If I buy seed, plant it, harvest it, plant again, harvest, and sell it, who owns the seed. The person I sell it to of course! There is NOTHING patentable about growing a crop! The process has been around a long time. True there has been some innovation (like using big machines), but these have nothing to do with this case. He didn't DO anything wrong in growing the crop. In fact, if anything, the seeds themselves violated patent law by reproducing without legal permission. Sound ridiculous, I think so too; but it's the truth.
It doesn't matter how he obtained the seed, as long as he obtained them legally from someone who legally owned them. Monsanto could be five parties up the chain and I wouldn't care, as long as each purchase was done legally. Yet they didn't argue (to the best of my knowledge) that he obtained the seed illegally, just that he didn't pay them for permission.
Imagine: "A method for producing seed resistant to [chemical name] out of seed of the same type also resistant". Yeah, that's a clever patent.
The only thing their patent should extend to is their laboratory method of genetic modification. Anything beyond that is loony (in patent terms anyway).
I love how the submitter is so blatantly trying to get everyone riled up with that quote (oh no, thought crime!), when in fact that quote is actually just a direct translation of Article 12 of the Brazilian Press Law.
So, the fact that brazilian law has written into it the notion of thought crimes means Microsoft's attempt to apply the definition of thought crime to its critics in a court of law an effort to declare their critics' spoken thoughts crimes doesn't represent Microsoft's stance on the issue?
I agree with you ideologically. But your parent post brings out interesting information that I haven't seen elsewhere in this discussion. What better way to phrase any lawsuit (valid or not) than in the words of the law. It is much easier for a judge to accept that way than in a more case specific wording. This tells us about Microsoft and about the case. It doesn't excuses them, but now I have a way to understand what they said, and why they said it.
You pull out a wonderfully point about morals not being relative to law.
Can anyone confirm/deny what the Brazilian law says (relative to the grandparent post?)
And there's a reason it's called case law. Once a federal, and especially supreme, court has made a ruling, it gets forever quoted in court AS IF it WERE law. People just are too proud to admit when there are errors. Equal protection (as if we had it) is a good thing, but sometimes comes at the cost of equally bad protection. We need more of those rare lawyers/judges we understand the letter of the law, the SPIRIT of the law, and are willing to ignore bad case law.
Maybe, but I think they have great "word of mouth". Geeks find it here, and take it to end users. I've heard/seen firefox recomended at least twice to end users in the last few months. I think it has a shot, particularly once it hits 1.0 and distributions start to package it.
Your welcome. Fortunately.sigs are served out each time you reload your browser. When you change your.sig, you change it for all your posts (past and future).
I just changed mine, got kind of squished in the 120 char limit though.
Hmm. I agree with you that the patent holder being always notified and provided with an opportunity to freely drop the patent would be a good idea. Perhaps the USPTO could be asked to just eat such costs?
I think so. Cost in this case would be minimal, or very small at least. Any secretary could send out a pre-formated letter, altered to add the specific patent number/information. This part wouldn't be handled by the expensive patent lawyers.
The problem is...who then pays the fee for re-examination in the event of an invalidation?
I see three reasonable possibilities:
* The person requesting the reexamination. This is the current case, and has the drawback of severely discouraging anyone from submitting examples of prior art. As folks have pointed out before, Slashdotters have submitted numerous examples of prior art to Slashdot, but do not request reexaminations by the USPTO, because of the expense. I do not believe that this system is feasible.
Nor I. You mention loopholes further down. In a sense, this aspect makes the whole patent system a business-law loophole.
* The general public. This would be the case if taxes are budgeted. This could get quite expensive quickly, and I'm not sure why everyone should have to pay for something that doesn't involve them.
but it DOES involve them. Their patent office fouled up, and now everyone to some extent is, or will, pay for it. Every greedy corporation with a bogus patent desired that patent for a reason. I think it would be ideal if we collectively bit the proverbial bullet, admit that we made some mistakes (or at least our government did) and prepare to move on. Of course, good luck finding a politician to back such a "money wasting" plan.
* The patent holder. This is the person who did not properly check for prior art, as he was required to do.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that patent holders should do a good job of searching for prior art. I do have a problem with forcing them to foot the bill for a mistake. It isn't expected that any business owner be a patent guru, just as good as they can be. It is expected out of the patent office though.
