After my AT&T contract expired, I switched to Straight Talk for my iPhone. $45/month unlimited everything (well, not unlimited data but a lot of data). They also use AT&T's network. Its been working great.
I was ready to hide all Ask Slashdot posts anyway because they provide very little value (mostly because the questions are not that interesting to me). Now I'm more motivated to do that...
Go to Options -> Exclusions and you can hide all Ask Slashdot posts.
Don't listen to this guy. He doesn't know what he is talking about, and if he was a lawyer he would likely be committing malpractice. Many DMCA notices are unjustified, but this one clearly is justified.
Your game is a complete knock off of the original. From your website, it looks like you copied: (1) the pac man character (2) the ghosts (3) the dots and power dots (3) the style of the maze This is clear case of copyright infringement.
You say that "no original artwork or sound has been copied", but this is clearly not true. If you draw it yourself to look like the original, it is still a copy. Instead of copying the original do something new. Change the characters. Put the bad guy box in a corner. Have the maze look different.
You clearly have trademark issues as well. "Pac" is distinctive so any name using "pac" will likely be a trademark infringement.
Under common law, all you have to do get trademark rights is to use a particular mark, although whether you can actually prevent any one else from using the mark depends on a lot of factors, e.g., your mark should be distinctive and you should be the first to use it for a particular type of product.
In addition to any common law rights, you can also get a federal trademark registration, which gives you the right to use the circle R symbol (note that it is against the law to use the circle R symbol unless you have a federal registration). Having a federal registration gives you some advantages over a common law trademark: (1) you get a presumption that you use the mark nationwide (as opposed to a particular geographic region), and (2) you can sue in federal court if someone infringes your trademark.
Even if you have a federal registration, you only have rights to a mark if you actually use it. If you get a federal registration on a mark, but stop using it, then that mark becomes available for someone else to use.
Trademark law is very different from patent/copyright law and serves a much clearer purpose -- people need to know the real source of the products they buy.
You state that haven't even read a complete research paper. The best way to learn to write one is to read a bunch and emulate the ones that you like. This is also the best way to find a journal to which you should try to publish your paper.
Note that in reading research papers you just might find that someone else has already done what you yourself discovered. There are a lot of smart people out there.
You also don't need to file the patent before you publish in the US. You have one year from the day that you publish (or otherwise make it publicly known) to file the patent. After that, you lose the right to seek a patent. In other countries, you must file the patent before you publish.
I use software called SportTracks (http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/) that downloads data my Garmin GPS watch (and other devices too). The software is not open source but it is free and it is fantastic software -- much better than the software that comes with the watch. You can also write plugins for it. I haven't tried, but I'm pretty sure you could get any data you wanted out of the program.
PS. I have no affiliation with the company that makes the software. I'm just a very happy user of the software. I don't donate for free software very often but I did for this one.
The original post says that Red Hat is getting the patent for "defensive" use. What this means is that if someone sues Red Hat for patent infringement, Red Hat could potentially countersue for infringement of its own patent. Having such defensive patents helps discourage other companies (e.g., Microsoft) from suing you. Unfortunately, it doesn't help against patent trolls because trolls don't actually do anything so you can't sue them for patent infringement.
If Red Hat only published its invention, it would prevent people from getting patents on that subject matter but it would not help Red Hat against patent infringement suits on different technology
A patent doesn't give you the right to do anything. A patent only gives you the right to prevent other people from doing something. So getting a patent on this won't prevent other people for suing you for patent infringement. The patent could be useful from a defensive perspective. If you get sued by a competitor for patent infringement, then you could potentially countersue for infringement of your own patent. If you are sued by a troll, however, that won't help because trolls don't do anything and thus can't be sued for patent infringement.
Just publishing something makes it available as prior art and allows it to be used to prevent someone else from obtaining a patent. The prior art rules in the US are slightly different for publications and patents (look up 35 USC 102) but if there is any significant difference it probably wouldn't be worth the expense of obtaining the patent.
I don't think that is correct characterization of the Bayh-Dole Act (BDA). Before the BDA, the US govt could claim ownership of IP rights that were developed at universities with govt funds. After the BDA, the university gets to own the IP even if it was funded by the govt.
This has nothing to do with whether a student or a university owns the ideas created by a student. I imagine that universities make incoming students sign some kind of document that give the university over student inventions created using university resources.
