Because the real issue is not packets but concurrent bandwidth.
But that problem has been solved already, time and time again.
Off peak electricity can be had cheaper than peak, with a different meter. Off peak phone calls essentially become free (nights and weekends). Off peak express/toll lane use is cheaper than peak use.
Demand period billing is easily managed in an industry where you know precisely the time of day that every packet transited the wire.
The problem comes in the uncertainty of the bill at the end of the month. People can budget their $30 bucks or $60 bucks, but how do you budget demand period adjusted usage? Yes, newer phones these days have the ability to keep track of this usage built right in, but the risk of a few dollars overage charge is deterring people from using their phones the way they want.
The whole concept of the need for demand period based billing and data caps is, I suspect, pretty much of a fraud. The carriers aren't even deploying all of the bandwidth they licensed, and regardless of Verizon's protestations to the contrary, they are simply hording it to justify high prices. I suspect that a complete analysis would show that there is plenty of bandwidth even for peak periods, and it is being artificially constrained.
We went through all of this before with the telephone companies. Its not exactly like they have been playing straight with us up to this point. Its the same game they played on us with "scarcity of long distance circuits". Now I don't know a single person that pays long distance charges. Its free with your basic phone service in most places.
High quality DRM-free movie downloads at a resonable price. As in, $5 or so.
I guarantee you most people will switch to downloading legally.
Don't think so. $5 is too much. Google will already let you stream a movie for about 4 Bucks They aren't finding it as profitable as they thought. Apple wants 15 bucks but thats Apple.
I believe the price point is closer to One dollar or Two dollars per view for a full length movie and 99 cents for a hour long tv show. That price will sell more views than theater showings, and easily earn back several hundred million dollars of production costs.
Which leads me to the assumption that these content companies don't give a rats-ass about the content, what they really want is to gain legal control the internet. That would be worth trillions, where as the average movie earns a few million. They are using content as a loss leader, a poker chip, in a high stakes game to grab control.
At 99cents per download/view you could easily make back the production costs of most tv shows.
Did you even follow read what you cited at infosec? No, I though not. The link points to a single Jpg in some nondescript blog. The blog sites the mere presence of a cookie from DoubleClick (now owned by Google) as an infection. It equates a cookie with infection!!! Any you fall for it! Unbefrickinlievable.
Google responded with changes to the system, but that doesn't minimize their accomplishment.
On the contrary, yet is does minimize their accomplishment. It makes it all for nothing, a technical exercise, with no near term or long term payback. Recaptcha is a huge con, no more secure then the original captcha. The second (or first) portion being there only to serve some other purpose, and any answer will do.
Adding the audio option (probably forced by ADA) did nothing for security. At best this demonstrates that adding multiple different keys to the same lock makes things worse, not better.
Captcha's original intent was to slow down bots, by making the user prove they were human. They are seldom used to protect anything of value, simply to keep the nuisance bots to a dull roar.
Now it appears that machines can beat captcha and recaptcha very easily. So WHY do we still see these schemes in use?
How could you possibly call an API if the argument structure was copyrightable? Buy a license for every single API set that was delivered with your machine, associated with every software product, or hosted somewhere on the web?
In a world of stupid IP laws, at least this judge gets it. (Which surprises the hell out of me).
Physical size is clearly the issue here. I can guarantee you that these boxes are mostly empty space inside, and the actual equipment could be configured to fit in a much smaller space.
*yawn* if this gets awarded, it will fall in court the first time its used against someone.
At what cost?
And if you read the summary (let alone the second link), you will see its not a matter of IF this gets awarded. Its ALREADY been awarded.
Given that this is already being done by hundreds of companies, and has been done years before Amazon decided to patent it, this should not have been awarded. Ever send flowers via the internet? Ever ordered gifts on line and had them sent direct? Congratulations, you've "electronically gifted".
This patent covers only electronic/digital items, music, ebooks, etc. But if this can be patented why not allow patenting the gifting of other things electronically via another patent?
So now, someone has to put up massive amounts of money to fight this the first time Amazon tries to enforce it.
