Many stores now use PCs as their cash registers. Distract the clerk, plug the USB minidrive into the checkout register or the keyboard. "What credit history?" Most small businesses use QuickBooks. Here's my "approved invoice to pay." Check's in the mail...
The anti-malware software industry is like the insurance industry. They want to provide their paying customers with benefit, but the last thing they ever want to do is encourage consumer behavior, law, or product changes that actually eliminate the problem, thus putting themselves out of business.
Your mother will go into the store. The salesperson will tell her, "With Blu-Ray every movie fits on a single disk. With HD-DVD you will need two disks for each movie. You will have to get up in the middle of the movie to swap disks. You will have find both disks and get back into the right case, no matter if you rent, use netflix, or own. "
I have one of only five (so I was told) ever made, real, 3-dimensional, physical, 5x5x5 Rubic's cube.
The original is 3x3x3. For a while you could buy a 4x4x4. For people who learned to solve the 3x3x3 (see other postings this thread) the 4x4x4 was only a "little bit harder." However, last time I heard, no human was "even close to solving" the 5x5x5.
This staggeringly complex device was invented by a brilliant guy named Scott Matthews, who lives in Yelm, WA.
I would like to suggest to the nerdy multi-dimensional java and.net guys: Make a computerized version of the 3D 5x5x5, and see how people respond to that.
The 'old' ask.com was pure crap. The 'new' ask.com appears to be blatant attempt to copy google in order to get a piece of their billion dollar valuation pie.
But I tried out a couple of genuine searches that frustrated me in both google and wikipedia. Their results were significantly better.:):) So I am going to eat a bit of crow and use them from time to time.
Competition is a good thing. We wouldn't want google turning into another M$, would we? So what if they are re-using google ads and wiki content? The US media has been serving up used bathwater for decades.
You provide two examples that possibly should not have granted by the patent office on the basis of obviousness. It is widely agreed that in the fields of programming and the Internet too many obvious patents have been granted. Any patent that could be implemented in a "couple of lines of code" should clearly have a high standard of "non-obviousness" prior to grant. Many people believe that the US Patent Office is currently much stricter reviewing for obviousness.
In my prior posting I specifically mentioned the need for rational litigation and public disclosure of licensing terms. Put aside for a moment, if you will, the question of whether these patents should have been granted.
Currently, the most common method in a trial to determine obviousness is for each side to present an expert witness. The judge or jury then chooses to believe the testimony of the expert they prefer. However, there are other ways to establish obviousness. If, as you say, the technique in the claim was implemented unknowingly in "publicly available and public domain code" this would be a strong argument in favor of the claim being obvious. More rational litigation would not only permit such evidence, it would appear in pre-trial disclosure, most likely leading to a settlement or the case being dropped. All such evidence should become part of the patent file, so that other people could benefit from the knowledge.
Currently, virtually all patent litigation evidence is kept sealed by agreement between the parties, which in my view, negates much of the original purpose of patents.
My second point was to require public disclosure of licensing. It is often stated that patent licensing fees may run between 3% and 6% of net revenue. However, this is for patents that are the heart and soul of product. Suppose your product consists of 10,000 lines of code. 11 lines, to use your example, infringe on the Hayes patent. Your revenue from this product is perhaps $3 million per year. Simple arithmetic shows that the patent contributes 11/10,000. At 6%, pro-rated, your "fair" licensing fee would be $198 per year.
The music industry provide a means for anyone who wishes to use a copyrighted work to pay a simple fee by formula. High school drama departments, for example, frequently use this service.
The patent industry and/or the software industry could setup a similar system for licensing software patents. Self registration, when the fees are fair, would likely be far more profitable to the patent holders (not the attorneys) than current litigation system.
I believe that all patent licensing should be public domain information. In the current information age, the licensing information would often be more valuable than the original patent disclosure, and would be no more than a continuation of the original intent of the patent system, which was to encourage public disclosure, for the public good. (Kind of like wikipedia.)
So... are you astroturfing for Microsoft or Macromedia?
Neither. I am an IP consultant.
someone in a few hours work has used a thousand technique...
