What with the selling carbon credits like they were indulgences from the middle ages? How about just cutting some emissions and avoiding creating fake industries.
Market-priced pollution/cleanup credits are the only sane way to price these activities. Currently the cost of polluting is either arbitrarily set by some government entity or foisted upon the public. Forcing companies to clean up after themselves or pay someone else to do so will allow everyone to pay the true cost of their activities, thus allowing the market to decide how best to allocate resources. Ideally such credits would be traded on an exchange not unlike the CME.
and the fact that the Federal Government has no Constitutional authority to prohibit growing crops for personal use (or even for intrastate commerce), and the the 9th Amendment (growing plants/crops on one's own land is a completely natural right).
The supreme court has held that the interstate commerce clause gives congress the authority to regulate wheat grown on a farm for consumption on the same farm. That case would probably be decided differently if brought to the court now, but it's still the law of the land (and frequently tested on the bar exam). The name of the case escapes me or I'd give you a citation.
Even if the CAFC/SC ruled to dramatically restrict the field of patentable subject matter (an unlikely outcome in these cases, as is pointed out by the linked articles in the summary), any specific patent would only be rendered useless after being dragged through a long and costly appeals process. Trolls seek to profit from the cost of defeating their flawed patents in court. No decision in these cases would harm the patent troll business model.
The only way to inhibit "patent trolls" is to make it profitable for the victim of a frivolous law suit to fight to the end rather than to settle.
I lean to Nintendo's side since the patents are registered to some dude in Carson City, Nevada; but Anascape is registered in Texas, famous for their friendly attitude toward patent trolls. I think it's a case of jury shopping.
Or it's a case of choosing a venue where the judge knows a patent from a potato, where the magistrates are experienced with patent matters for expedited pretrial proceedings, and where the docket that isn't clogged with federal criminal cases that prevent timely resolution of civil matters. Very little in a patent case is decided by the jury and much of what the jury has power over can be corrected on appeal should the jury err. The Eastern District of Texas (and other "rocket dockets") are popular with plaintiffs because they provide the plaintiff with a predictable litigation timetable. They all appeal to the same place (CAFC) so they all follow the same law and extraordinary jury outcomes will be subjected to the same review.
On the upside for the infringement defendants in this case, there is a joint infringement problem with the claims in the client/server architecture. Infringing this patent would effectively require two entities to take action - one on the client, and one on the server. This "joint" requirement precludes the possibility of any actual infringement, and is indicative of a poorly drafted claim. Combined with the likelihood that the patent will be invalidated as anticipated or obvious in view of all the prior art out there, it's highly unlikely an infringement judgment will ever go through. However, the defendants are likely to settle to avoid the cost of litigation - classic patent troll strategy.
Claims 2-42 depend on claim 1 containing the phrases:
establishing a management tool on a client computer system, remote from said server computer system, said management tool including said list identifier;
establishing a communications link between said client computer system and said server computer system;
Which may pose such a joint-infringement issue. I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, though at first glance there's a strong argument.
The more troubling claims are a bit further in. Independent claim 46 (and claims 47-49 and 57 which depend on it) makes no reference to a client or to communicating over a network -- they describe only the database. Likewise independent claim 58 with its dependent claims (59 & 60) and independent claim 61 with its dependent claims (62 & 63) describe only the database. These claims without the client or communication link limitation present in claim 1 would not be vulnerable to a joint-infringement argument. They're preposterously broad at first glance. Claim 46 may read on any database ever implemented. You'd have to read through the specification to see how the inventor redefined the claim terms to know how broad some of these ridiculous-seeming claims really are.
Unless those photos were of the crime scene, I agree with the GP. It's the state's job to prove that a crime was committed and that he was responsible.
He posted photos of himself smoking pot and drinking while underage on his social networking page. Those photos are evidence of a crime (namely, smoking pot and drinking while underage). That's sufficient PC to search his computer for additional photographs and other evidence of those crimes. Just because he's under arrest for vehicular homicide doesn't mean the police can't get a search warrant for evidence of other crimes.
