You're of course right, and my first paragraph was intended to be a disclaim of "I'm not saying that nothing in lab animals is applicable to humans", but rather, I wanted to point out that "hair" isn't just one thing in humans. There are two types of hair, vellus hair, and terminal hair, and it's entirely possible that this process would only activate vellus hair growth (being that women have more fat on average, and more vellus hair, this seems like a possibility).
My objection was that while this could be used to grow more hair, there is no guarantee that it could be used to grow more of the same type of hair that most people mean when they say, "hair". Because, in fact, bald men don't have any less hair, they just have had terminal hair follicles change to vellus hair follicles. (Excepting the case where a man is bald because he shaved, or used a form of epilation.)
I know, from the summary title I was hoping for a link between being fat and being bald, since often we men exhibit both characteristics. Disappointments all round. I can take down that banner welcoming our fat, bald, vellus enveloped overlords.
Well, there's no reason to doubt that fatty tissue could lead to more vellus hair. In fact, since women typically have more of both, it might actually be related in humans. I suppose, the point I was trying to make was that when we think of "hair", we think there is only one kind... silly us, there's actually three kinds. (vellus hair, and two types of terminal hair: on the head, and "axillary hair", which is vellus hair that turns to terminal hair under exposure to testosterone.)
So, it's entirely possible that we could cause humans to grow more hair with this process, we just wouldn't usually call it hair, because we don't typically consider vellus hair to be "hair".
So, don't let your desire to wave your banner wane, there is still a chance that that much might actually apply to humans.
Spamhaus initially hired an American law firm, which had the case moved from the state court to the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, but then (on the advice of its British lawyers) objected to the lawsuit altogether on the grounds that Spamhaus, being based in the United Kingdom, was outside the jurisdiction of United States courts.[21][22] The court, presided over by Judge Charles Kocoras, proceeded with the case against Spamhaus without considering the international jurisdiction issue, prompting British MP Derek Wyatt to call for the judge to be suspended from office.[23] Not having had its objection to jurisdiction examined, Spamhaus refused to participate in the U.S. case any further and withdrew its counsel.
Sounds perfectly like what I suggested had happened. They hired a US lawyer to fight it, but later on advice from a UK lawyer, objected to personal jurisdiction. However, since they had already made a general appearance the US courts refused to hear the matter, as they had already submitted to personal jurisdiction by general appearance. At such time, likely again under advice of a UK lawyer, they withdrew from the proceeding in an attempt to defend against an enforcement ruling within the UK itself, by retaining the "na na na na, I don't hear you" traditional personal jurisdiction defense.
On 20 October 2006, Judge Korcoras issued a ruling denying e360's motion against ICANN, stating in his opinion that "there has been no indication that ICANN [is] not [an] independent entit[y] [from Spamhaus], thus preventing a conclusion that [it] is acting in concert" with Spamhaus and that the court had no authority over ICANN in this matter. The court further ruled that removing Spamhaus's domain name registration was a remedy that was "too broad to be warranted in this case," because it would "cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus via its existing domain name, not just those that are in contravention" of the default judgment. Kocoras concluded, "[w]hile we will not condone or tolerate noncompliance with a valid order of this court [i.e., Spamhaus' refusal to satisfy the default judgement] neither will we impose a sanction that does not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct.
Sounds like they were not in any danger of having their domain seized. Considering it wasn't until 2007 that they again retained US counsel to fight the amount of the judgement. So, it doesn't seem like they were under any fear that their domain was going to be seized, as to why they decided to fight it. Perhaps they got further input from their UK lawyer noting that their general appearance might be accepted by UK courts, and make the default judgement enforceable in the UK, and as such they had to make the choice of rolling the dice on the judgement being held unenforceable in the UK, or appealing the default judgement and getting the award reduced. (Oftentimes, lawyers will present alternatives like this, rather than a single "you have one legal choice in this matter.")
or.. its possible they have hired a lawyer in the UK and he was just told to talk to the American court and point out the obvious that they really don't have any jurisdiction over their company, and therefor was talking to the courts on behalf of the company as a representative, not a lawyer.
In US law, no one can speak on behalf of a corporation in court except a bar-certified lawyer. Whether they attempt to call themselves "merely a representative" or not.
Did you ever think that they had two lawyers? One in the UK, and the other in the US? They initially did make a special appearance to argue personal jurisdiction (it's noted in fact in the opinion linked to in TFS) but "for unknown reasons" (paraphrasing) withdrew their appearance and let it sit.