Let's say I own a business, and I have an employee who thinks of a simple, but very innovative process. I then do a prior art search, and find nothing. I then submit for a patent, and maybe a derivative patent or two. Along comes a competitor who claims prior art (maybe 2, 3 years down the road). My competitor is uncooperative in giving me any information I might need to validate this claim. Is he bluffing? If I hold on to the patent, and he isn't, I get slammed with heavy fees. Granted, this situation could get a lot worse if companies, weren't given the chance to re-evaluate ahead of the patent office. This would be enough to convince many small business owners to avoid patenting altogether.
...
I've considered such penalties before. Their main problem is that this sort of thing is very hard to harden against legal loopholes. For example, companies could have employees own patents, but be required to give the company an exclusive license to the patent and give the company the legal right to require said owning employee to transfer rights to the patent at any time.
Your example seems pretty far fetched (but then again, mine does too). This seems to be very risky for a company to try. I don't know of any specific law, but it strikes me as the type of thing that isn't legal. Imagine the court case if a competitor bought out your employee for a hefty retirement package, and then challenged your "rights" to the patent in court.
I do think it would be easier than you propose to patch loopholes. But regardless, I was mostly dreaming anyway. I happen to think that something like this would be fairly well balanced, but wouldn't ever actually happen.
After quite a bit of yelling at messy children, mothers will often give up, and clean their children's bedrooms. That's kind of like what is going on here. The EFF just doesn't deserve to pay rediculous amounts of money to the patent office in order to get the books fixed. Neither does anybody else who cares. But that's the only option available short of government reform (which needs to happen here anyway).
But lets pretend the patent office was doing their job well. Such a community program would still be wonderful. Such an organization could work alongside the office, in harmony. I get the impression that CERT does that. Right now, though, this is only a dream where the USPO is concerned.
Who really wants the PIAA to come after them (Patent Industry Artists of America)? Don't think it couldn't happen.
I'll agree with the first part of your post. OTOH copyright law has it's own problems. Unregistered, but legally protected, copyrights abound (for example).
I think patents are the right general direction, but I personally think they should be MUCH harder to get, not apply to algorithms, and last only a few years (as apposed to almost 2 decades after filing).
I don't like the idea of getting some sudden enormous financial setback, just because some obscure prior art is found. I do like the idea of having the re-examination sent to the patent holder for a short time before the patent office deals with it, and in giving them a chance to back out of the patent. I also think there should be some type of penalty for submitting a patent that later gets canceled, but some fine that forces you onto the path to bankruptcy is not the answer. This would only discourage smaller businesses from applying.
It has been said that driving is a privilege, not a right. Regardless of this statement's validity, the same vein holds true for patents. If someone has a patent yanked out from under them, it should become harder for them to hold other patents. One suggestion would be to increase/double future filing fees per-patent yanked. If filing is normally $1000, and a company has 2 prior violations, their fee jumps up to $4000. This would give companies an incentive to not file frivolous patents, and if they do, to step down quickly when a re-examination comes in. It would also mean more to big companies that hold many patents. I would have the "violation" "stay on record" for either 17 years (the life span of a patent) or at least until the patent was due to expire.
I like this idea quite a bit actually. It sounds a bit like this project is trying to do half of the patent office's job. But even if they were doing their own job, having a full fledged project of this nature would be a boon. Forums, mailing lists, wiki, the whole nine yards. If I was a bit older, and had lived through a little more history, I would gladly help patent bust as a hobby. I think there are many here on slashdot who feel the same.
It could just fix one problem this way. Without the type of feedback/interaction mechanisms you mention, projects like this tend to disappear from view. If there was a following to the project, there would likely be more items submitted to slashdot, drawing the long term attention of a fair percentage of slashdot users (and other news/forums). The effects could be a mild domino effect, not becoming the best known project in existence, but making its presence felt to those most able to help.
I hadn't read the article and figured the "we're at war" phrase was against drugs or crime or some such. So, I linked to the article and received a shock. I still suspect this has nothing to do with terrorism, but may just be an excuse to receive funding. But you're right. One way or another, there IS something wrong here.
I agree with most of your post. This line just doesn't feel right though:
The laws are here to improve quality of life for the largest number of people (ideally).
