"How many "sweatshops" do you see in places like Hong Kong and Singapore?"
Not many. But they have even more regulation and are closer to socialism than the USA. They are not the free-for-all capitalist havens that you think they are.
'The problem with the idea that companies should just "keep their stuff secret" is that they will do exactly that. And if/when this company no longer exists, the knowledge about their new technology will be lost to history and humanity at large.'
When it comes to software patents, they still keep the technology secret anyway. The way software patents are written, the patent doesn't actually tell you how to implement the "invention", and they don't reveal the source code or even pseudocode.
This is yet another patent where they haven't actually gotten the specified technology to work as described; they just patent it ahead of time so when somebody else gets it to work they can sue them. The USPTO needs to bring back the requirement for a working prototype.
"(Oh! We have NO IDEA if we're going to use 10,000 minutes a month, or 50 minutes a month - therefore telecoms can't charge us by the minute!) How absurd."
Almost everybody understands the concept of a minute and how long it feels like. If they use 100 minutes in a given day, they know it's not 15 minutes and they know it's not 500 minutes, even if they didn't time themselves. But most internet users don't have any idea of what it means to download a gigabyte or 100 gigabytes, if they even know what a gigabyte is.
Sometimes a big business or somebody posing as one comes along offering to buy up a small startup company, when in reality they only want to get inside information so they can copy the ideas and technology.
So you really need to find out if these people are actually capable of buying your company for millions (anything less, and by the time you split it up between all of you and take out taxes it won't be worth it), and that they are genuinely interested in buying the company, before you even think about selling it to them. Then if you think they're real, get a lawyer ASAP with experience in these type of deals, and be very careful of how much information you reveal to the buyer.
They gave it to him instead of others who developed a phone, because they thought history would prefer that somebody named "Bell" invented the telephone, like how Sir Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the flush toilet even though he really didn't invent it.
Diamonds are very different. The main appeal of diamonds as jewelry is that they are expensive. If a diamond mine is suddenly discovered in Greenland and it has 10 times the supply of the rest of the world combined, and DeBeers didn't manage to get hold of it, the price would plummet and women wouldn't want them in engagement rings.
But games and DVDs aren't purchased because of status and being in short supply. The resale value of games and DVDs certainly props up the purchase price. I buy and sell DVDs regularly, and I wouldn't buy them for anything more than $7 or $8 if I didn't expect to be able to sell them for at least half the purchase price.
Corporations often won't allow you to install software on their machine if you personally paid for it. So the option of paying the $200 yourself isn't necessarily there.
What you have described is evolution towards a weaker human species. It's still natural selection, but in a different way. When an obstacle to survival is taken away, like a predator or virus, subsequent generations become less capable of dealing with it. Take away lions and tigers and cheetahs, and future antelopes will become slowpokes. Like the Kiwi bird losing its wings due to the lack of predators in New Zealand.
50,000 years from now, medical treatments given through the generations will probably lead to fertility treatments being the norm for couples who want children, and people routinely getting cancer and heart disease at a young age.
Blockbuster and other video shops would make more money that way, but the movie industry doesn't want burn-on-demand, unless the burned disc can only be viewed for a limited time.
"Well, what happens with algorithms implemented in hardware? Do I get a chance to patent the algorithm? If someone simulates the digital logic in software, are they in violation of the patent?"
Are you asking how it is or how it should be?
If you're talking about how things should be, I would say you should be able to patent the specific hardware that implements the algorithm, but not the algorithm itself. If somebody implements it with hardware substantially different from yours, or in software, they should not be considered as infringing.
"This fact alone is enough to make me be convinced that shareholders should not agree to the outrageous CEO compensation levels that we see in our society."
Shareholders usually don't agree to ridiculously high CEO compensation. The board sets the CEO compensation, and the shareholders often object, but the board ignores them because the law doesn't give much power to the shareholders to force the board to do (or not do) anything.
"All property rights are "government-granted monopolies".
Yes, one could make that argument. But "intellectual property" rights are significantly more far-reaching than physical property rights.
With physical property rights, you build a better mousetrap and you own that mousetrap. You have a "government granted monopoly" over that specific mousetrap, if you want to put it that way. But everybody else's mousetrap is still their own.
Once you patent your mousetrap, you own not just the mousetrap you made, but you also effectively own every other mousetrap in the country that is similar to yours, even though they were made by the hands and tools and materials of somebody else. Your intellectual property takes away the physical property rights of other people.
"CableCard was created by the FCC in an attempt to do - well, who knows what."
