This was not a court decision, this was a USPTO decision.
That being said, there would be a massive amount of expert testimony and testimony of those involved if it did come down to the judge to have to decide. I'm not sure why "this needs to be clarified" though - trials are not held to please the public's interpretation of them. If you want it clarified, go to court and watch the proceedings. And read the final decisions - those will tell you what the judge (at least expressly) based his decisions on.
Correct, US Patent Law technically only covers the US - although by treaty, it'll include more - much more. But I agree, I think the posters wish has already happened;) If a company does business in the US though, they are then subject to US patent law, of course. And that is what RIM has done - could anyone seriously contend that RIM doesn't need to honor US patents when doing business in the US? That would be ridiculous.
As easy as it is for me to want to side with RIM, and be excited that this last patent was thrown out...
I'd like to know several things. First, what WAS the last patent? The article doesn't say - I'm sure someone could dig it up, though. Also, why was it rejected, and if there was good cause to reject it, why did it survive so much previous scrutiny? While the USPTO will accept almost anything at first - they don't do rigorous review of everything submitted, until it is challenged - they start scrutinizing them once court cases come up. So how did it survive previously if it could not survive now? Could this perhaps be only a political decision? The USPTO bowing to administration pressure?
There's really two different items that you mention in your comment that you don't like: commercials, and not being able to watch at your leisure. I would argue that the first is good, and the second is nearly irrelevant.
There's plenty of channels on TV that have no commercials: HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, etc etc. I almost never watch these channels. They're impossible to watch! How can you sit down and watch something for an hour, for two hours, without ever moving. Without the commercial breaks, you can't get up to so much as grab a drink of water without missing something. I like commercials for that. Also, there's the rare commercial that's either well done, informative, or both. These ARE useful things - we wouldn't know about a lot of products - both good and bad - if it wasn't for advertising.
Secondarily, and to address your next point, DVR is the answer. If you want to watch something - and indeed, to skip commercials - record to DVR. It's a pretty easy solution (and cheap, these days - Comcast DVR is all of $6 or so, once you have HD).
One last point worth making is that at the moment, HDTV signals are considerably higher quality than DVD. Of course, this doesn't help for non-network shows, but on the networks, you can't beat the quality of the HD signals.
This isn't to say that it isn't worth it to buy DVD's - I own a large library of DVD's. But more often I watch television - and I don't have DVR.
FW is a great spec - both in 400 & 800 varieties. It's FAST - we all know that. However, Intel was smart with USB. Beyond bundling it with all their boards, I mean. They made USB2 the same connector and backwards compatible with USB1.1. I assume that there was simply no way to do that with FW800/400, but that's what is killing it. It's simply too hard to include 2 different connectors on one board, especially when the 2nd connector (800) is totally incompatible with anything previous, there's no demand for it (that's faster than most devices could run) and there's few devices out that would run on it, even if they are fast enough.
Those connectors needed to be backwards compatible.
Agreed. This is why using "prototype" is a bit extreme. However, details and testing can still be done, even as parts are prepared for production. They won't be making major changes at this point, but even after they start working with the factories they can revise certain things, continue QA, switch out certain things (for instance, if the batter suddenly shows some massive flaw, there is no massive design change to be done, simply a different part they'd need to put in in final assembly - and 1 part (the battery) that would need to be redone).
Apple... introduce a machine before it's ready to ship? That never happens! I'm shocked. And appalled. How dare they!
*looks at my mini... aww that was obviously released immediately*
All my sarcasm being said and done, I don't think anybody looked at the 15" MacBook (god I hate that name) and thought it was anything beyond a rush job. Probably a very good machine, and something I'd buy if I had the money, but it's nothing earth shattering in terms of design or anything like that - it just *shouts* "we needed to do something about our powerbooks, and we needed to get as many x86 boxes out as soon as possible."
Yeah, this is exactly what I was going to post - since when has Apple said anything about licensing FairPlay? While I think they should at least license it for music stores at least - they don't make much on iTMS anyway, and having more stores out there selling music for iPod's would only increase the reasons to buy an iPod, they haven't said anything, as far as I know. And they certainly haven't showed any interest in giving up their hardware monopoly in favor of licensing.
'As long as an invention is not clearly contrary to scientific laws - like time travel - research has no bearing on the grant of a patent.'"
So I guess they're saying there's no need to prove you've invented anything... it just has to pass the laugh test.
You actually aren't far off. So what? The USPTO's function, contrary to what I often see people seem to think, is not to exhaustively investigate each option. They'll approve anything that's nominally new. It's then the function of the courts to see if the patents are actually new. To fully investigate every patent, even those that will never be used or that are irrellevant to anyone, would be far to huge a waste of resources.
