Well, what I was trying to do was show how the Wii remote compares to only one of the claims -- claim 1.
Does Interlink have a patent on the Wii remote? Well, you're just asking for my opinion, where I just wanted to show some basic steps in the process. There's something there, and the claim should certainly give Nintendo pause. But even if a claim looks to be dead-on, that doesn't mean anything. You can look in the prosecution history (communications with the PTO by Interlink while obtaining the patent) to find statements made by Interlink that could narrow the scope of the claims. You can find that the specification teaches away from, for example, using Bluetooth (usually by saying something like, "infra-red is the only way this will work").
Dependent claims are refinements of the independent claims. Let me show you an independent claim, and a dependent claim, 1 and 2 respectively:
I claim: 1. A widget comprising: an "A" part; a "B" part; and a "C" part; wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "A" part and the "B" part.
2. The widget of claim 1, further comprising: a "D" part; wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "A" part; and wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "B" part.
Ok, so what does claim 2 actually get me? If you've got a product with A, B, C, and D in it, and you're infringing claim 2, you're also infringing claim 1! So claim 2 is useless, right?
No. Let's say you find some prior art that teaches claim 1, but you can't for the life of you find anything that teaches that pesky use of the "D" part from claim 2. Well, you've knocked out claim 1, but I still have something with claim 2.
Claim 2 is only "dependent" in the sense that the claim is written to incorporate the language of claim 1. When writing the claims, there is nothing at all preventing me from writing claim 2 as an independent claim! It's just more expensive, because the examiner has to do more work to research independent claims.
I could have just written claim 2 from the get-go as:
2. A widget comprising: an "A" part; a "B" part; a "C" part; and a "D" part; wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "A" part and the "B" part; wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "A" part; and wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "B" part.
They're there to make sure that, in the event of litigation, you still have patentable subject matter should your opponent produce something fatal to a bunch of your claims.
First off, patents protect ideas. Copyrights protect expressions of ideas. It's important to use the right label -- I know it's not the easiest thing to keep straight, but it really does matter.
That said, the issue here is patents. What you described in points 1 and 2 is, by the way, pretty much what filing a lawsuit does. The problem here is that you are assuming the validity of the patent. Few people go into court blindly, and those that do are destined for failure. Usually when a complaint is filed in a case like this, some amount of back-and-forth between the parties has already happened.
Run through 1 and 2, but this time put yourself in Nintendo's shoes, arguing that either your product doesn't infringe Interlink's patent, or that Interlink's patent is invalid or unenforceable.
If you're sure you're infringing and that there's nothing you can do about it, you'll settle! You have absolutely no incentive to fight it out in court. If the plaintiff wants to push the issue despite your desire to settle, many courts will go out of their way to encourage the settlement.
I did a write-up for the Kotaku crowd, but I figure this might help some Slashdotters understand how to read the patent and better determine what's going on here:
No. But at least you asked. A lesser Slashdotter would have simply assumed, thrown a hissy fit, and cursed the damned patent system!
The broadest claim reads: A method of selecting at least one track from a plurality of tracks stored in a computer-readable medium of a portable media player configured to present sequentially a first, second, and third display screen on the display of the media player, the plurality of tracks accessed according to a hierarchy, the hierarchy having a plurality of categories, subcategories, and items respectively in a first, second, and third level of the hierarchy, the method comprising: selecting a category in the first display screen of the portable media player; displaying the subcategories belonging to the selected category in a listing presented in the second display screen; selecting a subcategory in the second display screen; displaying the items belonging to the selected subcategory in a listing presented in the third display screen; and accessing at least one track based on a selection made in one of the display screens.
However, in litigation, you have to look at the dependent claims as well. It may be entirely possible that Apple's attorneys concluded that independent claim 1 was way too broad and likely invalid, but that they would have been beaten by one of the dependent claims. Accordingly, they settled to avoid trial. Because of the settlement, we may never know which, if any, of the claims are valid.
But I digress... just reading the broadest claim, it's nowhere near what you state. First off, it only applies to "portable media players," whatever that may mean (though it clearly excludes a number of things). Furthermore, upon a really quick glance of the specification, "tracks" will only mean individual songs stored in the portable media player.
