But the point is is that to do what you are suggesting, make the exception that is, you have to revisit the law every time some new piece of technology comes out. Does a moped fit your definition? It can be used without engaging the motor. Therefore is it motorized? Assuming the law is "no motorized vehicles in the park" does that mean I can drive a footpedaled version of a Hum-V through the park? Hey, not motorized.
To your point about well-maintained, well maintained by whose standards? Yours? Mine? A horticulturalist? Laws are just words and no amount of words will ever truly convey an idea. The best you can hope for is, like you said, try to establish some lexicon that all know and are aware of. But that lexicon must then be revised on a regular basis. And take into account all the nuances that we encounter as life progresses.
You make it sound as if there is some magical simple solution when in reality there isn't. It's like a previous poster points out: "Thou shalt not kill" blooms into "Thou shalt not kill, except in self-defense and during self-defense you have a duty to retreat, unless you're in your own home, and even in those cases only if you have no clear path to an exit."
A simple law is an unpredictable one. And if you don't have lawyers to write or interpret them, who's going to judge the facts against them?
Nothing stupified me more as a second year law student than what you described, happening to me when my car radio was stolen. "Fill out the paperwork, contact your insurance, have a nice day." "But officer, HE LEFT HIS FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER THE WINDOW! YOU CAN SEE THEM FROM HERE!" "...... nah, they won't dust those. Have nice day"
A few small points (bummer about the litter. I too have seen the unfun side of local "justice," so I do feel for you. really.)
Local DA has 600 cases per session, and only ever gets to the cases that plead
Sounds like you need more lawyers.;-)
Be sure the minorities released from death row on the basis of DNA tests know that we've fixed the system.
No, it isn't fixed, and it never will be because humans and juries make mistakes. But those that have been freed, see it working. They aren't dead and that's an improvement. We're getting there.
Doctors don't make medicine more expensive (Lawyers do)
Bull, bull, bull, bull. I hate this argument. "It's the lawyers fault that insurance premiums are so high." Like lawyers filled this vaccuum of malpractice litigation that never would have happened without them. Bull. Here's how a malpractice case goes down: A) Doctor FUCKS UP. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. And when it is a lot... B) Patient's life is made harder. Maybe a little, Maybe a lot. Like the doctor leaves a 13" piece of metal in the guy's stomach, it casuses necrosis, and the guy has a gaping hole in his belly.(can't find a link but it was on dateline or something once) C) Lawyer steps in to help the guy with the hole in his stomach since, by your own assertion, the doctor is rich and already has a great lawyer. Now I'm not naive. There are plenty of lawyers that would chomp at he bit because of the settlement this guy would get, and the lawyer takes a part of it. But if the rich doctor/insurance company has a great lawyer, should the guy who has a hole in his stomach??
But malpractice is one of the most severe screw ups a person can have done to them. A friend of mine who works in the insurance industry was appalled that a woman at a Red Sox game sued after being hit in the face with a ball goin over a 100 miles an hour. She says she would have sat somewhere different if she had know about the dangers. Whether you believe her or not, or think the court decided correctly (for Fenway Park), the point is she got hit in the FACE with a baseball going 100 mph and is now PERMANENTLY DISFIGURED. She had 1.07 seconds to react after the foul ball came off the bat. At least let her tell her side of the story.
Sorry, but this mantra that malpractice suits are all lawyers' faults is one of my big buttons because you can't have one without a doctor that messed up and a patient willing to sue.
Programmers don't make software more expensive - they make it more available
When I was a software engineer, my company charged a pretty decent hourly rate for me to cover my salary. The number one expense when determining software price is the salary you had to pay to create it. It ain't the packaging or the media.
Actually, US law, and all common law jurisdictions (as opposed to civil law) is derived from the law of the English King. Look up Matthew Hale if you're not inclined to believe wikipedia.
