I'm at my office. I use the lowest tier of Time Warner's Business Internet (purportedly 1.5 meg up and down - but usually 600k up according to Speakeasy / DSLReports) for $200/mo. At home, across a state line, I have Time Warner home Internet at ~4.5 down and ~1.3 meg up - at $49.00/mo.
I routinely use VPN contact with my office computer network and I have downloaded 2-3 gig video depo files. I can easily have evidentiary material scanned into tens of.PDF files all in excess of a gig.
I routinely use video streaming to take Continuing Legal Education courses and those also involve a massive conference call with all of the participants. If I am already paying $250/mo for Internet and $400 + for a Video streamed CLE and I make use of my VPN connections I'm going to be in the top 5% of bandwidth users and it is all 100% legit. How much of a surcharge are these twits planning? A normal month will be dozens if not hundreds of gigs of data. My primary email is through a web hosting company that I negotiated "unlimited" file size with (effectively that "unlimited email is about 600 meg) and posting unencrypted client data to a private server is a massive ethical violation.
Anybody want to guess what PGP does with a 4.2 gig.mov file? Besides the year it takes to encrypt it - most of my clients and most other attorneys simply don't use PGP.
So, what do I do? Buy a ton of Firelite drives and Fedex data? Does this even make sense?
Hell, if I spend any time researching the law on Westlaw and Lexis (not to mention Thomas) I'll download a few gig. EVERY MONTH.
I'm a solo practitioner with an active litigation practice (primarily Federal) and I can't think of a better reason than this new scheme to REGULATE the @#$%^&* out of the access providers.
Are likely to survive reentry. Skylab had a film safe that survived, too.... but this kind of device is (obviously) unmanned, has no "film safe" and has depleted its energy supply (thermal based upon radio-nucleotide decay) - so, one mass might actually reach the planet's surface.
I've tried them all - and spent dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars for "custom dictionaries" - as a lawyer I dictate in a language that is almost, but not quite totally, unlike English.
I've had excellent "luck" with iListen and almost bought their "last" upgrade a few weeks ago. I decided not to because I couldn't get the helpdesk to tell me if my custom dictionaries and profile would transfer to the latest release.
I know why they didn't answer - and I'm not alone - the support mailing list posted this response today:
I can give you some basic information right now. MacSpeech Dictate is a brand-new product written from the ground up around the same engine that is in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The new product is Intel only. There was just no way for us to bring out a product based on the Dragon engine and make it anything but Intel only. Besides being an Intel only product you must be running MacOS 10.4.11 or higher. In other words the last version of Tiger or a version of Leopard. Minimum processor speed and memory requirements have yet to be determined as we are still in development.
Guess who is throwing in the towel? I've had it with the whole lot. Wake me in 10 years when somebody actually has a product that works. (And, don't blather at me - these bozos still don't know the final memory / processor configuration their new program will run on!) I suppose a Mac Pro 8 Core running at 3.2 gig and having 32 gig of RAM might suffice for that 99% accuracy - BUT that Mac Pro with a display and standard hard drive / standard graphics card + warranty would only cost 14,766.95
The technology exists - consider radio scanners and repeaters. Add in some memory and create an interface to your mini scanner/repeater (sounds like a job for gumstix http://gumstix.com/ ) and off you go.
FWIW directional antennas (dish, yagi) could direct a RF signal source at distance & coupled with a rifle site it would make all of those people carrying RFID easy targets to pick out of a crowd.
Whose idea was RDID tags in passports, anyway? The Saudi's?
RFID is a "passive" responder that generates a signal when "charged" or "pumped" with enough current from an active RF field. Look at the Wikipedia link I posted and you will see that the most massive part of any RFID device is the antenna. Through that antenna induction takes place and thence the power to generate a signal. RFID are without internal power supplies and must make use of induction to function. The smaller the device the smaller the antenna. Once we reach true microwave frequencies the tradeoff between the energy density of the rf field needed to induce current in the device and the rf energy necessary to excite H2O (cooking level microwave energy) molecules we have reached the limiting factor: cooking your human.