It sounds to me, like they got a lawyer in the US to argue against personal jurisdiction (proper course in US law), then retained a UK attorney to speak to locally (so they don't have to communicate with their lawyer in the US for exorbitant fees for legal time, possibly odd hours, phone call costs.) so they could get a handle on legal advise appropriate for UK citizens. This UK lawyer probably directed them that if e360 got a judgement against them, and they had made an appearance in a US court, that e360 could come to the UK courts and seek enforcement of the judgement, and the UK courts would grant that enforcement, because the UK law does not recognize special appearances.
You know, because there are a lot more issues for a foreign citizen in a foreign country working within the US legal system than just what the US legal system says...
Submitting in the sense that they would be completely unaffected by any ruling and not pay out any money?
No, by submitting to the jurisdiction of the court, you lose the ability to argue lack of personal jurisdiction when the ruling is brought to be enforced in their home country. And then they have a court order against you in a court that can seize your assets.
The spammer lost badly. He wasted lots of money lawyers and Spamhaus didn't.
Correct. Even though he "won", he lost the most in this exchange.
You can protect the tradmark by sending them a C & D. No need to fall for this extortion scam.
Brilliant idea. Even if sending it for about the cost of postage is possible, (which it likely is not for a corporation, because they can't do anything legal-wise except through a lawyer, because the corporation has no natural person to act pro se), imagine that just one person chooses to fight it. While it might be possible for a corporation to avoid any legal costs by issuing a C&D from a web form, it certainly is not possible for them to handle and objections to a C&D, or refusal to C&D without obtaining a lawyer. And in about one hour, they will have exceeded the costs to just register the.xxx domain in the first place.
While a lot of people are calling this a "shakedown", and I can see some analogy for it, this is also a beneficial situation to the companies protecting trademarks, as they can protect their trademarks for significantly less than it would cost to protect them through legal actions.
Exactly. Remember mikerowesoft.com? The guy's name was Mike Rowe, and he had a software company. He had every right to that domain name and company name, but Microsoft forced him to give it up.
He did walk away with Microsoft paying all his legal fees, moving him to a new site, a subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network, an all-expenses paid trip for his family and him to visit the Microsoft Research Tech Fest , training for Microsoft certification, and an XBox with a ton of games (likely all of the games that Microsoft was publisher/producer for... hell, they're only about $15 in the company store anyways). And with all his legal fees paid off, his legal fund that he had collected was donated and turned into education money...
I almost don't call that "forced" to give anything up. It sounds like a perfectly reasonable (and perhaps overly generous from Microsoft) exchange for changing his website's name...
This finding has been made IN MICE. Now, I'm not usually one to suggest that just because an effect is demonstrated in a lab animal that it won't apply to humans, but hey, saccharine only caused bladder cancer in lab rats because they have a different urinary tract, and they were retaining it in a way that would never happen in humans.
Now, the disclaimer being made, women have a larger dispersion of fat about the whole body, and while they have more vellus hair then men, vellus hair is hardly noticeable, and in fact, "balding" is typically a result of the hair on one's head turning into vellus hair. So, making humans grow more vellus hair isn't really going to solve anything.
...But this greedy registry wants to wring extra dough out of people by playing on their trademark paranoias.
But if I don't register my-trademark.xxx, then it could be claimed in court that I wasn't protecting my trademark, and thus it should be vacated...
:( You know, I started this post off as a joke, but unfortunately, I suspect that someone could actually succeed at this claim... FSM, we need better trademark laws...:(
This dual major BS will just distract you and possibly cause you to have a lower GPA with your BSME - your GPA plus internships is going to get you into your first job. And by NOT double majoring, you may actually have time to socialize and further develop your networking and people skills.
I briefly was dual majoring in CS and German, but then I already skipped all the prereqs before the upper-division German courses, so all I would have had to do is take one German course every semester in addition to the normal CS program, and I would have had a double major. That easily would have fit into the electives requirements.
I eventually dropped the German major, because I failed my English 101 course, and so I couldn't take any more upper-division German courses, because I had to have a good foundation before taking upper-division courses, otherwise I might fail them. You know, even though I had an A in the upper-division German course that I did take...