This is close, but not close enough to satisfy. Laws (constitutional, federal, local) are here to level the playing field. They're not to improve quality of life, but to allow people to improve the quality and happiness of their own lives. Here-in lies the beauty of the American philosophy. Sure, many 'laws' are enacted to build schools and other public works. But these are not laws as much as they are the will of the public in general deciding how to improve their lives collectively (ideally at least).
That means that undercover police, or a private investigator, or your nosy girlfriend, or some satellite in space has the legal right to record and anaylze any word you utter and to track every step you take (in public).
Uh, no. This may be mostly legal, but to track every step you take is called "stalking" and isn't legally tollerated.
While I agree with a previous poster that an increase in the number of actual police in the area would be more effective, I see nothing wrong with a couple of cameras in trouble spots. At worst you can say that they're setting a precident. Just keep your eyes open for the time they spread hundreds of cameras throughout a city. Until then, I have a hard time believing these will really be abused.
You're right, it doesn't make it patent free. Once an idea/invention is published there is a one year fileing period. After that it stayes in the public domain. Patent applications can stay in the approval process for several years though. I don't know how long this has been out, or whether it can be a "submarine patent".
Only government regulations can protect dishonest and inefficient companies from would be competitors.
Only some form of government/collective action can protect honest companies (and individuals) from dishonest ones (inefficient is a different story, though they do overlap). Your point is valid, but blown out of proportion. The problem you are addressing is that dishonest people will use anything to get ahead, even the laws that protect the inocent.
How about restricting some of the practices with unions, like making strikes illegal for more important service companies like SBC, where service is crucial.
Service is a crucial part of any company. This isn't a life or death occupation such as health care or air traffic control.
But yes, there is a chance that YOU will feel the effects of this strike. That is their bargaining chip (legitimate cause or not).
SNET (Southern New England Telephone) is owned and operated by SBC. I saw SNET trucks all over Connecticut. Now I'm back in California and see SBC trucks everywhere. They cover a fair portion of the USA.
I can see two actually. One, you aren't violating the terms of service (If you were to make multiple hotmail accounts. Not your point, but it was his.) (and yes, hotmail and yahoo have both gotten much better lately.)
The second, you can tell who is selling/mishandling email addresses. If you register for a site with one of these, and then you decide you actually want to use the service longterm, you can be alerted to the possibility of letting one of your real addresses out into the wild.
(disclaimer: I've never used this service. I just think I see where the poster was going with this.)
Assuming the cell phone worked properly, and there was sufficient fumes in the air, could a low voltage spark have set it off? After all, it's reasonable to assume such low voltage sparks while operating any electronics.
Here's an experiment. Try holding a light switch half way between on and off. Can you get electricity to arc within the switch? It's really not hard, it just takes a steady hand.
Any switch or button just has two pieces of metal that move from not touching, to making contact. When they are close to touching, there comes a point where the air simply doesn't put up enough resistance to prevent electricity from jumping the gap. The greater the voltage, the larger the possible gap.
I really doubt cell phones are designed with gas pumps in mind. They probably use the same button design as other electronics (flip phones just implement a switch or button, just another electrical contact).
My question is: could gas be ignited using a very low voltage, brief spark? That's what it really boils down to.
From what I read here, this seems likely to be a good security feature. But tell me, what would happen if a cracker/virus/otherBadStuff were to exploit a bug and set NX on a part of the kernel. Something to watch for.
Does trying to outguess the IPO really matter?
on
Google IPO Swami
·
· Score: 1
Think about it for a moment. Does it really matter if you can outguess Google's IPO. Let's say you want to invest $100 in Google stock. If you placed one bid of $100, another of $50, %33.33, $25, $20, etc. If the price comes out to just under $20 then you've purchased 5 stocks worth a total of $100. Same with any other fraction of 100. (In case you didn't get it the first time, that was 100, 100/2, 100/3, 100/4, 100/5, etc.)
Of course investment firms are going to want to do more research and put some more thought into it, but for most of us it really shouldn't be that hard.
As was said before, IANACPA. Go ask someone who knows something.
Slashdot Mirror
If I buy seed, plant it, harvest it, plant again, harvest, and sell it, who owns the seed. The person I sell it to of course! There is NOTHING patentable about growing a crop! The process has been around a long time. True there has been some innovation (like using big machines), but these have nothing to do with this case. He didn't DO anything wrong in growing the crop. In fact, if anything, the seeds themselves violated patent law by reproducing without legal permission. Sound ridiculous, I think so too; but it's the truth.