High-energy/high frequency RF is quite dangerous and as you decrease wavelength and increase energy you move through the microwave spectrum and after that the shorter wavelengths include x-rays and, eventually Gamma. That is ionizing radiation and, given the proper exposure, it is lethal. I don't see any way to make microscopic or even 1-2 mm RFID devices that can be driven by non-harmful energy sources.
Every ID system has been beaten. You seem to be discussing nano-level tech (and, I'm unaware of how that size device could pick up enough RF to power their system) and not the 1-2 cm standard today. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID/
The market for pirated DVDs couldn't exist without the blanks. Perhaps a third or so are created in factories in China - but the rest are purchased from the usual sources and diverted to illicit copying. What's to keep chip manufacturers from supplying the black market?
Want to consider what would happen if the chips were really tightly controlled? There would be a market for chips forcibly extracted from the original "owner."
At root, it is a stupid idea - but my pets have them. Now, if the animal control folks would just buy the scanner we lobbied for (and, budgeted two years ago) so that a lost/runaway could be returned....
In short, the barriers to adopting this policy are formidable and the end result is far from certain.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
How many Yugos do you have to buy before you realize that every one is a bad car?
The Rootkit breached the license agreement with Microsoft, compromised the kernel, allowed anybody who could create an executable named $sys$****.com / exe to run - without showing up on the stack and they created a massive "phone-home" scam that stole your bandwidth and sent private data without your permission to their servers.
This is a massive intrusion and there is not a single reason on this earth that we should ever buy a Sony/BMG music/dvd again. Make it hurt. The decent artists will leave and other labels will pick them up. Sony/BMG acted like we were criminals and in turn violated Title 18 of the US Code.
Put them on the same shelf as anthrax, small pox and fascists. Things better locked away forever.
If they were nuts enough to do it once - they are nuts enough to do it again. Lock them out of the market.
Oy, Scotty - man the phasers and load the forward torpedo tubes. The Bush-Rove-Borg are moderatin' agin.
Fire at the sight of Rove's thighs - he controls the entire news cycle. Take him out and Alberto-the-whiny-voiced and Monkey-man will have no power left in their nacelles. Karma be damned - FIRE AT WILL!
Let's face it: the Bush administration is run by marketeers and we have been sold every bad idea, war and policy that can be dressed up in decent ad copy.
We are drowning in hype and some fool says one vector is better today? I am certain that reality intrudes ever so slightly into the world of the average American. War against Terrorism (a methodology, not an enemy); No Child Left Behind (a mechanism to eliminate public schools in favor of vouchers); Tax Cuts for the top 1% (trickle down my muscular buttocks); Mission Accomplished (no more hazardous duty pay - the war is over).
This device is a classic example of unpatentable subject matter. It is also the funniest OSHA complaint that I have ever read.
Medical devices - no problem. Tools such as this one - well, it is illegal to use without meeting the OSHA bodily fluids protocol.
I'd say that the "industry" has been an early adopter simply because the profits are so high for the producers - and, certain male medications now make one of the major problems on set a thing of the past.
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." 35 USC Sec 101
Once an application is allowable in both substance and form, the examiner will mail a Notice of Allowance. This terminates the examiner's jurisdiction over the file. At this point, the applicant may take the following actions: B) Pay the issue fee within 3 months (non-extensible) of the mailing of the Notice of Allowance; or B) Petition (with fee) for a deferral of the issuance of the application and show cause why this is necessary. Deferral will last for a maximum of 1 month unless extraordinary circumstances exist. If the applicant owns several applications that are allowed and awaiting issue, he may request that all applications issue simultaneously; or B) Petition for the application to be withdrawn from allowance and show cause why this is necessary. The fee must be paid if the cause is not based on PTO error. After the issue fee is paid, an issued patent will only be withdrawn from issue in cases of:
) PTO error, or
) Illegality of the patent, or....
Title 18 defines criminality - and, drug, sex and obscene matter pursuant to Title 18 are one method by which a patent can be determined to be illegal, Google "inventions that can only be used for illegal and/or immoral practices" for a long list of resources.
Nope, sex toys are excluded as un-patentable subject matter (immoral) - the same class as drug paraphernalia
A "utility patent" must be "new, unique and nonobvious." In late November, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in KSR v. Teleflex -- the case that will determine what constitutes a "nonobvious" invention. We should have a ruling in the next two months.