Actually, since I started as a German major, I started taking Japanese, and ended up taking the whole series, even though I didn't have to once I was a double major, and then even after I switched to just a single major, I still finished the series. In all, of the four ways to satisfy my foreign language requirement, I did three of them. (Take 4 years in High School, Pass an upper-division foreign language course, and complete the 4-semester series for a foreign language. The only one I didn't do was: demonstrate competency in a foreign language not taught at the school equivalent to the 4-semester series to the foreign language department head. And really, I think by the time I graduated, I could have done that with Swedish...)... I'm rambling... TL;DR: double majoring isn't always a bad idea, or a social-life-killing choice.
TFA may not mention it, but TFF does - it's in the introduction of the film.
If the article contains the film, then does it count? I could have sworn I had seen it somewhere in the article... silly me, forgetting that there was text in the video itself. >_
Not sure that is accurate. Written as an algebraic expression, perhaps. Expressed as a method or a device (ie: drug) then a formula is able to be patented. Formulas as software (as pointed out by AC) is another avenue, such as MPEG. A formula is simply a mathematical expression, which describes a lot of software that is now patented, and as it stands now, software can be patented, at least in the US.
Software contains flow control, conditionals, a process, formula describe mathematical relationships and values but are not process. We have regularized processes for evaluating them, however they are not "process" in and of themselves.
Abstract ideas are concepts like pure mathematics and algorithms. You cannot patent a formula. However, you can patent an application of that formula. Thus, while you cannot patent a mathematical formula that produces nonrepeating patterns, you can patent paper products that use that formula to prevent rolls of paper from sticking together.
Starting from the given "formula cannot be patented", there is no way to construct a non-contradictory soliloquy to the contrary. I understand what people do, and I understand that software is patentable, however the specific formula apart from its application cannot be patented.
It's a pretty crappy distinction that the law makes, but it is still there. Arguing things like "you can't copyright a number, but since every computer text can be converted into a number, and you can copyright that text, then you can therefore copyright a number." No. You copyright the text regardless of medium. The number that is equivalent to the text is not the text without a "decoding" process, and therefore is not equivalent to the text itself... unless that number is specifically representing the copyrighted next.
This whole post is equivalent in my coding scheme to the number 42, therefore, I have a copyright on the number 42? No, because people can use the number 42 without it representing this specific set of text.
They're razor thin distinctions yes, but they exist, and your argument is not going to change that.
... but if the very foundation of key parts of 3D patents is undermined through prior art.... i dunno...
Formulas can't be patented, so it's unlikely that this video could provide any prior art for dismantling patents. Probably about all this video and the GPU patents share in common is the formulas involve.
In theory the law says that they can't in practice patent offices do approve patents for them and going to court to void them is a roulette.
You've responded with the best response to my comment. Patents are often issued for things that are not strictly patentable, but taking them down is of course, a wonderfully painful legal matter.
yes and no. If the court doesn't have jurisdiction, the judge is supposed to toss the case, not rule on it anyway inspite of the fact that his ruling will be unenforceable. In this case, the judge took the word of the plaintiff (who obviously has a massive vested interest in getting a default judgement) that the court had jurisdiction, and proceeded with the case.
A review of the way US courts may be in order... it is not the plaintiff's job to argue for the defense that there is a defect of jurisdiction. Since it used to be that just by appearing in front of the judge to argue any detail of the case was admitting that the court had jurisdiction, fighting a suit based on lack of personal jurisdiction used to be handled by just never showing up, having a default judgement entered, and then fighting the enforcement action brought in a court of competent jurisdiction.
Most of the US has realized how retarded this catch-22 is, and have started allowing for "special appearances" wherein a person can argue against personal jurisdiction (and only personal jurisdiction). Spamhaus started on this route, but then withdrew and opted for the older "lalala, I can't hear you" way of asserting personal jurisdiction.
Courts don't just sua sponte deny jurisdiction because they think they might not have jurisdiction.
Personally, if the $3 went to the court, I would not bother the clerks with pennies. But, if it went directly to the spammers, I would be sorely tempted to send 300 one cent USD international money orders in seperate envelopes with signature confirmation for the spammers to cash.
Sign here, please!...and here...and here...etc...
What? It's just a signature. You can't just write your signature? We all can. What's the big deal?
I don't think money orders are legal tender, so they could decline to accept payment in that form. However, since pennies are legal tender, no creditor can decline to accept it as payment for a debt.