Is no reason to justify making the rest of my life incomprehensible
But that is exactly why the law is so complex: because life is. Here's an example: Let's say there is a statute that says "No vehicles in the park," and it was enacted 50 years ago. Very few people drive cars or airplanes through the park, so it's not really a big deal and the statute has never been challenged. Now let's say that someone on a bycycle runs over a pedestrian in the park? Vehicle? Well, probably not. Why was the statute enacted? To protect the quality of the grass and park in general? Well then a bike is fairly unobtrusive, so a bicycle is allowed. Or was the statute enacted to protect pedestrians in the park? If that is the case, and this guy just got bowled over, can he point to the statute and say "this guy did something forbidden!"?
So the bike is sort of ambiguous, but probably would not be considered a "vehicle" per se. But what about a motorized scooter the kids use today? What about a Segway?
Life is complicated and full of exceptions. Add on top of that that people feel differently. A majority of Texans may feel that carrying a gun in public is ok, so in Texas it's ok. A majority of Virginians may disagree, so it's not ok in VA. Now that's all fine and well for states and "the people" can understand the law where they are from. But how does this come into play when the nation chooses one way or the other? How do the Federal and the States resolve their different "feelings" about how the people should live and act? The law is complicated because life is.
Lawyers - as a practice - enable a government to create overly complicated rules
As I said, it's life that is complicated. You may say "anyone that runs over another in the park not only committed a tort of battery, but they should be fined for violating the statute." The guy that did the running over may agree that he committed a battery (or may not), but he will certainly contest that he violated the statute. You disagree, depsite the fact that the statute is in the language of the people.
such as thurgood marshall and a few pro-bono cases
A little factoid: It's not a few pro bono cases. Many states have policies encouraging/requiring lawyers to perform a certain amount of of pro bono work. Looking at the chart, many of them are 50 hrs. That's over a week of work that you do for free! In the big scheme is that a lot to ask of one person? No. But how many jobs do you know of that ask that of its employees? And to do it every year? That adds up to a lot of pro bono cases, per lawyer.
Please provide the experiences you've had with lawyers. I work with them everyday and they really are not the bottom feeders everyone on/. makes them out to be. Yes there are bad apples. But there are bad doctors, bad programmers, and bad librarians, too, yet they are villified.
the people, who by all reckoning, are charged with understanding the law in the first place..
Do you understand the tax code? What about negligence in a tort action? Or can you explain to me why the computer you own is "yours" (and no, paying for it does not make it yours e.g., if the person that sold it to you stole it). I'm guessing the answer is no, you don't. Lawyers are like mechanics. Sure, everyone could spend all their time learning how to fix their car, but then they wouldn't spend time doing other things that make them productive. Instead, lawyers spend the time, energy,and money to figure out the law so you can sit at your desk and program whatever it is you program (or manage, or whatever).
The purpose of law is to create equality.
Eh, the general purpose is more to provide remedies to those that have been wronged and to deter those that do wrong, but true that it is supposed to serve these functions equally among all.
The purpose of lawyers is to create priveledge for rich people.
Which is why no lawyers do pro bono work, right? What about the EFF's lawyers? Are they doing it for the rich?
In criminal cases, the interest of freedom should be representated by an independant counter-prosector. The defendant should speak for himself or not as he chooses. But every defendant should have the same counter-prosecutor.
Truthfully, I don't even understand this. Are you making the case for the appointment of a public defender? As for defendant's representing themself, that's silly. He may say things he does not need to say, be confused or not remember clearly, making him look more guilty than he is, or he may just not be a good speaker. I mean, who is a jury more likely to believe or sympathize with: "Yo' Honah, I didn' dewit. I wuz at muh friend's haas" or "No, your Honor, I did not commit the crime in question, and I have an alibi." Sam statement, bu the latter is more sympathetic and believeable.
You only need the foot pedals if you use emacs. Shift-Meta-Control-ChickenBone, Shift-Meta-Control-CircleOfBlood-Chanting-S to save a file. (The foot pedals key in the Shift-Meta) Simple.
I don't quite understand it (no I didn't read the link, I just saw that it went to an adoption site). Are you pro-life and that's why the choose was in quotes? Are you pro-choice but encourage adoption? I just didn't understand.