Wrong. CableCard was created by CableLabs, a private organization run by the cable TV industry. The FCC didn't mandate CableCard; they only mandated that something be available that allows consumers to buy compatible third-party boxes instead of having to rent the box from the cable companies. The unreliability of CableCard is the cable industry's fault, not the FCC. The cablecos could have designed CableCard better or chosen another technology.
"More than 99.9% of the species existing before the birth of humanity managed to go extinct on their own,"
More than 99% of species going extinct in the last 1000 years did so in the last century, thanks .
"now go back to eating your "dolphin safe" tuna salad."
Hahaha! You intended that as an insult, but it isn't. What next, you're going to try to insult somebody for driving a 40 mpg hybrid instead of a 5 mpg Hummer?
"If you have some inside knowledge of this, I'm sure people would love to know. That is a such a leap from your other statements it does not follow."
No inside knowledge is required. Look at the pollution, environmental destruction, and extinctions that humans have already caused, most of it in just the last couple hundred years. You really think the planet can withstand millions of years of such abuse?
"It is like so many people will cry in their milk if humanity survives. Sad."
It is indeed sad how humanity has f@cked up the planet for other species, and ultimately ourselves.
"I seriously think we have an advantage with intellects, thumbs, and technology to help preserve other life when it is threatened in a way that it can't avoid."
Theoretically, yes. But in actually, we are a much bigger risk to other species and to ourselves than any asteroid out there. The last big asteroid hit was about sixty million years ago. Humans will make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves as well as the majority of other species long before another sixty million years have passed.
Having the Chinese industries bogged down in patent disputes will slow down their innovation like what has happened in the US, thereby allowing the US to compete with them on a more level playing field.
... and crush their skulls as badly as they did to this guy.
Then we could use them as experimental subjects to develop a reliable treatment for others. If the treatment makes them recover, send them to prison for more beatings. Rinse and repeat.
The lawyers filing the lawsuit want former patent lawyers running the USPTO, because former patent lawyers would be more sympathetic to their "patent everything under sun" goals.
Slashdot Mirror
"How many "sweatshops" do you see in places like Hong Kong and Singapore?"
Not many. But they have even more regulation and are closer to socialism than the USA. They are not the free-for-all capitalist havens that you think they are.
'The problem with the idea that companies should just "keep their stuff secret" is that they will do exactly that. And if/when this company no longer exists, the knowledge about their new technology will be lost to history and humanity at large.'
When it comes to software patents, they still keep the technology secret anyway. The way software patents are written, the patent doesn't actually tell you how to implement the "invention", and they don't reveal the source code or even pseudocode.
But they haven't implemented anything as fancy as what is described in the patent.
This is yet another patent where they haven't actually gotten the specified technology to work as described; they just patent it ahead of time so when somebody else gets it to work they can sue them. The USPTO needs to bring back the requirement for a working prototype.
"(Oh! We have NO IDEA if we're going to use 10,000 minutes a month, or 50 minutes a month - therefore telecoms can't charge us by the minute!) How absurd."
Almost everybody understands the concept of a minute and how long it feels like. If they use 100 minutes in a given day, they know it's not 15 minutes and they know it's not 500 minutes, even if they didn't time themselves. But most internet users don't have any idea of what it means to download a gigabyte or 100 gigabytes, if they even know what a gigabyte is.
Sometimes a big business or somebody posing as one comes along offering to buy up a small startup company, when in reality they only want to get inside information so they can copy the ideas and technology.
So you really need to find out if these people are actually capable of buying your company for millions (anything less, and by the time you split it up between all of you and take out taxes it won't be worth it), and that they are genuinely interested in buying the company, before you even think about selling it to them. Then if you think they're real, get a lawyer ASAP with experience in these type of deals, and be very careful of how much information you reveal to the buyer.
They gave it to him instead of others who developed a phone, because they thought history would prefer that somebody named "Bell" invented the telephone, like how Sir Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the flush toilet even though he really didn't invent it.
Diamonds are very different. The main appeal of diamonds as jewelry is that they are expensive. If a diamond mine is suddenly discovered in Greenland and it has 10 times the supply of the rest of the world combined, and DeBeers didn't manage to get hold of it, the price would plummet and women wouldn't want them in engagement rings.
But games and DVDs aren't purchased because of status and being in short supply. The resale value of games and DVDs certainly props up the purchase price. I buy and sell DVDs regularly, and I wouldn't buy them for anything more than $7 or $8 if I didn't expect to be able to sell them for at least half the purchase price.