Techniques are not patentable. Only complete "devices." Typically, if a customer purchases a subsystem, like a screw, the mfg provides a sublicense and indemnification for the customer. Thus, someone could write a program using compilers, objects, IDE, etc and not violate any of the underlying patents in her components.
Thank you for clarifying your point. IMHO, however, I think a programmer in a few hours would likely only violate a proper s/w patent if her intent was to clone that (protected) product.
It takes lots of money and time to get a patent. People aren't going to get a patent on "a few hours work." The required test for novelty is significant, so 99.9% of programs would not qualify. You can't patent algorthims, so that doesn't leave a lot of room for software patents. For something truely novel, such as Flash (in its time), a patent could protect a $100 million invention against copycat products. There is nothing about patent law that should hinder $5 shareware.
Public domain simply lets the biggest bully on the block blow away the real inventors.
It used to be that inventions were made out of motors, belts, pulleys, and such. Consider the cotton gin, or the sewing machine. Now, inventions are made with computer programs, web interfaces, java beans, relational databases, flash. The real tests (used to be): is it novel? It is useful? More than ever, those hundred-year-old requirements still make perfect sense. Patenting the obvious is just as bad an idea now as it ever was.
In the heyday of railroads, new patents were being issued every few hours on improvements in track shape and airbrakes. The parts of the patent system that are broken, or badly in need of a tune-up, are not related to computer programs, they are related to issues of proper review, rational litigation, and what should be public disclosure of licensing, and mandatory licensing.
Patent law actually requires "fair licensing." After all, the whole point of patents was to get inventions INTO the public domain, not to promote monopolies. Its just that courts have long since given up trying to assess fair licensing, so we have forgotten that half of the original formula.
I doubt this system will replace mechanically focusing a camera lens.
However, this might be used as a way to optimize solar panels as the sun moves across the sky, or to change the field pattern for headlights or taillights to better match current driving conditions.
Most people in the patent industry [patent attorneys, entrepreneurs, corp senior management] agree that the single best reform would simply be more, and better paid examiners. Right now, the US Patent office is a profit center for the Federal Gov't. How about if it just got to keep (more) of the money it raises through filing fees? The current rules in place are 'reasonable.' The biggest problem is that rushed and weak examiners don't always do a good job.
What of stealing other peoples' ideas and making money from them don't you understand? Bill Gates has repeated explained that this is called I N N O V A T I O N !
MS has a crystal clear understanding of business ethics. What you can get away with is legal. What you can't get away with is government interference in innovation.
Symantec (plantiff) can only get an injunction, in the best of circumstances, AFTER MS has been determined by a trial court to be infringing. An average patent case now costs $13 million in legal expenses and takes 7 years. Then, assume about two more years for the injunction.
The recent Supreme Court decision has (almost) put an end to injunctions. Since the damages in patent cases are restricted to "actual" (meaning lost business profit) damages, it is hardly worth the bother.
Expect to see patent holders pretty much ignored by all large companies, from now on.
Odds are 50/50 they have more advanced technology than we do.
How did you calculate those odds? Is that based on a large sample size of similar situations? Or is this based on the number of Vegas betters being equal both ways? If you want to state a fact, please provide the source. IMHO there are not many planets supporting "move advanced" life than earth. Why? most planets aren't in the 'sweet spot' where water is in all three states. Plus, by logic, if there were many more advanced cultures, then they would either be out there laughing at us, or we would be their slaves. I don't hear an laughter from space, so...
If you were an expert on only one thing, and wrote a single article for Wikipedia, then you would have done 250 times as much as the average person in the US.
The company, OncolyticsBiotech, who have a short video (see link http://www.oncolyticsbiotech.com/webfiles/moviewin dowQuickTime.htm) describing the process, claim it is a "naturally occuring virus." If this is true, it seems unlikely that the virus could easily mutate to something truly awful. However, the uncontrolled cellular growth processes we call cancer bear some similarities to natural growth. (Cancer cells typically have really messed up nuclei, but there are still some functional similaries.) So there is always risk when messing around with mother nature.