Under Bilski, a method claim must be tied to a particular machine or must cause some kind of transformation. I haven't read the McD patent but is sounds like a claim for making a sandwich would be a transformation so Bilski wouldn't invalidate that kind of claim. That doesn't mean the claim is valid though as the claim could well have been something done in the past or obvious over what has been done in the past.
> But the decision contains statements about IP addresses, domain names, > and anonymity that are rather basically wrong, and which may enable > the state to win on appeal.
There is no such thing as an appeal from a Supreme Court judgment. That's why it is Supreme! (Except in NY where they use weird names).
From the VA Supreme Court ruling, you have two options:
(1) Ask the VA Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. This rarely happens, but if the Court really did screw up, then it might.
(2) Seek a writ of certiorari from the US Supreme Court. These are also hard to get, but where a state Supreme Court really messes up First Amendment law, you probably have better odds.
All the ad needed to succeed was to have Seinfeld in it. They are paying Seinfeld a large amount of money and he is a super famous guy so the ad is successful no matter what the content is. IMHO, the ad was awful and it succeeded despite the lousy content.
Below I pasted the text of the actual court order from the CAFC granting the rehearing en banc. It appears that that the CAFC will be considering business method patents rather than software patents. More specifically, the CAFC seems interested in business method patents that contain a "mental process" as one of the steps. I don't think CAFC will be considering software patents at all.
The link in the techdirt article to PatentlyO provides much better information than the techdirt article.
IN RE BERNARD L. BILSKI and RAND A. WARSAW
This case was argued before a panel of this court on October 1, 2007. Thereafter, a poll of the judges in regular active service was conducted to determine whether the appeal should be heard en banc. Upon consideration thereof, IT IS ORDERED THAT: The court by its own action grants a hearing en banc. The parties are requested to file supplemental briefs that should address the following questions:
(1) Whether claim 1 of the 08/833,892 patent application claims patent- eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101?
(2) What standard should govern in determining whether a process is patent- eligible subject matter under section 101?
(3) Whether the claimed subject matter is not patent-eligible because it constitutes an abstract idea or mental process; when does a claim that contains both mental and physical steps create patent-eligible subject matter?
(4) Whether a method or process must result in a physical transformation of an article or be tied to a machine to be patent-eligible subject matter under section 101?
(5) Whether it is appropriate to reconsider State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), and AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 1999), in this case and, if so, whether those cases should be overruled in any respect?
This appeal will be heard en banc on the basis of the original briefs and supplemental briefs addressing, inter alia, the issues set forth above. An original and thirty copies of all briefs shall be filed, and two copies served on opposing counsel. The parties shall file simultaneous supplemental briefs which are due in the court within 20 days from the date of filing of this order, i.e., on March 6, 2008. No further briefing will be entertained. Supplemental briefs shall adhere to the type-volume limitations for principal briefs set forth in Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32 and Federal Circuit Rule 32.
Any amicus briefs will be due 30 days thereafter. Any such briefs may be filed without leave of court but otherwise must comply with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 29 and Federal Circuit Rule 29. Oral argument will be held on Thursday, May 8 at 2:00 p.m. in Courtroom 201.
> STV is the only mainstream electoral method which fails the monotonocity criterion.
This is not true.
One of the most commonly used voting systems in the United States also fails the monotonicity criterion -- that of simply using a second runoff election between the two top vote getters of a first election.
In my opinion, this shows that the monotonicity criterion is interesting mathematically but, from a practical perspective, just doesn't matter. Even though runoff elections have been used for more than 100 years, you don't see anyone complaining that a runoff election caused a violation of the monotonicity criterion.
I have some open-source software that implements STV, IRV, Condorcet, approval, and other voting systems (but not range voting) called OpenSTV. You can download it from http://stv.sourceforge.net/ and you can also download some ranked ballots from US elections to see how the various voting systems work.
Some entity owns the copyright to the linux kernel and associated utilities, and in the absence of a license, anyone who distributed or even installed the software would be violating the copyright. The copyright owners can, of course, GPL to allow widespread use.
After granting the license to the whole world, could the owners, however, revoke Novell's license? I don't see why not. Licenses do get revoked. I don't believe that the GPL is irrevocable, although revoking the license is arguably counter to the spirit of the license. See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html.
This suit would be thrown out a US court immediately. By federal statute, ideas are not copyrightable: 17 USC 102 Subject Matter of Copyright: In General - (b) Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery.
Slashdot Mirror
After my AT&T contract expired, I switched to Straight Talk for my iPhone. $45/month unlimited everything (well, not unlimited data but a lot of data). They also use AT&T's network. Its been working great.
