"I came away willing to invest in Unix" again, he said. "I was very pleased that SCO appears to be very committed to Unix, that there is a road map. It appears that it's a company that wants to partner, and therefore we should explore a lot of technical opportunities with them."
S. Arshad Raza, CEO of Premier Systems Ltd., a SCO reseller and systems integrator in Karachi, Pakistan, said he has worried for several years about the apparent end of SCO Unix, but he now has a renewed belief in the company's outlook. "When [customers] lost confidence in SCO," he said, they stopped paying him for licenses and bought and installed pirated copies of the operating system because they didn't feel they needed to pay money to a declining business. But that's now changing, he said, since SCO has filed an intellectual-property lawsuit against IBM, and customers are gaining new optimism.
Considering the ethics of the current SCO, would you trust them to deliver products they promise?
One of the SCO articles of the last few hours quotes SCO users as saying that SCO's utilities are useless and they depend on GNU to be able to do anything.
"The OpenServer compiler is crap. Without (the GCC) they would be up the creek," said Hans Anderson, the director of software development with Price Data Systems in Louisville, Kentucky.
First of all, McBride seems to think that IBM's counterclaims may be a sign that IBM is trying to get into a better position to capitulate to SCO:
IBM might be throwing hard balls to [get ready] for the soft pitch [to settle].
Hahahahahahahaha!
We'd want a settlement and royalty [on Linux] going forward.
I think he's rather confused. Even if IBM did settle, that would not necessarily give SCO any right to receive royalties on Linux from now on.
Could IBM retroactively assign the copyrights and patents to SCO? I doubt it. And it is far less likely that they would.
Even if IBM did improperly contribute their own code to Linux in violation of their contract, it doesn't follow that there is anything improper about using that code. It is, after all, IBM's code, not SCO's.
And I, for one, think IBM is highly unlikely to have done anything to violate that contract. There are other companies that I might believe it, but not IBM.
And then there's this:
Hundreds of customers like and use SCO's Unix products.
And later on, CRN asked about the number of resellers being reduced from 16,000 to 11,000. McBride answered:
McBride: We cleaned up the list. We had 16,000 names in our database but about 5,000 names were marketing fluff that we sent materials to. This is the real number.
Hmmm.
Hundreds of customers and 11,000 resellers?
Just how many resellers does it take to convince anyone to purchase anything from SCO?
On Fox News, it looks like there are more people lined up to take the ferry than the entire population of the county I live in.
In the local town, some high school kid will occasionlly shine a spot light on the electric eye that controls all the street lights in town. Then the streets go dark for a little.
Maybe some New York City high school kid figured out where New York City's electric eye is.
From what I remember reading about the case, the defendant sent the plaintiff a copy of his first book along with a note asking him if everything was okay with him.
The plaintiff received the book and the note but failed to read it and only complained after the defendant wrote his third book in the series.
The judge also ruled that the events of the book were historical and could not be copyrighted.
The bad thing is that Judge Kimball's ruling was overruled and was sent back. I have no idea whether the overruled part of the ruling releated to the failure to mitigate damages or to something else.
It would be nice if the rulings were available so we could all read them and see in detail what happened.
that mitigation duty hasn't been applied as far as I can tell to copyright infringement
In at least one case, it has been applied. Someone was denied damages because they didn't mitigate their damages even though it was found that the other work did infringe on theirs.
And the judge in that matter is the same Judge Kimball who is presiding over this case. In the opinion, he said "Had Jacobsen voiced his disapproval in 1996, Hughes would have had the opportunity to take the offending material out of the books".
SCO's stock price had been declining, for the most part, all day. But then the announcement of the license purchase seems to have helped them pull it back up a bit.
There was a rather interesting dip to $8.27 a share from around $9.00 a share just before they released the news.
MAGNETOELECTRONICS, SPIN ELECTRONICS, AND SPINTRONICS are different names for the same thing: the use of electrons' spins (not just their electrical charge) in information circuits. One magnetoelectronic device is the magnetic hard drive based on the giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect. In a GMR material, consisting of a stack of alternating layers of magnetic and nonmagnetic atoms, a small magnetic field can produce a large change in electrical resistance. Already a billion dollar business, GMR read heads will boost disk drive densities from 1 to 20 Gbits, and GMR might be incorporated into random access memory units as well (Gary Prinz, Science, 27 Nov 1998). The latest demonstration of spin versatility is the organized movement of a herd of spins over a lateral distance of 100 microns. In an experiment at UC Santa Barbara, David Awschalom first aligned the spins of a swarm of electrons and then nudged them across a semiconductor strip without the spin bunch falling apart. Such coherence will be necessary if spin currents are to transport information from place to place, particularly in quantum computers. (Nature, 14 Jan 1999.)
