I disagree completely. In Supersize Me, the filmmaker asks 5 or 6 year olds to identify some pictures- George Washington, Jesus, George W. Bush, and Ronald McDonald. Most kids are hesitant with all of the pictures, yet all of them immediately know who Ronald is. When asked to described what Ronald does, the kids mention he helps kids, is funny, tells kids about good food, etc.
The kids thus form an early bond with McDonalds, and often associate it with good memories, and with a trusting character. Couple this with the fact that in many cities, the only place to find a decent playground is in the local McDonalds, and you have a marketing juggernaut pumping billions into getting kids hooked on their unhealthy food early on. Sure parents give in and take the kids there, but it's the kid insisting they want to go there in the first place.
In other news, Microsoft announced today that they have filed a patent application for a "spread-sheet," as evidenced by Excel 2003. They claim that the earlier art is irrelevant, as the test is whether people associate "spread-sheet" with Microsoft's current intellectual property. This stems from Microsoft's original "0s and 1s" patent, ripped off here from a story from The Onion.
The station that is moving is owned by Mid-Columbia Broadcasting Inc. It looks like that Mid-Columbia only has 1 station, and 10 employees- so it's a pretty small fish compared to Clear Channel.
Here is San Diego, we're lucky that Clear Channel can own stations in San Diego, and in Tijuana, Mexico (right across the border). We thus get double the Clear Channel, and yes, our radio sucks more than most cities.
The USPTO charges decent size fees for filings, responding, etc. They money goes into the general Treasury fund, and then Congress reallocates it back to the USPTO. Most often, the USPTO gets back a lot less money than they actually take in- a real source of contention.
Depends. Uncle Sam can keep the rights (doesn't happen that often), or give it to who makes it- but Uncle Sam gets a free license to use it. Verbage needs to be included in the patent application: "This invention was made with government support under (grant/contract number) awarded by (institute, agency). The Government has certain rights in the invention." Uncle Sam would be able to retain worldwide patent rights as well. Could this perhaps be a nice way to generate some revenue to cover our deficit? (source: NIH)
As an IP attorney in the US, I share your beefs about the extent of patent protection in the US. Patent law is being influenced too much by big companies in the US. Copyright is a little different.
According to the Copyright Act of 1976, the United States cannot copyright works created by the U.S. government. Individuals may freely copy from almost any federal government publication, with some exceptions including materials from the Postal Service and reference data provided by the Secretary of Commerce. Items free from copyright include laws, tax forms, and vidoes promoting the amazing new medicare changes. State and local governments can copyright their materials.
woah, settle down. no need to launch a tirade against me- i agree with you completely, and feel that thomas c. greene's opinion piece about the iraq fiasco is right on point.
budget cuts are being made in most state court systems as they deal with the awful realities of deficits brought upon by the terrible economic situation in the us. bush loves to pump more money into things like defense, so although i don't have the stats, i imagine the federal courts have had their budgets frozen or shrunk.
i'm still working to realized my law school dream. i was voted by my graduating class "most likely to own their own internet porn site." for now my wife won't let me.
i guess this would be a bad point to mention that i was actually contacted by a micro$oft recruiter a few months back, and, ugh, interviewed with them. it was a management position, and i was kind of broke at the time, so i played along. didn't get the job, thank god.
i looked thru my server logs, and found that the recruiter for micro$oft found my online resume thru a google search for "intellectual property resume." kind of funny that she was using google, and not search.msn.com.
to bolster my geek standing, does it matter that i was gopher admin for my college during my freshman year in 1993?
c'mon, i'm at work (i'm an attorney), and although i do the IT here, i haven't been able to convince my boss to switch over to something non-windows. lawyers never want to change their computer setups.
to get back on the cool side, i've been a longtime seti@home participant...
i know microsoft won't be destroyed, but it will be nice to see them get embarassed. i'm an IP attorney, and let's just say that their appeal on this ruling was questionable. it's quite obvious, even to the law clerks in my firm, that you look at the level of genericness when the trademark was first used, not when it's being litigated. looked pretty rookie to me.
things in court can take really long, especially with current budget cutbacks in the US. if it's really important, like someone on death row, the case will move quickly. something like this, which involves volumes of case materials, can proceed quite slowly.
that said, i'm rubbing my hands waiting for the downfall of micro$oft to happen at trial...