I was ready to hide all Ask Slashdot posts anyway because they provide very little value (mostly because the questions are not that interesting to me). Now I'm more motivated to do that...
Go to Options -> Exclusions and you can hide all Ask Slashdot posts.
Don't listen to this guy. He doesn't know what he is talking about, and if he was a lawyer he would likely be committing malpractice. Many DMCA notices are unjustified, but this one clearly is justified.
Your game is a complete knock off of the original. From your website, it looks like you copied:
(1) the pac man character
(2) the ghosts
(3) the dots and power dots
(3) the style of the maze
This is clear case of copyright infringement.
You say that "no original artwork or sound has been copied", but this is clearly not true. If you draw it yourself to look like the original, it is still a copy. Instead of copying the original do something new. Change the characters. Put the bad guy box in a corner. Have the maze look different.
You clearly have trademark issues as well. "Pac" is distinctive so any name using "pac" will likely be a trademark infringement.
The original post confuses trademark law.
Under common law, all you have to do get trademark rights is to use a particular mark, although whether you can actually prevent any one else from using the mark depends on a lot of factors, e.g., your mark should be distinctive and you should be the first to use it for a particular type of product.
In addition to any common law rights, you can also get a federal trademark registration, which gives you the right to use the circle R symbol (note that it is against the law to use the circle R symbol unless you have a federal registration). Having a federal registration gives you some advantages over a common law trademark: (1) you get a presumption that you use the mark nationwide (as opposed to a particular geographic region), and (2) you can sue in federal court if someone infringes your trademark.
Even if you have a federal registration, you only have rights to a mark if you actually use it. If you get a federal registration on a mark, but stop using it, then that mark becomes available for someone else to use.
Trademark law is very different from patent/copyright law and serves a much clearer purpose -- people need to know the real source of the products they buy.
You state that haven't even read a complete research paper. The best way to learn to write one is to read a bunch and emulate the ones that you like. This is also the best way to find a journal to which you should try to publish your paper.
Note that in reading research papers you just might find that someone else has already done what you yourself discovered. There are a lot of smart people out there.
Antitrust is a good bet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
You also don't need to file the patent before you publish in the US. You have one year from the day that you publish (or otherwise make it publicly known) to file the patent. After that, you lose the right to seek a patent. In other countries, you must file the patent before you publish.
I use software called SportTracks (http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/) that downloads data my Garmin GPS watch (and other devices too). The software is not open source but it is free and it is fantastic software -- much better than the software that comes with the watch. You can also write plugins for it. I haven't tried, but I'm pretty sure you could get any data you wanted out of the program.
PS. I have no affiliation with the company that makes the software. I'm just a very happy user of the software. I don't donate for free software very often but I did for this one.
The original post says that Red Hat is getting the patent for "defensive" use. What this means is that if someone sues Red Hat for patent infringement, Red Hat could potentially countersue for infringement of its own patent. Having such defensive patents helps discourage other companies (e.g., Microsoft) from suing you. Unfortunately, it doesn't help against patent trolls because trolls don't actually do anything so you can't sue them for patent infringement.
If Red Hat only published its invention, it would prevent people from getting patents on that subject matter but it would not help Red Hat against patent infringement suits on different technology
A patent doesn't give you the right to do anything. A patent only gives you the right to prevent other people from doing something. So getting a patent on this won't prevent other people for suing you for patent infringement. The patent could be useful from a defensive perspective. If you get sued by a competitor for patent infringement, then you could potentially countersue for infringement of your own patent. If you are sued by a troll, however, that won't help because trolls don't do anything and thus can't be sued for patent infringement.
Just publishing something makes it available as prior art and allows it to be used to prevent someone else from obtaining a patent. The prior art rules in the US are slightly different for publications and patents (look up 35 USC 102) but if there is any significant difference it probably wouldn't be worth the expense of obtaining the patent.
I don't think that is correct characterization of the Bayh-Dole Act (BDA). Before the BDA, the US govt could claim ownership of IP rights that were developed at universities with govt funds. After the BDA, the university gets to own the IP even if it was funded by the govt.
This has nothing to do with whether a student or a university owns the ideas created by a student. I imagine that universities make incoming students sign some kind of document that give the university over student inventions created using university resources.
Under Bilski, a method claim must be tied to a particular machine or must cause some kind of transformation. I haven't read the McD patent but is sounds like a claim for making a sandwich would be a transformation so Bilski wouldn't invalidate that kind of claim. That doesn't mean the claim is valid though as the claim could well have been something done in the past or obvious over what has been done in the past.