The best case is Amazon filed this patent for defensive purposes (to avoid being sued), and irrevocably declares the patent free for all users. But that isn't going to happen, and Barnes and Noble isn't likely to add gifting to their ebook sales and have to fight that court battle.
This type of Infrastructure stays around for 50 years on average, and there's no need to accept such crappie equipment strewn all over the landscape because once in, you are stuck, they will never improve or replace them.
If you don't force them to do it right the first time, it will look like hell forever.
I have a ground mounted transformer, a telephone cabinet , a cable company cabinet all sitting in my front yard, all because the subdivision builder granted them easements. The service companies bitch where I shroud them with Rhodies.
And it doesn't have to be COTS stuff. I know a small company that developed a weather instrument monitoring package and sold thousands of executable-only versions, but one customer wanted a source license so they could modify it or recompile it for other platforms. He sold exactly one source license.
Six months later a Google search revealed his entire source code on three different source code repositories, two of which were overseas.
Would this system be a secret ballot sort of approach where the representative would not know who expressed the opinion that the vote should go a certain way, or would it be more like a letter to the representatives office, where staff would at least check for unsigned, anonymous letters and shuffle them aside?
With an authenticated system, constituents could express their opinion Yea/Nay, and change it as they learn more about the issue under debate, right up to the time of the floor vote.
Without authentication, even dead people and Canadians could vote (no disrespect intended to dead people). (JK!!!).
This isn't a vote. Its a suggestion to a Representative on how he should vote.
Some states vote entirely by mail. (Washington). Vote buying has not been proven or even alleged over the years, yet its easy to do.
Why would anyone pay someone to cast their opinion a certain way when they know the voter could log back in and change their vote as soon as the $20 bill is in the wallet and the payer is out the door?
There is no reason to limit the number of times a voter could change their vote right up to the time the floor vote was cast.
You do understand that even private keys can require a passphrase don't you? Mere possession of someone's private key does not automatically get you in.
Further, when the constituent logs in, and finds that his opinion has already been registered, its his clue that he has been compromised, and further, since its merely an expression of his opinion, he can change it.
You would want constituents to be able to change their opinion right up to the time the floor vote was to take place.
(Note: I'm totally glossing over the statement "Apparently most private computers are infected/compromised.", for which you haven't presented a shred of evidence. Microsoft stats indicate 4 PCs per 1,000 for Windows 7, less for 64bit. Simply having some bad actors in your cookies does not constitute a compromise that would allow grabbing ones private key and the password thereto.)
Remember that the professor is looking for feedback from his constituents as to how he should vote, he is not looking to replace the ballot box. Perhaps this is where your worry about direct voting went off the rails. That is NOT what he is proposing.
True, but the moment he starts voting against the stated will of his constituents his entire platform goes down in flames.
As well it should go down in flames. If he is getting a surge of input from a significant number of his constituents and instead chooses to vote against those inputs, he, and the platform he ran on should go down to defeat in the next election.
If he decides to drop his public input scheme, he better have a goddamed good reason, because it may well turn out to be the bell that can't be un-rung, and his constituents may demand it back again or find someone who will re-instate it.
Not everyone uses the internet, yet everyone should be represented. See the dilemma?
And not everyone writes a letter to his representative to tell them how they think he should vote. See That dilemma?
Please stay on track here. We are not talking about ELECTIONS.
This is NOT a system for ELECTING representatives, its a system for telling the representative how you would like them to vote. If the representative gets ONLY 27 people demanding a For or Against an issue, out of 270,000 constituents it would be a clear indication that nobody cares, and he should use his best judgement. On any issue for which a significant portion of the electorate cared enough to log in and register their opinion (if even at a public library), a vote contrary to their wishes would stand out very publicly.
Do you see anyone auditing the letters your congressman receives on any issue? Of course not.
This dilemma you worry so much about is already upon us, we've been living with it for 200 years and its getting worse day by day.
Election security is difficult and makes voting processes slow and difficult. This is why democracies moved from direct voting to "representative democracy" in the first place.
