would rather settle than litigate. Litigation costs millions for the defendant as well as the plaintiff, and the infringer can have huge potential liability (otherwise, the patentee wouldn't have gone to trial), say tens of millions of dollars.
It was intentional. Bart thinks Homer is a terrible father while he adores Krusty, while Krusty is in fact almost the same person as Homer. He never realizes how similar they are, though (in personality and appearance). It's very sweet dramatic irony. I think I learned this on the DVD commentary, or it might have been in an interview somewhere.
There is an episode where Homer goes to clown school and there is much madcap as everybody confuses them.
I'm only repeating what I've read elsewhere. I don't remember the original article but a minute or so of Google searching turned up this article.
The article I linked uses rather unfortunate language (it seems to be from a motivational speaker's website), but it says in part "it took [the SA plant] two weeks to make a car that had seventy defects. By contrast, the Mercedes Benz plant in Europe could turn out a car in one week that had only fourteen defects." It goes on to say how the production problems were solved.
The original article I found was much better, talking about the difficulties of overseas sourcing in a broader context, but I read it a long time ago and I don't know where I found it.
The linked article was the second listed when I Googled for "mercedes south africa defects." The first article seems particularly relevant but the full text is subscription-only.
Slashdot Mirror
Are there any positive similes concerning asses?
Boy, you don't remember (or more likely, you weren't born early enough to have known) how much federal research was commercialized before the Bayh-Dole Act, do you? (The answer is: not much.)
The GameCube was sold at a loss after the cut to $99. I don't know if costs came down since then.
In the Betamax decision, he voted to find infringement. Stevens, bless his soul, wrote the majority opinion. The case will be heard in March and decided by June, so ideally that curmudgeonly bastard Rehnquist will die in February or so and we don't get a new justice appointed before summer. Cross your fingers.
That's a very strange way of setting out the elements of a patent suit. normally, it's validity, infringement, and enforceability. The notion of a "license" doesn't really have anything to do with patent law - more of a rule 8 civil procedure matter, which could be variously said to be release, waiver, license, payment, etc.
why don't you use pliers?
I've poked around in Chisum (the leading patent treatise) and not found anything. I would tend to believe that this is not a legal principle, but rather a consequence of the lower standards for software patents generally. (e.g. in the written description requirement)
It would be very useful for one of the law journal articles I'm writing if there were in fact an authority putting forth this principle.
Do you know of one?
Effectively it would kill software patenting (which I'm all for), but if we're trying to do that it's just as easy (nearly impossible) to ban software patents outright. The bottom line is that a lot of big political players make bank on software patents, and this kind of change would never slip past them.
Your example of GCC shows that this would work fine for open-source software, but no closed source vendor would go for it. For closed source vendors to patent anything, under this proposal, they would need to reveal much more than the invention at issue.
I think you understand the enablement and written description requirements (and the former model requirement) of patent law pretty well, but there's no need to rehash it for my benefit. I've worked on both sides of the engineering / patent law fence.
What you say is true. The question is whether mere programming according to a high-level plan is within the ordinary skill of the art. The Federal Circuit in Robotic Vision Systems said that it is. Most developers would disagree with that assessment, including me.
Now your statement is that a developer should submit anything required to make the sample code go. Say the sample code is for a new kind of peephole optimization in a compiler. You say that the developer should make that code runnable.
My contention, which you didn't disagree with, is that complex programs cannot be broken down. This peephole optimization function would rely on the rest of the compiler to work. It would be possible to make it work on its own, but I remarked that neither the patent attorney nor the inventor would have the time or wherewithal to adapt the function to standalone use.
I shouldn't have said the Pentium 4 bus because it confuses things too much, mostly because I was mixing semiconductor patents and software patents (they have effectively the same public policy issues). What I meant by that is: A pentium 4 bus is exceedingly complex to design. If the inventor is required to submit Verilog code to make the Pentium 4 go, the only practical way to do that is to submit a good chunk of code for the Pentium 4 itself, most likely all of it. Not the chip itself - we're talking about a part of the chip, and if we're disclosing plans for someone else to make a chip that can talk the same way as the P4, it doesn't do any good to just tell them to go buy a Pentium 4.
That will never happen. No patent is worth describing all of the internals of a state-of-the-art compiler or CPU.
I must confess my initial response was drawn by the old-fogey grandparent complaining about sequences being published on reams of paper, which hasn't been true for a long time. Either he's not a patent attorney, or he doesn't practice much.
I think the greater difficulty is that non-trivial software patents are embedded in the rest of the application. I assume Microsoft has patents on COM/OLE (Apple has some on OpenDoc) -- if they were to disclose that source code, that would involve perhaps millions of lines of code. Patent attorneys charging $10k to come up with 15 pages of text and 5 Visio charts, there's no way any of this would come from the patent attorneys, and with inventors doing nothing more than filling out a two page invention disclosure statement there's sure as heck not going to be any dummy sample code from them either.
What about patents on compiler improvements? What about a patent on the Pentium 4 bus? Would Intel have to disclose the Verilog for the entire chip?
as a practical matter you may be right (see newman's dissent in the recent duke university case) but as a matter of common law you are not.
Why didn't you just keep the amps away from the mice?
It does not matter if you are under 18 or within 3 years of age, although it is only a misdemeanor (meaning up to one year in county jail) if you are within three years. Read the penal code
Wasn't that to make old software and hardware work that couldn't run right on the new machines?
You are right when you say a person needs standing, but the justice department in this case would be acting on behalf of the U.S. government. You can ask your con law professor why this is different. (Civil actions by the government are very common - securities actions, environmental actions, etc.)
funniest thing I've read in weeks.
mad propz
you might want to run this strategy of looking for patents before selling your product by a patent attorney sometime. you're setting yourself up for treble damages from willful infringement.
Was she in the same delegation going to Japan, or was she working in Japan? If it's the latter, I'm really impressed that both of you were able to sense the chemistry so quickly, and that the two of you were willing to make a leap of faith that things would work out.
She's viscous? Have you tried to squeeze her out of her suit onto a muffin or something?
You're trying to put back the "flash of genius" test which was unworkable for many reasons. You can find more information on Google.
Absolutely, but non-showstopper bugs will go unfixed to make the scheduled ship date, and those bugs aren't fixed until later versions. The later versions usually have many more features and therefore more bugs. It's not just a matter of finding bugs it's also a matter of fixing them.
On the other hand, defending a patent is not necessarily expensive, because most alleged infringers would rather settle than litigate. Litigation costs millions for the defendant as well as the plaintiff, and the infringer can have huge potential liability (otherwise, the patentee wouldn't have gone to trial), say tens of millions of dollars.
There is an episode where Homer goes to clown school and there is much madcap as everybody confuses them.
The article I linked uses rather unfortunate language (it seems to be from a motivational speaker's website), but it says in part "it took [the SA plant] two weeks to make a car that had seventy defects. By contrast, the Mercedes Benz plant in Europe could turn out a car in one week that had only fourteen defects." It goes on to say how the production problems were solved.
The original article I found was much better, talking about the difficulties of overseas sourcing in a broader context, but I read it a long time ago and I don't know where I found it.
The linked article was the second listed when I Googled for "mercedes south africa defects." The first article seems particularly relevant but the full text is subscription-only.