First, a city does not have the authority to regulate the conduct of persons within its boundaries (and even outside as SF seems to be claiming) however it wants. Sure, it can regulate the class of people who occupy parking spaces, and it can tax the people who use them. What it cannot do is (1) regulate the conduct of persons outside of its bounds who want information about those parking spaces, (2) regulate what applications people run on their devices and the commerce they engage in without a clear public interest in doing so, (3) stop them from expressing themselves where there is no criminal conduct or civil obligation involved (a.k.a. "free speech"), and (4) pass ordinances that are beyond the scope of the authority granted to them by the state (I doubt the State of CA has granted its cities the authority to regulate software). There's four strong reasonings available to the offender when the city tries to enforce this ordinance.
Second, there's no practical way the city will be able to enforce this. Hell, most places don't enforce speeding and traffic laws because its too bothersome/costly to the police to do so. How is the city going to detect illegal activity, when it can't snoop on wireless traffic without a warrant?
Third, the city is the cause of this market in the first place. If the city would oversee the parking situation such that there was sufficient parking, then there wouldn't be a market for this application to exploit. The city should provide more parking &/| transport, not try to punish people for getting around.
Fourth, their city council is stupid for doing so: they are dissuading people from coming into their city where they would be spending money & paying more in sales and other taxes. But then we're talking about CA: the land where original idiotic laws are common...
The number of measurements taken and the level of precision are irrelevant if the reference standard used to set those thermometers is off. If you'd passed your stats 101 course, you'd have been able to figure that one out, Coward. We can do without your "education".
There are records of a guy by the name of Noah surviving a worldwide flood in the Old Testament: just because you've got "records" back for centuries does not make your information reliable.
The graph from the article shows "high geothermal flux" "exceeding 150 or 200 mW/m^2 in more than 10 locations, those localities apparently less than a few km wide. That looks pretty "excessive" to me... particularly where that heat has practically nowhere to go but directly into the ice above it.
I didn't argue that your several W/m^2 couldn't have an effect. I argued that you haven't shown that it does in the face of evidence to the contrary. (You do understand the difference, right?)
As far as sea water getting under the ice, the article seems to be saying that the circulating water is *because* of the additional geothermal heat, not from heating attributable to global warming. Your seawater heated by global warming would have to flow tens or even hundreds of km under the sheet to even reach the locations where the high geothermal flux is shown in the graph. A much more likely explanation is that any water under the sheet would be from the melted freshwater of the ice sheet brought about by the geothermal warming.
Oh, and just because the seawater is below sea level does not make it flow under the ice sheet. The pressure of the seawater is basically the same as the pressure of the freshwater under the ice; the freshwater is below sea level, too.
I have a little scented wax warmer that melts a pot of wax less than.01 m^2 surface and maybe 3cm thick, and it uses the heat from a 25 watt bulb to do it. Your couple of W/m^2 is the equivalent of a Christmas tree bulb under a block that would be 100 times larger in surface and many cm or meters thick. Now I am making a comparison of wax to ice, but the extra exposure caused by the additional CO2 would be like holding out a match over a square meter of frozen tundra. I just can't see it having much effect.
As to the lubricating effect at the edges: I'm just not buying that. The warm water would have to get under the glacier somehow to lubricate it. That would be against the flow of the glacier and against the thermal mass of the ice within it. Water doesn't flow through ice.
Now warmer water could have an effect on the bottom of an ice sheet... and that warmer water could be sourced from underwater volcanoes as the thread originator posited. A single erupting underwater volcano could weaken an ice sheet in one location, cause a fracture, and release a large portion of the ice sheet into the ocean. The effect of the increased greenhouse effect is diffuse; the effect of volcanic eruption is concentrated.
Now global warming may very well be having a significant effect, but to link it to a change in melting ice sheets and glaciers (and further to the migration of penguins) in the presence of another plausible explanation (underwater volcanoes) requires a lot more of a showing, in my mind.