The state of public/private key technology today suggests to me that the system could be reasonably safe from each of the points you list, other than the purely social ones, (people with interest and time). You can't expect a polling system to solve social issues, such as disinterested voters, or organized vote buying. But duplicate or authorized users should be able to be controlled by a system of public/private key pairs.
Other than state actors, I believe an Open Source on-line polling system where registration was still handled (or at least vetted) by election authorities, would be at least as safe as any system currently in place.
Remember that the professor is looking for feedback from his constituents as to how he should vote, he is not looking to replace the ballot box. Perhaps this is where your worry about direct voting went off the rails. That is NOT what he is proposing.
Direct democracy provides the people with a direct, unfiltered voice in that government. Stopping somewhat short of that, Hansen proposes a system of direct democracy in combination with our current system of representative democracy. He suggests that, “A representative should be elected who would work strictly as an advisor and make all policy and voting decisions based on the will of his or her constituents, regardless of personal opinion.
So the bar is much lower than replacing the voting system. He is perfectly capable under current law to do exactly as he proposes, simply by setting up a web site and collecting opinions, and then voting that way.
And in this regard such a system (if done right, or even approximately right) is probably better than the current method of lobbyists and letter writers, and campaign contribution fueled decision making. It at least has the potential of being more open, and more transparent.
The risk is more from "anonymous" denial of service attackers taking down the system during polling periods when ever an issue they didn't like was under discussion. Even this could be somewhat mitigated by making so many targets (ip addresses) available that anonymous would run out of bot-power. But that solution is probably beyond the capabilities of any given representative and would have to be run at the state or at least county level.
Yes, but there are a ton of things that many factories can be re-tooled to make in a hurry. The amount of military gear rapidly farmed out to general industry in world war 2 is amazing. Even Singer Sewing Machines company produced Norton Bomb sights and rifle parts.
Just about any big steel fabrication plant can produce trucks, and light armored vehicles, and any electronics fab can be cut over to producing battle field electronics, and aircraft avionics.
There far more to military gear than helicopters and tanks.
The combat rifles of WWII for US forces were produced by many different companies.
M-1 CARBINES MANUFACTURED DURING WWII
Rock-Ola Music Corporation (ROCK-OLA) Standard Products (STANDARD PRODUCTS) International Business Machines (IBM) Quality Hardware (QUALITY HARDWARE) National Postal Meter (NATIONAL POSTER METER) Saginaw (SAGINAW DIVISION,GENERAL MOTORS)S.G. Saginaw (Grand Rapids) S'G' Underwood-Elliot-Fisher (UNDERWOOD) Winchester (WINCHESTER) Inland (INLAND DIVISION, GENERAL MOTORS
Everybody talks about fixing the patent law like its something you get get passed overnight.
I can't imagine a single thing congress could pass that would solve the problem in any reasonable time frame.
Shorten new patent terms? Results is more patent filings. (Take old patent, tweak it yearly, file new patent). Does nothing for those already issued. Ex post facto shorten existing patent terms? Huge "taking" fight. Kill off entire types of patents? Kill off Business Process patents, and the cockroaches wrap it in hardware or software and call it something else. Expand the trivial and obvious test? That hasn't been successful for two hundred years, what could change it now?
I doubt Congress could ever accomplish anything in this regard with every lobbyist in the country pouring money into pockets. But if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Do you really think it's a good ban to prevent all motorola android devices from being imported because they can be used to organize a meeting ? An eye for an eye, bitches.
Exactly.
Would Motorola spend all this time tearing down an XBox and comparing every tiny detail against each of their mountain of patents without provocation? Where is the business case for that? Pay the Motorola lawyers to prevent Microsoft from making a profit? How does that help Moto? Does it protect their game console business?
Moto only sued because they were sued for offering a portable way of performing a perfectly normal business activity via electronic communications.
Only when companies learn that they have more to lose than they have to gain will this silliness stop.
I think we're seeing some wide cracks in the patent system if a product can be produced right up to EOL before an import ban can be thrown at it.