While attacking his character may be successful in getting him a harsher sentence, or maybe getting him convicted in the first place by manipulating the jury, it strikes me as a pretty unethical thing to do
Generally the prosecution cannot introduce character evidence against a defendant until a defendant raises his own character as an issue. Depending on what's recovered, it may be possible to introduce evidence against him under one of the exceptions to this rule (MIMIC - motive, intent, lack of mistake, identity, common plan).
Nope, if you have a patent issued on an improvment, you are free to build your device as described in the patent without being subject to royalties.
This is why patents are phrased as broadly as possible.
Sorry, but this is completely wrong. Patents convey no right to practice the claimed invention, merely the right to stop others from doing so. If I patent the car, and you patent the blue car, you cannot make any blue cars without making cars and infringing on my patent. I, however, cannot make blue cars without infringing on your patent. Patents are phrased as broadly as possible in part because of this. By claiming broadly, it is possible to capture the future gains of others within the scope of a patent's specification.
A lot of folks here are going to complain about this decision without really understanding the case. It seems to me that this guy's lawyer made some poor decisions if he was pinning his hopes on this decision.
It appears that Warshak asked for two things:
-an injunction against future searches under 2703(d) without notice
-a ruling on the constitutionality of 2703(d) on the grounds that it allows the violation of a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy without a warrant
On the first matter, the court's ripeness argument strikes the nail on the head. Warshak knows that he is under investigation now (indeed, he is convicted) so there's no need for judicially-delayed notification.
On the second matter, the court points out that a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy (REP) when using an electronic mail/data storage service will vary with the terms of service agreed upon between the citizen and the service provider. Thus, whether a citizen has a REP should be decided on a case by case basis.
Warshak should be arguing that he had a REP and that the statute as applied to him was a violation of his 4th amendment rights. I don't think that's a winner, as 2703(d) appears to require probable cause or something like it.
Probable cause:
Probable cause is what would lead a person of reasonable caution and prudence to believe that a person, evidence, or contraband related to a crime is in a specific place at a specific time.
2703(d):
"a court of competent jurisdiction" may issue an order based on "specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the contents of a wire or electronic communication, or the records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."
2703(d) is slightly more broad than probable cause, as there is no need for the records or other information sought to be useful as evidence of a crime. They need merely be relevant and material. For example, a contact list from Warshak's email service provider may give investigators an idea of who to contact to discover more victims of his wire fraud scheme without itself being evidence of said scheme. In this case, though, I suspect that investigators would have had sufficient probable cause had they sought a warrant. As with a warrant, investigators had to prove to an impartial magistrate their reasonable belief that Warshak's service provider had evidence relevant to a specific criminal investigation. The principle advantage gained by using 2703(d) in this case appears to be the delayed notice provision.
can you prove, with only science, that all the laws of science have always existed
That's not a valid question. Science deals with questions that are provably false, not provably true. There are no true laws in science, only theories supported by evidence. Some disciplines call some of their basic theories laws, but that is a semantic distinction. Further, "always" is a meaningless term. We have no information from before ~13.75 bn years ago. Since that point, we have a pretty good understanding of the fundamental forces controlling the development of the universe. Further, what other than science would you use to answer such a question?
explain how our 1 in 10^99999999999999999999999999999999999 chance of evolving into an intelligent species
Care to share where that number came from. Creatures of intelligence on our planet appear to have evolved independently starting from the earliest multicellular eucaryotes. Both invertebrates and vertebrates have exemplars of organisms with large brains integrating input from multiple complex sensory organs to regulate bodily function and direct behavior. Within the vertebrate subphylum, organisms that communicate to direct the behavior of a group is a common theme. Virtually every mammal and avian communicates with other members of the same species. Pack predators organize hunts. Herd animals communicate the presence of threats or food. Cetacea mammals are highly social and are able to communicate over incredible distances. In addition to Apes, several other mammal and avian species use tools. Based on fossil evidence from the Cretaceous period, the modern trend towards communicative, large-brained social organisms appears to have occured on this planet at least once before.
Intelligent tool-using social animals appear to be little more than a combination of prevalent successful evolutionary strategies. Given enough time, I'd guess that any planet where simple eucaryotes evolved would eventually host a species that you would consider intelligent.
though out of the millions of stars we've studied ours is one of very few that might possibly contain a planet that might possible support life?