And what percentage of that heat from the sun is a result of global warming? It's not the total "hundreds of watts" that you suggest. I'd like to know how many mW/m^2 is caused by the increased CO2 for a proper comparison, if you don't mind. Oh, and let's not forget that we're talking about a solar exposure that's at a low average angle, which will reduce your number quite a bit. (Hot air does not immediately transfer from the equator to the poles, and most the effect of direct overhead exposure is lost to space, as I'm sure you're smart enough to know.)
I'm sure that 35 mW/m^2 (100-65) is significant when you compare against the right number, whatever that is.
YUP. Imagine that. The environmentalist freaks are running into Darwin's theories. I wonder if they'll adapt to survive?
Beliefs that don't relate well to the real world have a name. They're called "obsessions". Evolution does not favor those who hold them (as the penguins seem to know.)
It's great that a comparison is made to the strength of the Eiffel Tower, but the reality is that we're talking about MICROstereolithorgraphy. If it printed a layer one micron in thickness, each layer needing an hour of production time, that's on the order of one century per inch.
This will be useful only where small parts are to be made that can withstand large forces: a miniature gyro perhaps rotating at insane speeds...
That's still not correct. A patent to a computer-related invention is not required to contain code. All that is needed is teachings that enable a person of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention. For many inventions, a description of what the computer does is enough. (Further disclosure might be needed under the "best mode" requirement, but that is altogether a separate issue.)
If the scope of the patent claims is so broad as to encompass the prior art, then they should be rejected or invalidated under 35 U.S.C. 102 (novelty) or 103 (obviousness). Section 101 does not prohibit broad claims: it only limits the kinds of inventions that can be patented.
Any good attorney considers the result of his work if and when it is considered by a judge. If that makes me a litigator, then I'll be proud to bear the title!
A computer that includes code that performs a function (even if it is obvious) is a "machine". Sorry, your definition of "abstract idea" doesn't work against 35 U.S.C. 101...
Ah, then we agree. And I think you'd agree with this as well:
The goal of an ordinary modern appellate (or supreme court) judge is to confuse the issue enough so he appears clever and important! If the resolution of an issue is too simple, then the judge gets no accolades from the legal community and no invitations to award ceremonies where he can wear black robes.:-)
The concept of an "abstract idea" is something the Supreme Court invented (did I really use that word?) --- to find a way to invalidate obvious patents under section 101. An abstract idea is some knowledge known in the art prior to the invention, applied to a general-purpose machine or computer. That renders the combination of the abstract idea and the application on a computer obvious, if somebody can find a stated motivation in the art from which a rejection can be made.
What you're describing is lack of "enablement". A patent is supposed to teach the invention such that one of ordinary skill in the art can make and use the invention.
The problem here is that most patent examiners haven't been engineers, and they're lousy at rejecting the claims you describe because they don't have a reference level of what "ordinary skill" is. If patent examiners were paid more (which might require higher filing fees), we might reach better quality patents.
Because the district court hearing the case invalidated the patent under section 101, the appeal was limited on those grounds. Neither the appellate court nor the Supreme Court could turn to section 103 (obviousness) to invalidate the patent, because there was no ruling on those grounds at the lower court level for them to review. Now if the respondent had made arguments under section 103 and the district court had ruled the patent to be invalid for obviousness, then the Supreme Court could have affirmed on those grounds.
What we really need is judges at the district court level that can distinguish reasonings based upon section 101 from 103. By continuing this "abstract idea" line of decisions, the Supreme Court has only clouded the issue further.
And to whoever wrote the subject line claiming that this patent was invalidated "for being software": this decision does nothing of the sort. It would be nice if you'd read the decision before trying to lure us in by claiming to fit the ocean in a teacup. I'll be happy to write claims for a valid software patent any time you like. (Yes, I'm a patent attorney.)