Looking at it rationally, how could it possibly work any other way?
Given that there are patents, gazillions of them, how can you possibly read thru each and every on to find out if your new product might have run afoul of some clause in some obscure patent, especially when the language of those patents is purposely written to be vague and all inclusive? You would have to spend two years of patent lawyer time researching what it took you two months to breadboard up in the lab.
These things are always going to be discovered after the fact.
While developing your new gizmo, you only look at the obvious competitors. (Some avoid looking at all, due to the risk of idea pollution).
Microsoft does not see Motorola as a competitor in game consoles, so they ignore them. Same for John Deere tractors. No game consoles. Ignore them.
But then they make the mistake of trying to block Motorola phones, and Moto starts digging around in its bag of patents for a club to hit Microsoft with. Would Moto spend that time and money without the initial provocation? I'm guessing not.
unfortunately, turnabout play does nothing for the customer or the nation.
The patent law is only half the problem. The other half is the business practices that these companies choose to take.
Given the inertia in changing the patent system, (good luck seeing that in your life time), the import bans are (arguably) the way to go.
Only by forcing these things into the nuclear condition can you ever get big companies to realize that cheap and perfunctory cross-licensing is the only way to assure there are no costly misadventures down the line.
Once it become the norm to cross-license (or very cheaply license), and the companies realize its more trouble and less revenue than it is worth to go after someone for these tiny little improvements and combinations of existing technology, they will perhaps stop beating each other up with lawyers.
They could then do it all on line, via email, and maybe they would simply resort to publishing these inconsequential compilations of technology, so that nobody else could patent them and let the chips fall where they may.
Its fitting that Microsoft got caught in this trap. Now if we can catch Apple's next phone and block it at the ports maybe some progress can be made in this direction.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the real issue is not packets but concurrent bandwidth.
But that problem has been solved already, time and time again.
Off peak electricity can be had cheaper than peak, with a different meter.
Off peak phone calls essentially become free (nights and weekends).
Off peak express/toll lane use is cheaper than peak use.
Demand period billing is easily managed in an industry where you know precisely the time of day that every packet transited the wire.
The problem comes in the uncertainty of the bill at the end of the month. People can budget their $30 bucks or $60 bucks, but how do you budget demand period adjusted usage? Yes, newer phones these days have the ability to keep track of this usage built right in, but the risk of a few dollars overage charge is deterring people from using their phones the way they want.
The whole concept of the need for demand period based billing and data caps is, I suspect, pretty much of a fraud. The carriers aren't even deploying all of the bandwidth they licensed, and regardless of Verizon's protestations to the contrary, they are simply hording it to justify high prices. I suspect that a complete analysis would show that there is plenty of bandwidth even for peak periods, and it is being artificially constrained.
We went through all of this before with the telephone companies. Its not exactly like they have been playing straight with us up to this point. Its the same game they played on us with "scarcity of long distance circuits". Now I don't know a single person that pays long distance charges. Its free with your basic phone service in most places.
High quality DRM-free movie downloads at a resonable price. As in, $5 or so.
I guarantee you most people will switch to downloading legally.
Don't think so. $5 is too much. Google will already let you stream a movie for about 4 Bucks They aren't finding it as profitable as they thought. Apple wants 15 bucks but thats Apple.
I believe the price point is closer to One dollar or Two dollars per view for a full length movie and 99 cents for a hour long tv show. That price will sell more views than theater showings, and easily earn back several hundred million dollars of production costs.
Exactly my thoughts posted above. Ant the network they are interested in controlling is the internet.
Which leads me to the assumption that these content companies don't give a rats-ass about the content, what they really want is
to gain legal control the internet. That would be worth trillions, where as the average movie earns a few million. They are using
content as a loss leader, a poker chip, in a high stakes game to grab control.
At 99cents per download/view you could easily make back the production costs of most tv shows.
Did you even follow read what you cited at infosec? No, I though not.
The link points to a single Jpg in some nondescript blog.