I use Camino - set to the highest security and to dump history and cache for just two uses: business banking and court filing. As a lawyer I take reasonable steps to protect my clients - nobody can predict every potential criminal act. I use the Mac's Filevault protection on all of my computers and every systems' password is greater than 20 characters.
It isn't absolute security - but it is a hell of a lot more than most of my colleagues use.
Yes, you expense a lease - but you have to depreciate a capital asset.
That's not what IBM's business model was. They wanted the right to assert their ownership of the machine, the OS and many applications. That is "vertical integration" in IBM-speak in reality it was a captive business at the mercy of a sole-source vendor.
Wicked observation. I assume that the KKK is your favorite jury pool, eh?
The proper punishment is to eliminate his access to computers and the Internet. Forever. If a 60 year prison sentence does that - well, it seems like a far more costly way to achieve the desired end than mandating a lifetime of work in fields not connected to computers and paying the fine until the day he dies.
The next time that you want to inflict inhumane punishments - go read up on the history of Great Britain - every horrible method of inflicting pain has been used and none of it stopped the crimes. Why the public hangings of pickpockets were among the most popular locations for pickpockets to ply their trade. Well researched, wizard!
The molecular biologists / developmental biologists are leaving because the government impedes their research. Putting your career at a standstill for political reasons is not acceptable and other nations academic and private employers won't tie up these scientists' research in political bs. It is a brain drain driven by political fiat - not patent. I used it as an example of what could happen with first to file.
Bad faith??? Try Fraud. But, first to file is just that - the ONLY TEST is: were you first to file? End of analysis. End of fraud, conversion, breach or any other cause of action. There will be no "criminal law" remedy - there isn't now. There is an administrative process within the USPTO for pending patents called "an interference" and, after a patent has issued a variety of federal actions are available to rectify a fraud on the patent office/invalidate a patent.
U.S. Patent No. 4544870, the windshield wiper intermittent delay circuit invented by Robert W. Kearns, who won multimillion-dollar judgments against Ford and Chrysler for stealing his invention. It took more than 20 years of litigation and Kearns felt so strongly that he had recouped only part what automakers had made from his inventions, that he left millions of dollars from Chrysler uncollected in a federal court account for years.
This case clearly shows that even with patent protection in place - NO QUESTION THAT KEARNES INVENTED the circuit - that enforcing that patent is very, very costly and time-consuming. It took Kearns twenty (20) years of litigation to prevail - and he did not even begin to recover all of his lost royalties, much less the treble-damages he was entitled to under law. Kearns died this last February and is presently up for induction into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in Akron, OH.
First to file means that the Kearnes of the US will have to challenge the validity of the underlying patent before they can even address the lost royalties. The Patent has to be invalidated - and that prong will be nearly impossible where merely filing first is dispositive.
As for the Constitutional analysis - the "shall" language is an imperative - and only authors and inventors are to have exclusive rights to their works - not the "first to file."
Read all of Article I Section 8 and name any power of Congress that Congress has failed to implement. The duty of Congress is. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..."
That was: "Promote the progress of Science and useful Arts...by securing... to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." What part of "THEIR" don't you understand? The USPTO exists to serve the INVENTORS not the FILERS.
The intent is clear. Inventors and Authors have the "exclusive right." Not corporations, not first to filers, not the guy with the biggest pile of money and not anybody else but the INVENTOR.
Got a simple answer to the experimental use problem?
You really think that the US isn't full of thieves? My, oh, my - why do you think corporations are worried about corporate espionage? If a large corporate entity with tons of money wants to steal a small inventor's invention - what's to keep them from simply placing a secretary or tech in the small inventor's lab?
I mentioned the blatant theft of the patented wiper delay circuit - and how the inventor spent 20 years in litigation (3 years longer that the 17 year patent term in place at that time) only to finally recover a portion of his royalties...
The upshot is simple: the present system, flawed as it may be, rewards the actual inventor. The person or group that invented the new, unique and non-obvious creation. A first to file system has exactly ZERO concern with rewarding the actual inventor.
