if you patent something really awesome, somebody with a lot more lawyers will surround your invention with patents so it can't be used, even by you, without infringing on one of their patents.
If you hold the patent for Illudium Pu-36, for instance, then even if someone else patents the Illudium Pu-36 explosive space modulator, they will be on the hook if they try to make their invention without getting a license from you. So even if everyone else comes out of the woodwork getting patents that hedge out all the possible applications of your invention, you're still better off with the patent, since they can't make their own patented inventions without using your patented invention.
In the US, the standard is "not obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art". In other words, someone with more skill than Joe Sixpack, but less skill than an expert in the field.
Eli Lilly agreed in 2009 to pay $515M, regarded as the "largest criminal fine paid by a single corporation in federal prosecution". Along with that went a $100M forfeiture of assets and a $800M civil settlement with the US and several state governments, for a grand total of $1.415 billion.
The Supreme Court was unwilling to categorically exclude business methods from patent eligibility in Bilski v. Kappos. Each such method has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the claims are directed to an abstract idea or a patent-eligible method.
Yes, the headline doesn't really match the story. They're talking about two groups of people:
1. Actual thieves, such as the ones who used ZeuS to steal money from various bank accounts in the US and other countries and launder that money back to Eastern Europe (and were recently arrested in a worldwide roundup). Some (maybe most or all) of these people, clearly lacking moral scruples, are also pirating the ZeuS software.
2. The authors of ZeuS, who would like to get paid for their work. (It's unclear whether these folks also use ZeuS themselves to steal money or engage in other nefarious activities, or if they're just software developers.)
So (the obvious problem with the term "software theft" aside), the headline should read, "Software Theft a Problem with Actual Thieves, Too".
Currently, a patent clerk has less than 4 hours to determine if a patent application should be approved or not.
It depends on how you divide up the allotted hours, but 4 hours might be true only for the simplest of arts (generally mechanical arts in very mature fields).
Examiners get a certain number of hours for (more or less) two reviews of an application. The first review usually results in a non-final rejection, and the second results in either an allowance (resulting in an issued patent), a final rejection (if the examiner did a good job on the non-final rejection), an abandonment (if the applicant fails to respond within the time limit), or an appeal (if the applicant appeals to the BPAI, or Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, the examiner must respond to the applicant's appeal brief). Each of these is worth a certain amount of credit to the examiner, called "counts", and examiners are supposed to get a certain quota of counts depending on their pay grade, the art they work in, and the number of hours they work.
These two reviews (non-final and final, along with the associated paperwork involved in disposal of the case) are essentially allotted a certain number of hours total. For examiners in simpler mechanical arts at higher pay grades, this number could be around 10, but for new examiners in complicated electrical arts, it could be 40 or more. That's not to say that this is enough time to review these cases, and many newer examiners work substantial amounts of voluntary overtime in order to meet their production requirements.
On a side note, all patent examiners must have a degree in an engineering field. Most of the training for the job is associated with the legal aspects of examining patents, but there is some technical training as well (usually higher-level general stuff to familiarize examiners with certain terms and concepts in the art). Also, examiners are assigned to examine a particular art, and they usually don't switch around much, so over time, they become very knowledgeable about their art. Some arts have a tough time with this because high turnover has kept much of the workforce green, but other arts have examiners with 10-20 years of experience examining patents.
We're essentially subsidizing the rest of the world's R&D contributions for pharmaceuticals. If the US instituted the same price controls that other countries did, there would be a sharp drop-off in investment in pharma, because nobody would be left to dump money into the industry. The whole world would suffer as a result.
If you want to pay less for drugs and still get useful new products on the market, convince the rest of the world to pay a little more.
Actually, I think a lot of agnostics have a more nuanced view of religion than many atheists do. My hardcore atheist friends have mostly drunk the kool-aid of reason just as much as my hardcore fundamentalist Christian friends have drunk the Jesus-flavored kool-aid, to the point where they're unwilling to even consider the possibility of religion having positive effects in some cases.
This isn't the same thing, though - these are perfectly good chips that are crippled so that Intel doesn't have to manufacture chips at multiple price points. Maybe their reject rate has dropped enough that it's not a viable way to get lower-performance chips.
You want competitive labor markets, you got competitive labor markets. These workers can try competing against workers in China, India, and other nations with a rapidly improving skill base in information technology and a lot of mouths to feed.
These employees should have got while the getting was good, and kept their mouths shut, because these companies had actually decided to keep them employed rather than shipping their jobs outside US borders. With this "gentleman's agreement" out of the way, what else is there to stop this from happening now?