Companies are getting rich by stealing the future inventions of people with these generic fucking patents.
Myth: Having a patent makes you rich. Myth busted: You make $0 on a patent until someone licenses it from you or you sue someone successfully for infringing.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself
Slashbot mentality: you should have to demonstrate your invention. Mentality busted: Hardware fabrication is not an overnight accomplishment. You have idea of how a chip or board will come together, but until it is physically constructed and tested, you really won't know. Simulations are great and all, but you can never really know until it is constructed. So do you wait to patent your idea until you can demonstrate it works, or do you patent the general idea, and by general I mean sufficiently novel, but does not describe the transistor level? Well it depends if you want to stay in business or not.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent
Slashbot mentality: Someone should stop these evil companies and have this stuff re-examined Mentality busted: It is expensive. If you're not willing to do it yourself, then don't bitch about others not doing it themself. I'm sure they want to spend their money better ways too.
Truth is, this sounds similar to sudo. What would be interesting would be to pull the file history for the patent (feel free to order it from the PTO. I think anyone has the right to see it once the patent issues). The file history will reveal what the examiner cited, what the original claims looked like, and what the inventors gave up in terms of trying to get the patent allowed.
If a patent is recognised in the USA, then lots of other countries are required by international agreements
That is complete bunk. Show me something that says the members of the PCT have to recognise a US patent. At best, they will allow you to file an application based on a US one up to a year after filing the US one. At worst, after the year is up you cannot file an application with the PCT. And once it's a patent, you haven't played their game so you have no rights to it whatsoever.
The EU (and the individual countries within it) each have their own standards of what is and is not patentable. Is there a likelihood that it will just go through Germany, France, et al. if it gets through the EU? Sure. But they are not required to recognise shit. That's why the International Bureau does its own prior art search (and generally turns up better results, which then get disclosed in the US case) rather than just passing the application through.
You've just suggested undoing the innovation the patent system is supposed to create.
A specific case of X should never be patentable, since its a subset of whats already done
Because patents give you a monopoly on X, part of the innovation patents are supposed to foster is creating X+Y. It makes people think of new ways to apply existing technology or to design around existing patents. A patent can be obtained for useful, new and non-obvious combinations of technologies. And just because you have a patent a) doesn't mean you'll enforce it maliciously and b) that you yourself don't have to pay someone else. If I get a patent on the wheel, you have every right to patent a wheel with spokes. You can't make a wheel with spokes without paying me of course (I have the patent on the wheel), but your improvement is yours and I can't go making spoked wheels without paying you for your improvement. What we'd likely do is cross-license each other and put everyone else out of business.
Now say someone doesn't way to pay for your spoked wheel and instead creates a new wheel. New variations is the whole point of the patent system. Now they only have to pay the license for the wheel and we've got three new products instead of one.
And yes, taking voice chat from a computer and doing on a console is a new variation. How obvious that variation is is what people here decry.
And my first point still stands, obvious patents costs so much to get approved for any normal person can't afford it. It's a game played by corporations to screw us over.
Putting your statement about nickels aside, a couple things:
1) anyone can file a patent application. You do not need a lawyer, so legal fees are not necessary, and they are the primary factor in cost.
2) I just don't believe your statement in light of 1). If we are going to have a discussion about it, I would be glad to start quoting filing fees or point you to the PTO website.
It's really not as expensive as you think. MAX for filing an application, and that includes using the lawyer to do it, is $15,000. Many patent boutiques, to undercut the big firms, will do it for $5,000. Please provide numbers rather than making sweeping generalizations because as it stands, your argument is weak without facts. Even assuming a large entity filing, it's only $770 to file the application. That's less than my half of one month's rent.
Back to the nickels, actually, yeah, I would be surprised if Apple only charged Dell a nickel. According to Dell's Q2 results, they own 18% of the computer market. If Apple owns 3%, and they shipped 711,000 (according to a different source I found), that means Dell shipped, guesstimating, 4.26 Million PCs. At a nickel a pop, that's about $213,000 for one quarter. Likely not enough to counterbalance not having an exlcusive discriminating feature. But what you're not looking at is that Dell is a competitor and Joe Casemodder is not. They can license Joe's tech, without harming themselves, for likely a lot cheaper than what they would charge Dell. And that's why they would license from Joe before they did Dell, and for a lot less.