The US Constitution provides: Clause 8. "The Congress shall have Power *** To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
OK, now tell me how a first to file system comports with the Constitution where the first to file isn't the inventor? There is NO right under the Constitution for exclusive rights to accrue to anyone but the author or inventor.
Of course, Bush calls the Constitution "just a piece of GD paper" and his Supreme Court is of the same ilk - so, a Constitutional argument may well be totally moot.
Still, the only reasonable outcome arising from a first to file system is a substantial decrease in innovation over time. Look at the effect media consolidation (or, Microsoft's massive presence) has had on he US. The system will self-destruct in a first to file modality. Inventors will leave the US for countries that protect them and reward them (much the same as our stem-cell and molecular biology brain drain) and in the final analysis we will trade simplicity for substance.
H.L. Mencken said: "For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple--and wrong." First to file IS the wrong answer.
Brown & Williamson Tobacco patented a high-niccotine GM Tobacco there under a "first to invent" patent interference battle around 1997. I had some involvement in the research that found that patent and used it in the Tobacco class actions in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm at my office. I use the lowest tier of Time Warner's Business Internet (purportedly 1.5 meg up and down - but usually 600k up according to Speakeasy / DSLReports) for $200/mo. At home, across a state line, I have Time Warner home Internet at ~4.5 down and ~1.3 meg up - at $49.00/mo.
.PDF files all in excess of a gig.
.mov file? Besides the year it takes to encrypt it - most of my clients and most other attorneys simply don't use PGP.
I routinely use VPN contact with my office computer network and I have downloaded 2-3 gig video depo files. I can easily have evidentiary material scanned into tens of
I routinely use video streaming to take Continuing Legal Education courses and those also involve a massive conference call with all of the participants. If I am already paying $250/mo for Internet and $400 + for a Video streamed CLE and I make use of my VPN connections I'm going to be in the top 5% of bandwidth users and it is all 100% legit. How much of a surcharge are these twits planning? A normal month will be dozens if not hundreds of gigs of data. My primary email is through a web hosting company that I negotiated "unlimited" file size with (effectively that "unlimited email is about 600 meg) and posting unencrypted client data to a private server is a massive ethical violation.
Anybody want to guess what PGP does with a 4.2 gig
So, what do I do? Buy a ton of Firelite drives and Fedex data? Does this even make sense?
Hell, if I spend any time researching the law on Westlaw and Lexis (not to mention Thomas) I'll download a few gig. EVERY MONTH.
I'm a solo practitioner with an active litigation practice (primarily Federal) and I can't think of a better reason than this new scheme to REGULATE the @#$%^&* out of the access providers.
Are likely to survive reentry. Skylab had a film safe that survived, too.... but this kind of device is (obviously) unmanned, has no "film safe" and has depleted its energy supply (thermal based upon radio-nucleotide decay) - so, one mass might actually reach the planet's surface.
Let's see,
I've tried them all - and spent dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars for "custom dictionaries" - as a lawyer I dictate in a language that is almost, but not quite totally, unlike English.
I've had excellent "luck" with iListen and almost bought their "last" upgrade a few weeks ago. I decided not to because I couldn't get the helpdesk to tell me if my custom dictionaries and profile would transfer to the latest release.
I know why they didn't answer - and I'm not alone - the support mailing list posted this response today:
I can give you some basic information right now. MacSpeech Dictate is
a brand-new product written from the ground up around the same engine
that is in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The new product is Intel only.
There was just no way for us to bring out a product based on the
Dragon engine and make it anything but Intel only. Besides being an
Intel only product you must be running MacOS 10.4.11 or higher. In
other words the last version of Tiger or a version of Leopard. Minimum
processor speed and memory requirements have yet to be determined as
we are still in development.
--
Technical Support Manager
MacSpeech, Inc.