Corporations often won't allow you to install software on their machine if you personally paid for it. So the option of paying the $200 yourself isn't necessarily there.
What you have described is evolution towards a weaker human species. It's still natural selection, but in a different way. When an obstacle to survival is taken away, like a predator or virus, subsequent generations become less capable of dealing with it. Take away lions and tigers and cheetahs, and future antelopes will become slowpokes. Like the Kiwi bird losing its wings due to the lack of predators in New Zealand.
50,000 years from now, medical treatments given through the generations will probably lead to fertility treatments being the norm for couples who want children, and people routinely getting cancer and heart disease at a young age.
Blockbuster and other video shops would make more money that way, but the movie industry doesn't want burn-on-demand, unless the burned disc can only be viewed for a limited time.
"Well, what happens with algorithms implemented in hardware? Do I get a chance to patent the algorithm? If someone simulates the digital logic in software, are they in violation of the patent?"
Are you asking how it is or how it should be?
If you're talking about how things should be, I would say you should be able to patent the specific hardware that implements the algorithm, but not the algorithm itself. If somebody implements it with hardware substantially different from yours, or in software, they should not be considered as infringing.
"This fact alone is enough to make me be convinced that shareholders should not agree to the outrageous CEO compensation levels that we see in our society."
Shareholders usually don't agree to ridiculously high CEO compensation. The board sets the CEO compensation, and the shareholders often object, but the board ignores them because the law doesn't give much power to the shareholders to force the board to do (or not do) anything.
"All property rights are "government-granted monopolies".
Yes, one could make that argument. But "intellectual property" rights are significantly more far-reaching than physical property rights.
With physical property rights, you build a better mousetrap and you own that mousetrap. You have a "government granted monopoly" over that specific mousetrap, if you want to put it that way. But everybody else's mousetrap is still their own.
Once you patent your mousetrap, you own not just the mousetrap you made, but you also effectively own every other mousetrap in the country that is similar to yours, even though they were made by the hands and tools and materials of somebody else. Your intellectual property takes away the physical property rights of other people.
"CableCard was created by the FCC in an attempt to do - well, who knows what."
Wrong. CableCard was created by CableLabs, a private organization run by the cable TV industry. The FCC didn't mandate CableCard; they only mandated that something be available that allows consumers to buy compatible third-party boxes instead of having to rent the box from the cable companies. The unreliability of CableCard is the cable industry's fault, not the FCC. The cablecos could have designed CableCard better or chosen another technology.
"More than 99.9% of the species existing before the birth of humanity managed to go extinct on their own,"
More than 99% of species going extinct in the last 1000 years did so in the last century, thanks .
"now go back to eating your "dolphin safe" tuna salad."
Hahaha! You intended that as an insult, but it isn't. What next, you're going to try to insult somebody for driving a 40 mpg hybrid instead of a 5 mpg Hummer?
"If you have some inside knowledge of this, I'm sure people would love to know. That is a such a leap from your other statements it does not follow."
No inside knowledge is required. Look at the pollution, environmental destruction, and extinctions that humans have already caused, most of it in just the last couple hundred years. You really think the planet can withstand millions of years of such abuse?
"It is like so many people will cry in their milk if humanity survives. Sad."
It is indeed sad how humanity has f@cked up the planet for other species, and ultimately ourselves.
"I seriously think we have an advantage with intellects, thumbs, and technology to help preserve other life when it is threatened in a way that it can't avoid."
Theoretically, yes. But in actually, we are a much bigger risk to other species and to ourselves than any asteroid out there. The last big asteroid hit was about sixty million years ago. Humans will make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves as well as the majority of other species long before another sixty million years have passed.
Humans are a much bigger threat to other species on earth than asteroids.
We cannot survive without other species, but they can survive easily without us.
The other living species on earth would definitely be better off if humans completely left the planet or became extinct.
Having the Chinese industries bogged down in patent disputes will slow down their innovation like what has happened in the US, thereby allowing the US to compete with them on a more level playing field.
OOPS, I meant "Superprogrammers might NOT have the skills..."
Superprogrammers might have the skills to start and run a business, but they can and often do partner with somebody who has the business skills.
... and crush their skulls as badly as they did to this guy.
Then we could use them as experimental subjects to develop a reliable treatment for others. If the treatment makes them recover, send them to prison for more beatings. Rinse and repeat.
The lawyers filing the lawsuit want former patent lawyers running the USPTO, because former patent lawyers would be more sympathetic to their "patent everything under sun" goals.