I believe we have only excluded a relatively small number of stars from possibly supporting an earth-like planet within the habitable zone for carbon/water-based life. We haven't found any stars with earth-like planets within their habitable zone because our instruments lack the necessary sophistication. Just because you can't use a pair of binoculars to stand on a beach in California and count the fleas on a dog in China doesn't mean that the dog doesn't have fleas.
Just curious. you can blindly accept evolution as fact and assume everything else is wrong
Who is blindly accepting evolution as "fact"?
Can you please provide a hypothesis supported by evidence that if true would contradict any aspect of the theory of evolution.
or you can at least give it some thought with an open mind and see WHY someone might be inclined to believe such irrational nonsense as ID.
I was born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line. I have a great deal of insight on why people believe irrational nonsense and it has nothing to do with maintaining an open mind.
The article cites that LimitNone claims that the 'gMove' application was a trade secret..it wasn't even patented.
Trade secrets are very rarely patented (and the patent application would end a piece of IP's status as a trade secret as it functions as a public disclosure). Most often, trade secret protection is used on IP that is not patentable and covers any IP that derives value from its secrecy (e.g. customer lists, secret formulae, etc). Trade secret protection is implemented by securing (most often through contract) confidentiality with all who encounter the IP. If LimitNone had competent attorneys when they spoke with Google, they'll have a contract that limits Google's ability to exploit the disclosed technology even if it was unpatentably obvious. Trade secret cases like this one are fundamentally disputes over the specific contract the parties entered into, with added penalties through state trade secret laws. No attorney interested in keeping his license would file a trade secret suit over an unconditional disclosure to a competitor so there's probably (at the very least) a good faith dispute over the limits of the contract between the parties.
Trade secrets? What trade secrets? Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.
LimitNone is probably going to argue that their disclosure agreement with Google prevented Google from doing exactly that. Without seeing the contract it's impossible to know whether such an argument would be viable.
This is ust another case of litigation over innovation. I mean, I'm no IP law expert or anything, but a client migration tool? This could have easily have been some kind of open source project..who would LimitNone have sued then?
This case has nothing to do with innovation. If you or I had written the exact same application that Google wrote LimitNone would have no case against us.
Isn't the whole problem that the damages sought in the civil suit are 'punitive', ie they are meant to punish the accused rather than to seek just compensation for the damage done by the infringement (which is minimal for any "non-career pirate")? And isn't it really strange that anything beyond just compensation is tried under civil suit rules?
The damages in these copyright infringement cases are not punitive. They are statutory. The copyright lobby had congress incorporate into statute the damages recoverable for copyright infringement, so that plaintiffs in copyright cases need not prove damages if they seek a judgment within the range of the copyright statute. There's an economic justification for such damages (they catch 10% of the infringers and charge them 10x, or the like) because enforcement is expensive and each person they catch would likely not be worth suing for provable damages.
Of course it's gotten much easier to catch infringers and the damages haven't been revised downwards, so the damages being awarded are nonsensical.
Punitive damages are generally used to punish defendants who knowingly choose to act negligently/wrongfully. For example, punitive damages would be applied when a defendant knowingly poisons some town's water supply because the cost of dealing with the lawsuits will be less than the cost of proper disposal of the poison. Most punitive damages awards are dramatically reduced or eliminated on appeal and in many jurisdictions the nominal plaintiff only gets a small cut (the rest going to the state). They are a trivial part of our civil litigation system that gets a lot of press because the press doesn't understand their function and ignores what happens on appeal.
but I'm really surprised given how the Dems have been crying foul for the last 8 years on packing the Supreme Court.
It was a 5-4 decision. That four Justices thought that the executive branch could act outside of its constitutional authority whenever it felt like it should be pretty alarming.
the two articles in TFS contradict one another....
No, they do not.
I think, that given the fact that we all know a tank full of lawyers would win over a tank full of sharks, even if we gave the sharks lasers, that I'd prefer to trust legalmetrics numbers, not some lawyer desperately clinging to his lifeblood, winning cases for patent trolls in east Texas.
The legalmetric figure refers to cases that go to trial while the McKool Smith attorney's figure refers to cases that are filed. The two figures do not necessarily contradict, and if taken together imply that the Eastern District of Texas is phenomenally good at eliminating meritless cases prior to trial.