Exactly. The summary was clearly written as a troll of the patent system, and attempts to prevent a rational fact-based discussion by misinterpreting the patent and ignoring how the law works. In order to even start having a discussion of this patent on its merits, you have to read the claims:
----
1. A method for selecting a logical branch in a storyline among a plurality of available storyline branches on a computing device, based on voters' votes, comprising:
obtaining and accumulating, the votes from the voters on a computing device for at least one of the plurality of available storyline branches, during the presentation of the storyline; selectively
excluding votes, using the computing device, based on voter characteristics from the accumulated votes for a specific storyline branch;
multiplying, using the computing device, at least one received vote by a weight factor based on voter characteristics, the weighting factor being based on at least ticket pricing;
calculating, using the computing device, a total for the accumulated and weighted votes; and
determining, using the computing device, a winning tally that corresponds to one of the plurality of available storyline branches;
selecting and presenting, using the computing device, at least one of the available storyline branches with the winning tally as a future storyline branch during the presentation of the storyline, and
generating, using the computing device, a media version matrix specifying a selected storyline having a particular set of logical branches selected by the voting for later use and retrieval, by recording each selected corresponding storyline branch of the plurality of available storyline branches on the computing device.
----
Just remember, before you say, OMFG THAT'S OBVIOUS, you have to find references that teach all of those limitations, and if you have to use more than one reference, you have to have a rationale for combining those references.
Of course, most people charged with a crime actually did it, and in those cases, the defense's motivation is to get people on the jury who are even stupider than the defendant.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a little more complicated than that.
True, but it's nigh impossible to convince /.ers to read the claims of a patent, so I figured I'd give the Cliff Notes version.
if you patent something really awesome, somebody with a lot more lawyers will surround your invention with patents so it can't be used, even by you, without infringing on one of their patents.
If you hold the patent for Illudium Pu-36, for instance, then even if someone else patents the Illudium Pu-36 explosive space modulator, they will be on the hook if they try to make their invention without getting a license from you. So even if everyone else comes out of the woodwork getting patents that hedge out all the possible applications of your invention, you're still better off with the patent, since they can't make their own patented inventions without using your patented invention.
In the US, the standard is "not obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art". In other words, someone with more skill than Joe Sixpack, but less skill than an expert in the field.
Eli Lilly agreed in 2009 to pay $515M, regarded as the "largest criminal fine paid by a single corporation in federal prosecution". Along with that went a $100M forfeiture of assets and a $800M civil settlement with the US and several state governments, for a grand total of $1.415 billion.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-civ-038.html
Also, Hoffman-La Roche agreed to pay $500M in federal criminal fines back in 1999.
my roomate got a worm/bot infection
You should have realized this before your ISP cut you off, when your roommate started dragging his ass around on the carpet.
The Supreme Court was unwilling to categorically exclude business methods from patent eligibility in Bilski v. Kappos. Each such method has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the claims are directed to an abstract idea or a patent-eligible method.
Yes, the headline doesn't really match the story. They're talking about two groups of people:
1. Actual thieves, such as the ones who used ZeuS to steal money from various bank accounts in the US and other countries and launder that money back to Eastern Europe (and were recently arrested in a worldwide roundup). Some (maybe most or all) of these people, clearly lacking moral scruples, are also pirating the ZeuS software.
2. The authors of ZeuS, who would like to get paid for their work. (It's unclear whether these folks also use ZeuS themselves to steal money or engage in other nefarious activities, or if they're just software developers.)
So (the obvious problem with the term "software theft" aside), the headline should read, "Software Theft a Problem with Actual Thieves, Too".
I just want a plug-in hybrid that doesn't look dumb. For some reason, nobody wants to make one of these vehicles that looks like a normal car.
Currently, a patent clerk has less than 4 hours to determine if a patent application should be approved or not.
It depends on how you divide up the allotted hours, but 4 hours might be true only for the simplest of arts (generally mechanical arts in very mature fields).
Examiners get a certain number of hours for (more or less) two reviews of an application. The first review usually results in a non-final rejection, and the second results in either an allowance (resulting in an issued patent), a final rejection (if the examiner did a good job on the non-final rejection), an abandonment (if the applicant fails to respond within the time limit), or an appeal (if the applicant appeals to the BPAI, or Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, the examiner must respond to the applicant's appeal brief). Each of these is worth a certain amount of credit to the examiner, called "counts", and examiners are supposed to get a certain quota of counts depending on their pay grade, the art they work in, and the number of hours they work.
These two reviews (non-final and final, along with the associated paperwork involved in disposal of the case) are essentially allotted a certain number of hours total. For examiners in simpler mechanical arts at higher pay grades, this number could be around 10, but for new examiners in complicated electrical arts, it could be 40 or more. That's not to say that this is enough time to review these cases, and many newer examiners work substantial amounts of voluntary overtime in order to meet their production requirements.