Check out our online Helpdesk at:
http://www.macspeech.com/support/
Guess who is throwing in the towel? I've had it with the whole lot. Wake me in 10 years when somebody actually has a product that works. (And, don't blather at me - these bozos still don't know the final memory / processor configuration their new program will run on!) I suppose a Mac Pro 8 Core running at 3.2 gig and having 32 gig of RAM might suffice for that 99% accuracy - BUT that Mac Pro with a display and standard hard drive / standard graphics card + warranty would only cost 14,766.95
The technology exists - consider radio scanners and repeaters. Add in some memory and create an interface to your mini scanner/repeater (sounds like a job for gumstix http://gumstix.com/ ) and off you go.
FWIW directional antennas (dish, yagi) could direct a RF signal source at distance & coupled with a rifle site it would make all of those people carrying RFID easy targets to pick out of a crowd.
Whose idea was RDID tags in passports, anyway? The Saudi's?
RFID is a "passive" responder that generates a signal when "charged" or "pumped" with enough current from an active RF field. Look at the Wikipedia link I posted and you will see that the most massive part of any RFID device is the antenna. Through that antenna induction takes place and thence the power to generate a signal. RFID are without internal power supplies and must make use of induction to function. The smaller the device the smaller the antenna. Once we reach true microwave frequencies the tradeoff between the energy density of the rf field needed to induce current in the device and the rf energy necessary to excite H2O (cooking level microwave energy) molecules we have reached the limiting factor: cooking your human.
High-energy/high frequency RF is quite dangerous and as you decrease wavelength and increase energy you move through the microwave spectrum and after that the shorter wavelengths include x-rays and, eventually Gamma. That is ionizing radiation and, given the proper exposure, it is lethal. I don't see any way to make microscopic or even 1-2 mm RFID devices that can be driven by non-harmful energy sources.
Every ID system has been beaten. You seem to be discussing nano-level tech (and, I'm unaware of how that size device could pick up enough RF to power their system) and not the 1-2 cm standard today. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID/
The market for pirated DVDs couldn't exist without the blanks. Perhaps a third or so are created in factories in China - but the rest are purchased from the usual sources and diverted to illicit copying. What's to keep chip manufacturers from supplying the black market?
Want to consider what would happen if the chips were really tightly controlled? There would be a market for chips forcibly extracted from the original "owner."
At root, it is a stupid idea - but my pets have them. Now, if the animal control folks would just buy the scanner we lobbied for (and, budgeted two years ago) so that a lost/runaway could be returned....
In short, the barriers to adopting this policy are formidable and the end result is far from certain.
Let's get real. If these RFID chip or multiple chip implantation policies become widespread so will chip mods.
/. readers will be in the front of THAT revolution.
If your ID chip accesses your credit line - how long before Warren Buffett/Bill Gates' ID becomes the hot new fake ID?
It is well known that all manufacturing processes produce a some number of defective products. How do we deal with those?
RFID can be zapped with a static charge - anybody for Van DeGraff generators?
Retasking, rewriting, forged, hacked and destroyed RFID is all that this policy will lead to. AND,
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
How many Yugos do you have to buy before you realize that every one is a bad car?
The Rootkit breached the license agreement with Microsoft, compromised the kernel, allowed anybody who could create an executable named $sys$****.com / exe to run - without showing up on the stack and they created a massive "phone-home" scam that stole your bandwidth and sent private data without your permission to their servers.
This is a massive intrusion and there is not a single reason on this earth that we should ever buy a Sony/BMG music/dvd again. Make it hurt. The decent artists will leave and other labels will pick them up. Sony/BMG acted like we were criminals and in turn violated Title 18 of the US Code.
Put them on the same shelf as anthrax, small pox and fascists. Things better locked away forever.
If they were nuts enough to do it once - they are nuts enough to do it again. Lock them out of the market.
Never, never, never trust these idiots. Don't run the risk that they will include some additional "content" but call it something other than DRM.
They will never have my business again. They proved themselves untrustworthy and only fools ask to be taken twice.
Oy, Scotty - man the phasers and load the forward torpedo tubes. The Bush-Rove-Borg are moderatin' agin.
Fire at the sight of Rove's thighs - he controls the entire news cycle. Take him out and Alberto-the-whiny-voiced and Monkey-man will have no power left in their nacelles. Karma be damned - FIRE AT WILL!
Nuclear weapons are patentable subject matter - but they are confidential.