A new approach to electronics, called 'spintronics' ( a short for spin electronics), is now emerging, and it is based on the up and down spin of the charge carrier rather than on electrons and holes as in traditional semiconductor electronics. Spintronics, also called magnetoelectronics including all the electronic devices where ferromagnetic thin films play an essential role, is today one of the most rapidly growing fields in electronics. A recent example of a rapid transition from discovery to commercialization in spintronics is the giant magnetoresistance effect (GMR), as applied to magnetic information storage. Although the first commercial product using GMR ( a magnetic field sensor) was available in 1994, the first products to have economic impact are read heads for magnetic hard disk drives, which were announced by IBM in 1997. The market for these products is estimated to be on the order of $1 billion per year and will increase the storage on a disk drive from 1 to 20 gigabits, merely by the incorporation of the new GMR materials.
For what it's worth, spintronics is already in use for disk drives.
From what I understand, the read/write heads of just about every modern disk drive are spintronics devices. Without them, we'd probably still be stuck with 1 GB disk drives.
Currently, the only thing confirmed to move faster than the speed of light (confirmed via the "alan aspect" experiments, if you want to google it), is the spin on a pair of electrons. Two elextrons in a pair alwats spin in reverse directions. Even if the two electrons are 1000 miles apart, if you polarize one (change the spin), then the other spin will reverse itself instaneously.
Are you sure about this?
As I remember the initial thought experiment, the two photons have opposite spins and so when you measure the spin of one, you instantly know the spin of the other an equal distance in the opposite direction from where they were emitted.
I've never heard anything about actually affecting the spin of the remote electron.
But then, I haven't really paid much attention to the subject in over 20 years. So there could easily be something new. (For that matter, this idea was quite new, I think, when I first heard of it.)
By the way, it is possible to exceed the speed of light.
Have you ever stood on top of a nuclear reactor and looked at the core? You'd see a blue glow called "Cerenkov Radiation" around the pile if it is on-line. The beta particles emitted by the radioactive materials are traveling the speed of light. When they enter the water around the core, they are travelling faster than the speed of light in water and give rise to the Cerenkov Radiation.
The only time I've seen this was on top of a research reactor that was just powerful enough to produce a faint blue glow from the Cerenkov radiation.
On April 24, 2000, the writer Harlan Ellison filed suit against an individual named Stephen Robertson, a Usenet company named RemarQ, and AOL over four of Harlan Ellison's stories posted on Usenet by Stephen Robertson.
If I understand it correctly, AOL was sued only because that happened to be the service provider of the two who tracked down the identity of Stephen Robertson.
In April, 2000, Harlan Ellison was told that an individual using the
screen name and e-mail address shaker@tco.net was scanning stories by
him and other writers and posting them to a newsgroup called
alt.binaries.e-book. (The designation alt.binaries means that it is a
newsgroup where files of material are exchanged; there is relatively
little discussion among the participants.) John Miller (former SFWA(R)
secretary) and Susan Parris assisted in tracking the works which were
copied to the newsgroup, which they received as part of the
subscription to America Online. Four of Harlans stories, all
apparently scanned from copies of the Nebula Awards(R) anthologies, were
identified as copied by Shaker.
We learned that Shaker was actually Stephen Robertson, a 40-year-old
living with his parents in Red Bluff, California. Although Robertsons
ISP was Tehama County Online, TCO outsourced its newsgroup services to
RemarQ Communties, Inc. TCO cooperated by blocking Shakers account
immediately upon notice of the infringing activities and revealing the
services provided by RemarQ and was therefore not included in the
lawsuit which followed.
The original complaint was filed on April 24, 2000. Stephen Robertson
settled with Harlan almost immediately and is no longer a part of the
case except for evidence he may have to provide during discovery and
trial. The complaint was amended in late May and the Court permitted
the filing and service of a second amended complaint in October.