The dongle actually is a pretty worry-free solution because it's only physically capable of communicating with the DS (or something pretending to be a DS... the dongle uses a Ralink chipset popular for homebrew use of the DS' "download play" feature) based on how the communications are formatted. The reason I didn't go with this perfectly acceptable route is because I wanted better signal coverage throughout the house (Linksys router running dd-wrt with signal power boosted a bit) and because of the aforementioned solution that gave me enough peace of mind to install the full-featured wireless network.
I did that anyway, but one of the flaws of WEP is that it makes it really easy to catch a MAC address of a device communicating over the wireless network, and then you can simply spoof that address to get in. Sure, it's an extra layer of protection, but one I'm using on top of what I said, and should be used in any circumstance where it is an available option.
If someone wants to get into your network, they will get into your network. I simply assumed someone was in my network, and isolated the remainder of my network to prevent it from being compromised as well.
The second problem is you are allowing strangers access to not only your Internet connection, but also your LAN. I have multiple computers and put files in shared folders so I can access them from different machines. I don't want some strange to have access to those files, or worse, have their computer be infected with a worm/virus that propagates across the network.
I recently got a Nintendo DS and decided to set up a wireless network so I could play online with it. I have never previously needed a wireless network in my home, prefering the security of wire-bound communications. Since most of my computers are desktops that hopefully have little mobility, I can just drop a wire and forget about it.
My concern was the same, especially because the DS only supports WEP, meaning I should probably assume my network to be compromised. But then I found a better way to use my current security (NAT routing only ports where I'm expecting communications) to extend the network. Basically, take the existing network, showing only those ports you've opened to the public Internet on a common IP address, and move them back behind a second NAT router (the new wireless router). Set the first NAT router on the second NAT router's DMZ. Set the first NAT router's gateway to the IP address of the second NAT router (as seen by the first NAT router). Now, any wireless clients connecting to the second NAT router/access point will still be able to see the rest of your network, but only through the single IP address of the first NAT router, and only through those ports you would have opened anyway.
Sure, someone can still use your bandwidth, but at least you can add another layer of protection to your sensitive machines.
Shh... you're not allowed to inject actual knowledge of the copyright laws into this conversation. Stick to the tried and true... you can't possibly be breaking the law if you haven't left your parents' basement to do whatever you've been accused of!
Thank goodness for statutory damages. If people can't do the 'time', they shouldn't be doing the crime.
Dear Slashdot: if you want to be able to freely use others' intellectual properties that have not been released to the public, your target is the legislature, not the judiciary. You'll lose every time in court, and rightfully so.
I know you're being sarcastic, but I agree -- thus my jabs at Nintendo's lack of support for modern security standards. However, I'm paranoid about running wireless networks anyway, and held off until getting the DS (my "inside" network is a hard-wired NAT router, not a second wireless router). I saw two alternatives, and the one I described is the one I picked -- if you get into my network, you're not going to be able to see my other computers no matter what you do.
The other alternative was to configure the wireless router as a simple WAP and plug into the wired network using the router's switch. I could then cycle power to the wireless router whenever I'm not using the wireless connection for added security without affecting the rest of the network. That's also a perfectly cromulent solution, and I think both are better than having to use the Nintendo dongle, regardless of how much it makes me giggle to say "dongle".
Well, I'm a law student...:) A movie is an audiovisual work, fixed on a tangible medium (a DVD). 109 is sometimes known as the first sale doctrine, and 109(a) allows you to resell your copy of a copyrighted work. 109(b) taketh away in the case of sound recordings and computer programs. But even computer programs can be rented out (I'm sure you've seen video games for rent at Blockbuster) as long as they meet the criteria of 109(b)(1)(B), which PC software does not.
There's more to it than that, but that's basically it. 106 defines an author's rights under the copyright laws, and a number of sections after it limit those rights.