Publishers all over the world are now screaming that search engines and aggregators are "abusing" (or, "stealing") their "content" by creating links and indexes. But I an NOT going to talk about how this has been legal use of copyrighted material for 100s of years.
I AM going to point out that this is parallel to what "credit bureaus" and other data aggregators have been doing with personal data for decades. There is no law in the US that says a person "owns" their own information. In fact, the law is quite clear that anyone who "collects" information about you, such a phone number, or an address, or a birth-date, or criminal records, then owns this information they have collecte. They can sell that information or do anything else they want with it. They can (and do) legally charge you to NOT distribute it. For example, that is why the phone company can legally charge you to NOT publish your phone number.
Up to now, people who thought the law should be a bit more favorable towards privacy rights have made no progress against huge industry (read: junk mail) lobbying.
Now that search engines are doing the same thing to newspaper book publishers, all of a sudden, "It is UNFAIR!!" they cry. Clearly, what is good for the goose is NOT good for the gander.
AP Wire Service makes Yahoo pay to put news in their search engine. The French and the Belgians object to Google making money "from other people's content." Hmm. Seems like that is precisely what TRW and Experian credit agencies have been doing with my "content" for 20 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Many stores now use PCs as their cash registers. Distract the clerk, plug the USB minidrive into the checkout register or the keyboard. "What credit history?" Most small businesses use QuickBooks. Here's my "approved invoice to pay." Check's in the mail...
The anti-malware software industry is like the insurance industry. They want to provide their paying customers with benefit, but the last thing they ever want to do is encourage consumer behavior, law, or product changes that actually eliminate the problem, thus putting themselves out of business.
Which one do you think she will buy?
I have one of only five (so I was told) ever made, real, 3-dimensional, physical, 5x5x5 Rubic's cube.
The original is 3x3x3. For a while you could buy a 4x4x4. For people who learned to solve the 3x3x3 (see other postings this thread) the 4x4x4 was only a "little bit harder." However, last time I heard, no human was "even close to solving" the 5x5x5.
This staggeringly complex device was invented by a brilliant guy named Scott Matthews, who lives in Yelm, WA.
I would like to suggest to the nerdy multi-dimensional java and .net guys: Make a computerized version of the 3D 5x5x5, and see how people respond to that.
In case anybody cares.
But I tried out a couple of genuine searches that frustrated me in both google and wikipedia. Their results were significantly better. :) :) So I am going to eat a bit of crow and use them from time to time.
Competition is a good thing. We wouldn't want google turning into another M$, would we? So what if they are re-using google ads and wiki content? The US media has been serving up used bathwater for decades.
How long before a PC outlet costs less than a power outlet? Today, an USB embedded CPU chip costs less than a USB mechanical connector.
In my prior posting I specifically mentioned the need for rational litigation and public disclosure of licensing terms. Put aside for a moment, if you will, the question of whether these patents should have been granted.
Currently, the most common method in a trial to determine obviousness is for each side to present an expert witness. The judge or jury then chooses to believe the testimony of the expert they prefer. However, there are other ways to establish obviousness. If, as you say, the technique in the claim was implemented unknowingly in "publicly available and public domain code" this would be a strong argument in favor of the claim being obvious. More rational litigation would not only permit such evidence, it would appear in pre-trial disclosure, most likely leading to a settlement or the case being dropped. All such evidence should become part of the patent file, so that other people could benefit from the knowledge.
Currently, virtually all patent litigation evidence is kept sealed by agreement between the parties, which in my view, negates much of the original purpose of patents.
My second point was to require public disclosure of licensing. It is often stated that patent licensing fees may run between 3% and 6% of net revenue. However, this is for patents that are the heart and soul of product. Suppose your product consists of 10,000 lines of code. 11 lines, to use your example, infringe on the Hayes patent. Your revenue from this product is perhaps $3 million per year. Simple arithmetic shows that the patent contributes 11/10,000. At 6%, pro-rated, your "fair" licensing fee would be $198 per year.
The music industry provide a means for anyone who wishes to use a copyrighted work to pay a simple fee by formula. High school drama departments, for example, frequently use this service.