On a side note, all patent examiners must have a degree in an engineering field. Most of the training for the job is associated with the legal aspects of examining patents, but there is some technical training as well (usually higher-level general stuff to familiarize examiners with certain terms and concepts in the art). Also, examiners are assigned to examine a particular art, and they usually don't switch around much, so over time, they become very knowledgeable about their art. Some arts have a tough time with this because high turnover has kept much of the workforce green, but other arts have examiners with 10-20 years of experience examining patents.
We're essentially subsidizing the rest of the world's R&D contributions for pharmaceuticals. If the US instituted the same price controls that other countries did, there would be a sharp drop-off in investment in pharma, because nobody would be left to dump money into the industry. The whole world would suffer as a result.
If you want to pay less for drugs and still get useful new products on the market, convince the rest of the world to pay a little more.
We tend to forget that the election was not a yea or nay vote for Obama.
No, really, it was a yea or nay vote on the Iraq War. Amusingly enough, though, Obama ended up doing pretty much what Bush was on the road to doing.
It just goes to show how incredibly likely it is to find planets like Earth everywhere in the galaxy.
But how many will have stargates on them?
I just love the endless amusement of typing "Is it wrong..." into google and seeing the list (to sleep with my dog/brother/mother).
What you are describing is not Google Instant.
In fact, this will just draw more attention to the hack and probably expose it to completely new audiences which may not have been aware of it yet.
In other news, the children of four out of five Sony execs have beans up their noses.
And then you can use this technology once the booze kills off your brain cells!
Replace them with geeks, and the world will suddenly be safe again.
It's the same as with nukes: it only works if everyone replaces their warriors with geeks. Otherwise, you get screwed.
Actually, I think a lot of agnostics have a more nuanced view of religion than many atheists do. My hardcore atheist friends have mostly drunk the kool-aid of reason just as much as my hardcore fundamentalist Christian friends have drunk the Jesus-flavored kool-aid, to the point where they're unwilling to even consider the possibility of religion having positive effects in some cases.
or obvious to an expert in the field
This isn't the high water mark for obviousness. Obviousness is assessed with respect to one having ordinary skill in the art, not expert skill.
The PTO's self-serving definition of obvious is laughably bad.
Actually, it's the Supreme Court's definition of obvious: KSR v. Teleflex.
This isn't the same thing, though - these are perfectly good chips that are crippled so that Intel doesn't have to manufacture chips at multiple price points. Maybe their reject rate has dropped enough that it's not a viable way to get lower-performance chips.
You want competitive labor markets, you got competitive labor markets. These workers can try competing against workers in China, India, and other nations with a rapidly improving skill base in information technology and a lot of mouths to feed.
These employees should have got while the getting was good, and kept their mouths shut, because these companies had actually decided to keep them employed rather than shipping their jobs outside US borders. With this "gentleman's agreement" out of the way, what else is there to stop this from happening now?
Exactly. The summary was clearly written as a troll of the patent system, and attempts to prevent a rational fact-based discussion by misinterpreting the patent and ignoring how the law works. In order to even start having a discussion of this patent on its merits, you have to read the claims:
----
1. A method for selecting a logical branch in a storyline among a plurality of available storyline branches on a computing device, based on voters' votes, comprising:
obtaining and accumulating, the votes from the voters on a computing device for at least one of the plurality of available storyline branches, during the presentation of the storyline; selectively
excluding votes, using the computing device, based on voter characteristics from the accumulated votes for a specific storyline branch;
multiplying, using the computing device, at least one received vote by a weight factor based on voter characteristics, the weighting factor being based on at least ticket pricing;
calculating, using the computing device, a total for the accumulated and weighted votes; and
determining, using the computing device, a winning tally that corresponds to one of the plurality of available storyline branches;
selecting and presenting, using the computing device, at least one of the available storyline branches with the winning tally as a future storyline branch during the presentation of the storyline, and
generating, using the computing device, a media version matrix specifying a selected storyline having a particular set of logical branches selected by the voting for later use and retrieval, by recording each selected corresponding storyline branch of the plurality of available storyline branches on the computing device.
----
Just remember, before you say, OMFG THAT'S OBVIOUS, you have to find references that teach all of those limitations, and if you have to use more than one reference, you have to have a rationale for combining those references.
Also, the iPhone 4 works great!
Of course, most people charged with a crime actually did it, and in those cases, the defense's motivation is to get people on the jury who are even stupider than the defendant.
Huh? If Microsoft is granting the license, how are they not in complete control over what entities qualify?