> But the decision contains statements about IP addresses, domain names,
> and anonymity that are rather basically wrong, and which may enable
> the state to win on appeal.
There is no such thing as an appeal from a Supreme Court judgment. That's why it is Supreme! (Except in NY where they use weird names).
From the VA Supreme Court ruling, you have two options:
(1) Ask the VA Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. This rarely happens, but if the Court really did screw up, then it might.
(2) Seek a writ of certiorari from the US Supreme Court. These are also hard to get, but where a state Supreme Court really messes up First Amendment law, you probably have better odds.
All the ad needed to succeed was to have Seinfeld in it. They are paying Seinfeld a large amount of money and he is a super famous guy so the ad is successful no matter what the content is. IMHO, the ad was awful and it succeeded despite the lousy content.
Below I pasted the text of the actual court order from the CAFC granting the rehearing en banc. It appears that that the CAFC will be considering business method patents rather than software patents. More specifically, the CAFC seems interested in business method patents that contain a "mental process" as one of the steps. I don't think CAFC will be considering software patents at all.
The link in the techdirt article to PatentlyO provides much better information than the techdirt article.
IN RE BERNARD L. BILSKI
and RAND A. WARSAW
This case was argued before a panel of this court on October 1, 2007.
Thereafter, a poll of the judges in regular active service was conducted to determine
whether the appeal should be heard en banc.
Upon consideration thereof, IT IS ORDERED THAT:
The court by its own action grants a hearing en banc. The parties are requested
to file supplemental briefs that should address the following questions:
(1) Whether claim 1 of the 08/833,892 patent application claims patent-
eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101?
(2) What standard should govern in determining whether a process is patent-
eligible subject matter under section 101?
(3) Whether the claimed subject matter is not patent-eligible because it
constitutes an abstract idea or mental process; when does a claim that
contains both mental and physical steps create patent-eligible subject
matter?
(4) Whether a method or process must result in a physical transformation of
an article or be tied to a machine to be patent-eligible subject matter under
section 101?
(5) Whether it is appropriate to reconsider State Street Bank & Trust Co. v.
Signature Financial Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 1998), and
AT&T Corp. v. Excel Communications, Inc., 172 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir.
1999), in this case and, if so, whether those cases should be overruled in
any respect?
This appeal will be heard en banc on the basis of the original briefs and
supplemental briefs addressing, inter alia, the issues set forth above. An original and
thirty copies of all briefs shall be filed, and two copies served on opposing counsel. The
parties shall file simultaneous supplemental briefs which are due in the court within 20
days from the date of filing of this order, i.e., on March 6, 2008. No further briefing will
be entertained. Supplemental briefs shall adhere to the type-volume limitations for
principal briefs set forth in Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32 and Federal Circuit
Rule 32.
Any amicus briefs will be due 30 days thereafter. Any such briefs may be filed
without leave of court but otherwise must comply with Federal Rule of Appellate
Procedure 29 and Federal Circuit Rule 29. Oral argument will be held on Thursday,
May 8 at 2:00 p.m. in Courtroom 201.
> STV is the only mainstream electoral method which fails the monotonocity criterion. This is not true. One of the most commonly used voting systems in the United States also fails the monotonicity criterion -- that of simply using a second runoff election between the two top vote getters of a first election. In my opinion, this shows that the monotonicity criterion is interesting mathematically but, from a practical perspective, just doesn't matter. Even though runoff elections have been used for more than 100 years, you don't see anyone complaining that a runoff election caused a violation of the monotonicity criterion.
I have some open-source software that implements STV, IRV, Condorcet, approval, and other voting systems (but not range voting) called OpenSTV. You can download it from http://stv.sourceforge.net/ and you can also download some ranked ballots from US elections to see how the various voting systems work.
Some entity owns the copyright to the linux kernel and associated utilities, and in the absence of a license, anyone who distributed or even installed the software would be violating the copyright. The copyright owners can, of course, GPL to allow widespread use. After granting the license to the whole world, could the owners, however, revoke Novell's license? I don't see why not. Licenses do get revoked. I don't believe that the GPL is irrevocable, although revoking the license is arguably counter to the spirit of the license. See http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html.
MS makes a dangerous OS and then they drag more money out of you to protect you from it. Sounds like the mafia to me.
This suit would be thrown out a US court immediately. By federal statute, ideas are not copyrightable:
17 USC 102 Subject Matter of Copyright: In General - (b) Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery.
Let's hope the UK courts do the same!