The patent industry and/or the software industry could setup a similar system for licensing software patents. Self registration, when the fees are fair, would likely be far more profitable to the patent holders (not the attorneys) than current litigation system.
I believe that all patent licensing should be public domain information. In the current information age, the licensing information would often be more valuable than the original patent disclosure, and would be no more than a continuation of the original intent of the patent system, which was to encourage public disclosure, for the public good. (Kind of like wikipedia.)
Neither. I am an IP consultant.
someone in a few hours work has used a thousand technique...
Techniques are not patentable. Only complete "devices." Typically, if a customer purchases a subsystem, like a screw, the mfg provides a sublicense and indemnification for the customer. Thus, someone could write a program using compilers, objects, IDE, etc and not violate any of the underlying patents in her components.
Thank you for clarifying your point. IMHO, however, I think a programmer in a few hours would likely only violate a proper s/w patent if her intent was to clone that (protected) product.
Public domain simply lets the biggest bully on the block blow away the real inventors.
In the heyday of railroads, new patents were being issued every few hours on improvements in track shape and airbrakes. The parts of the patent system that are broken, or badly in need of a tune-up, are not related to computer programs, they are related to issues of proper review, rational litigation, and what should be public disclosure of licensing, and mandatory licensing.
Patent law actually requires "fair licensing." After all, the whole point of patents was to get inventions INTO the public domain, not to promote monopolies. Its just that courts have long since given up trying to assess fair licensing, so we have forgotten that half of the original formula.
However, this might be used as a way to optimize solar panels as the sun moves across the sky, or to change the field pattern for headlights or taillights to better match current driving conditions.
Most people in the patent industry [patent attorneys, entrepreneurs, corp senior management] agree that the single best reform would simply be more, and better paid examiners. Right now, the US Patent office is a profit center for the Federal Gov't. How about if it just got to keep (more) of the money it raises through filing fees? The current rules in place are 'reasonable.' The biggest problem is that rushed and weak examiners don't always do a good job.
MS has a crystal clear understanding of business ethics. What you can get away with is legal. What you can't get away with is government interference in innovation.
The recent Supreme Court decision has (almost) put an end to injunctions. Since the damages in patent cases are restricted to "actual" (meaning lost business profit) damages, it is hardly worth the bother.
Expect to see patent holders pretty much ignored by all large companies, from now on.
How did you calculate those odds? Is that based on a large sample size of similar situations? Or is this based on the number of Vegas betters being equal both ways? If you want to state a fact, please provide the source. IMHO there are not many planets supporting "move advanced" life than earth. Why? most planets aren't in the 'sweet spot' where water is in all three states. Plus, by logic, if there were many more advanced cultures, then they would either be out there laughing at us, or we would be their slaves. I don't hear an laughter from space, so ...
It is 85% of the current US population. I made the estimate that 15% of the population are still too young to contribute an article.
If you were an expert on only one thing, and wrote a single article for Wikipedia, then you would have done 250 times as much as the average person in the US.
If its a single-malt whiskey, do you have to put a single-core CPU?
Its not too late!
They lost.
There is nothing to keep someone else from publishing your phone number, even if it is "unlisted," once they have it.
How soon are you planning to die?
I AM going to point out that this is parallel to what "credit bureaus" and other data aggregators have been doing with personal data for decades. There is no law in the US that says a person "owns" their own information. In fact, the law is quite clear that anyone who "collects" information about you, such a phone number, or an address, or a birth-date, or criminal records, then owns this information they have collecte. They can sell that information or do anything else they want with it. They can (and do) legally charge you to NOT distribute it. For example, that is why the phone company can legally charge you to NOT publish your phone number.
Up to now, people who thought the law should be a bit more favorable towards privacy rights have made no progress against huge industry (read: junk mail) lobbying. Now that search engines are doing the same thing to newspaper book publishers, all of a sudden, "It is UNFAIR!!" they cry. Clearly, what is good for the goose is NOT good for the gander. AP Wire Service makes Yahoo pay to put news in their search engine. The French and the Belgians object to Google making money "from other people's content." Hmm. Seems like that is precisely what TRW and Experian credit agencies have been doing with my "content" for 20 years.