We faced a series of procedural challenges to the complaint prior to
answer by either AOL or RemarQ and its new parent company Critical
Path, but we have prevailed and are now out of the pleading stage and
facing the discovery phase.
AOLs original motion for dismissal or summary judgment on the first
amended complaint was heard in July, and resulted in a temporary
partial victory for AOL. However, the effect of this early ruling in
favor of summary judgment on the copyright allegations has been
essentially overruled by the Courts more recent ruling on AOLs motion
to dismiss, or in the alternative for a more definite statement, the
second amended complaint, which was heard in January and resolved in
Harlans favor. AOLs answer to the second amended complaint was due on
February 5, 2001.
RemarQ/Critical paths original motion to dismiss or in the alternative
for summary judgment on the first amended complaint was scheduled for
hearing and moved several times before being declared moot by the
Court when granting leave to plaintiff to file the second amended
complaint at the end of October. [Note: RemarQ provides its Usenet
newsgroup services under the name SuperNews; SuperNews remains one of
the prime origination news servers for illegal material posted to
alt.binaries.e-book.] RemarQ/Critical Paths motion to dismiss or in
the alternative for summary judgment on the second amended complaint
was denied by the Court in January. RemarQ/Critical Path answered the
second amended complaint on January 26, 2001.
In its order of January 12, 2001, the Court demonstrates a better, but
not complete, understanding of the DMCA than evidenced in July. What
is important about this ruling is that it sets ou
What does it cost to license an OS you don't really need? A cool $6 million. That's the figure a Microsoft sales pro let slip when asked why the Redmond boys acquired a Unix license from The SCO Group. According to my source, the pro said Microsoft ponied up because "SCO needed money for their lawsuit problem." SCO PR dude Blake Stowell issued a staunch denial, saying MS wants the code for its Services for Unix product. Still, $6 mil would certainly keep SCO attorney David Boies' legal machine nicely oiled -- and the news is sure to make thousands of Microsoft conspiracy theorists happy.
That brings up an important question.
Red Hat and IBM both bring up SCO's problems with the Lanhorn Act in their suit and countersuit, respectively.
If Microsoft is indeed helping fund SCO in their FUD campaign, does this mean that Microsoft may be a co-conspirator in the Lanhorn Act violations?
Is it possible that Microsoft and SCO may both be financially liable for damages?
After all, if SCO is involved in false advertising, tortious interference, and other violations of the act, it seems natural to question whether they are doing it on their own.
I really can't imagine SCO painting themselves into the corner that they did on their own.
How easy is it for an attorney to dump clients? I've heard of lawyers being ordered by a judge to continue even though they really wanted out.
It's been reported that Boies' law firm is doing this on a contingency basis.
Even under the best of circumstances, lawyers don't want their clients running their mouths off and damaging their cases.
But the way SCO's executives keep going on an on giving IBM more and more ammunition and creating more and more damages, I have to wonder if Boies isn't going to make an early exit.
Mark Webbink made some comments that are being reported that are quite interesting.
He pointed out that even though it has now been months since SCO filed their lawsuit against IBM, SCO has yet to file even a single motion for discovery in the matter.
I suspect SCO is in real trouble, now.
From the above, it certainly appears, as we've long suspected, that SCO was seeking something other than an actual lawsuit.
Now SCO has been filed with a strong lawsuit by Red Hat that could cost them enormous amounts of money.
And to top it off, IBM has responded with counterclaims that should threaten even the continued existence of SCO.
I really don't see any way out for SCO at this point.
If SCO keeps going as they are, they are going to get flattened by Red Hat and oblitterated by IBM. Talk about road kill on the information super highway!
If they settle, the only way they survive is if IBM allows them to continue violating their patents. I guess it's possible that IBM could end up with System V as part of the settlement. In any event, there won't be much left of SCO, but they'd at least be in business.
The executives that got them there would be likely to bear the brunt of the punishment. They'll be out of there.
If the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) investigates and finds problems, some of the executives of both SCO and the Canopy Group could find themselves in a federal country club prison for a while and both SCO and the Canopy Group (depending on the blame for the violations) could end up paying enormous fines as well.
The only way I can see that SCO is gong to come out ahead is if they continue and IBM and Red Hat both stumble. But I can't imagine either making the kinds of mistakes that they would have to make for SCO to win.