Yeah, Montgomery/KONE deploy's large amounts of machineroom-less elevators these days - and has been for some time. All the other companies (such as Otis) now are as well.
The interesting thing about MagLev will be what happens to the service industry for elevators. Typically elevator/escalator companies bid below cost (or just plain end up running over budget) and therefore LOSE money on elevator construction projects, hoping to regain it by charging for service. Even if these new elevators require a decent amount of service still, it will be different - these guys have been trained for a long, long time on the relatively standard basic workings of elevators.
It'll also be interesting to see if the same old major companies (only one of which is still American - Otis, the rest of the American's having been bought by Kone, Thyssen, and uh... damn forgetting the last one or two) are able to stay on top in a transition like this. It seems like different technology, different business model.
The Texas case is not a class action suit. It is a state action alleging violation of the Texas CPA. So Sony will have to satisfy the Texas Attorney General, not a lawyer for a citizen (who supposedly represents all other citizens in the area, in similar circumstances).
Still, I'm not sure what you guys expect? They aren't going to be banned from including DRM, unless they agree to that, which they won't. It's also unlikely they'll be hit with any MASSIVE fine. Although $7.50 per CD is actually a good amount of money (not to mention if people go for iTunes downloads, and the like), if the theoretical number of people all take it (unlikely).
I did not realize that the settlement included any download service - that makes it much better.
What I don't understand is why MS cares which format wins. They have no stake in the hardware business, really, except for the xbox, which uses neither. By the time the next xbox comes out, one format or the other would be a significant amount of the marketshare and MS could just go with that. So I don't get it. Why does MS care which wins?
Perhaps he's right, he does get the worst software from Apple...
(ok, there's two ways I can go with this)
1. But at least Apple patches them
or
2. That's because Apple doesn't like him very much
Take your pick;)
Alright, after reading through a lot of the comments on here, the vast majority of which are angry at BellSouth, I'm going to fall on my sword here and come out in favor of them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that what they did is the nice thing to do, and I have absolutely no experience with their services - I live in Boston. But when you're donating something to somebody (or in this case, some city), you don't expect them to turn around and stab you in the back. And that's exactly what New Orleans has done. Internet access is a huge revenue stream for telecommunications companies, obviously, and New Orleans has just circumvented that, for many people.
Does New Orleans need all the help it can get, right now? Yes, of course
Is this a nasty thing for BellSouth to do? Yes
But is it undestandable? To me, absolutely.
I could be missing something, but isn't this basic astronomy (or whatever science you care to term it)? Water vapor (among other gasses) is responsible for keeping a planet heated, and not a frozen ball of rock like Mars. Maintaining that delicate balance of how much water is in the air is important of course, but noting that water is causing the atmosphere to retain heat is... nothing new.
Not true at all. A song I will listen to tens and hundreds of times a year. How many times will I watch any one movie? A couple times a year? Maybe four times a year if it's an exceptional movie, and I have lots of free time?
If everyone followed what something looks like at the time, because of their fiscal or market share position, all the PC companies should have shut down in the face of IBM, or even before that IBM should have not started a PC division because Apple ruled that world. TWA should have sold out to Pan Am. Torvalds should have joined Microsoft. T-Mobil would fold up in the face of Verizon. The Bell's would never have formed Cingular. etc etc.
If "lucid advice" just means/;the company looks like it's doing badly," we'd never have half the innovations or companies of the world.
"The station is a testbed for long-duration missions to live and work on the Moon and Mars."
How is it a test bed for that? Sure, the structure is still up there... I'm pretty sure that isn't the hard part about getting to Mars, or even the moon. The hard part is keeping a human alive in there without resupply, in-gravity exercise, etc. None of which the station helps with.
Well, to extend what I said earlier "to get their music out there in order to make more money." That doesn't change anything about what I said though. They still want their music in as many places as it can be, in order for them to make money.
No, you're confusing what contract they had to sign in order to get their music out there, with what they WANTED to have happen. The artists are trying to get their music out ther. They sign with a label in order to do that. The contract restricts them to only doing what the label says, but that isn't what the artists WANT.
They signed with the label to get their music out there as best as possible - in order to do that, they ended up resctricting themselves to Sony.
Hundreds and hundreds of products have been killed or permanently crippled because their first versions were terrible. Itanium is the same thing. With the public perception of the Itanium still the same as it was for the first (pathetic) iteration of it, how are you going to convince your manager to spend the money to get it? Benchmarks only go so far.
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This was not a court decision, this was a USPTO decision.
That being said, there would be a massive amount of expert testimony and testimony of those involved if it did come down to the judge to have to decide. I'm not sure why "this needs to be clarified" though - trials are not held to please the public's interpretation of them. If you want it clarified, go to court and watch the proceedings. And read the final decisions - those will tell you what the judge (at least expressly) based his decisions on.