I can further assure you that any partner at McKool Smith is not "clinging to his lifeblood" and that that firm will continue to be one of the most successful firms in representing both plaintiffs and defendants in patent cases filed in venues across the country.
so who do you believe? legalmetric, who says 88% of patent 'owners' win in marshal, or a lawyer who makes his living in Marshall Texas, saying that only 57% win there?
McKool Smith are some of the most skilled attorneys practicing in the field. They are highly respected and represent both plaintiffs and defendants. If patent litigation in another venue becomes popular, it will not affect McKool Smith's business. They'll continue to get as much business as they can bill. I doubt anyone there would misrepresent a material fact to a trade journal read by his colleagues, especially over something as unimportant as this.
What you, and many of the kneejerk anti-patent posters on slashdot fail to understand is why the Eastern District of Texas is a good venue for civil suits. Unlike (say) the Southern Distict of New York, the Eastern District of Texas has very few criminal cases pending at any given time. These cases get priority over civil cases and get to cut in line. The lack of criminal cases gives both plaintiffs and defendants a very clear timetable for trial. This led to the popularity of the Eastern District which led to an experienced court, where reversals on appeal are now less likely (and that's a huge component in patent litigation). It allows patent cases to be quickly resolved on their merits (where quickly is 2-5 years) rather than allowing either party to victimize the other by gaming some broken aspect of the court system.
Rapid resolution is good for both parties, as it reduces uncertainty and legal fees. What kind of investment would a rational business make in additional employees or new technology when some legal sword of Damocles hangs over them for ten years, threatening to take three times their profits over that period at any moment? What incentive would anyone have to respect the patent system when they could draw any patent litigation into a venue already so clogged that the plaintiff had no realistic opportunity to have his day in court. If you think people shouldn't lose their jobs because of patent cases, or that patents stifle innovation, then you should be in favor of a venue of experienced jurists that rapidly resolves patent disputes and reduces patent-related uncertainty from business decisions.
Well, other than the tracks for the vehicle to haul around this massive magnet and its power supply, as well as any debris in the area that may be magnetized, and of course the weird victim who had a beef with the guy with the giant mobile electromagnet.
If your goal is to injure or kill with impunity, leaving no evidence is worth its weight in gold.
How much does leaving no evidence weigh?
Ballistics evidence is only useful if you can tie a bullet to a gun to a person. That gives you two rather obvious opportunities to break the logical chain between you and your victim. If your plan is to kill someone in a manner that allows you to evade criminal prosecution, again, a gun is likely a more cost-effective option than some giant electromagnet.
Now you'll have to go based on average. Things are more expensive in NYC, Seattle, San Francisco, London, etc. than in smaller places like Dallas, Kansas City, Omaha, etc.
Metropolitan population and cost of living aren't as closely related as you think. Dallas is the 5th largest media market in the U.S. (Chicago is 3rd, SF 4th). Houston is 6th, Atlanta is 8th, DC is 9th, Boston is 10th, Seattle is 14th, and San Diego is 17th. The state that a city is in has far more to do with how far a given gross income will go than the size of the city. I never considered Seattle when I looked into this a few years ago, but a similarly paying job in Chicago, Dallas, Houston or Atlanta was far more valuable than the same job in NYC, LA, SF, DC, Boston, or San Diego.
Tax exposure also varies widely from state to state. Several years ago you could make about as much (in terms of after-tax purchasing power) as a reasonably competent waitress in an upscale chain restaurant in Dallas as you could as a first year associate in a major law firm in NYC.
As a caveat, though, I haven't looked into this for several years (and the Cost of Living index above is 3-4 years old). In several markets, housing costs have probably changed substantially within the last year. Rising transportation costs and a weakening dollar are likely to impact some markets more than others.
I suppose it might work that way if the large businesses weren't able to both write legislation and prevent fair enforcement of existing laws.
There's a reason that current legislative reform and recent changes in patent jurisprudence in the US is greatly reducing the power conferred by a patent.
Assuming that the big business doesn't already hold a patent on something the small company needs, and form a patent consortium with other large businesses to ensure no newcomers can get a toehold in the market.