Get a second wireless router and set it to WEP encryption. Place the WEP-encrypted router directly behind your cable modem/DSL/tin can. Place your original router, with a more secure configuration, behind the WEP-encrypted router. Thanks to the magic of NAT, computers behind your original router will be able to see out to the machines connected over the WEP-encrypted router, but the machines connected to the WEP-encrypted router will only be able to see the ports you would have had open to the general Internet anyway.
Network isolation, courtesy of NAT. The kind of security through crapscurity required by Nintendo.
That would be significantly more expensive and would lack the variety. Many cable companies already provide on-demand service, as I'm sure you're aware, but they need to obtain permission to air the programming, whereas renting out a DVD is exempted under 17 U.S.C. 109.
What about the people who just won't listen? How long have debates about patents been going on here? Yet it seems that nobody on Slashdot has so much as figured out how to properly read a patent!
I would encourage everyone to learn something about the law. Heck, it's your civic duty. It's just more than a little bit frustrating at how difficult it is to have a civilized discussion about any intellectual property subject with self-proclaimed techie geeks who think they're the only ones that understand computers, while forgetting at the same time that you need to have an engineering/scientific/etc. degree to even practice before the PTO.
So, I didn't mean for my comment to be interpreted the way you have interpreted it. Hopefully it was useful without the last sentence thrown in there. The last sentence is directed at the Slashdot community, not non-lawyers in general.
Certainly there are problems with it, but at least we've gotten everybody on the same page now. Laches' weakness is in its grounding as an equitable doctrine. What you propose may be a better alternative. At least, it sounds pretty good. But we'll never have a good discussion about it on here because most people are simply unaware of where the real legal problems are.
Slashdot Mirror
They can be embarassingly parallel, though.
Well, what I was trying to do was show how the Wii remote compares to only one of the claims -- claim 1.
Does Interlink have a patent on the Wii remote? Well, you're just asking for my opinion, where I just wanted to show some basic steps in the process. There's something there, and the claim should certainly give Nintendo pause. But even if a claim looks to be dead-on, that doesn't mean anything. You can look in the prosecution history (communications with the PTO by Interlink while obtaining the patent) to find statements made by Interlink that could narrow the scope of the claims. You can find that the specification teaches away from, for example, using Bluetooth (usually by saying something like, "infra-red is the only way this will work").
Dependent claims are refinements of the independent claims. Let me show you an independent claim, and a dependent claim, 1 and 2 respectively:
I claim:
1. A widget comprising:
an "A" part;
a "B" part; and
a "C" part;
wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "A" part and the "B" part.
2. The widget of claim 1, further comprising:
a "D" part;
wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "A" part; and
wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "B" part.
Ok, so what does claim 2 actually get me? If you've got a product with A, B, C, and D in it, and you're infringing claim 2, you're also infringing claim 1! So claim 2 is useless, right?
No. Let's say you find some prior art that teaches claim 1, but you can't for the life of you find anything that teaches that pesky use of the "D" part from claim 2. Well, you've knocked out claim 1, but I still have something with claim 2.
Claim 2 is only "dependent" in the sense that the claim is written to incorporate the language of claim 1. When writing the claims, there is nothing at all preventing me from writing claim 2 as an independent claim! It's just more expensive, because the examiner has to do more work to research independent claims.
I could have just written claim 2 from the get-go as:
2. A widget comprising:
an "A" part;
a "B" part;
a "C" part; and
a "D" part;
wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "A" part and the "B" part;
wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "A" part; and
wherein the "C" part is operable to establish communications between the "D" part and the "B" part.
They're there to make sure that, in the event of litigation, you still have patentable subject matter should your opponent produce something fatal to a bunch of your claims.
First off, patents protect ideas. Copyrights protect expressions of ideas. It's important to use the right label -- I know it's not the easiest thing to keep straight, but it really does matter.
That said, the issue here is patents. What you described in points 1 and 2 is, by the way, pretty much what filing a lawsuit does. The problem here is that you are assuming the validity of the patent. Few people go into court blindly, and those that do are destined for failure. Usually when a complaint is filed in a case like this, some amount of back-and-forth between the parties has already happened.
Run through 1 and 2, but this time put yourself in Nintendo's shoes, arguing that either your product doesn't infringe Interlink's patent, or that Interlink's patent is invalid or unenforceable.