I remember the good ol' days before spyware: it was always took a little work to fix the PCs of friends. Now it's quite easy- just run AdAware and everything's fixed!
If you had spent $700, you could've had double the spam- and double all your returns (0 customers, 6 complaints, and 6 times the charges on your credit card). If it sounds too good to be true...
From the Register article, these amazing secrets were revealed:
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an XXXXXXXX service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."
The crossed out area (XXXs) was revealed to be "Egyptian." Nothing too exciting here.
The more interesting one is an analysis that revealed South Korea was the likely supplier of anonymous helicopter knowledge to Iraq. With friends like this, who needs enemies? Perhaps it's time to add South Korea to the Axis of Evil, and just invade and level both Koreas at the same time.
But the prior art search is still a good idea! It's good to have these things as clearly documented as possible in case spurious claims ever did wind up happening.
I'm an IP attorney, and I think the real question here is not prior art, which is from others, but the on sale bar. Apple filed this application Nov. 5, 2003. They do not claim priority to any earlier patents or applications. The on sale bar holds:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States. (102(b) of United States Code Title 35)
Having no experience with Apple since college, I'm not sure when they started doing the opaque menus. Was it after November 3, 2002? If it is before that date, they will not be able to patent it.
I'm an IP attorney, and would like to correct a misconception here. A patent application has to describe an invention that is "new, useful and nonobvious." "New" is often used in place of "novel." The hardest thing to explain (and understand) in patent law is how something is not obvious when the current art is considered. It's a catch-22: if something was invented, then it must be obvious.
Patents being filed for Longhorn are for completely new things: new file systems, etc. I doubt we'll see this in OSS, since there would have to be a really large improvement in say how a disk is read/written to come up with a "novel" method.
Potentially, you could get a patent on a totally new OSS project, say a great new rendering engine platform for a webbrowser.
as an attorney in the US, i can say it is pretty easy to get a case filed (pretty much just pay a fee and write some stuff down). actually having the case move forward is another thing.
the big amount of law relating to suits by criminals/trespassers has to do w/ using too much force in relation to the amount threatened. if some crazy person breaks into your house and threatens you with a spoon, you can't shoot them (unless you fear for your life). also, automatic things that use deadly force, like a spring gun (my personal favorite) are not allowed.
I've been blogging 3-4 times a week for over a month (I'm building some blogs up so that I can do some Google Bombs and/or search engine positioning experiements), and I did not get an invite. Perhaps because I signed up my email addres to be notified of gmail when it's available (and that is the same email address that my blogger account is registered to).
Slashdot Mirror
(insert evil laughter sound here)
The kids thus form an early bond with McDonalds, and often associate it with good memories, and with a trusting character. Couple this with the fact that in many cities, the only place to find a decent playground is in the local McDonalds, and you have a marketing juggernaut pumping billions into getting kids hooked on their unhealthy food early on. Sure parents give in and take the kids there, but it's the kid insisting they want to go there in the first place.
In other news, Microsoft announced today that they have filed a patent application for a "spread-sheet," as evidenced by Excel 2003. They claim that the earlier art is irrelevant, as the test is whether people associate "spread-sheet" with Microsoft's current intellectual property. This stems from Microsoft's original "0s and 1s" patent, ripped off here from a story from The Onion.
Here is San Diego, we're lucky that Clear Channel can own stations in San Diego, and in Tijuana, Mexico (right across the border). We thus get double the Clear Channel, and yes, our radio sucks more than most cities.
I imagine this will be a new target of French suicide showoffs, bored with jumping off the Eiffel Tower.
The USPTO charges decent size fees for filings, responding, etc. They money goes into the general Treasury fund, and then Congress reallocates it back to the USPTO. Most often, the USPTO gets back a lot less money than they actually take in- a real source of contention.