It doesn't matter how he obtained the seed, as long as he obtained them legally from someone who legally owned them. Monsanto could be five parties up the chain and I wouldn't care, as long as each purchase was done legally. Yet they didn't argue (to the best of my knowledge) that he obtained the seed illegally, just that he didn't pay them for permission.
Imagine: "A method for producing seed resistant to [chemical name] out of seed of the same type also resistant". Yeah, that's a clever patent.
The only thing their patent should extend to is their laboratory method of genetic modification. Anything beyond that is loony (in patent terms anyway).
You pull out a wonderfully point about morals not being relative to law.
Can anyone confirm/deny what the Brazilian law says (relative to the grandparent post?)
And there's a reason it's called case law. Once a federal, and especially supreme, court has made a ruling, it gets forever quoted in court AS IF it WERE law. People just are too proud to admit when there are errors. Equal protection (as if we had it) is a good thing, but sometimes comes at the cost of equally bad protection. We need more of those rare lawyers/judges we understand the letter of the law, the SPIRIT of the law, and are willing to ignore bad case law.
Maybe, but I think they have great "word of mouth". Geeks find it here, and take it to end users. I've heard/seen firefox recomended at least twice to end users in the last few months. I think it has a shot, particularly once it hits 1.0 and distributions start to package it.
Your welcome. Fortunately .sigs are served out each time you reload your browser. When you change your .sig, you change it for all your posts (past and future).
I just changed mine, got kind of squished in the 120 char limit though.
Let's say I own a business, and I have an employee who thinks of a simple, but very innovative process. I then do a prior art search, and find nothing. I then submit for a patent, and maybe a derivative patent or two. Along comes a competitor who claims prior art (maybe 2, 3 years down the road). My competitor is uncooperative in giving me any information I might need to validate this claim. Is he bluffing? If I hold on to the patent, and he isn't, I get slammed with heavy fees. Granted, this situation could get a lot worse if companies, weren't given the chance to re-evaluate ahead of the patent office. This would be enough to convince many small business owners to avoid patenting altogether. Your example seems pretty far fetched (but then again, mine does too). This seems to be very risky for a company to try. I don't know of any specific law, but it strikes me as the type of thing that isn't legal. Imagine the court case if a competitor bought out your employee for a hefty retirement package, and then challenged your "rights" to the patent in court. I do think it would be easier than you propose to patch loopholes. But regardless, I was mostly dreaming anyway. I happen to think that something like this would be fairly well balanced, but wouldn't ever actually happen.
your .sig gives me a 404 error. You might want to fix it.
After quite a bit of yelling at messy children, mothers will often give up, and clean their children's bedrooms. That's kind of like what is going on here. The EFF just doesn't deserve to pay rediculous amounts of money to the patent office in order to get the books fixed. Neither does anybody else who cares. But that's the only option available short of government reform (which needs to happen here anyway).
But lets pretend the patent office was doing their job well. Such a community program would still be wonderful. Such an organization could work alongside the office, in harmony. I get the impression that CERT does that. Right now, though, this is only a dream where the USPO is concerned.
Who really wants the PIAA to come after them (Patent Industry Artists of America)? Don't think it couldn't happen.
I'll agree with the first part of your post. OTOH copyright law has it's own problems. Unregistered, but legally protected, copyrights abound (for example).
I think patents are the right general direction, but I personally think they should be MUCH harder to get, not apply to algorithms, and last only a few years (as apposed to almost 2 decades after filing).
I don't like the idea of getting some sudden enormous financial setback, just because some obscure prior art is found. I do like the idea of having the re-examination sent to the patent holder for a short time before the patent office deals with it, and in giving them a chance to back out of the patent. I also think there should be some type of penalty for submitting a patent that later gets canceled, but some fine that forces you onto the path to bankruptcy is not the answer. This would only discourage smaller businesses from applying.
It has been said that driving is a privilege, not a right. Regardless of this statement's validity, the same vein holds true for patents. If someone has a patent yanked out from under them, it should become harder for them to hold other patents. One suggestion would be to increase/double future filing fees per-patent yanked. If filing is normally $1000, and a company has 2 prior violations, their fee jumps up to $4000. This would give companies an incentive to not file frivolous patents, and if they do, to step down quickly when a re-examination comes in. It would also mean more to big companies that hold many patents. I would have the "violation" "stay on record" for either 17 years (the life span of a patent) or at least until the patent was due to expire.