We wouldn't want somebody of "ordinary skill" in the field able to make and use the invention in the best mode from the patent, now would we?
Let's face it: the Bush administration is run by marketeers and we have been sold every bad idea, war and policy that can be dressed up in decent ad copy.
We are drowning in hype and some fool says one vector is better today? I am certain that reality intrudes ever so slightly into the world of the average American. War against Terrorism (a methodology, not an enemy); No Child Left Behind (a mechanism to eliminate public schools in favor of vouchers); Tax Cuts for the top 1% (trickle down my muscular buttocks); Mission Accomplished (no more hazardous duty pay - the war is over).
We are unable to discern Goatse from any ad.
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
And, do you take a patent prosecution where you know that any challenge to the issuance will be successful?
Juicy Whip is inapposite to that issue. In fact, it is a wholly specious argument.
The "sex industry" sometimes goes a mite too far with technology. See this: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/clublove1.html/
This device is a classic example of unpatentable subject matter. It is also the funniest OSHA complaint that I have ever read.
Medical devices - no problem. Tools such as this one - well, it is illegal to use without meeting the OSHA bodily fluids protocol.
I'd say that the "industry" has been an early adopter simply because the profits are so high for the producers - and, certain male medications now make one of the major problems on set a thing of the past.
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." 35 USC Sec 101
....
Once an application is allowable in both substance and form, the examiner will mail a
Notice of Allowance. This terminates the examiner's jurisdiction over the file. At this
point, the applicant may take the following actions:
B) Pay the issue fee within 3 months (non-extensible) of the mailing of the Notice of
Allowance; or
B) Petition (with fee) for a deferral of the issuance of the application and show cause
why this is necessary. Deferral will last for a maximum of 1 month unless
extraordinary circumstances exist. If the applicant owns several applications that
are allowed and awaiting issue, he may request that all applications issue
simultaneously; or
B) Petition for the application to be withdrawn from allowance and show cause why
this is necessary. The fee must be paid if the cause is not based on PTO error.
After the issue fee is paid, an issued patent will only be withdrawn from issue in
cases of:
) PTO error, or
) Illegality of the patent, or
Title 18 defines criminality - and, drug, sex and obscene matter pursuant to Title 18 are one method by which a patent can be determined to be illegal, Google "inventions that can only be used for illegal and/or immoral practices" for a long list of resources.
Nope, sex toys are excluded as un-patentable subject matter (immoral) - the same class as drug paraphernalia
A "utility patent" must be "new, unique and nonobvious." In late November, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in KSR v. Teleflex -- the case that will determine what constitutes a "nonobvious" invention. We should have a ruling in the next two months.
Can't patent sex toys - not patentable subject matter.
I use Camino - set to the highest security and to dump history and cache for just two uses: business banking and court filing. As a lawyer I take reasonable steps to protect my clients - nobody can predict every potential criminal act. I use the Mac's Filevault protection on all of my computers and every systems' password is greater than 20 characters.
It isn't absolute security - but it is a hell of a lot more than most of my colleagues use.
Yes, you expense a lease - but you have to depreciate a capital asset.
That's not what IBM's business model was. They wanted the right to assert their ownership of the machine, the OS and many applications. That is "vertical integration" in IBM-speak in reality it was a captive business at the mercy of a sole-source vendor.
This machine? From the '60's? I bet that the lease ended within the past 10 years.
In the end, it is whatever fit IBM's balance sheet - albeit that distributed computing has made the monopoly far less powerful.
I cut my teeth on a DEC PDP 11 (at a private high school!) - worked on a 370 series with MUSIC/SP in college and miss neither.....
I well know that the University paid IBM big bucks - I had core time limits - as did every other kid.
No, they LEASED THEM.
How can you abstract an article - denominating the lease rates and conclude that, "Big Blue sold some 2,000 of the mainframes.."?
Wicked observation. I assume that the KKK is your favorite jury pool, eh?
The proper punishment is to eliminate his access to computers and the Internet. Forever. If a 60 year prison sentence does that - well, it seems like a far more costly way to achieve the desired end than mandating a lifetime of work in fields not connected to computers and paying the fine until the day he dies.