How well do you think Joe Casemodder would do in court defending a "put lights inside my cool boxen" patent if Apple or Dell decided they didn't want to pay for his "patented technology"
Well since all lawyers are scumbags, and if Joe Casemodder really had a case, I'm sure noooo one would take the case pro bono for a piece of the settlement, huh? Fact is, Joe Casemodder probably doesn't have a case (nyuk, nyuk). Truth is, Apple or Dell would probably pay Joe Casemodder his licensing fee unless it was something unreasonable. Quick scenario:
Joe Casemodder sends Apple a letter saying "You are infringing on my invention. Please send me a nickel for every machine you ship." Based on Apples Q2 results (first I could find) that comes to 749,000 macs for a total of ~$37,500 for the quarter. Typical patent litigation cost... let's say $200,000k for searching, attempts at invalidity, and discovery alone (typical litigation all the way through can approach 1 million). They can license his tech for a year for 3/4 of what the early phases of a litigation costs. Plus avoid all the bad publicity ("Big bad Apple won't pay litt Joe Casemodder his due"). Companies will always license if they can. It is a lot cheaper in the long run.
Filing a patent application will cost you under $400 if you are a small entity (e.g., a single inventor). And no, you do not need an attorney. I bet most slashdotters could scrap that up in under three months.
there are so many obvious things that nobody could possibly list them
My point is that to slashdotters, myself included until I started working as a patent agent, everything is obvious. But it's not. Not at the standard of the PTO, not at the standard set by the courts. Many patents, including software patents, are actually fairly narrow, and not as obvious, nor as broad as people here claim. Plus people here don't know the prosecution history of the application. The inventors may have given up claims to certain aspects of the invention during the back and forth of the process.
the people you're berating consider patenting the obvious to be immoral
I disagree. I think people think that suing using a patent that is "obvious" is immoral, or suing the litle guy. I bet if Red Hat patented something obvious for "defensive purposes," yes, there would be a mumor of discontent, and an eyebrow raised, but not nearly the outcry as Amazon getting one click (and no, I am no justifying the granting of that patent). Amazon is not a proven "good guy" so their obvious patents are not deemed ok yet by the slashdot crowd. Yes, there are those that consider all patents immoral. But most people here only bitch when it's a bad guy getting the patent. But guess what? No one is going to sue the little guy. Little guys have no money. Tangent to copyright: Who is SCO suing? Joe Bob developer? No, IBM. Chrysler. Auto-Zone. Name a patent infringment suit where the Assignee was a big corporation and they sued a single developer. Th small developer isn't worth the lawsuit. Only someone like Microsoft has the real money to burn on litigating developers because it fits their strategy. Most companies bet the farm when they bring a patent suit because they are long and expensive.
While I'm ranting, it drives me crazy when people here say "Company X was doing this exact thing four years ago! Prior art!" when in fact it is not the exact same thing and may have been considered anyway during prosecution but the examiner thought that it wasn't. The fact is, everyone does things different and you carve out your little piece of the pie. But people on slashdot just see the pie, claim a pie in its entirety is an obvious invention, and have a fit.
The really interesting thing is that patent applications by default publish at 18 months. This one published after 7 months. I think Apple had to request early publication, which makes me wonder why they would. Typically you'd love to never have you application publish until it is granted and then get money from people already practicing your invention. In this case, early publication has put competitors on notice, which is typically not a good thing. Weird.
And as mentioned, this is a published application not an issued patent. I love that the Reg uses "finally" in describing the "granting" of the patent. A typical prosecution time is a couple years, not a couple months. Having a patent granted in 7 months would kick ass. But again, this is just an application.
And for those crying "prior art!" note that the application claims priority back to 2001. I dunno what case modders were doing three years ago, or if the glowing orb thing on thinkgeek was around, but it makes your prior art case harder (though still not that weak of course).