As explained to an anonymous coward above, lawyers fees are only awarded if it is declared in the judgement, and not for all cases where someone loses. In particular, lawyers fees are usually only awarded in cases where it would be unreasonable for a party to shoulder the burden of bringing the case to court, usually because one side is so utterly wronged that it's either "come on defendants, these people shouldn't have had to bring this matter to a court... you were clearly wrong, and decided to just scream out 'nu-huh'"... or "come on plaintiffs, this argument is the stupidest thing in the world, and you have no evidence and/or no sane legal theory to make your argument... they never should have had to defend this in court in the first place."
Spamhaus is a British company anyway so the court had no jurisdiction over them. They only appealed on principal, there was never any prospect of them paying or being shut down.
Yeah, "appealing on principle"... and thus making a general appearance, and submitting to the jurisdiction of the court. Good job on those principles...
Spamhaus tried to argue that the court didn't have personal jurisdiction, and sent a lawyer under General Appearance to argue against the amount of the judgement. The appeals court rightfully explained that by making such an argument, Spamhaus recognizes the jurisdiction of the court.
They initially attempted to argue lack of personal jurisdiction under Special Appearance of a lawyer, but then (probably due to a misunderstanding of law, and advice from a UK lawyer) feared that they might jeopardize their claim of lack of personal jurisdiction by appearance, and so they up and quit, withdrawing their appearance. As a result, a default judgement was entered (as was the normal course of fighting cases prior to special appearance), and their remaining position was to fight any attempts to recover the judgement with claims that the court had no personal jurisdiction. They decided for the other route of arguing against the damages, and thus making a general appearance and submitting to jurisdiction.
I honestly think it's probable that they were working under different legal assumptions based on UK law, rather than US law, and didn't understand how to properly argue lack of personal jurisdiction in the US... (since the US law in this matter differs from UK law, it's not an unreasonable assumption.)
Slashdot Mirror
You're of course right, and my first paragraph was intended to be a disclaim of "I'm not saying that nothing in lab animals is applicable to humans", but rather, I wanted to point out that "hair" isn't just one thing in humans. There are two types of hair, vellus hair, and terminal hair, and it's entirely possible that this process would only activate vellus hair growth (being that women have more fat on average, and more vellus hair, this seems like a possibility).
My objection was that while this could be used to grow more hair, there is no guarantee that it could be used to grow more of the same type of hair that most people mean when they say, "hair". Because, in fact, bald men don't have any less hair, they just have had terminal hair follicles change to vellus hair follicles. (Excepting the case where a man is bald because he shaved, or used a form of epilation.)
oops, respect m'am. pls ignore previous profanity.
Fuck that noise. ;)
You just ruined the days of hundreds of slashdot readers, thanks for the FACTS pal!
Someone mod this guy +5 dream shattering.
I'm also a girl... so the -5 No girls on the internet modding will probably equal the two out?
I know, from the summary title I was hoping for a link between being fat and being bald, since often we men exhibit both characteristics. Disappointments all round. I can take down that banner welcoming our fat, bald, vellus enveloped overlords.
Well, there's no reason to doubt that fatty tissue could lead to more vellus hair. In fact, since women typically have more of both, it might actually be related in humans. I suppose, the point I was trying to make was that when we think of "hair", we think there is only one kind... silly us, there's actually three kinds. (vellus hair, and two types of terminal hair: on the head, and "axillary hair", which is vellus hair that turns to terminal hair under exposure to testosterone.)
So, it's entirely possible that we could cause humans to grow more hair with this process, we just wouldn't usually call it hair, because we don't typically consider vellus hair to be "hair".
So, don't let your desire to wave your banner wane, there is still a chance that that much might actually apply to humans.
You can express a process as a formula and a formula as a process. (see, among others: lambda calculus)
Very well then, I'm patenting 0*x = 0.
You all are already arguing that I can turn this into software, and thus patent it, right? So, I'm going to patent it.
Oh that's right, except I can't patent formulas, only their application.
(All quotes from the Wikipedia article: The Spamhaus Project)
Spamhaus initially hired an American law firm, which had the case moved from the state court to the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, but then (on the advice of its British lawyers) objected to the lawsuit altogether on the grounds that Spamhaus, being based in the United Kingdom, was outside the jurisdiction of United States courts.[21][22] The court, presided over by Judge Charles Kocoras, proceeded with the case against Spamhaus without considering the international jurisdiction issue, prompting British MP Derek Wyatt to call for the judge to be suspended from office.[23] Not having had its objection to jurisdiction examined, Spamhaus refused to participate in the U.S. case any further and withdrew its counsel.