Patent pooling is heavily regulated by the FTC and DOJ. If you're bothered by a patent pool operating as a legal apparatus for promoting cartel formation and enforcement, that's a problem with antitrust law, not patent law. http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2006dltr0007.html
If a small player that actually produces products were to assert a patent against one of the oligarchy members, it will most get countersued for patents in the big guy's portfolio.
What reason would a company have for litigating under the same corporate umbrella that he does business? Patents not being licensed or litigated yield the holder no benefit and filing suit as anything more than a patent holding company exposes the patent holder to frivolous countersuits from his target. (Such "defensive" uses of patents cause far more problems with the economics of patents and technology than offensive "trolls")
The party with the most lawyers and financial resources will be the one most likely to prevail.
Decreasing the power granted by the patent only increases the relative importance of legal fees in patent litigation, enforcement, and settlement.
In the software industry, patents are nothing more than an unpredictable minefield that can pop up anywhere to threaten any small company's survival, and patent trolls can pop up do do significant financial damage even to large companies.
First off, I don't believe there's anything special about software patents in this regard. Patent trolls pose a threat to every industry, and the harm they cause has nothing to do with the subject matter of the patent they abuse.
Second, can you name a single patent "troll" who ended a small company's existence by successfully asserting a patent against it in court? True patent trolls bring suits for nuisance value and settle for something less than the $3-5M it takes to prove their patent is invalid/is inapplicable/is not infringed/etc. Weakening patents would not reduce the impact of these "trolls" as they profit from defense costs, not the anticipated cost of an adverse verdict.
Software and (more importantly, though not yet apparent) financial services patents are a special problem because of how they were managed early on. Very little prior art (within the PTO's definition) existed when many of these problem patents came through, which made the PTO's tests for obviousness and anticipation less useful for denying patent applications. Specifically, the lack of printed publications and prior patents/patent applications covering much of the art claimed in the bad software/financial services patents probably led to the issuance of patents that would likely not have issued in another art. As more of this background art makes it into the record searchable by patent examiners, though, we'll have fewer and fewer bad patents in these fields. Many of the problems associated with software patents (i.e. obviousness) thus have little to do with software patents and a great deal to do with the transition of software from unpatentable subject matter to patentable subject matter.
If you want to reduce the number of software patents that can be enforced against you in the future, publish early and often (websites don
What it comes down to is which interest owns more Congressmen. (I'm aware that this is a brief in a court, but any sufficiently broad decision rejecting the idea of software patents would no doubt immediately come under legislative fire).
Strong patents favor smaller companies/startups/open source/etc. Weak patents favor big business. A startup holding a patent can exclude others from the market or force them to increase their marginal cost of production. A large company can lower its marginal cost of production/distribution/etc to below that of a startup or small business if not forced to license or work around whatever competitive advantage the startup/small business gained through their invention.
Slashdot Mirror
I want to live in your universe, where banks provide early-round financing to entrepreneurs and the laws of thermodynamics don't exist.
Praytell what injury or loss of property, personal injury, or death occurred here?
Market-priced pollution/cleanup credits are the only sane way to price these activities. Currently the cost of polluting is either arbitrarily set by some government entity or foisted upon the public. Forcing companies to clean up after themselves or pay someone else to do so will allow everyone to pay the true cost of their activities, thus allowing the market to decide how best to allocate resources. Ideally such credits would be traded on an exchange not unlike the CME.
The supreme court has held that the interstate commerce clause gives congress the authority to regulate wheat grown on a farm for consumption on the same farm. That case would probably be decided differently if brought to the court now, but it's still the law of the land (and frequently tested on the bar exam). The name of the case escapes me or I'd give you a citation.
Even if the CAFC/SC ruled to dramatically restrict the field of patentable subject matter (an unlikely outcome in these cases, as is pointed out by the linked articles in the summary), any specific patent would only be rendered useless after being dragged through a long and costly appeals process. Trolls seek to profit from the cost of defeating their flawed patents in court. No decision in these cases would harm the patent troll business model.
The only way to inhibit "patent trolls" is to make it profitable for the victim of a frivolous law suit to fight to the end rather than to settle.
If we're assuming archetypal prison behavior, wouldn't it be his outbox that gets stuffed?