The blog sites the mere presence of a cookie from DoubleClick (now owned by Google) as an infection. It equates a cookie with infection!!!
Any you fall for it! Unbefrickinlievable.
Gmail uses ssl, search may or may not.
Don't see why your Gmail would break.
But this is another reason all the USA haters out there should really consider whether they want the Internet run by the UN as China is now proposing.
The company cafeteria isn't all that great, but jeez nothing is less satisfying than a virtual burger and virtual fries.
Quote summary:
Google responded with changes to the system, but that doesn't minimize their accomplishment.
On the contrary, yet is does minimize their accomplishment. It makes it all for nothing, a technical exercise, with no near term or long term payback.
Recaptcha is a huge con, no more secure then the original captcha. The second (or first) portion being there only to serve some other purpose, and any answer will do.
Adding the audio option (probably forced by ADA) did nothing for security. At best this demonstrates that adding multiple different keys to the same lock makes things worse, not better.
Captcha's original intent was to slow down bots, by making the user prove they were human. They are seldom used to protect anything
of value, simply to keep the nuisance bots to a dull roar.
Now it appears that machines can beat captcha and recaptcha very easily. So WHY do we still see these schemes in use?
Where are those Doom of Android purveyors today?
Are there really enough towels to get that much egg off of their collective blog faces?
This!
How could you possibly call an API if the argument structure was copyrightable? Buy a license for every single API set that was delivered with your machine, associated with every software product, or hosted somewhere on the web?
In a world of stupid IP laws, at least this judge gets it. (Which surprises the hell out of me).
Physical size is clearly the issue here. I can guarantee you that these boxes are mostly empty space inside, and the actual equipment could be configured to fit in a much smaller space.
*yawn* if this gets awarded, it will fall in court the first time its used against someone.
At what cost?
And if you read the summary (let alone the second link), you will see its not a matter of IF this gets awarded. Its ALREADY been awarded.
Given that this is already being done by hundreds of companies, and has been done years before Amazon decided to patent it, this should not have been awarded. Ever send flowers via the internet? Ever ordered gifts on line and had them sent direct? Congratulations, you've "electronically gifted".
This patent covers only electronic/digital items, music, ebooks, etc. But if this can be patented why not allow patenting the gifting of other things electronically via another patent?
So now, someone has to put up massive amounts of money to fight this the first time Amazon tries to enforce it.
The best case is Amazon filed this patent for defensive purposes (to avoid being sued), and irrevocably declares the patent free for all users. But that isn't going to happen, and Barnes and Noble isn't likely to add gifting to their ebook sales and have to fight that court battle.
This type of Infrastructure stays around for 50 years on average, and there's no need to accept such crappie equipment strewn all over the landscape because once in, you are stuck, they will never improve or replace them.
If you don't force them to do it right the first time, it will look like hell forever.
I have a ground mounted transformer, a telephone cabinet , a cable company cabinet all sitting in my front yard, all because the subdivision builder granted them easements. The service companies bitch where I shroud them with Rhodies.
Exactly.
And it doesn't have to be COTS stuff. I know a small company that developed a weather instrument monitoring package and sold thousands of executable-only versions, but one customer wanted a source license so they could modify it or recompile it for other platforms. He sold exactly one source license.
Six months later a Google search revealed his entire source code on three different source code repositories, two of which were overseas.
Would this system be a secret ballot sort of approach where the representative would not know who expressed the opinion that the vote should go a certain way, or would it be more like a letter to the representatives office, where staff would at least check for unsigned, anonymous letters and shuffle them aside?
With an authenticated system, constituents could express their opinion Yea/Nay, and change it as they learn more about the issue under debate, right up to the time of the floor vote.
Without authentication, even dead people and Canadians could vote (no disrespect intended to dead people). (JK!!!).
This isn't a vote. Its a suggestion to a Representative on how he should vote.
Some states vote entirely by mail. (Washington). Vote buying has not been proven or even alleged over the years,
yet its easy to do.