Some places on the earth naturally accumulate sand/soil from natural processes. In the Marshall Islands, it is a hurricane now and again. The sand/soil naturally subsides (sinks) into the surrounding lower-lying regions, or sometimes because of the pumping out of groundwater. Here's a description made for the southern shore of the U.S.:
When the next hurricane comes along, the graves of these soldiers will be covered again. Let this "foreign minister" flap about "global warming" all he wants: he's really just concerned about getting foreign aid for a populace trying to live on untenable land.
I think the main issue you're raising is that of familiarity. Those marks that are widely recognized for products coming from a particular source are stronger than those that are just started to be used.
There isn't a definitive test as to trademark validity: a number of factors are weighed. Familiarity/recognition is one. Distinctiveness is another. Whether or not a mark is registered is another. Without cracking open a book on trademark law I can't give you the complete list. What I can tell you is it is often the case that nobody knows that their trademark is secure. What a trademark lawyer will often do is try to make the mark as distinctive as possible (as you suggest), and that will weigh in favor of the originator of that trademark when it is enforced.
Yes, trademarks do have a similar concept as prior art. The trademark examiner (or judge in an infringement suit) asks the question of whether a new trademark would be confusingly similar to those presently in use. Those that have confusion are not as strong as those clearly identifiable with a source. That's not a bright standard, but it's the best that anyone's come up with.
Here I think Zazzle is just telling its suppliers that they have the burden of proving non-infringement. The resupplier (Zazzle) is just avoiding the risk and cost of the investigation needed to know that it is safe. Zazzle sells lots and lots of products, and it can cherry pick the ones it wants to sell without negatively impacting its market position. That's just how the world works...
There is a balance in trademarks between distinctiveness and familiarity. Perhaps the guy with the "Pi." mark should be required to make his mark more distinctive. I could go for that.
Perhaps the trademark examiner should have applied a higher standard for distinctiveness than he did...
Actually, lots of trademarks are no more complicated than the greek letter Pi. The Nike "swoosh" is is a good example. Another is a yellow "M" for a fast-food restaurant. This guy isn't going to get a prohibition on everyone else using the letter Pi in every situation. He might get protection against the use of the letter Pi on a class of goods that would confuse the source of those goods. It's not an "ownership" of the letter Pi: it's a prohibition on using the letter Pi with a period under certain circumstances.
Yes, I am an IP attorney. I don't handle trademark litigation and don't make any money on this particular kind of confusion. I do try to understand the concepts and the issues, and not just post for the thrill of slinging mud...
I can understand how many in this community would think that because a trademark (or copyright) has been registered, the registrant has "carte blanche" to use it and prohibit others from using it. That is, after all, how domain registrations work...
What a registration really is is the filing and recognition of a CLAIM to ownership rights. The USPTO does do a search to make a determination of its own as to whether the registrant has any rights in a trademark, but that is far, far from conclusive. There are examples in the caselaw where some unknown guy out in the middle of Iowa has been using an unregistered trademark, someone else comes along later registering that same or a similar trademark (innocently and coincidentally), and the registrant can't stop the little guy from continuing his use. What the registration does is to put the world on notice of the intent of the registrant to use the registered trademark, and give him an avenue against parties who come along later wanting to use it. The registrant still has to prove in court that it has ownership rights, EVEN THOUGH it has registered the trademark.
So this "PI." trademark could be attacked in a number of ways. It could be that the registrant really hasn't used (or continued to use) it in the marketplace. The symbol is arguably so generic that trademark rights cannot be had. Sometimes trademark rights are restricted to one field of use, and others get to use it for something else. And, from the example above, it could be that the alleged infringers started using the symbol before the registrant did.
So what our legal system prescribes is that Zazzle and their suppliers go consult with their own attorneys, competent in trademark law, and decide whether they need to change their products. That's what lawyers are for...
Yes: a skilled patent lawyer can word the claims of a patent so as to make the job of the patent examiner difficult to do -- difficult to make a rejection for.