Or it's a case of choosing a venue where the judge knows a patent from a potato, where the magistrates are experienced with patent matters for expedited pretrial proceedings, and where the docket that isn't clogged with federal criminal cases that prevent timely resolution of civil matters. Very little in a patent case is decided by the jury and much of what the jury has power over can be corrected on appeal should the jury err. The Eastern District of Texas (and other "rocket dockets") are popular with plaintiffs because they provide the plaintiff with a predictable litigation timetable. They all appeal to the same place (CAFC) so they all follow the same law and extraordinary jury outcomes will be subjected to the same review.
Claims 2-42 depend on claim 1 containing the phrases:
Which may pose such a joint-infringement issue. I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, though at first glance there's a strong argument.
The more troubling claims are a bit further in. Independent claim 46 (and claims 47-49 and 57 which depend on it) makes no reference to a client or to communicating over a network -- they describe only the database. Likewise independent claim 58 with its dependent claims (59 & 60) and independent claim 61 with its dependent claims (62 & 63) describe only the database. These claims without the client or communication link limitation present in claim 1 would not be vulnerable to a joint-infringement argument. They're preposterously broad at first glance. Claim 46 may read on any database ever implemented. You'd have to read through the specification to see how the inventor redefined the claim terms to know how broad some of these ridiculous-seeming claims really are.
He posted photos of himself smoking pot and drinking while underage on his social networking page. Those photos are evidence of a crime (namely, smoking pot and drinking while underage). That's sufficient PC to search his computer for additional photographs and other evidence of those crimes. Just because he's under arrest for vehicular homicide doesn't mean the police can't get a search warrant for evidence of other crimes.
Generally the prosecution cannot introduce character evidence against a defendant until a defendant raises his own character as an issue. Depending on what's recovered, it may be possible to introduce evidence against him under one of the exceptions to this rule (MIMIC - motive, intent, lack of mistake, identity, common plan).
Sorry, but this is completely wrong. Patents convey no right to practice the claimed invention, merely the right to stop others from doing so. If I patent the car, and you patent the blue car, you cannot make any blue cars without making cars and infringing on my patent. I, however, cannot make blue cars without infringing on your patent. Patents are phrased as broadly as possible in part because of this. By claiming broadly, it is possible to capture the future gains of others within the scope of a patent's specification.
It appears that Warshak asked for two things:
-an injunction against future searches under 2703(d) without notice
-a ruling on the constitutionality of 2703(d) on the grounds that it allows the violation of a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy without a warrant
On the first matter, the court's ripeness argument strikes the nail on the head. Warshak knows that he is under investigation now (indeed, he is convicted) so there's no need for judicially-delayed notification.
On the second matter, the court points out that a citizen's reasonable expectation of privacy (REP) when using an electronic mail/data storage service will vary with the terms of service agreed upon between the citizen and the service provider. Thus, whether a citizen has a REP should be decided on a case by case basis.
Warshak should be arguing that he had a REP and that the statute as applied to him was a violation of his 4th amendment rights. I don't think that's a winner, as 2703(d) appears to require probable cause or something like it.
Probable cause:
2703(d):
2703(d) is slightly more broad than probable cause, as there is no need for the records or other information sought to be useful as evidence of a crime. They need merely be relevant and material. For example, a contact list from Warshak's email service provider may give investigators an idea of who to contact to discover more victims of his wire fraud scheme without itself being evidence of said scheme. In this case, though, I suspect that investigators would have had sufficient probable cause had they sought a warrant. As with a warrant, investigators had to prove to an impartial magistrate their reasonable belief that Warshak's service provider had evidence relevant to a specific criminal investigation. The principle advantage gained by using 2703(d) in this case appears to be the delayed notice provision.
That's not a valid question. Science deals with questions that are provably false, not provably true. There are no true laws in science, only theories supported by evidence. Some disciplines call some of their basic theories laws, but that is a semantic distinction. Further, "always" is a meaningless term. We have no information from before ~13.75 bn years ago. Since that point, we have a pretty good understanding of the fundamental forces controlling the development of the universe. Further, what other than science would you use to answer such a question?