If you're sure you're infringing and that there's nothing you can do about it, you'll settle! You have absolutely no incentive to fight it out in court. If the plaintiff wants to push the issue despite your desire to settle, many courts will go out of their way to encourage the settlement.
I did a write-up for the Kotaku crowd, but I figure this might help some Slashdotters understand how to read the patent and better determine what's going on here:
- to-quick-and-dirty-patent-analysis.html
;)
http://jointstrikeweasel.blogspot.com/2006/12/how
I hope this helps. Analyzing patents is much more fun when you understand how to do it.
Legal? I'm sure she could teach you a thing or two!
:P
Everything I never wanted to know about sex I learned on the Internets.
Can you make me a PS3?
... I'm pretty sure the people capable of database work are no longer with the company.
There's nothing that makes you feel alive so much as getting clotheslined...especially when you are ten years old.
... being the guy doing the clotheslining.
I can think of at least one thing
No. But at least you asked. A lesser Slashdotter would have simply assumed, thrown a hissy fit, and cursed the damned patent system!
... just reading the broadest claim, it's nowhere near what you state. First off, it only applies to "portable media players," whatever that may mean (though it clearly excludes a number of things). Furthermore, upon a really quick glance of the specification, "tracks" will only mean individual songs stored in the portable media player.
The broadest claim reads:
A method of selecting at least one track from a plurality of tracks stored in a computer-readable medium of a portable media player configured to present sequentially a first, second, and third display screen on the display of the media player, the plurality of tracks accessed according to a hierarchy, the hierarchy having a plurality of categories, subcategories, and items respectively in a first, second, and third level of the hierarchy, the method comprising: selecting a category in the first display screen of the portable media player; displaying the subcategories belonging to the selected category in a listing presented in the second display screen; selecting a subcategory in the second display screen; displaying the items belonging to the selected subcategory in a listing presented in the third display screen; and accessing at least one track based on a selection made in one of the display screens.
However, in litigation, you have to look at the dependent claims as well. It may be entirely possible that Apple's attorneys concluded that independent claim 1 was way too broad and likely invalid, but that they would have been beaten by one of the dependent claims. Accordingly, they settled to avoid trial. Because of the settlement, we may never know which, if any, of the claims are valid.
But I digress
So, no, the world isn't ending.
Ah yes, it's a lot like 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'. In many ways it's superior but will never be as recognized as the original.
If the machine gave you a stack of twenties for voting, that would probably take care of the problem with voter apathy.
M. Night Shyamalan's movies are ABSOLUTE HORSESHIT.
The dongle actually is a pretty worry-free solution because it's only physically capable of communicating with the DS (or something pretending to be a DS ... the dongle uses a Ralink chipset popular for homebrew use of the DS' "download play" feature) based on how the communications are formatted. The reason I didn't go with this perfectly acceptable route is because I wanted better signal coverage throughout the house (Linksys router running dd-wrt with signal power boosted a bit) and because of the aforementioned solution that gave me enough peace of mind to install the full-featured wireless network.
I did that anyway, but one of the flaws of WEP is that it makes it really easy to catch a MAC address of a device communicating over the wireless network, and then you can simply spoof that address to get in. Sure, it's an extra layer of protection, but one I'm using on top of what I said, and should be used in any circumstance where it is an available option.
If someone wants to get into your network, they will get into your network. I simply assumed someone was in my network, and isolated the remainder of my network to prevent it from being compromised as well.
The second problem is you are allowing strangers access to not only your Internet connection, but also your LAN. I have multiple computers and put files in shared folders so I can access them from different machines. I don't want some strange to have access to those files, or worse, have their computer be infected with a worm/virus that propagates across the network.
I recently got a Nintendo DS and decided to set up a wireless network so I could play online with it. I have never previously needed a wireless network in my home, prefering the security of wire-bound communications. Since most of my computers are desktops that hopefully have little mobility, I can just drop a wire and forget about it.
