It would be much more interesting to see how biased judges are. That study could be done by taking 100+ misdemeanor prosecutions at the local courthouse, and ranking the "ugliness" of the defendants with a sample of the public. Correlate that to the actual convictions and acquittals, and you can find out how fair your local judge is...
It is well settled in copyright law that sculptures are protected: it probably would be infringement, for example, to take a picture of a recent sculpture through a window from the outside of a building, even if it were visible from the street. Although I haven't researched the question, I'm sure that the form of a car would be protected like a sculpture in U.S. copyright law.
In your activities as a videojournalist, your reproductions of cars on the street would most likely not have been infringement because the way in which they were used had only minimal impacts on the commercial interests of the auto-makers. Your story would have had only minimal impacts on the auto-maker's interests in it's works as sculpture.
In the instant case, the activities of the Mustang fan club would impact Ford's ability to sell its own calendar, and thus the impacts are (at least theoretically) not sufficiently minimal. Furthermore, the fan club would be making money on the calendar, and thus that publication would probably not be a 'fair use'.
Now, if the fan club where to modify the theme/focus of the calendar, say to sexy bodies on/around the Mustangs or Mustangs under the wrecking ball, the use of the Mustang form might only be incidental and might not constitute infringement. It's an interesting question...
The slashdot headline is misleading. It is not the viruses that are new, but rather that they would be added to foods. It's likely that you have been exposed to these viruses thousands of times already. Your concern for this should be much less than, say, the addition of MSG to your baloney.
The big problem, I think, is that everyone is sending each other word processing files. If I receive a.doc, and I don't have Word (and don't want to pay for it) I can view the file, but my program may paginate/format it differently.
Portable formats have been around for years: postscript, pdf, etc. Most recipients aren't interested in editing what you send to them. Just send them a pdf and avoid the problem (OpenOffice 2.0 has a very nice pdf export function.) If it turns out that the recipient wants the text he can cut and paste it into whatever he wants.
As usual, the problem is not in the software; it is in the use of the software.
1. There is no such thing as a U.S. Provisional Patent.
2. Anyone can get a U.S. Patent Application Publication to anything by filing a patent application with a $500 filing fee.
3. I am registered to practice with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
4. The way it is worded, this story can have no other purpose/effect than to inflame the Slashdot community. IHMO, it is irresponsible.
5. Rather than promulgating misinformation to thousands of others, it would be better to be a real journalist and verify your facts. Oh-- what is the point.
For a published disclosure by others to count as prior art, it must either:
(1) have published more than one year prior to the application's filing date, or
(2) have published before the invention occurred.
For (2), it is possible to get around this prior art if substantial evidence can be produced to the patent office that the inventor invented it prior to the publication date of the reference, if that date is not more than one year prior to the filing date of the application.
And, yes, I would know: I am a practicing patent agent.
Would you disclose the ingredients of the secret sauce without getting something back? A patent is supposed to be about a trade between the patentee and the public. The patentee discloses the invention to the public, and in return he gets to exclude others from practicing the invention.
If a patent application were immediately published as you suggest, companies would be reluctant to file because their inventions would be picked up immediately by the competition. The company may not be successful in getting the patent they want, which means they will have given the invention to the competition for free.
On the other hand, in the U.S. an applicant can choose to have the application published after 18 months, which may give the applicant the right to collect royalties while the application is pending if the patent issues. An applicant can also choose not to publish an application, potentially surprising the industry.
Other countries (such as Germany, I think) have a kind of comment period. If the local patent office intends to award a patent, it is published for comment. After a period of time (months), the patent goes through if nobody produces prior art. In that case, examination is performed in two steps, first by the patent office and then by the public. In practice, this really doesn't provide an improvement because (1) the public really doesn't watch what patents are about to issue and (2) the public doesn't have the first clue how to fashion legal arguments directed to patentability.
To avoid infringement, the circumventing product must eliminate one of the elements of the claims. In other words, for each of the claims, you have to find one element in the claims that isn't in the product. For claimed methods, one of the recited steps must not be performed.
Adding a feature or an improvement will not circumvent.
As to the "prior art" in August 2002, that by itself isn't enough. If the date were more than one year before the filing date of the patent, perhaps it would be effective as prior art. The problem is, the inventor may have come up with the idea/invention on his own before Aug. 2002, which means he's got a year from that date to file before the reference becomes effective as prior art against a U.S. patent/application.
This box plays a message, and then requires the user to enter a code. My message says something like:
"If you're a telemarketer, we will not accept your call. Please put us on the DNC list. All others, please press 2"
The tones are helpful for autodialers, but those can be programmed to work around the Telezappers. Tones won't help a call with a live TM on the other end (i.e. local calls from carpet cleaners, windshield replacement cos., etc.)
The privacycall box instantly eliminated TM calls for me.
Hope that helps!
OK. Maybe claim 1 is invalidated by the prior art. But what about the remaining claims? Claim 1 in an application is often too broad; the other claims may be patentable and may provide MS the coverage they need. Also keep in mind that the original claims in the application can be changed in prosecution (and probably will).
Better check again when the patent is issued...
MS will enforce its patents when it perceives it to benefit the company, i.e. when the cost of bad publicity (impressing the public with their monopolistic brutality) outweighs the benefit of market control. Look at what they've done for DOJ: when they started to get beat up in the papers, they "settled".
MS has a department full of IP lawyers at the waiting. Who do you have on your side?
What seems obvious now may not have been obvious on Feb. 3, 1999 when the patent application was filed. Using what is presently known to show an invention is obvious is often "impermissible hindsight".
So all of you groaning about how "obvious" these patented inventions are should think twice...