Care to share where that number came from. Creatures of intelligence on our planet appear to have evolved independently starting from the earliest multicellular eucaryotes. Both invertebrates and vertebrates have exemplars of organisms with large brains integrating input from multiple complex sensory organs to regulate bodily function and direct behavior. Within the vertebrate subphylum, organisms that communicate to direct the behavior of a group is a common theme. Virtually every mammal and avian communicates with other members of the same species. Pack predators organize hunts. Herd animals communicate the presence of threats or food. Cetacea mammals are highly social and are able to communicate over incredible distances. In addition to Apes, several other mammal and avian species use tools. Based on fossil evidence from the Cretaceous period, the modern trend towards communicative, large-brained social organisms appears to have occured on this planet at least once before.
Intelligent tool-using social animals appear to be little more than a combination of prevalent successful evolutionary strategies. Given enough time, I'd guess that any planet where simple eucaryotes evolved would eventually host a species that you would consider intelligent.
I believe we have only excluded a relatively small number of stars from possibly supporting an earth-like planet within the habitable zone for carbon/water-based life. We haven't found any stars with earth-like planets within their habitable zone because our instruments lack the necessary sophistication. Just because you can't use a pair of binoculars to stand on a beach in California and count the fleas on a dog in China doesn't mean that the dog doesn't have fleas.
Who is blindly accepting evolution as "fact"?
Can you please provide a hypothesis supported by evidence that if true would contradict any aspect of the theory of evolution.
I was born and raised south of the Mason-Dixon line. I have a great deal of insight on why people believe irrational nonsense and it has nothing to do with maintaining an open mind.
Trade secrets are very rarely patented (and the patent application would end a piece of IP's status as a trade secret as it functions as a public disclosure). Most often, trade secret protection is used on IP that is not patentable and covers any IP that derives value from its secrecy (e.g. customer lists, secret formulae, etc). Trade secret protection is implemented by securing (most often through contract) confidentiality with all who encounter the IP. If LimitNone had competent attorneys when they spoke with Google, they'll have a contract that limits Google's ability to exploit the disclosed technology even if it was unpatentably obvious. Trade secret cases like this one are fundamentally disputes over the specific contract the parties entered into, with added penalties through state trade secret laws. No attorney interested in keeping his license would file a trade secret suit over an unconditional disclosure to a competitor so there's probably (at the very least) a good faith dispute over the limits of the contract between the parties.
LimitNone is probably going to argue that their disclosure agreement with Google prevented Google from doing exactly that. Without seeing the contract it's impossible to know whether such an argument would be viable.
This case has nothing to do with innovation. If you or I had written the exact same application that Google wrote LimitNone would have no case against us.
Of course it's gotten much easier to catch infringers and the damages haven't been revised downwards, so the damages being awarded are nonsensical.
Punitive damages are generally used to punish defendants who knowingly choose to act negligently/wrongfully. For example, punitive damages would be applied when a defendant knowingly poisons some town's water supply because the cost of dealing with the lawsuits will be less than the cost of proper disposal of the poison. Most punitive damages awards are dramatically reduced or eliminated on appeal and in many jurisdictions the nominal plaintiff only gets a small cut (the rest going to the state). They are a trivial part of our civil litigation system that gets a lot of press because the press doesn't understand their function and ignores what happens on appeal.
Should be funny watching the forum whines from all the folks who use this but didn't take the time to read the patch notes.
The legalmetric figure refers to cases that go to trial while the McKool Smith attorney's figure refers to cases that are filed. The two figures do not necessarily contradict, and if taken together imply that the Eastern District of Texas is phenomenally good at eliminating meritless cases prior to trial.
I can further assure you that any partner at McKool Smith is not "clinging to his lifeblood" and that that firm will continue to be one of the most successful firms in representing both plaintiffs and defendants in patent cases filed in venues across the country.
McKool Smith are some of the most skilled attorneys practicing in the field. They are highly respected and represent both plaintiffs and defendants. If patent litigation in another venue becomes popular, it will not affect McKool Smith's business. They'll continue to get as much business as they can bill. I doubt anyone there would misrepresent a material fact to a trade journal read by his colleagues, especially over something as unimportant as this.