Just what is SCO's exit strategy? Or do they have one?
Actually, it has turned into an IP battle, at least in part.
For example, IBM's sixth counterclaim:
Breach of the GNU General Public LIcense
...
75. IBM has made contributions of source code to Linux under the GPL on the condition that users and distributors of such code, including SCO, abide by the terms of the GPL in modifying and distributing Linux products, including, for example, the requirement that they distribute all versions of GPL'd software (original or derivative) under the GPL and only the GPL pursuant to 2(b) of the GPL
76. SCO has taken source code mad available by IBM under the GPL, including that code in SCO's Linux products, and distributed significant portions of those products under the GPL. By doing so, SCO accepted the terms of the GPL (pursuant to GPL 5), both with respoect to source code made available by IBM under the GPL and with respect to SCO's own Linux distributions.
77. The GPL prohibits SCO from asserting certain proprietary rights (such as the right to collect license fees) over, and attempting to restrict further distribution of any source code distributed by SCO under the terms of the GPL. Based on the misconduct described herin, SCO's rights to distribute the copyrighted works of others included in Linux uder the GPL have been terminated pursuant to 4 of the GPL.
78. SCO has breached the GPL by, among other things, (1) claiming ownership rights over Linux code, including IBM contributions; (2) seeking to collect and collecting license fees with respoect to Linux code, including IBM contributions; (3) copying, modifying, sublicensing or distributing Linux, including IBM contributions, on terms other than those set out in the GPL and after its rights under the GPL terminated; and (4) seeking to impose additional restrictions on the recipients of Linux code, including IBm contributions, distributed by SCO.
79. As a result of SCO's breaches of the GPL, countless developers and users of Linux, including IBM, have suffered and will continue to suffer damages and other irreparable injury. IBM is entitled to an award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial and to an injunction prohibiting SCO from its continuing and threatened breaches of the GPL
Also, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth counterclaims deal with the four patent infringement and so they are also Intellectual Property issues.
So while this didn't start out as an IP dispute, it has basically morphed into a hybrid dispute involving contracts, Lanhorn Act violations, and Intellectual Property issues.
This is certainly convincing me of some ways to make changes in the Copyright code for the better.
For example, when you copyright a program, you only have to provide the first and last 25 pages of source code.
What we really need is to provide every page in a machine readable format and post it on the Internet so that people can check their code for possible infringements.
Then, we need to rule out all damages for anything other than malicious infringements that occur prior to some reasonable amount of time after it is published.
The larger the amount of code copyrighted, the longer amount of time should be allowed to check the code and remove any infringing code. This should give people time to identify possibly infringing code, determine whether or not it really is an infringement (at least to a reasonable degree), and if it does infringe, to remove it.
We really need a reasonable maximum length of time on copyrights. I'd say 20 years is more than enough. (Actually 5 years should be plenty.)
While we're at it, we should cut patents back in most cases. The length of the patent should really reflect the cost of developing the patent and the time reasonably needed for a payout on the patent.
Any patent that you could infringe while sleepwalking should have a maximum life of no more than a month.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that every OS should automatically include an assembler and a C/C++ compiler.
Back when the Atari Amiga first became available, I drive to the only store in Houston that sold them at the time ready to buy one.
But when I found out that the assembler was not included and wouldn't be available for a few months, I changed my mind and left.
My earliest criticism of Microsoft was for the same reason, no assembler included.
I was wondering about whether or not their sales talks at their little get together are real or are they just hot air.
They seem to have convinced their faithful that they really do have some new products coming out.
From Users and resellers say SCO's news is good news:
Considering the ethics of the current SCO, would you trust them to deliver products they promise?
One of the SCO articles of the last few hours quotes SCO users as saying that SCO's utilities are useless and they depend on GNU to be able to do anything.
From SCO users divided over GPL:
What do you bet that it's a DMCA violation to circumvent their so-called security and get the original code they obfuscated?
Check out Interview with McBride on crn.com
First of all, McBride seems to think that IBM's counterclaims may be a sign that IBM is trying to get into a better position to capitulate to SCO:
Hahahahahahahaha!
I think he's rather confused. Even if IBM did settle, that would not necessarily give SCO any right to receive royalties on Linux from now on.
Could IBM retroactively assign the copyrights and patents to SCO? I doubt it. And it is far less likely that they would.