My concern was the same, especially because the DS only supports WEP, meaning I should probably assume my network to be compromised. But then I found a better way to use my current security (NAT routing only ports where I'm expecting communications) to extend the network. Basically, take the existing network, showing only those ports you've opened to the public Internet on a common IP address, and move them back behind a second NAT router (the new wireless router). Set the first NAT router on the second NAT router's DMZ. Set the first NAT router's gateway to the IP address of the second NAT router (as seen by the first NAT router). Now, any wireless clients connecting to the second NAT router/access point will still be able to see the rest of your network, but only through the single IP address of the first NAT router, and only through those ports you would have opened anyway.
Sure, someone can still use your bandwidth, but at least you can add another layer of protection to your sensitive machines.
This might explain the typical Slashdotter's fear and apprehension of the patent system.
Shh ... you're not allowed to inject actual knowledge of the copyright laws into this conversation. Stick to the tried and true ... you can't possibly be breaking the law if you haven't left your parents' basement to do whatever you've been accused of!
Thank goodness for statutory damages. If people can't do the 'time', they shouldn't be doing the crime.
Dear Slashdot: if you want to be able to freely use others' intellectual properties that have not been released to the public, your target is the legislature, not the judiciary. You'll lose every time in court, and rightfully so.
I know you're being sarcastic, but I agree -- thus my jabs at Nintendo's lack of support for modern security standards. However, I'm paranoid about running wireless networks anyway, and held off until getting the DS (my "inside" network is a hard-wired NAT router, not a second wireless router). I saw two alternatives, and the one I described is the one I picked -- if you get into my network, you're not going to be able to see my other computers no matter what you do.
The other alternative was to configure the wireless router as a simple WAP and plug into the wired network using the router's switch. I could then cycle power to the wireless router whenever I'm not using the wireless connection for added security without affecting the rest of the network. That's also a perfectly cromulent solution, and I think both are better than having to use the Nintendo dongle, regardless of how much it makes me giggle to say "dongle".
Well, I'm a law student... :) A movie is an audiovisual work, fixed on a tangible medium (a DVD). 109 is sometimes known as the first sale doctrine, and 109(a) allows you to resell your copy of a copyrighted work. 109(b) taketh away in the case of sound recordings and computer programs. But even computer programs can be rented out (I'm sure you've seen video games for rent at Blockbuster) as long as they meet the criteria of 109(b)(1)(B), which PC software does not.
There's more to it than that, but that's basically it. 106 defines an author's rights under the copyright laws, and a number of sections after it limit those rights.
^^ obviously in the context of what Netflix rents out.
And a DVD is which one of those?
Get a second wireless router and set it to WEP encryption. Place the WEP-encrypted router directly behind your cable modem/DSL/tin can. Place your original router, with a more secure configuration, behind the WEP-encrypted router. Thanks to the magic of NAT, computers behind your original router will be able to see out to the machines connected over the WEP-encrypted router, but the machines connected to the WEP-encrypted router will only be able to see the ports you would have had open to the general Internet anyway.
Network isolation, courtesy of NAT. The kind of security through crapscurity required by Nintendo.
That would be significantly more expensive and would lack the variety. Many cable companies already provide on-demand service, as I'm sure you're aware, but they need to obtain permission to air the programming, whereas renting out a DVD is exempted under 17 U.S.C. 109.
What about the people who just won't listen? How long have debates about patents been going on here? Yet it seems that nobody on Slashdot has so much as figured out how to properly read a patent!
I would encourage everyone to learn something about the law. Heck, it's your civic duty. It's just more than a little bit frustrating at how difficult it is to have a civilized discussion about any intellectual property subject with self-proclaimed techie geeks who think they're the only ones that understand computers, while forgetting at the same time that you need to have an engineering/scientific/etc. degree to even practice before the PTO.
So, I didn't mean for my comment to be interpreted the way you have interpreted it. Hopefully it was useful without the last sentence thrown in there. The last sentence is directed at the Slashdot community, not non-lawyers in general.
Certainly there are problems with it, but at least we've gotten everybody on the same page now. Laches' weakness is in its grounding as an equitable doctrine. What you propose may be a better alternative. At least, it sounds pretty good. But we'll never have a good discussion about it on here because most people are simply unaware of where the real legal problems are.