Depends. Uncle Sam can keep the rights (doesn't happen that often), or give it to who makes it- but Uncle Sam gets a free license to use it. Verbage needs to be included in the patent application: "This invention was made with government support under (grant/contract number) awarded by (institute, agency). The Government has certain rights in the invention." Uncle Sam would be able to retain worldwide patent rights as well. Could this perhaps be a nice way to generate some revenue to cover our deficit? (source: NIH)
the rest of the world calls it "wus-ter." Hear the lovely lady at Webster say it here.
According to the Copyright Act of 1976, the United States cannot copyright works created by the U.S. government. Individuals may freely copy from almost any federal government publication, with some exceptions including materials from the Postal Service and reference data provided by the Secretary of Commerce. Items free from copyright include laws, tax forms, and vidoes promoting the amazing new medicare changes. State and local governments can copyright their materials.
budget cuts are being made in most state court systems as they deal with the awful realities of deficits brought upon by the terrible economic situation in the us. bush loves to pump more money into things like defense, so although i don't have the stats, i imagine the federal courts have had their budgets frozen or shrunk.
i'm willing to bet he was using wordperfect 5.1...
i'm still working to realized my law school dream. i was voted by my graduating class "most likely to own their own internet porn site." for now my wife won't let me.
my going rate is a six pack per hour
i looked thru my server logs, and found that the recruiter for micro$oft found my online resume thru a google search for "intellectual property resume." kind of funny that she was using google, and not search.msn.com.
to bolster my geek standing, does it matter that i was gopher admin for my college during my freshman year in 1993?
to get back on the cool side, i've been a longtime seti@home participant...
lothar97 stats
:-P
i know microsoft won't be destroyed, but it will be nice to see them get embarassed. i'm an IP attorney, and let's just say that their appeal on this ruling was questionable. it's quite obvious, even to the law clerks in my firm, that you look at the level of genericness when the trademark was first used, not when it's being litigated. looked pretty rookie to me.
micro$oft hacked
that said, i'm rubbing my hands waiting for the downfall of micro$oft to happen at trial...
I remember the good ol' days before spyware: it was always took a little work to fix the PCs of friends. Now it's quite easy- just run AdAware and everything's fixed!
If you had spent $700, you could've had double the spam- and double all your returns (0 customers, 6 complaints, and 6 times the charges on your credit card). If it sounds too good to be true...
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an XXXXXXXX service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."
The crossed out area (XXXs) was revealed to be "Egyptian." Nothing too exciting here.
The more interesting one is an analysis that revealed South Korea was the likely supplier of anonymous helicopter knowledge to Iraq. With friends like this, who needs enemies? Perhaps it's time to add South Korea to the Axis of Evil, and just invade and level both Koreas at the same time.
I'm an IP attorney, and I think the real question here is not prior art, which is from others, but the on sale bar. Apple filed this application Nov. 5, 2003. They do not claim priority to any earlier patents or applications. The on sale bar holds:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States. (102(b) of United States Code Title 35)
Having no experience with Apple since college, I'm not sure when they started doing the opaque menus. Was it after November 3, 2002? If it is before that date, they will not be able to patent it.
I'm an IP attorney, and would like to correct a misconception here. A patent application has to describe an invention that is "new, useful and nonobvious." "New" is often used in place of "novel." The hardest thing to explain (and understand) in patent law is how something is not obvious when the current art is considered. It's a catch-22: if something was invented, then it must be obvious. Patents being filed for Longhorn are for completely new things: new file systems, etc. I doubt we'll see this in OSS, since there would have to be a really large improvement in say how a disk is read/written to come up with a "novel" method. Potentially, you could get a patent on a totally new OSS project, say a great new rendering engine platform for a webbrowser.
as an attorney in the US, i can say it is pretty easy to get a case filed (pretty much just pay a fee and write some stuff down). actually having the case move forward is another thing. the big amount of law relating to suits by criminals/trespassers has to do w/ using too much force in relation to the amount threatened. if some crazy person breaks into your house and threatens you with a spoon, you can't shoot them (unless you fear for your life). also, automatic things that use deadly force, like a spring gun (my personal favorite) are not allowed.
I've been blogging 3-4 times a week for over a month (I'm building some blogs up so that I can do some Google Bombs and/or search engine positioning experiements), and I did not get an invite. Perhaps because I signed up my email addres to be notified of gmail when it's available (and that is the same email address that my blogger account is registered to).