Legally, and that's all that counts here, a continuation is a patent application that claims the filing date of an earlier filed application. It must be filed while the earlier application is still pending in order to receive the earlier date for the material commonly disclosed by both. The disposition of the earlier case, whether under rejection or notice of allowance has no bearing whatsoever on whether continuation status is granted. A later filed case claiming priority to an earlier filed case, and which adds new subject matter is called a "continuation-in-part", or CIP, and is only entitled to the earlier date on the common subject matter assuming all other criteria are met. There's no way a drug company can file a continuation for an earlier application right before the patent to the earlier case expires unless they've kept a line of applications to the original application pending all along. The line of pendancy does not need to be entirely through U.S. application - it can detour through foreign filings as well, typically PCT filings. There's nothing to prohibit an applicant from claiming the same thing in a continuation as was claimed in the parent case, and the practice is typically done when the application gets "finally rejected" by the examiner before the applicant feels comfortable appealing the examiner's decision. In the past, before patent protection ran twenty years from date of filing (it was 17 years from date of issue) and before applications were published devious inventors used to prosecute their applications up to the time the examiner notified them the application was allowable, ready to issue as a patent, and then abandon the application while filing a continuation of it. They could do this indfinitely or until somebody else developed a market for the invention, then they would allow the application to issue as a patent and sue everybody in the now thriving market for infringement of their "submarine" patent. Drug companies have been criticized for filing new applications (not continuations) for old drugs whose patents are about to expire and making slightly, in many cases obvious modifications of the old drugs. Like different dosages, or form (tablet vs capsule) for example. By doing so they can list the drug in the FDA "orange book" as being under patent prosecution which stops any generic manufacturers from making the drug for at least 60 days. Even though they know the applications will never stand up to examination the smart drug companies know that if they're making $5B/yr on a particular drug that's about to have its patent expire then a two month extension is worth, well, you do the math...
Yeah, it was last modified 4/24/2003, long after the McAfee patent application was filed. Which means this was legally NOT prior art during the examination of the application.
Just once, I'd like to see one of these "uncommissioned" TCO reports separate OS users into software producers and software consumers. If you produce software you have a vested interest in sticking with MS - they change their OS every few years and that means their customers, and yours, will be back again and again. Let's face it, software is not a consumable - it doesn't wear out or get used up. There has to be something other than new faces driving sales or you're dead as a producer.
Software consumers don't like to keep buying new versions of software, and if they're home users they don't necessarily care about MS support, or lack thereof, for an obsolete OS. They're going to keep playing those games on Windows 98 as long as they work. Commercial users pretty much need to use supported software - if they can't go to someone when they have a problem it's useless to them. That's the primary allure of MS over open software. Though with Big Blue and others getting into the service end of open software there is a whole lot less reason for saying open software is not supported, particularly if you've got a service contract with a large outfit.
My company writes a lot of custom software for internal use, only. Expensive software. We need a supported OS. A lot of stuff we have that worked in NT doesn't work in XP, so it's been a major headache making the switch (we're still not half way there). As one of the better MS customers we are actually one of the reasons MS provided support for NT long after it was supposed to expire.
I don't know when the guys running this outfit are going to see, if they ever do, that sticking with MS means we are going to have to go through this over and over and over again. That's because every MS OS is obsolete and without MS support, right out of the box. It just hasn't happened for the newer ones, yet. That's something that's not given a lot of weight in these TCO analyses, and nobody tells you up front.
It's getting old reading about how this or that patent is going to be the wrench in linux's works, or that such a feature was known long before it was patented, and the patent will never stand in up court. The real benefit, and also the real problem with free/open software, at least when it comes down to the issue of property rights, is that nobody owns them. That's why OSF, or some other similar organization should obtain patents, or at the very least file Statutory Invention Registrations with the USPTO on behalf of those working on the development of free/open products to ensure that the technology remains in the public domain. Ignoring the fact that property rights exist is simply inexcusable. To maintain the freedom of free software the players must learn to use the system just like everyone else.
When recent copyright legislation in this country passed extending copyrights to longer than 100 years I recall one of the battle cries of the RIAA was that the United States needed to harmonize their copyright terms with those in Europe. Turns out we gave longer terms than Europe, and now they want to harmonize with ours. I'll bet after Europe has finished harmonizing their copyright terms with ours in this round we'll have to lengthen ours again to harmonize with theirs.
The question to ask is can he do the job he's being hired for. If he can then I don't see a problem. Does writing evil code disqualify somebody from getting a job coding? I don't think so, unless part of the plea agreement requires him to stay away from computers. On the other hand, I don't think writing a virus necessarily qualifies one to write just any kind of program anymore than being a speeder qualifies one to drive NASCAR.