Sounds perfectly like what I suggested had happened. They hired a US lawyer to fight it, but later on advice from a UK lawyer, objected to personal jurisdiction. However, since they had already made a general appearance the US courts refused to hear the matter, as they had already submitted to personal jurisdiction by general appearance. At such time, likely again under advice of a UK lawyer, they withdrew from the proceeding in an attempt to defend against an enforcement ruling within the UK itself, by retaining the "na na na na, I don't hear you" traditional personal jurisdiction defense.
On 20 October 2006, Judge Korcoras issued a ruling denying e360's motion against ICANN, stating in his opinion that "there has been no indication that ICANN [is] not [an] independent entit[y] [from Spamhaus], thus preventing a conclusion that [it] is acting in concert" with Spamhaus and that the court had no authority over ICANN in this matter. The court further ruled that removing Spamhaus's domain name registration was a remedy that was "too broad to be warranted in this case," because it would "cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus via its existing domain name, not just those that are in contravention" of the default judgment. Kocoras concluded, "[w]hile we will not condone or tolerate noncompliance with a valid order of this court [i.e., Spamhaus' refusal to satisfy the default judgement] neither will we impose a sanction that does not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct.
Sounds like they were not in any danger of having their domain seized. Considering it wasn't until 2007 that they again retained US counsel to fight the amount of the judgement. So, it doesn't seem like they were under any fear that their domain was going to be seized, as to why they decided to fight it. Perhaps they got further input from their UK lawyer noting that their general appearance might be accepted by UK courts, and make the default judgement enforceable in the UK, and as such they had to make the choice of rolling the dice on the judgement being held unenforceable in the UK, or appealing the default judgement and getting the award reduced. (Oftentimes, lawyers will present alternatives like this, rather than a single "you have one legal choice in this matter.")
or.. its possible they have hired a lawyer in the UK and he was just told to talk to the American court and point out the obvious that they really don't have any jurisdiction over their company, and therefor was talking to the courts on behalf of the company as a representative, not a lawyer.
In US law, no one can speak on behalf of a corporation in court except a bar-certified lawyer. Whether they attempt to call themselves "merely a representative" or not.
Did you ever think that they had two lawyers? One in the UK, and the other in the US? They initially did make a special appearance to argue personal jurisdiction (it's noted in fact in the opinion linked to in TFS) but "for unknown reasons" (paraphrasing) withdrew their appearance and let it sit.
It sounds to me, like they got a lawyer in the US to argue against personal jurisdiction (proper course in US law), then retained a UK attorney to speak to locally (so they don't have to communicate with their lawyer in the US for exorbitant fees for legal time, possibly odd hours, phone call costs.) so they could get a handle on legal advise appropriate for UK citizens. This UK lawyer probably directed them that if e360 got a judgement against them, and they had made an appearance in a US court, that e360 could come to the UK courts and seek enforcement of the judgement, and the UK courts would grant that enforcement, because the UK law does not recognize special appearances.
You know, because there are a lot more issues for a foreign citizen in a foreign country working within the US legal system than just what the US legal system says...
Submitting in the sense that they would be completely unaffected by any ruling and not pay out any money?
No, by submitting to the jurisdiction of the court, you lose the ability to argue lack of personal jurisdiction when the ruling is brought to be enforced in their home country. And then they have a court order against you in a court that can seize your assets.
The spammer lost badly. He wasted lots of money lawyers and Spamhaus didn't.
Correct. Even though he "won", he lost the most in this exchange.
I'm rambling.
No shit. I think I know why you failed English 101.
Because I'm insanely lazy, and didn't ever do any homework?
Oh... you thought it was because I had poor written skills. No, that wasn't the reason.
You can protect the tradmark by sending them a C & D. No need to fall for this extortion scam.
Brilliant idea. Even if sending it for about the cost of postage is possible, (which it likely is not for a corporation, because they can't do anything legal-wise except through a lawyer, because the corporation has no natural person to act pro se), imagine that just one person chooses to fight it. While it might be possible for a corporation to avoid any legal costs by issuing a C&D from a web form, it certainly is not possible for them to handle and objections to a C&D, or refusal to C&D without obtaining a lawyer. And in about one hour, they will have exceeded the costs to just register the .xxx domain in the first place.
While a lot of people are calling this a "shakedown", and I can see some analogy for it, this is also a beneficial situation to the companies protecting trademarks, as they can protect their trademarks for significantly less than it would cost to protect them through legal actions.