Basically, the problem is one of where to place the burden. If we place the burden on the patent applicant (to prove that they have a worthy invention), then we would force the applicant to find and show the closest prior art to some level of adequacy. But how does an applicant show they've done an adequate search and disclosure? How does the government test this (and meet their burden to the public)? There actually has been some attempt to approach this problem in this way: there was a program that allowed for an applicant to (more or less) perform the search instead of a patent examiner. (I think that program has gone the way of the dodo...)
I say: let the patent examiner do the job from an objective viewpoint, and let the cost of that examination be charged to the applicant. We'd have a lot fewer junk patents issued, and a lot fewer applications filed (by applicants who'd be disincentivized to spend a lot of money on something without confirming a good chance of getting something valuable out of it in the first place.) If it continues as it is (with applicants paying a few thousand dollars with a high likelihood of getting something valuable from a licensing standpoint), there will continue to be patent trolls.
Oh, and patent examiners should have a better route available to them to challenge an application for lack of enablement. Most of these patents used by the trolls don't instruct how to practice an invention: they just predict where the technology will go before the inventing has been done.
... it's the lack of effort in patent examination. The reason proper examination isn't being done is because patent applicants don't pay enough in fees. The time a patent examiner gets toward a case is a matter of hours: they are evaluated upon the number of cases they dispose of. It's easier to allow a case to issue with the appearance of proper search and examination, than it is to find proper grounds to make a legally valid rejection.
Patent trolls are merely people who take advantage of these facts.
Actually, it's easy for McAffee: they just claim they didn't violate anyone's copyrights. If they copied publicly-available data, they probably have a good argument. The fact that that data was behind restrictions doesn't change the lack of copyrights. Accessing a website does not imply acceptance of any license (whether posted on the site or not.)
McAffee will claim they didn't need a license, because they didn't need a license. (probably)
Slashdot Mirror
I have three points to make:
First, a city does not have the authority to regulate the conduct of persons within its boundaries (and even outside as SF seems to be claiming) however it wants. Sure, it can regulate the class of people who occupy parking spaces, and it can tax the people who use them. What it cannot do is (1) regulate the conduct of persons outside of its bounds who want information about those parking spaces, (2) regulate what applications people run on their devices and the commerce they engage in without a clear public interest in doing so, (3) stop them from expressing themselves where there is no criminal conduct or civil obligation involved (a.k.a. "free speech"), and (4) pass ordinances that are beyond the scope of the authority granted to them by the state (I doubt the State of CA has granted its cities the authority to regulate software). There's four strong reasonings available to the offender when the city tries to enforce this ordinance.
Second, there's no practical way the city will be able to enforce this. Hell, most places don't enforce speeding and traffic laws because its too bothersome/costly to the police to do so. How is the city going to detect illegal activity, when it can't snoop on wireless traffic without a warrant?
Third, the city is the cause of this market in the first place. If the city would oversee the parking situation such that there was sufficient parking, then there wouldn't be a market for this application to exploit. The city should provide more parking &/| transport, not try to punish people for getting around.
Fourth, their city council is stupid for doing so: they are dissuading people from coming into their city where they would be spending money & paying more in sales and other taxes. But then we're talking about CA: the land where original idiotic laws are common...
The number of measurements taken and the level of precision are irrelevant if the reference standard used to set those thermometers is off. If you'd passed your stats 101 course, you'd have been able to figure that one out, Coward. We can do without your "education".
There are records of a guy by the name of Noah surviving a worldwide flood in the Old Testament: just because you've got "records" back for centuries does not make your information reliable.
The graph from the article shows "high geothermal flux" "exceeding 150 or 200 mW/m^2 in more than 10 locations, those localities apparently less than a few km wide. That looks pretty "excessive" to me ... particularly where that heat has practically nowhere to go but directly into the ice above it.
I didn't argue that your several W/m^2 couldn't have an effect. I argued that you haven't shown that it does in the face of evidence to the contrary. (You do understand the difference, right?)