Given the typical short lived duration of marriage these days they ought to start sending the divorce lawyers right around the time they start sending the women. Or better yet, just send all the lawyers. Now there's a science fiction horror story if ever there was one: "Attack of the intellectual property lawyers from Mars."
Let's see, that's about 204 dpi screen resolution. Although much better than most displays, it doesn't match the 300 dpi resolution of my old HP2 laser printer.
I don't want my fridge to be my friend, partner, or something I can talk to. The only thing I want it doing besides keeping my suds cold is turning on a light inside when I open the door, and maybe spitting out ice cubes, but only when I press the button. I feel perfectly well with myself about trashing it when it no longer works to my satisfaction. You can't that with a "friend" or "partner". Anybody who needs his toilet to be a friend, to greet him in the morning and wish him good night is already dead. And don't forget viruses. Am I going to have to talk to some guy in India on the phone when my oven starts misbehaving? Download and install software patches to my toaster? This is clearly a prime example of solutions looking for problems to solve. We're better off without, thank you.
Since having my system disk fail I always mirror my system drive using RAID 1. If one goes you just have to pull it out and you're back in business. Also, some OS don't like to be installed on a RAID 5 array and will be trouble on disk failure, and impossible if you're using the OS for the RAID management. I keep my data in RAID 5 because it is more space efficient. I use five drive striping and a hot swap spare. I backup critical data from both drives to tape every night and store the tape offsite because I had to manually rebuild one of those file systems once. And most importantly, regardless of what RAID system you use, upgrade to a new controller whenever your old one is no longer supported by the manufacturer, else keep a spare around if you plan on keeping the thing going longer than the company that made it. Chances are you're not going to be able to make a simple swap of controllers on drives that are already loaded. I can tell you from experience that it's less costly to pay for the regular hardware upgrades than to have a RAID controller repaired by a company that no longer exists.
True. And so what if he planned this all along or asked for more than it cost?? It was clearly noted in the news article that the site was owned by Pat - it was his property and he could ask for it whatever he wanted. The sheriff could pay it, try and negotiate a different price, or just walk away from the deal. But they didn't like the terms of the deal so they abused their authority and trampled Pat's civil rights by charging him with FELONIES. Pat should give Johnny Cochran a call, and ultimately Macomb County is going to have to pony up a lot more than $300K before this one's over.
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Legally, and that's all that counts here, a continuation is a patent application that claims the filing date of an earlier filed application. It must be filed while the earlier application is still pending in order to receive the earlier date for the material commonly disclosed by both. The disposition of the earlier case, whether under rejection or notice of allowance has no bearing whatsoever on whether continuation status is granted. A later filed case claiming priority to an earlier filed case, and which adds new subject matter is called a "continuation-in-part", or CIP, and is only entitled to the earlier date on the common subject matter assuming all other criteria are met. There's no way a drug company can file a continuation for an earlier application right before the patent to the earlier case expires unless they've kept a line of applications to the original application pending all along. The line of pendancy does not need to be entirely through U.S. application - it can detour through foreign filings as well, typically PCT filings. There's nothing to prohibit an applicant from claiming the same thing in a continuation as was claimed in the parent case, and the practice is typically done when the application gets "finally rejected" by the examiner before the applicant feels comfortable appealing the examiner's decision. In the past, before patent protection ran twenty years from date of filing (it was 17 years from date of issue) and before applications were published devious inventors used to prosecute their applications up to the time the examiner notified them the application was allowable, ready to issue as a patent, and then abandon the application while filing a continuation of it. They could do this indfinitely or until somebody else developed a market for the invention, then they would allow the application to issue as a patent and sue everybody in the now thriving market for infringement of their "submarine" patent. Drug companies have been criticized for filing new applications (not continuations) for old drugs whose patents are about to expire and making slightly, in many cases obvious modifications of the old drugs. Like different dosages, or form (tablet vs capsule) for example. By doing so they can list the drug in the FDA "orange book" as being under patent prosecution which stops any generic manufacturers from making the drug for at least 60 days. Even though they know the applications will never stand up to examination the smart drug companies know that if they're making $5B/yr on a particular drug that's about to have its patent expire then a two month extension is worth, well, you do the math...
Yeah, it was last modified 4/24/2003, long after the McAfee patent application was filed. Which means this was legally NOT prior art during the examination of the application.
Just once, I'd like to see one of these "uncommissioned" TCO reports separate OS users into software producers and software consumers. If you produce software you have a vested interest in sticking with MS - they change their OS every few years and that means their customers, and yours, will be back again and again. Let's face it, software is not a consumable - it doesn't wear out or get used up. There has to be something other than new faces driving sales or you're dead as a producer.