-truth
PS if everything is so obvious, why haven't you patented it? People here are like Nostradamus fans: everything is obvious (predictions are accurate) after the fact.
Nothing. Move on and find one that is. The/. crowd doesn't need you to judge a post for them. Merely to bring the potential signal above the noise. They should be able to figure out if the signal's any good themselves.
I'm not disputing your claim that dealing with CSS can be difficult, but it is what the web is supposed to be moving to. I honestly think support for it is getting better and CSS itself has dramatically improved from 1.0 to 2.0. But that's just MHO.
Modding overrated is dick. Pure and simple. It does nothing to the conversation, it only shows your disapproval of another moderator. Use your mod points constructively and like you said, go to the non-frontpage stories. Seriously, which does more for the slashdot community? Modding a frontpage comment overrated or a non-frontpage comment informative?
He didn't say browser, he said website. Though he is wrong since the standard resolution designed for is 800x600, he is right in that many many web shops design sites for a specific resolution. Many shops cut images images to include table widths and navigation sizes so that the total comes to 800 pixels. Though CSS is the ideal choice for logical placement of objects, tables and fixed widths to position material still reign.
Slashdot Mirror
To your point about well-maintained, well maintained by whose standards? Yours? Mine? A horticulturalist? Laws are just words and no amount of words will ever truly convey an idea. The best you can hope for is, like you said, try to establish some lexicon that all know and are aware of. But that lexicon must then be revised on a regular basis. And take into account all the nuances that we encounter as life progresses.
You make it sound as if there is some magical simple solution when in reality there isn't. It's like a previous poster points out: "Thou shalt not kill" blooms into "Thou shalt not kill, except in self-defense and during self-defense you have a duty to retreat, unless you're in your own home, and even in those cases only if you have no clear path to an exit."
A simple law is an unpredictable one. And if you don't have lawyers to write or interpret them, who's going to judge the facts against them?
-truth
Un-fucking-believable.
-truth
Local DA has 600 cases per session, and only ever gets to the cases that plead
Sounds like you need more lawyers. ;-)
Be sure the minorities released from death row on the basis of DNA tests know that we've fixed the system.
No, it isn't fixed, and it never will be because humans and juries make mistakes. But those that have been freed, see it working. They aren't dead and that's an improvement. We're getting there.
Doctors don't make medicine more expensive (Lawyers do)
Bull, bull, bull, bull. I hate this argument. "It's the lawyers fault that insurance premiums are so high." Like lawyers filled this vaccuum of malpractice litigation that never would have happened without them. Bull. Here's how a malpractice case goes down:
A) Doctor FUCKS UP. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. And when it is a lot...
B) Patient's life is made harder. Maybe a little, Maybe a lot. Like the doctor leaves a 13" piece of metal in the guy's stomach, it casuses necrosis, and the guy has a gaping hole in his belly.(can't find a link but it was on dateline or something once)
C) Lawyer steps in to help the guy with the hole in his stomach since, by your own assertion, the doctor is rich and already has a great lawyer. Now I'm not naive. There are plenty of lawyers that would chomp at he bit because of the settlement this guy would get, and the lawyer takes a part of it. But if the rich doctor/insurance company has a great lawyer, should the guy who has a hole in his stomach??
But malpractice is one of the most severe screw ups a person can have done to them. A friend of mine who works in the insurance industry was appalled that a woman at a Red Sox game sued after being hit in the face with a ball goin over a 100 miles an hour. She says she would have sat somewhere different if she had know about the dangers. Whether you believe her or not, or think the court decided correctly (for Fenway Park), the point is she got hit in the FACE with a baseball going 100 mph and is now PERMANENTLY DISFIGURED. She had 1.07 seconds to react after the foul ball came off the bat. At least let her tell her side of the story.
Sorry, but this mantra that malpractice suits are all lawyers' faults is one of my big buttons because you can't have one without a doctor that messed up and a patient willing to sue.