Why would anyone pay someone to cast their opinion a certain way when they know the voter could log back in and change their vote as soon as the $20 bill is in the wallet and the payer is out the door?
There is no reason to limit the number of times a voter could change their vote right up to the time the floor vote was cast.
You do understand that even private keys can require a passphrase don't you? Mere possession of someone's private key does not automatically get you in.
Further, when the constituent logs in, and finds that his opinion has already been registered, its his clue that he has been compromised, and further, since its merely an expression of his opinion, he can change it.
You would want constituents to be able to change their opinion right up to the time the floor vote was to take place.
(Note: I'm totally glossing over the statement "Apparently most private computers are infected/compromised.", for which you haven't presented a shred of evidence. Microsoft stats indicate 4 PCs per 1,000 for Windows 7, less for 64bit. Simply having some bad actors in your cookies does not constitute a compromise that would allow grabbing ones private key and the password thereto.)
True, but the moment he starts voting against the stated will of his constituents his entire platform goes down in flames.
As well it should go down in flames. If he is getting a surge of input from a significant number of his constituents and instead chooses to vote against those inputs, he, and the platform he ran on should go down to defeat in the next election.
If he decides to drop his public input scheme, he better have a goddamed good reason, because it may well turn out to be the bell that can't be un-rung, and his constituents may demand it back again or find someone who will re-instate it.
Not everyone uses the internet, yet everyone should be represented. See the dilemma?
And not everyone writes a letter to his representative to tell them how they think he should vote.
See That dilemma?
Please stay on track here. We are not talking about ELECTIONS.
This is NOT a system for ELECTING representatives, its a system for telling the representative how you would like them to vote.
If the representative gets ONLY 27 people demanding a For or Against an issue, out of 270,000 constituents it would be a clear indication that
nobody cares, and he should use his best judgement. On any issue for which a significant portion of the electorate cared enough to log in
and register their opinion (if even at a public library), a vote contrary to their wishes would stand out very publicly.
Do you see anyone auditing the letters your congressman receives on any issue?
Of course not.
This dilemma you worry so much about is already upon us, we've been living with it for 200 years and its getting worse day by day.
Election security is difficult and makes voting processes slow and difficult. This is why democracies moved from direct voting to "representative democracy" in the first place.
The state of public/private key technology today suggests to me that the system could be reasonably safe from each of the points you list, other than the purely social ones, (people with interest and time). You can't expect a polling system to solve social issues, such as disinterested voters, or organized vote buying. But duplicate or authorized users should be able to be controlled by a system of public/private key pairs.
Other than state actors, I believe an Open Source on-line polling system where registration was still handled (or at least vetted) by election authorities, would be at least as safe as any system currently in place.
Remember that the professor is looking for feedback from his constituents as to how he should vote, he is not looking to replace the ballot box.
Perhaps this is where your worry about direct voting went off the rails. That is NOT what he is proposing.
Direct democracy provides the people with a direct, unfiltered voice in that government. Stopping somewhat short of that, Hansen proposes a system of direct democracy in combination with our current system of representative democracy. He suggests that, “A representative should be elected who would work strictly as an advisor and make all policy and voting decisions based on the will of his or her constituents, regardless of personal opinion.
So the bar is much lower than replacing the voting system. He is perfectly capable under current law to do exactly as he proposes, simply by setting up a web site and collecting opinions, and then voting that way.
And in this regard such a system (if done right, or even approximately right) is probably better than the current method of lobbyists and letter writers, and campaign contribution fueled decision making. It at least has the potential of being more open, and more transparent.
The risk is more from "anonymous" denial of service attackers taking down the system during polling periods when ever an issue they didn't like was under discussion. Even this could be somewhat mitigated by making so many targets (ip addresses) available that anonymous would run out of bot-power. But that solution is probably beyond the capabilities of any given representative and would have to be run at the state or at least county level.
Yes, but there are a ton of things that many factories can be re-tooled to make in a hurry.
The amount of military gear rapidly farmed out to general industry in world war 2 is amazing.
Even Singer Sewing Machines company produced Norton Bomb sights and rifle parts.