Software consumers don't like to keep buying new versions of software, and if they're home users they don't necessarily care about MS support, or lack thereof, for an obsolete OS. They're going to keep playing those games on Windows 98 as long as they work. Commercial users pretty much need to use supported software - if they can't go to someone when they have a problem it's useless to them. That's the primary allure of MS over open software. Though with Big Blue and others getting into the service end of open software there is a whole lot less reason for saying open software is not supported, particularly if you've got a service contract with a large outfit.
My company writes a lot of custom software for internal use, only. Expensive software. We need a supported OS. A lot of stuff we have that worked in NT doesn't work in XP, so it's been a major headache making the switch (we're still not half way there). As one of the better MS customers we are actually one of the reasons MS provided support for NT long after it was supposed to expire.
I don't know when the guys running this outfit are going to see, if they ever do, that sticking with MS means we are going to have to go through this over and over and over again. That's because every MS OS is obsolete and without MS support, right out of the box. It just hasn't happened for the newer ones, yet. That's something that's not given a lot of weight in these TCO analyses, and nobody tells you up front.
It's getting old reading about how this or that patent is going to be the wrench in linux's works, or that such a feature was known long before it was patented, and the patent will never stand in up court. The real benefit, and also the real problem with free/open software, at least when it comes down to the issue of property rights, is that nobody owns them. That's why OSF, or some other similar organization should obtain patents, or at the very least file Statutory Invention Registrations with the USPTO on behalf of those working on the development of free/open products to ensure that the technology remains in the public domain. Ignoring the fact that property rights exist is simply inexcusable. To maintain the freedom of free software the players must learn to use the system just like everyone else.
When recent copyright legislation in this country passed extending copyrights to longer than 100 years I recall one of the battle cries of the RIAA was that the United States needed to harmonize their copyright terms with those in Europe. Turns out we gave longer terms than Europe, and now they want to harmonize with ours. I'll bet after Europe has finished harmonizing their copyright terms with ours in this round we'll have to lengthen ours again to harmonize with theirs.
The question to ask is can he do the job he's being hired for. If he can then I don't see a problem. Does writing evil code disqualify somebody from getting a job coding? I don't think so, unless part of the plea agreement requires him to stay away from computers. On the other hand, I don't think writing a virus necessarily qualifies one to write just any kind of program anymore than being a speeder qualifies one to drive NASCAR.
Given the typical short lived duration of marriage these days they ought to start sending the divorce lawyers right around the time they start sending the women. Or better yet, just send all the lawyers. Now there's a science fiction horror story if ever there was one: "Attack of the intellectual property lawyers from Mars."
If only they could discover something like 'smart cow disease'. Now there would be something to infect politicians with.
Let's see, that's about 204 dpi screen resolution. Although much better than most displays, it doesn't match the 300 dpi resolution of my old HP2 laser printer.
I don't want my fridge to be my friend, partner, or something I can talk to. The only thing I want it doing besides keeping my suds cold is turning on a light inside when I open the door, and maybe spitting out ice cubes, but only when I press the button. I feel perfectly well with myself about trashing it when it no longer works to my satisfaction. You can't that with a "friend" or "partner". Anybody who needs his toilet to be a friend, to greet him in the morning and wish him good night is already dead. And don't forget viruses. Am I going to have to talk to some guy in India on the phone when my oven starts misbehaving? Download and install software patches to my toaster? This is clearly a prime example of solutions looking for problems to solve. We're better off without, thank you.
Since having my system disk fail I always mirror my system drive using RAID 1. If one goes you just have to pull it out and you're back in business. Also, some OS don't like to be installed on a RAID 5 array and will be trouble on disk failure, and impossible if you're using the OS for the RAID management. I keep my data in RAID 5 because it is more space efficient. I use five drive striping and a hot swap spare. I backup critical data from both drives to tape every night and store the tape offsite because I had to manually rebuild one of those file systems once. And most importantly, regardless of what RAID system you use, upgrade to a new controller whenever your old one is no longer supported by the manufacturer, else keep a spare around if you plan on keeping the thing going longer than the company that made it. Chances are you're not going to be able to make a simple swap of controllers on drives that are already loaded. I can tell you from experience that it's less costly to pay for the regular hardware upgrades than to have a RAID controller repaired by a company that no longer exists.
True. And so what if he planned this all along or asked for more than it cost?? It was clearly noted in the news article that the site was owned by Pat - it was his property and he could ask for it whatever he wanted. The sheriff could pay it, try and negotiate a different price, or just walk away from the deal. But they didn't like the terms of the deal so they abused their authority and trampled Pat's civil rights by charging him with FELONIES. Pat should give Johnny Cochran a call, and ultimately Macomb County is going to have to pony up a lot more than $300K before this one's over.