Programmers don't make software more expensive - they make it more available
When I was a software engineer, my company charged a pretty decent hourly rate for me to cover my salary. The number one expense when determining software price is the salary you had to pay to create it. It ain't the packaging or the media.
And that's why laws are complicated. Because life/human interaction is.
Actually, US law, and all common law jurisdictions (as opposed to civil law) is derived from the law of the English King. Look up Matthew Hale if you're not inclined to believe wikipedia.
Is no reason to justify making the rest of my life incomprehensible
But that is exactly why the law is so complex: because life is. Here's an example: Let's say there is a statute that says "No vehicles in the park," and it was enacted 50 years ago. Very few people drive cars or airplanes through the park, so it's not really a big deal and the statute has never been challenged. Now let's say that someone on a bycycle runs over a pedestrian in the park? Vehicle? Well, probably not. Why was the statute enacted? To protect the quality of the grass and park in general? Well then a bike is fairly unobtrusive, so a bicycle is allowed. Or was the statute enacted to protect pedestrians in the park? If that is the case, and this guy just got bowled over, can he point to the statute and say "this guy did something forbidden!"?
So the bike is sort of ambiguous, but probably would not be considered a "vehicle" per se. But what about a motorized scooter the kids use today? What about a Segway?
Life is complicated and full of exceptions. Add on top of that that people feel differently. A majority of Texans may feel that carrying a gun in public is ok, so in Texas it's ok. A majority of Virginians may disagree, so it's not ok in VA. Now that's all fine and well for states and "the people" can understand the law where they are from. But how does this come into play when the nation chooses one way or the other? How do the Federal and the States resolve their different "feelings" about how the people should live and act? The law is complicated because life is.
Lawyers - as a practice - enable a government to create overly complicated rules
As I said, it's life that is complicated. You may say "anyone that runs over another in the park not only committed a tort of battery, but they should be fined for violating the statute." The guy that did the running over may agree that he committed a battery (or may not), but he will certainly contest that he violated the statute. You disagree, depsite the fact that the statute is in the language of the people.
such as thurgood marshall and a few pro-bono cases
A little factoid: It's not a few pro bono cases. Many states have policies encouraging/requiring lawyers to perform a certain amount of of pro bono work. Looking at the chart, many of them are 50 hrs. That's over a week of work that you do for free! In the big scheme is that a lot to ask of one person? No. But how many jobs do you know of that ask that of its employees? And to do it every year? That adds up to a lot of pro bono cases, per lawyer.
Please provide the experiences you've had with lawyers. I work with them everyday and they really are not the bottom feeders everyone on /. makes them out to be. Yes there are bad apples. But there are bad doctors, bad programmers, and bad librarians, too, yet they are villified.
-truth
Do you understand the tax code? What about negligence in a tort action? Or can you explain to me why the computer you own is "yours" (and no, paying for it does not make it yours e.g., if the person that sold it to you stole it). I'm guessing the answer is no, you don't. Lawyers are like mechanics. Sure, everyone could spend all their time learning how to fix their car, but then they wouldn't spend time doing other things that make them productive. Instead, lawyers spend the time, energy,and money to figure out the law so you can sit at your desk and program whatever it is you program (or manage, or whatever).
The purpose of law is to create equality.
Eh, the general purpose is more to provide remedies to those that have been wronged and to deter those that do wrong, but true that it is supposed to serve these functions equally among all.
The purpose of lawyers is to create priveledge for rich people.
Which is why no lawyers do pro bono work, right? What about the EFF's lawyers? Are they doing it for the rich?
In criminal cases, the interest of freedom should be representated by an independant counter-prosector. The defendant should speak for himself or not as he chooses. But every defendant should have the same counter-prosecutor.
Truthfully, I don't even understand this. Are you making the case for the appointment of a public defender? As for defendant's representing themself, that's silly. He may say things he does not need to say, be confused or not remember clearly, making him look more guilty than he is, or he may just not be a good speaker. I mean, who is a jury more likely to believe or sympathize with: "Yo' Honah, I didn' dewit. I wuz at muh friend's haas" or "No, your Honor, I did not commit the crime in question, and I have an alibi." Sam statement, bu the latter is more sympathetic and believeable.