Correct, US Patent Law technically only covers the US - although by treaty, it'll include more - much more. But I agree, I think the posters wish has already happened ;) If a company does business in the US though, they are then subject to US patent law, of course. And that is what RIM has done - could anyone seriously contend that RIM doesn't need to honor US patents when doing business in the US? That would be ridiculous.
As easy as it is for me to want to side with RIM, and be excited that this last patent was thrown out...
I'd like to know several things. First, what WAS the last patent? The article doesn't say - I'm sure someone could dig it up, though. Also, why was it rejected, and if there was good cause to reject it, why did it survive so much previous scrutiny? While the USPTO will accept almost anything at first - they don't do rigorous review of everything submitted, until it is challenged - they start scrutinizing them once court cases come up. So how did it survive previously if it could not survive now? Could this perhaps be only a political decision? The USPTO bowing to administration pressure?
There's really two different items that you mention in your comment that you don't like: commercials, and not being able to watch at your leisure. I would argue that the first is good, and the second is nearly irrelevant.
There's plenty of channels on TV that have no commercials: HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, etc etc. I almost never watch these channels. They're impossible to watch! How can you sit down and watch something for an hour, for two hours, without ever moving. Without the commercial breaks, you can't get up to so much as grab a drink of water without missing something. I like commercials for that. Also, there's the rare commercial that's either well done, informative, or both. These ARE useful things - we wouldn't know about a lot of products - both good and bad - if it wasn't for advertising.
Secondarily, and to address your next point, DVR is the answer. If you want to watch something - and indeed, to skip commercials - record to DVR. It's a pretty easy solution (and cheap, these days - Comcast DVR is all of $6 or so, once you have HD).
One last point worth making is that at the moment, HDTV signals are considerably higher quality than DVD. Of course, this doesn't help for non-network shows, but on the networks, you can't beat the quality of the HD signals.
This isn't to say that it isn't worth it to buy DVD's - I own a large library of DVD's. But more often I watch television - and I don't have DVR.
FW is a great spec - both in 400 & 800 varieties. It's FAST - we all know that. However, Intel was smart with USB. Beyond bundling it with all their boards, I mean. They made USB2 the same connector and backwards compatible with USB1.1. I assume that there was simply no way to do that with FW800/400, but that's what is killing it. It's simply too hard to include 2 different connectors on one board, especially when the 2nd connector (800) is totally incompatible with anything previous, there's no demand for it (that's faster than most devices could run) and there's few devices out that would run on it, even if they are fast enough.
Those connectors needed to be backwards compatible.
Agreed. This is why using "prototype" is a bit extreme. However, details and testing can still be done, even as parts are prepared for production. They won't be making major changes at this point, but even after they start working with the factories they can revise certain things, continue QA, switch out certain things (for instance, if the batter suddenly shows some massive flaw, there is no massive design change to be done, simply a different part they'd need to put in in final assembly - and 1 part (the battery) that would need to be redone).
Apple... introduce a machine before it's ready to ship? That never happens! I'm shocked. And appalled. How dare they!
;)
*looks at my mini... aww that was obviously released immediately*
All my sarcasm being said and done, I don't think anybody looked at the 15" MacBook (god I hate that name) and thought it was anything beyond a rush job. Probably a very good machine, and something I'd buy if I had the money, but it's nothing earth shattering in terms of design or anything like that - it just *shouts* "we needed to do something about our powerbooks, and we needed to get as many x86 boxes out as soon as possible."
Oh, and "we wanted to spite the rumors sites"
Yeah, this is exactly what I was going to post - since when has Apple said anything about licensing FairPlay? While I think they should at least license it for music stores at least - they don't make much on iTMS anyway, and having more stores out there selling music for iPod's would only increase the reasons to buy an iPod, they haven't said anything, as far as I know. And they certainly haven't showed any interest in giving up their hardware monopoly in favor of licensing.
'As long as an invention is not clearly contrary to scientific laws - like time travel - research has no bearing on the grant of a patent.'"
So I guess they're saying there's no need to prove you've invented anything... it just has to pass the laugh test.
You actually aren't far off. So what? The USPTO's function, contrary to what I often see people seem to think, is not to exhaustively investigate each option. They'll approve anything that's nominally new. It's then the function of the courts to see if the patents are actually new. To fully investigate every patent, even those that will never be used or that are irrellevant to anyone, would be far to huge a waste of resources.
Yeah, Montgomery/KONE deploy's large amounts of machineroom-less elevators these days - and has been for some time. All the other companies (such as Otis) now are as well.
The interesting thing about MagLev will be what happens to the service industry for elevators. Typically elevator/escalator companies bid below cost (or just plain end up running over budget) and therefore LOSE money on elevator construction projects, hoping to regain it by charging for service. Even if these new elevators require a decent amount of service still, it will be different - these guys have been trained for a long, long time on the relatively standard basic workings of elevators.