As far as sea water getting under the ice, the article seems to be saying that the circulating water is *because* of the additional geothermal heat, not from heating attributable to global warming. Your seawater heated by global warming would have to flow tens or even hundreds of km under the sheet to even reach the locations where the high geothermal flux is shown in the graph. A much more likely explanation is that any water under the sheet would be from the melted freshwater of the ice sheet brought about by the geothermal warming.
Oh, and just because the seawater is below sea level does not make it flow under the ice sheet. The pressure of the seawater is basically the same as the pressure of the freshwater under the ice; the freshwater is below sea level, too.
I have a little scented wax warmer that melts a pot of wax less than .01 m^2 surface and maybe 3cm thick, and it uses the heat from a 25 watt bulb to do it. Your couple of W/m^2 is the equivalent of a Christmas tree bulb under a block that would be 100 times larger in surface and many cm or meters thick. Now I am making a comparison of wax to ice, but the extra exposure caused by the additional CO2 would be like holding out a match over a square meter of frozen tundra. I just can't see it having much effect.
As to the lubricating effect at the edges: I'm just not buying that. The warm water would have to get under the glacier somehow to lubricate it. That would be against the flow of the glacier and against the thermal mass of the ice within it. Water doesn't flow through ice.
Now warmer water could have an effect on the bottom of an ice sheet ... and that warmer water could be sourced from underwater volcanoes as the thread originator posited. A single erupting underwater volcano could weaken an ice sheet in one location, cause a fracture, and release a large portion of the ice sheet into the ocean. The effect of the increased greenhouse effect is diffuse; the effect of volcanic eruption is concentrated.
Now global warming may very well be having a significant effect, but to link it to a change in melting ice sheets and glaciers (and further to the migration of penguins) in the presence of another plausible explanation (underwater volcanoes) requires a lot more of a showing, in my mind.
And what percentage of that heat from the sun is a result of global warming? It's not the total "hundreds of watts" that you suggest. I'd like to know how many mW/m^2 is caused by the increased CO2 for a proper comparison, if you don't mind. Oh, and let's not forget that we're talking about a solar exposure that's at a low average angle, which will reduce your number quite a bit. (Hot air does not immediately transfer from the equator to the poles, and most the effect of direct overhead exposure is lost to space, as I'm sure you're smart enough to know.)
I'm sure that 35 mW/m^2 (100-65) is significant when you compare against the right number, whatever that is.
YUP. Imagine that. The environmentalist freaks are running into Darwin's theories. I wonder if they'll adapt to survive?
Beliefs that don't relate well to the real world have a name. They're called "obsessions". Evolution does not favor those who hold them (as the penguins seem to know.)
It's great that a comparison is made to the strength of the Eiffel Tower, but the reality is that we're talking about MICROstereolithorgraphy. If it printed a layer one micron in thickness, each layer needing an hour of production time, that's on the order of one century per inch.
This will be useful only where small parts are to be made that can withstand large forces: a miniature gyro perhaps rotating at insane speeds...
That's still not correct. A patent to a computer-related invention is not required to contain code. All that is needed is teachings that enable a person of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention. For many inventions, a description of what the computer does is enough. (Further disclosure might be needed under the "best mode" requirement, but that is altogether a separate issue.)
If the scope of the patent claims is so broad as to encompass the prior art, then they should be rejected or invalidated under 35 U.S.C. 102 (novelty) or 103 (obviousness). Section 101 does not prohibit broad claims: it only limits the kinds of inventions that can be patented.
Any good attorney considers the result of his work if and when it is considered by a judge. If that makes me a litigator, then I'll be proud to bear the title!
A computer that includes code that performs a function (even if it is obvious) is a "machine". Sorry, your definition of "abstract idea" doesn't work against 35 U.S.C. 101...