The next time that you want to inflict inhumane punishments - go read up on the history of Great Britain - every horrible method of inflicting pain has been used and none of it stopped the crimes. Why the public hangings of pickpockets were among the most popular locations for pickpockets to ply their trade. Well researched, wizard!
The molecular biologists / developmental biologists are leaving because the government impedes their research. Putting your career at a standstill for political reasons is not acceptable and other nations academic and private employers won't tie up these scientists' research in political bs. It is a brain drain driven by political fiat - not patent. I used it as an example of what could happen with first to file.
... to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." What part of "THEIR" don't you understand? The USPTO exists to serve the INVENTORS not the FILERS.
Bad faith??? Try Fraud. But, first to file is just that - the ONLY TEST is: were you first to file? End of analysis. End of fraud, conversion, breach or any other cause of action. There will be no "criminal law" remedy - there isn't now. There is an administrative process within the USPTO for pending patents called "an interference" and, after a patent has issued a variety of federal actions are available to rectify a fraud on the patent office/invalidate a patent.
U.S. Patent No. 4544870, the windshield wiper intermittent delay circuit invented by Robert W. Kearns, who won multimillion-dollar judgments against Ford and Chrysler for stealing his invention. It took more than 20 years of litigation and Kearns felt so strongly that he had recouped only part what automakers had made from his inventions, that he left millions of dollars from Chrysler uncollected in a federal court account for years.
This case clearly shows that even with patent protection in place - NO QUESTION THAT KEARNES INVENTED the circuit - that enforcing that patent is very, very costly and time-consuming. It took Kearns twenty (20) years of litigation to prevail - and he did not even begin to recover all of his lost royalties, much less the treble-damages he was entitled to under law. Kearns died this last February and is presently up for induction into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in Akron, OH.
First to file means that the Kearnes of the US will have to challenge the validity of the underlying patent before they can even address the lost royalties. The Patent has to be invalidated - and that prong will be nearly impossible where merely filing first is dispositive.
As for the Constitutional analysis - the "shall" language is an imperative - and only authors and inventors are to have exclusive rights to their works - not the "first to file."
Read all of Article I Section 8 and name any power of Congress that Congress has failed to implement. The duty of Congress is. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..."
That was: "Promote the progress of Science and useful Arts...by securing
The intent is clear. Inventors and Authors have the "exclusive right." Not corporations, not first to filers, not the guy with the biggest pile of money and not anybody else but the INVENTOR.
Got a simple answer to the experimental use problem?
You really think that the US isn't full of thieves? My, oh, my - why do you think corporations are worried about corporate espionage? If a large corporate entity with tons of money wants to steal a small inventor's invention - what's to keep them from simply placing a secretary or tech in the small inventor's lab?
I mentioned the blatant theft of the patented wiper delay circuit - and how the inventor spent 20 years in litigation (3 years longer that the 17 year patent term in place at that time) only to finally recover a portion of his royalties...
The upshot is simple: the present system, flawed as it may be, rewards the actual inventor. The person or group that invented the new, unique and non-obvious creation. A first to file system has exactly ZERO concern with rewarding the actual inventor.
The US Constitution provides: Clause 8. "The Congress shall have Power *** To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
OK, now tell me how a first to file system comports with the Constitution where the first to file isn't the inventor? There is NO right under the Constitution for exclusive rights to accrue to anyone but the author or inventor.
Of course, Bush calls the Constitution "just a piece of GD paper" and his Supreme Court is of the same ilk - so, a Constitutional argument may well be totally moot.
Still, the only reasonable outcome arising from a first to file system is a substantial decrease in innovation over time. Look at the effect media consolidation (or, Microsoft's massive presence) has had on he US. The system will self-destruct in a first to file modality. Inventors will leave the US for countries that protect them and reward them (much the same as our stem-cell and molecular biology brain drain) and in the final analysis we will trade simplicity for substance.
H.L. Mencken said: "For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple--and wrong." First to file IS the wrong answer.
What is the date of this change?
Brown & Williamson Tobacco patented a high-niccotine GM Tobacco there under a "first to invent" patent interference battle around 1997. I had some involvement in the research that found that patent and used it in the Tobacco class actions in the US.