Comments, suggestions?
I like this idea quite a bit actually. It sounds a bit like this project is trying to do half of the patent office's job. But even if they were doing their own job, having a full fledged project of this nature would be a boon. Forums, mailing lists, wiki, the whole nine yards. If I was a bit older, and had lived through a little more history, I would gladly help patent bust as a hobby. I think there are many here on slashdot who feel the same.
It could just fix one problem this way. Without the type of feedback/interaction mechanisms you mention, projects like this tend to disappear from view. If there was a following to the project, there would likely be more items submitted to slashdot, drawing the long term attention of a fair percentage of slashdot users (and other news/forums). The effects could be a mild domino effect, not becoming the best known project in existence, but making its presence felt to those most able to help.
I hadn't read the article and figured the "we're at war" phrase was against drugs or crime or some such. So, I linked to the article and received a shock. I still suspect this has nothing to do with terrorism, but may just be an excuse to receive funding. But you're right. One way or another, there IS something wrong here.
While I agree with a previous poster that an increase in the number of actual police in the area would be more effective, I see nothing wrong with a couple of cameras in trouble spots. At worst you can say that they're setting a precident. Just keep your eyes open for the time they spread hundreds of cameras throughout a city. Until then, I have a hard time believing these will really be abused.
Rebutals?
You're right, it doesn't make it patent free. Once an idea/invention is published there is a one year fileing period. After that it stayes in the public domain. Patent applications can stay in the approval process for several years though. I don't know how long this has been out, or whether it can be a "submarine patent".
IANAPL
And the other poster is right, we see it often enough. Comments often get modded up if they point to a mirror.
Since we are backing up from where we are now, I think it would be more like ./..
Only some form of government/collective action can protect honest companies (and individuals) from dishonest ones (inefficient is a different story, though they do overlap). Your point is valid, but blown out of proportion. The problem you are addressing is that dishonest people will use anything to get ahead, even the laws that protect the inocent.
But yes, there is a chance that YOU will feel the effects of this strike. That is their bargaining chip (legitimate cause or not).
SNET (Southern New England Telephone) is owned and operated by SBC. I saw SNET trucks all over Connecticut. Now I'm back in California and see SBC trucks everywhere. They cover a fair portion of the USA.
I can see two actually. One, you aren't violating the terms of service (If you were to make multiple hotmail accounts. Not your point, but it was his.) (and yes, hotmail and yahoo have both gotten much better lately.)
The second, you can tell who is selling/mishandling email addresses. If you register for a site with one of these, and then you decide you actually want to use the service longterm, you can be alerted to the possibility of letting one of your real addresses out into the wild.
(disclaimer: I've never used this service. I just think I see where the poster was going with this.)
Assuming the cell phone worked properly, and there was sufficient fumes in the air, could a low voltage spark have set it off? After all, it's reasonable to assume such low voltage sparks while operating any electronics.
Here's an experiment. Try holding a light switch half way between on and off. Can you get electricity to arc within the switch? It's really not hard, it just takes a steady hand.
Any switch or button just has two pieces of metal that move from not touching, to making contact. When they are close to touching, there comes a point where the air simply doesn't put up enough resistance to prevent electricity from jumping the gap. The greater the voltage, the larger the possible gap.
I really doubt cell phones are designed with gas pumps in mind. They probably use the same button design as other electronics (flip phones just implement a switch or button, just another electrical contact).
My question is: could gas be ignited using a very low voltage, brief spark? That's what it really boils down to.
From what I read here, this seems likely to be a good security feature. But tell me, what would happen if a cracker/virus/otherBadStuff were to exploit a bug and set NX on a part of the kernel. Something to watch for.
Think about it for a moment. Does it really matter if you can outguess Google's IPO. Let's say you want to invest $100 in Google stock. If you placed one bid of $100, another of $50, %33.33, $25, $20, etc. If the price comes out to just under $20 then you've purchased 5 stocks worth a total of $100. Same with any other fraction of 100. (In case you didn't get it the first time, that was 100, 100/2, 100/3, 100/4, 100/5, etc.)
Of course investment firms are going to want to do more research and put some more thought into it, but for most of us it really shouldn't be that hard.
As was said before, IANACPA. Go ask someone who knows something.