Ah, then we agree. And I think you'd agree with this as well:
The goal of an ordinary modern appellate (or supreme court) judge is to confuse the issue enough so he appears clever and important! If the resolution of an issue is too simple, then the judge gets no accolades from the legal community and no invitations to award ceremonies where he can wear black robes. :-)
The concept of an "abstract idea" is something the Supreme Court invented (did I really use that word?) --- to find a way to invalidate obvious patents under section 101. An abstract idea is some knowledge known in the art prior to the invention, applied to a general-purpose machine or computer. That renders the combination of the abstract idea and the application on a computer obvious, if somebody can find a stated motivation in the art from which a rejection can be made.
What you're describing is lack of "enablement". A patent is supposed to teach the invention such that one of ordinary skill in the art can make and use the invention.
The problem here is that most patent examiners haven't been engineers, and they're lousy at rejecting the claims you describe because they don't have a reference level of what "ordinary skill" is. If patent examiners were paid more (which might require higher filing fees), we might reach better quality patents.
You've almost got this right, Theaetetus:
Because the district court hearing the case invalidated the patent under section 101, the appeal was limited on those grounds. Neither the appellate court nor the Supreme Court could turn to section 103 (obviousness) to invalidate the patent, because there was no ruling on those grounds at the lower court level for them to review. Now if the respondent had made arguments under section 103 and the district court had ruled the patent to be invalid for obviousness, then the Supreme Court could have affirmed on those grounds.
What we really need is judges at the district court level that can distinguish reasonings based upon section 101 from 103. By continuing this "abstract idea" line of decisions, the Supreme Court has only clouded the issue further.
And to whoever wrote the subject line claiming that this patent was invalidated "for being software": this decision does nothing of the sort. It would be nice if you'd read the decision before trying to lure us in by claiming to fit the ocean in a teacup. I'll be happy to write claims for a valid software patent any time you like. (Yes, I'm a patent attorney.)
Some places on the earth naturally accumulate sand/soil from natural processes. In the Marshall Islands, it is a hurricane now and again. The sand/soil naturally subsides (sinks) into the surrounding lower-lying regions, or sometimes because of the pumping out of groundwater. Here's a description made for the southern shore of the U.S.:
http://www.agu.org/report/hurr...
When the next hurricane comes along, the graves of these soldiers will be covered again. Let this "foreign minister" flap about "global warming" all he wants: he's really just concerned about getting foreign aid for a populace trying to live on untenable land.
I think the main issue you're raising is that of familiarity. Those marks that are widely recognized for products coming from a particular source are stronger than those that are just started to be used.
There isn't a definitive test as to trademark validity: a number of factors are weighed. Familiarity/recognition is one. Distinctiveness is another. Whether or not a mark is registered is another. Without cracking open a book on trademark law I can't give you the complete list. What I can tell you is it is often the case that nobody knows that their trademark is secure. What a trademark lawyer will often do is try to make the mark as distinctive as possible (as you suggest), and that will weigh in favor of the originator of that trademark when it is enforced.
Yes, trademarks do have a similar concept as prior art. The trademark examiner (or judge in an infringement suit) asks the question of whether a new trademark would be confusingly similar to those presently in use. Those that have confusion are not as strong as those clearly identifiable with a source. That's not a bright standard, but it's the best that anyone's come up with.
Here I think Zazzle is just telling its suppliers that they have the burden of proving non-infringement. The resupplier (Zazzle) is just avoiding the risk and cost of the investigation needed to know that it is safe. Zazzle sells lots and lots of products, and it can cherry pick the ones it wants to sell without negatively impacting its market position. That's just how the world works...
There is a balance in trademarks between distinctiveness and familiarity. Perhaps the guy with the "Pi." mark should be required to make his mark more distinctive. I could go for that.
Perhaps the trademark examiner should have applied a higher standard for distinctiveness than he did...
Actually, lots of trademarks are no more complicated than the greek letter Pi. The Nike "swoosh" is is a good example. Another is a yellow "M" for a fast-food restaurant. This guy isn't going to get a prohibition on everyone else using the letter Pi in every situation. He might get protection against the use of the letter Pi on a class of goods that would confuse the source of those goods. It's not an "ownership" of the letter Pi: it's a prohibition on using the letter Pi with a period under certain circumstances.