-truth
-truth
Ugh.
-truth
-truth
Myth: Having a patent makes you rich.
Myth busted: You make $0 on a patent until someone licenses it from you or you sue someone successfully for infringing.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself
Slashbot mentality: you should have to demonstrate your invention.
Mentality busted: Hardware fabrication is not an overnight accomplishment. You have idea of how a chip or board will come together, but until it is physically constructed and tested, you really won't know. Simulations are great and all, but you can never really know until it is constructed. So do you wait to patent your idea until you can demonstrate it works, or do you patent the general idea, and by general I mean sufficiently novel, but does not describe the transistor level? Well it depends if you want to stay in business or not.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent
Slashbot mentality: Someone should stop these evil companies and have this stuff re-examined
Mentality busted: It is expensive. If you're not willing to do it yourself, then don't bitch about others not doing it themself. I'm sure they want to spend their money better ways too.
Truth is, this sounds similar to sudo. What would be interesting would be to pull the file history for the patent (feel free to order it from the PTO. I think anyone has the right to see it once the patent issues). The file history will reveal what the examiner cited, what the original claims looked like, and what the inventors gave up in terms of trying to get the patent allowed.
-truth
That is complete bunk. Show me something that says the members of the PCT have to recognise a US patent. At best, they will allow you to file an application based on a US one up to a year after filing the US one. At worst, after the year is up you cannot file an application with the PCT. And once it's a patent, you haven't played their game so you have no rights to it whatsoever.
The EU (and the individual countries within it) each have their own standards of what is and is not patentable. Is there a likelihood that it will just go through Germany, France, et al. if it gets through the EU? Sure. But they are not required to recognise shit. That's why the International Bureau does its own prior art search (and generally turns up better results, which then get disclosed in the US case) rather than just passing the application through.
-truth
Please cite the patent statute that mandates a working prototype. Here's a hint: there isn't one. All it has to exist in is the person's head.
-truth
A specific case of X should never be patentable, since its a subset of whats already done
Because patents give you a monopoly on X, part of the innovation patents are supposed to foster is creating X+Y. It makes people think of new ways to apply existing technology or to design around existing patents. A patent can be obtained for useful, new and non-obvious combinations of technologies. And just because you have a patent a) doesn't mean you'll enforce it maliciously and b) that you yourself don't have to pay someone else. If I get a patent on the wheel, you have every right to patent a wheel with spokes. You can't make a wheel with spokes without paying me of course (I have the patent on the wheel), but your improvement is yours and I can't go making spoked wheels without paying you for your improvement. What we'd likely do is cross-license each other and put everyone else out of business.
Now say someone doesn't way to pay for your spoked wheel and instead creates a new wheel. New variations is the whole point of the patent system. Now they only have to pay the license for the wheel and we've got three new products instead of one.
And yes, taking voice chat from a computer and doing on a console is a new variation. How obvious that variation is is what people here decry.
psxndc
such as...?
-truth
Putting your statement about nickels aside, a couple things:
1) anyone can file a patent application. You do not need a lawyer, so legal fees are not necessary, and they are the primary factor in cost.
2) I just don't believe your statement in light of 1). If we are going to have a discussion about it, I would be glad to start quoting filing fees or point you to the PTO website.
It's really not as expensive as you think. MAX for filing an application, and that includes using the lawyer to do it, is $15,000. Many patent boutiques, to undercut the big firms, will do it for $5,000. Please provide numbers rather than making sweeping generalizations because as it stands, your argument is weak without facts. Even assuming a large entity filing, it's only $770 to file the application. That's less than my half of one month's rent.