Even if IBM did improperly contribute their own code to Linux in violation of their contract, it doesn't follow that there is anything improper about using that code. It is, after all, IBM's code, not SCO's.
And I, for one, think IBM is highly unlikely to have done anything to violate that contract. There are other companies that I might believe it, but not IBM.
And then there's this:
And later on, CRN asked about the number of resellers being reduced from 16,000 to 11,000. McBride answered:
Hmmm.
Hundreds of customers and 11,000 resellers?
Just how many resellers does it take to convince anyone to purchase anything from SCO?
It appears that they even want you to pay licensing fees if you're using their own Linux distribution.
By the way, there is some question of whether they can double collect damages.
If they collect from end users, can they also collect from IBM?
If they collect from IBM, can they also collect from end users?
One article that was written by a lawyer says that courts tend to take a very dim view of such double dipping.
On Fox News, it looks like there are more people lined up to take the ferry than the entire population of the county I live in.
In the local town, some high school kid will occasionlly shine a spot light on the electric eye that controls all the street lights in town. Then the streets go dark for a little.
Maybe some New York City high school kid figured out where New York City's electric eye is.
From what I remember reading about the case, the defendant sent the plaintiff a copy of his
first book along with a note asking him if everything was okay with him.
The plaintiff received the book and the note but failed to read it and only complained after the defendant wrote his third book in the series.
The judge also ruled that the events of the book were historical and could not be copyrighted.
The bad thing is that Judge Kimball's ruling was overruled and was sent back. I have no idea whether the overruled part of the ruling releated to the failure to mitigate damages or to something else.
It would be nice if the rulings were available so we could all read them and see in detail what happened.
In at least one case, it has been applied. Someone was denied damages because they didn't mitigate their damages even though it was found that the other work did infringe on theirs.
And the judge in that matter is the same Judge Kimball who is presiding over this case. In the opinion, he said "Had Jacobsen voiced his disapproval in 1996, Hughes would have had the opportunity to take the offending material out of the books".
A few days ago, a former broker told me that he wasn't surprised that it was gonig up in spite of the low prospects of winning the suit.
He said that the people bidding it up basically believe that if and when it starts to fall, they can sell their shares before it falls too far.
SCO's stock price had been declining, for the most part, all day. But then the announcement of the license purchase seems to have helped them pull it back up a bit.
There was a rather interesting dip to $8.27 a share from around $9.00 a share just before they released the news.
See SCOX on finance
With a quick google search, you can find a number of references to the use of spintronics for disk drive heads. Here are just a couple.
Here is something from 1999:
And this is from 2003, or at least, last updated in 2003:
For what it's worth, spintronics is already in use for disk drives.
From what I understand, the read/write heads of just about every modern disk drive are spintronics devices. Without them, we'd probably still be stuck with 1 GB disk drives.
Are you sure about this?
As I remember the initial thought experiment, the two photons have opposite spins and so when you measure the spin of one, you instantly know the spin of the other an equal distance in the opposite direction from where they were emitted.
I've never heard anything about actually affecting the spin of the remote electron.
But then, I haven't really paid much attention to the subject in over 20 years. So there could easily be something new. (For that matter, this idea was quite new, I think, when I first heard of it.)
By the way, it is possible to exceed the speed of light.
Have you ever stood on top of a nuclear reactor and looked at the core? You'd see a blue glow called "Cerenkov Radiation" around the pile if it is on-line. The beta particles emitted by the radioactive materials are traveling the speed of light. When they enter the water around the core, they are travelling faster than the speed of light in water and give rise to the Cerenkov Radiation.
The only time I've seen this was on top of a research reactor that was just powerful enough to produce a faint blue glow from the Cerenkov radiation.
The SCO lawsuit against IBM was not about the GPL.
The Red Hat lawsuit against SCO is about the GPL, as is the IBM countersuit against SCO.
On April 24, 2000, the writer Harlan Ellison filed suit against an individual named Stephen Robertson, a Usenet company named RemarQ, and AOL over four of Harlan Ellison's stories posted on Usenet by Stephen Robertson.
If I understand it correctly, AOL was sued only because that happened to be the service provider of the two who tracked down the identity of Stephen Robertson.
Read about it here
Here's a 2002 story on zdnet about it
The following is from this article:
It's being reported that a Microsoft sales pro admitted that Microsoft gave SCO six million dollars to help them with the lawsuit.