What you, and many of the kneejerk anti-patent posters on slashdot fail to understand is why the Eastern District of Texas is a good venue for civil suits. Unlike (say) the Southern Distict of New York, the Eastern District of Texas has very few criminal cases pending at any given time. These cases get priority over civil cases and get to cut in line. The lack of criminal cases gives both plaintiffs and defendants a very clear timetable for trial. This led to the popularity of the Eastern District which led to an experienced court, where reversals on appeal are now less likely (and that's a huge component in patent litigation). It allows patent cases to be quickly resolved on their merits (where quickly is 2-5 years) rather than allowing either party to victimize the other by gaming some broken aspect of the court system.
Rapid resolution is good for both parties, as it reduces uncertainty and legal fees. What kind of investment would a rational business make in additional employees or new technology when some legal sword of Damocles hangs over them for ten years, threatening to take three times their profits over that period at any moment? What incentive would anyone have to respect the patent system when they could draw any patent litigation into a venue already so clogged that the plaintiff had no realistic opportunity to have his day in court. If you think people shouldn't lose their jobs because of patent cases, or that patents stifle innovation, then you should be in favor of a venue of experienced jurists that rapidly resolves patent disputes and reduces patent-related uncertainty from business decisions.
Ballistics evidence is only useful if you can tie a bullet to a gun to a person. That gives you two rather obvious opportunities to break the logical chain between you and your victim. If your plan is to kill someone in a manner that allows you to evade criminal prosecution, again, a gun is likely a more cost-effective option than some giant electromagnet.
1. Religion
2. Righteousness
3. Regressive taxation
Metro Areas: http://www.arbitron.com/radio_stations/mm001050.asp
Costs of Living: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883960.html
Tax exposure also varies widely from state to state. Several years ago you could make about as much (in terms of after-tax purchasing power) as a reasonably competent waitress in an upscale chain restaurant in Dallas as you could as a first year associate in a major law firm in NYC.
As a caveat, though, I haven't looked into this for several years (and the Cost of Living index above is 3-4 years old). In several markets, housing costs have probably changed substantially within the last year. Rising transportation costs and a weakening dollar are likely to impact some markets more than others.
Out of curiosity, in how many airline emergencies over the last 20 years did the 2 minute "rapid escape" capability matter?
There's a reason that current legislative reform and recent changes in patent jurisprudence in the US is greatly reducing the power conferred by a patent.
Patent pooling is heavily regulated by the FTC and DOJ. If you're bothered by a patent pool operating as a legal apparatus for promoting cartel formation and enforcement, that's a problem with antitrust law, not patent law. http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2006dltr0007.html
What reason would a company have for litigating under the same corporate umbrella that he does business? Patents not being licensed or litigated yield the holder no benefit and filing suit as anything more than a patent holding company exposes the patent holder to frivolous countersuits from his target. (Such "defensive" uses of patents cause far more problems with the economics of patents and technology than offensive "trolls")
Decreasing the power granted by the patent only increases the relative importance of legal fees in patent litigation, enforcement, and settlement.
First off, I don't believe there's anything special about software patents in this regard. Patent trolls pose a threat to every industry, and the harm they cause has nothing to do with the subject matter of the patent they abuse.
Second, can you name a single patent "troll" who ended a small company's existence by successfully asserting a patent against it in court? True patent trolls bring suits for nuisance value and settle for something less than the $3-5M it takes to prove their patent is invalid/is inapplicable/is not infringed/etc. Weakening patents would not reduce the impact of these "trolls" as they profit from defense costs, not the anticipated cost of an adverse verdict.
Software and (more importantly, though not yet apparent) financial services patents are a special problem because of how they were managed early on. Very little prior art (within the PTO's definition) existed when many of these problem patents came through, which made the PTO's tests for obviousness and anticipation less useful for denying patent applications. Specifically, the lack of printed publications and prior patents/patent applications covering much of the art claimed in the bad software/financial services patents probably led to the issuance of patents that would likely not have issued in another art. As more of this background art makes it into the record searchable by patent examiners, though, we'll have fewer and fewer bad patents in these fields. Many of the problems associated with software patents (i.e. obviousness) thus have little to do with software patents and a great deal to do with the transition of software from unpatentable subject matter to patentable subject matter.
If you want to reduce the number of software patents that can be enforced against you in the future, publish early and often (websites don