Slashdot Mirror
It would be much more interesting to see how biased judges are. That study could be done by taking 100+ misdemeanor prosecutions at the local courthouse, and ranking the "ugliness" of the defendants with a sample of the public. Correlate that to the actual convictions and acquittals, and you can find out how fair your local judge is...
It is well settled in copyright law that sculptures are protected: it probably would be infringement, for example, to take a picture of a recent sculpture through a window from the outside of a building, even if it were visible from the street. Although I haven't researched the question, I'm sure that the form of a car would be protected like a sculpture in U.S. copyright law.
In your activities as a videojournalist, your reproductions of cars on the street would most likely not have been infringement because the way in which they were used had only minimal impacts on the commercial interests of the auto-makers. Your story would have had only minimal impacts on the auto-maker's interests in it's works as sculpture.
In the instant case, the activities of the Mustang fan club would impact Ford's ability to sell its own calendar, and thus the impacts are (at least theoretically) not sufficiently minimal. Furthermore, the fan club would be making money on the calendar, and thus that publication would probably not be a 'fair use'.
Now, if the fan club where to modify the theme/focus of the calendar, say to sexy bodies on/around the Mustangs or Mustangs under the wrecking ball, the use of the Mustang form might only be incidental and might not constitute infringement. It's an interesting question...
If Sealand is a principality, who is the prince? (Can I be the prince? Please? Please?)
The slashdot headline is misleading. It is not the viruses that are new, but rather that they would be added to foods. It's likely that you have been exposed to these viruses thousands of times already. Your concern for this should be much less than, say, the addition of MSG to your baloney.
The big problem, I think, is that everyone is sending each other word processing files. If I receive a .doc, and I don't have Word (and don't want to pay for it) I can view the file, but my program may paginate/format it differently.
Portable formats have been around for years: postscript, pdf, etc. Most recipients aren't interested in editing what you send to them. Just send them a pdf and avoid the problem (OpenOffice 2.0 has a very nice pdf export function.) If it turns out that the recipient wants the text he can cut and paste it into whatever he wants.
As usual, the problem is not in the software; it is in the use of the software.1. There is no such thing as a U.S. Provisional Patent.
2. Anyone can get a U.S. Patent Application Publication to anything by filing a patent application with a $500 filing fee.
3. I am registered to practice with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
4. The way it is worded, this story can have no other purpose/effect than to inflame the Slashdot community. IHMO, it is irresponsible.
5. Rather than promulgating misinformation to thousands of others, it would be better to be a real journalist and verify your facts. Oh-- what is the point.
You've got it half right.
For a published disclosure by others to count as prior art, it must either:
(1) have published more than one year prior to the application's filing date, or
(2) have published before the invention occurred.
For (2), it is possible to get around this prior art if substantial evidence can be produced to the patent office that the inventor invented it prior to the publication date of the reference, if that date is not more than one year prior to the filing date of the application.
And, yes, I would know: I am a practicing patent agent.
Would you disclose the ingredients of the secret sauce without getting something back? A patent is supposed to be about a trade between the patentee and the public. The patentee discloses the invention to the public, and in return he gets to exclude others from practicing the invention.
If a patent application were immediately published as you suggest, companies would be reluctant to file because their inventions would be picked up immediately by the competition. The company may not be successful in getting the patent they want, which means they will have given the invention to the competition for free.
On the other hand, in the U.S. an applicant can choose to have the application published after 18 months, which may give the applicant the right to collect royalties while the application is pending if the patent issues. An applicant can also choose not to publish an application, potentially surprising the industry.
Other countries (such as Germany, I think) have a kind of comment period. If the local patent office intends to award a patent, it is published for comment. After a period of time (months), the patent goes through if nobody produces prior art. In that case, examination is performed in two steps, first by the patent office and then by the public. In practice, this really doesn't provide an improvement because (1) the public really doesn't watch what patents are about to issue and (2) the public doesn't have the first clue how to fashion legal arguments directed to patentability.
To avoid infringement, the circumventing product must eliminate one of the elements of the claims. In other words, for each of the claims, you have to find one element in the claims that isn't in the product. For claimed methods, one of the recited steps must not be performed.
Adding a feature or an improvement will not circumvent.
As to the "prior art" in August 2002, that by itself isn't enough. If the date were more than one year before the filing date of the patent, perhaps it would be effective as prior art. The problem is, the inventor may have come up with the idea/invention on his own before Aug. 2002, which means he's got a year from that date to file before the reference becomes effective as prior art against a U.S. patent/application.
This box plays a message, and then requires the user to enter a code. My message says something like: "If you're a telemarketer, we will not accept your call. Please put us on the DNC list. All others, please press 2" The tones are helpful for autodialers, but those can be programmed to work around the Telezappers. Tones won't help a call with a live TM on the other end (i.e. local calls from carpet cleaners, windshield replacement cos., etc.) The privacycall box instantly eliminated TM calls for me. Hope that helps!
htttp://www.privacycall.com. Best $90 I ever spent. Telemarketing calls went from 3-5 per day to 0.
OK. Maybe claim 1 is invalidated by the prior art. But what about the remaining claims? Claim 1 in an application is often too broad; the other claims may be patentable and may provide MS the coverage they need. Also keep in mind that the original claims in the application can be changed in prosecution (and probably will). Better check again when the patent is issued...
MS will enforce its patents when it perceives it to benefit the company, i.e. when the cost of bad publicity (impressing the public with their monopolistic brutality) outweighs the benefit of market control. Look at what they've done for DOJ: when they started to get beat up in the papers, they "settled". MS has a department full of IP lawyers at the waiting. Who do you have on your side?
What seems obvious now may not have been obvious on Feb. 3, 1999 when the patent application was filed. Using what is presently known to show an invention is obvious is often "impermissible hindsight". So all of you groaning about how "obvious" these patented inventions are should think twice...