It'll also be interesting to see if the same old major companies (only one of which is still American - Otis, the rest of the American's having been bought by Kone, Thyssen, and uh... damn forgetting the last one or two) are able to stay on top in a transition like this. It seems like different technology, different business model.
The Texas case is not a class action suit. It is a state action alleging violation of the Texas CPA. So Sony will have to satisfy the Texas Attorney General, not a lawyer for a citizen (who supposedly represents all other citizens in the area, in similar circumstances).
Still, I'm not sure what you guys expect? They aren't going to be banned from including DRM, unless they agree to that, which they won't. It's also unlikely they'll be hit with any MASSIVE fine. Although $7.50 per CD is actually a good amount of money (not to mention if people go for iTunes downloads, and the like), if the theoretical number of people all take it (unlikely).
I did not realize that the settlement included any download service - that makes it much better.
What I don't understand is why MS cares which format wins. They have no stake in the hardware business, really, except for the xbox, which uses neither. By the time the next xbox comes out, one format or the other would be a significant amount of the marketshare and MS could just go with that. So I don't get it. Why does MS care which wins?
Who said "Microsoft and IBM can develop such a beast as part of a console with a $300.00 pricepoint"?
They can't
They can because Microsoft is willing to take the hit on the pricing of the console to make up for it in selling accessories and games.
I forget the cost of production offhand, though guesses/estimates have been posted, and it's low, but it isn't THAT low.
This story makes it feel like sex in my pants.
Perhaps he's right, he does get the worst software from Apple... (ok, there's two ways I can go with this) 1. But at least Apple patches them or 2. That's because Apple doesn't like him very much Take your pick ;)
Yes, it works out to $141k/yr... assuming they work on the side of the road with 2 sticks they cut themselves.
Alright, after reading through a lot of the comments on here, the vast majority of which are angry at BellSouth, I'm going to fall on my sword here and come out in favor of them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that what they did is the nice thing to do, and I have absolutely no experience with their services - I live in Boston. But when you're donating something to somebody (or in this case, some city), you don't expect them to turn around and stab you in the back. And that's exactly what New Orleans has done. Internet access is a huge revenue stream for telecommunications companies, obviously, and New Orleans has just circumvented that, for many people.
Does New Orleans need all the help it can get, right now? Yes, of course
Is this a nasty thing for BellSouth to do? Yes
But is it undestandable? To me, absolutely.
I could be missing something, but isn't this basic astronomy (or whatever science you care to term it)? Water vapor (among other gasses) is responsible for keeping a planet heated, and not a frozen ball of rock like Mars. Maintaining that delicate balance of how much water is in the air is important of course, but noting that water is causing the atmosphere to retain heat is... nothing new.
Not true at all. A song I will listen to tens and hundreds of times a year. How many times will I watch any one movie? A couple times a year? Maybe four times a year if it's an exceptional movie, and I have lots of free time?
If everyone followed what something looks like at the time, because of their fiscal or market share position, all the PC companies should have shut down in the face of IBM, or even before that IBM should have not started a PC division because Apple ruled that world. TWA should have sold out to Pan Am. Torvalds should have joined Microsoft. T-Mobil would fold up in the face of Verizon. The Bell's would never have formed Cingular.
/;the company looks like it's doing badly," we'd never have half the innovations or companies of the world.
etc etc.
If "lucid advice" just means
"The station is a testbed for long-duration missions to live and work on the Moon and Mars."
How is it a test bed for that? Sure, the structure is still up there... I'm pretty sure that isn't the hard part about getting to Mars, or even the moon. The hard part is keeping a human alive in there without resupply, in-gravity exercise, etc. None of which the station helps with.
Well, to extend what I said earlier "to get their music out there in order to make more money." That doesn't change anything about what I said though. They still want their music in as many places as it can be, in order for them to make money.
No, you're confusing what contract they had to sign in order to get their music out there, with what they WANTED to have happen. The artists are trying to get their music out ther. They sign with a label in order to do that. The contract restricts them to only doing what the label says, but that isn't what the artists WANT.
They signed with the label to get their music out there as best as possible - in order to do that, they ended up resctricting themselves to Sony.
Good for them! They should be able to put their music everywhere and anywhere - isn't that why they signed on with a label in the first place?
Of course, doing so in violation of their contract could put them in a sticky situation. I wonder what the contract actually says.
Hundreds and hundreds of products have been killed or permanently crippled because their first versions were terrible. Itanium is the same thing. With the public perception of the Itanium still the same as it was for the first (pathetic) iteration of it, how are you going to convince your manager to spend the money to get it? Benchmarks only go so far.