Just about any big steel fabrication plant can produce trucks, and light armored vehicles,
and any electronics fab can be cut over to producing battle field electronics, and aircraft
avionics.
There far more to military gear than helicopters and tanks.
The combat rifles of WWII for US forces were produced by many different companies.
M-1 CARBINES MANUFACTURED DURING WWII
Rock-Ola Music Corporation (ROCK-OLA)
Standard Products (STANDARD PRODUCTS)
International Business Machines (IBM)
Quality Hardware (QUALITY HARDWARE)
National Postal Meter (NATIONAL POSTER METER)
Saginaw (SAGINAW DIVISION,GENERAL MOTORS)S.G.
Saginaw (Grand Rapids) S'G'
Underwood-Elliot-Fisher (UNDERWOOD)
Winchester (WINCHESTER)
Inland (INLAND DIVISION, GENERAL MOTORS
Everybody talks about fixing the patent law like its something you get get passed overnight.
I can't imagine a single thing congress could pass that would solve the problem in any reasonable time frame.
Shorten new patent terms? Results is more patent filings. (Take old patent, tweak it yearly, file new patent). Does nothing for those already issued.
Ex post facto shorten existing patent terms? Huge "taking" fight.
Kill off entire types of patents? Kill off Business Process patents, and the cockroaches wrap it in hardware or software and call it something else.
Expand the trivial and obvious test? That hasn't been successful for two hundred years, what could change it now?
I doubt Congress could ever accomplish anything in this regard with every lobbyist in the country pouring money into pockets.
But if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Do you really think it's a good ban to prevent all motorola android devices from being imported because they can be used to organize a meeting ? An eye for an eye, bitches.
Exactly.
Would Motorola spend all this time tearing down an XBox and comparing every tiny detail against each of their mountain of patents without provocation? Where is the business case for that? Pay the Motorola lawyers to prevent Microsoft from making a profit? How does that help Moto? Does it protect their game console business?
Moto only sued because they were sued for offering a portable way of performing a perfectly normal business activity via electronic communications.
Only when companies learn that they have more to lose than they have to gain will this silliness stop.
I think we're seeing some wide cracks in the patent system if a product can be produced right up to EOL before an import ban can be thrown at it.
Looking at it rationally, how could it possibly work any other way?
Given that there are patents, gazillions of them, how can you possibly read thru each and every on to find out if your new product might have run afoul of some clause in some obscure patent, especially when the language of those patents is purposely written to be vague and all inclusive? You would have to spend two years of patent lawyer time researching what it took you two months to breadboard up in the lab.
These things are always going to be discovered after the fact.
While developing your new gizmo, you only look at the obvious competitors. (Some avoid looking at all, due to the risk of idea pollution).
Microsoft does not see Motorola as a competitor in game consoles, so they ignore them. Same for John Deere tractors. No game consoles. Ignore them.
But then they make the mistake of trying to block Motorola phones, and Moto starts digging around in its bag of patents for a club to hit Microsoft with.
Would Moto spend that time and money without the initial provocation? I'm guessing not.
unfortunately, turnabout play does nothing for the customer or the nation.
The patent law is only half the problem. The other half is the business practices that these companies
choose to take.
Given the inertia in changing the patent system, (good luck seeing that in your life time), the import bans are (arguably) the way to go.
Only by forcing these things into the nuclear condition can you ever get big companies to realize that cheap and perfunctory
cross-licensing is the only way to assure there are no costly misadventures down the line.
Once it become the norm to cross-license (or very cheaply license), and the companies realize its more
trouble and less revenue than it is worth to go after someone for these tiny little improvements and
combinations of existing technology, they will perhaps stop beating each other up with lawyers.
They could then do it all on line, via email, and maybe they would simply resort to publishing these inconsequential
compilations of technology, so that nobody else could patent them and let the chips fall where they may.
Its fitting that Microsoft got caught in this trap. Now if we can catch Apple's next phone and block it
at the ports maybe some progress can be made in this direction.