Back to the nickels, actually, yeah, I would be surprised if Apple only charged Dell a nickel. According to Dell's Q2 results, they own 18% of the computer market. If Apple owns 3%, and they shipped 711,000 (according to a different source I found), that means Dell shipped, guesstimating, 4.26 Million PCs. At a nickel a pop, that's about $213,000 for one quarter. Likely not enough to counterbalance not having an exlcusive discriminating feature. But what you're not looking at is that Dell is a competitor and Joe Casemodder is not. They can license Joe's tech, without harming themselves, for likely a lot cheaper than what they would charge Dell. And that's why they would license from Joe before they did Dell, and for a lot less.
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Well since all lawyers are scumbags, and if Joe Casemodder really had a case, I'm sure noooo one would take the case pro bono for a piece of the settlement, huh? Fact is, Joe Casemodder probably doesn't have a case (nyuk, nyuk). Truth is, Apple or Dell would probably pay Joe Casemodder his licensing fee unless it was something unreasonable. Quick scenario:
Joe Casemodder sends Apple a letter saying "You are infringing on my invention. Please send me a nickel for every machine you ship." Based on Apples Q2 results (first I could find) that comes to 749,000 macs for a total of ~$37,500 for the quarter. Typical patent litigation cost... let's say $200,000k for searching, attempts at invalidity, and discovery alone (typical litigation all the way through can approach 1 million). They can license his tech for a year for 3/4 of what the early phases of a litigation costs. Plus avoid all the bad publicity ("Big bad Apple won't pay litt Joe Casemodder his due"). Companies will always license if they can. It is a lot cheaper in the long run.
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Filing a patent application will cost you under $400 if you are a small entity (e.g., a single inventor). And no, you do not need an attorney. I bet most slashdotters could scrap that up in under three months.
there are so many obvious things that nobody could possibly list them
My point is that to slashdotters, myself included until I started working as a patent agent, everything is obvious. But it's not. Not at the standard of the PTO, not at the standard set by the courts. Many patents, including software patents, are actually fairly narrow, and not as obvious, nor as broad as people here claim. Plus people here don't know the prosecution history of the application. The inventors may have given up claims to certain aspects of the invention during the back and forth of the process.
the people you're berating consider patenting the obvious to be immoral
I disagree. I think people think that suing using a patent that is "obvious" is immoral, or suing the litle guy. I bet if Red Hat patented something obvious for "defensive purposes," yes, there would be a mumor of discontent, and an eyebrow raised, but not nearly the outcry as Amazon getting one click (and no, I am no justifying the granting of that patent). Amazon is not a proven "good guy" so their obvious patents are not deemed ok yet by the slashdot crowd. Yes, there are those that consider all patents immoral. But most people here only bitch when it's a bad guy getting the patent. But guess what? No one is going to sue the little guy. Little guys have no money. Tangent to copyright: Who is SCO suing? Joe Bob developer? No, IBM. Chrysler. Auto-Zone. Name a patent infringment suit where the Assignee was a big corporation and they sued a single developer. Th small developer isn't worth the lawsuit. Only someone like Microsoft has the real money to burn on litigating developers because it fits their strategy. Most companies bet the farm when they bring a patent suit because they are long and expensive.
While I'm ranting, it drives me crazy when people here say "Company X was doing this exact thing four years ago! Prior art!" when in fact it is not the exact same thing and may have been considered anyway during prosecution but the examiner thought that it wasn't. The fact is, everyone does things different and you carve out your little piece of the pie. But people on slashdot just see the pie, claim a pie in its entirety is an obvious invention, and have a fit.
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And as mentioned, this is a published application not an issued patent. I love that the Reg uses "finally" in describing the "granting" of the patent. A typical prosecution time is a couple years, not a couple months. Having a patent granted in 7 months would kick ass. But again, this is just an application.
And for those crying "prior art!" note that the application claims priority back to 2001. I dunno what case modders were doing three years ago, or if the glowing orb thing on thinkgeek was around, but it makes your prior art case harder (though still not that weak of course).
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PS if everything is so obvious, why haven't you patented it? People here are like Nostradamus fans: everything is obvious (predictions are accurate) after the fact.
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proudly,
Turok
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Ummmm, yeah. See my own reply to myself. It's been a while since I even had to think about FSAs. kthnx.
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