Yes, I am an IP attorney. I don't handle trademark litigation and don't make any money on this particular kind of confusion. I do try to understand the concepts and the issues, and not just post for the thrill of slinging mud...
I can understand how many in this community would think that because a trademark (or copyright) has been registered, the registrant has "carte blanche" to use it and prohibit others from using it. That is, after all, how domain registrations work...
What a registration really is is the filing and recognition of a CLAIM to ownership rights. The USPTO does do a search to make a determination of its own as to whether the registrant has any rights in a trademark, but that is far, far from conclusive. There are examples in the caselaw where some unknown guy out in the middle of Iowa has been using an unregistered trademark, someone else comes along later registering that same or a similar trademark (innocently and coincidentally), and the registrant can't stop the little guy from continuing his use. What the registration does is to put the world on notice of the intent of the registrant to use the registered trademark, and give him an avenue against parties who come along later wanting to use it. The registrant still has to prove in court that it has ownership rights, EVEN THOUGH it has registered the trademark.
So this "PI." trademark could be attacked in a number of ways. It could be that the registrant really hasn't used (or continued to use) it in the marketplace. The symbol is arguably so generic that trademark rights cannot be had. Sometimes trademark rights are restricted to one field of use, and others get to use it for something else. And, from the example above, it could be that the alleged infringers started using the symbol before the registrant did.
So what our legal system prescribes is that Zazzle and their suppliers go consult with their own attorneys, competent in trademark law, and decide whether they need to change their products. That's what lawyers are for...
Yes: a skilled patent lawyer can word the claims of a patent so as to make the job of the patent examiner difficult to do -- difficult to make a rejection for.
Basically, the problem is one of where to place the burden. If we place the burden on the patent applicant (to prove that they have a worthy invention), then we would force the applicant to find and show the closest prior art to some level of adequacy. But how does an applicant show they've done an adequate search and disclosure? How does the government test this (and meet their burden to the public)? There actually has been some attempt to approach this problem in this way: there was a program that allowed for an applicant to (more or less) perform the search instead of a patent examiner. (I think that program has gone the way of the dodo...)
I say: let the patent examiner do the job from an objective viewpoint, and let the cost of that examination be charged to the applicant. We'd have a lot fewer junk patents issued, and a lot fewer applications filed (by applicants who'd be disincentivized to spend a lot of money on something without confirming a good chance of getting something valuable out of it in the first place.) If it continues as it is (with applicants paying a few thousand dollars with a high likelihood of getting something valuable from a licensing standpoint), there will continue to be patent trolls.
Oh, and patent examiners should have a better route available to them to challenge an application for lack of enablement. Most of these patents used by the trolls don't instruct how to practice an invention: they just predict where the technology will go before the inventing has been done.
... it's the lack of effort in patent examination. The reason proper examination isn't being done is because patent applicants don't pay enough in fees. The time a patent examiner gets toward a case is a matter of hours: they are evaluated upon the number of cases they dispose of. It's easier to allow a case to issue with the appearance of proper search and examination, than it is to find proper grounds to make a legally valid rejection.
Patent trolls are merely people who take advantage of these facts.
Let's play a game: You show me a law without a threat, and I'll show you anarchy... and you can name your subject.
Actually, it's easy for McAffee: they just claim they didn't violate anyone's copyrights. If they copied publicly-available data, they probably have a good argument. The fact that that data was behind restrictions doesn't change the lack of copyrights. Accessing a website does not imply acceptance of any license (whether posted on the site or not.)
McAffee will claim they didn't need a license, because they didn't need a license. (probably)
I'm sure if they're watching our communications, they'd love to watch some better afternoon television programs...
Then I'm sure they'll all be very good at finding the fastest road to bankruptcy...
In comparison, many forms of wildlife to the very same thing ... except that when conditions change, wildlife adapts.