From Infoworld: SCO strikes gold, Verizon just strikes:
That brings up an important question.
Red Hat and IBM both bring up SCO's problems with the Lanhorn Act in their suit and countersuit, respectively.
If Microsoft is indeed helping fund SCO in their FUD campaign, does this mean that Microsoft may be a co-conspirator in the Lanhorn Act violations?
Is it possible that Microsoft and SCO may both be financially liable for damages?
After all, if SCO is involved in false advertising, tortious interference, and other violations of the act, it seems natural to question whether they are doing it on their own.
I really can't imagine SCO painting themselves into the corner that they did on their own.
How easy is it for an attorney to dump clients? I've heard of lawyers being ordered by a judge to continue even though they really wanted out.
It's been reported that Boies' law firm is doing this on a contingency basis.
Even under the best of circumstances, lawyers don't want their clients running their mouths off and damaging their cases.
But the way SCO's executives keep going on an on giving IBM more and more ammunition and creating more and more damages, I have to wonder if Boies isn't going to make an early exit.
Mark Webbink made some comments that are being reported that are quite interesting.
He pointed out that even though it has now been months since SCO filed their lawsuit against IBM, SCO has yet to file even a single motion for discovery in the matter.
I suspect SCO is in real trouble, now.
From the above, it certainly appears, as we've long suspected, that SCO was seeking something other than an actual lawsuit.
Now SCO has been filed with a strong lawsuit by Red Hat that could cost them enormous amounts of money.
And to top it off, IBM has responded with counterclaims that should threaten even the continued existence of SCO.
I really don't see any way out for SCO at this point.
If SCO keeps going as they are, they are going to get flattened by Red Hat and oblitterated by IBM. Talk about road kill on the information super highway!
If they settle, the only way they survive is if IBM allows them to continue violating their patents. I guess it's possible that IBM could end up with System V as part of the settlement. In any event, there won't be much left of SCO, but they'd at least be in business.
The executives that got them there would be likely to bear the brunt of the punishment. They'll be out of there.
If the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) investigates and finds problems, some of the executives of both SCO and the Canopy Group could find themselves in a federal country club prison for a while and both SCO and the Canopy Group (depending on the blame for the violations) could end up paying enormous fines as well.
The only way I can see that SCO is gong to come out ahead is if they continue and IBM and Red Hat both stumble. But I can't imagine either making the kinds of mistakes that they would have to make for SCO to win.
Just what is SCO's exit strategy? Or do they have one?
For that matter, what is Boies' exit strategy?
Actually, it has turned into an IP battle, at least in part.
For example, IBM's sixth counterclaim:
Also, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth counterclaims deal with the four patent infringement and so they are also Intellectual Property issues.
So while this didn't start out as an IP dispute, it has basically morphed into a hybrid dispute involving contracts, Lanhorn Act violations, and Intellectual Property issues.
But that is readiily handled. We can create open source spyware and license it under the GPL.
For what it's worth, the above link was posted in a comment on the Groklaw page
See comment by Anthony Awtrey at 8/7/03; 7:24:38 PM
There is also a link to the documents in TIFF format.
Sure. The IBM Filing as a PDF file How's that?
The funny thing is that in spite of SCO's arguments, their so-called license doesn't indemnify anyone against lawsuits either.
This is certainly convincing me of some ways to make changes in the Copyright code for the better.
For example, when you copyright a program, you only have to provide the first and last 25 pages of source code.
What we really need is to provide every page in a machine readable format and post it on the Internet so that people can check their code for possible infringements.
Then, we need to rule out all damages for anything other than malicious infringements that occur prior to some reasonable amount of time after it is published.
The larger the amount of code copyrighted, the longer amount of time should be allowed to check the code and remove any infringing code. This should give people time to identify possibly infringing code, determine whether or not it really is an infringement (at least to a reasonable degree), and if it does infringe, to remove it.
We really need a reasonable maximum length of time on copyrights. I'd say 20 years is more than enough. (Actually 5 years should be plenty.)
While we're at it, we should cut patents back in most cases. The length of the patent should really reflect the cost of developing the patent and the time reasonably needed for a payout on the patent.
Any patent that you could infringe while sleepwalking should have a maximum life of no more than a month.