Exactly. Remember mikerowesoft.com? The guy's name was Mike Rowe, and he had a software company. He had every right to that domain name and company name, but Microsoft forced him to give it up.
He did walk away with Microsoft paying all his legal fees, moving him to a new site, a subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network, an all-expenses paid trip for his family and him to visit the Microsoft Research Tech Fest , training for Microsoft certification, and an XBox with a ton of games (likely all of the games that Microsoft was publisher/producer for... hell, they're only about $15 in the company store anyways). And with all his legal fees paid off, his legal fund that he had collected was donated and turned into education money...
I almost don't call that "forced" to give anything up. It sounds like a perfectly reasonable (and perhaps overly generous from Microsoft) exchange for changing his website's name...
This finding has been made IN MICE. Now, I'm not usually one to suggest that just because an effect is demonstrated in a lab animal that it won't apply to humans, but hey, saccharine only caused bladder cancer in lab rats because they have a different urinary tract, and they were retaining it in a way that would never happen in humans.
Now, the disclaimer being made, women have a larger dispersion of fat about the whole body, and while they have more vellus hair then men, vellus hair is hardly noticeable, and in fact, "balding" is typically a result of the hair on one's head turning into vellus hair. So, making humans grow more vellus hair isn't really going to solve anything.
...But this greedy registry wants to wring extra dough out of people by playing on their trademark paranoias.
But if I don't register my-trademark.xxx, then it could be claimed in court that I wasn't protecting my trademark, and thus it should be vacated...
:( You know, I started this post off as a joke, but unfortunately, I suspect that someone could actually succeed at this claim... FSM, we need better trademark laws... :(
This dual major BS will just distract you and possibly cause you to have a lower GPA with your BSME - your GPA plus internships is going to get you into your first job. And by NOT double majoring, you may actually have time to socialize and further develop your networking and people skills.
I briefly was dual majoring in CS and German, but then I already skipped all the prereqs before the upper-division German courses, so all I would have had to do is take one German course every semester in addition to the normal CS program, and I would have had a double major. That easily would have fit into the electives requirements.
I eventually dropped the German major, because I failed my English 101 course, and so I couldn't take any more upper-division German courses, because I had to have a good foundation before taking upper-division courses, otherwise I might fail them. You know, even though I had an A in the upper-division German course that I did take...
Actually, since I started as a German major, I started taking Japanese, and ended up taking the whole series, even though I didn't have to once I was a double major, and then even after I switched to just a single major, I still finished the series. In all, of the four ways to satisfy my foreign language requirement, I did three of them. (Take 4 years in High School, Pass an upper-division foreign language course, and complete the 4-semester series for a foreign language. The only one I didn't do was: demonstrate competency in a foreign language not taught at the school equivalent to the 4-semester series to the foreign language department head. And really, I think by the time I graduated, I could have done that with Swedish...) ... I'm rambling... TL;DR: double majoring isn't always a bad idea, or a social-life-killing choice.
TFA may not mention it, but TFF does - it's in the introduction of the film.
If the article contains the film, then does it count? I could have sworn I had seen it somewhere in the article... silly me, forgetting that there was text in the video itself. >_
Nah! You noticed you were wrong. The total idiots never figure that out.
Ok, so just an idiot then. :)
Formulas can't be patented,
Not sure that is accurate. Written as an algebraic expression, perhaps. Expressed as a method or a device (ie: drug) then a formula is able to be patented. Formulas as software (as pointed out by AC) is another avenue, such as MPEG. A formula is simply a mathematical expression, which describes a lot of software that is now patented, and as it stands now, software can be patented, at least in the US.
Software contains flow control, conditionals, a process, formula describe mathematical relationships and values but are not process. We have regularized processes for evaluating them, however they are not "process" in and of themselves.
Abstract ideas are concepts like pure mathematics and algorithms. You cannot patent a formula. However, you can patent an application of that formula. Thus, while you cannot patent a mathematical formula that produces nonrepeating patterns, you can patent paper products that use that formula to prevent rolls of paper from sticking together.
Source
Starting from the given "formula cannot be patented", there is no way to construct a non-contradictory soliloquy to the contrary. I understand what people do, and I understand that software is patentable, however the specific formula apart from its application cannot be patented.
It's a pretty crappy distinction that the law makes, but it is still there. Arguing things like "you can't copyright a number, but since every computer text can be converted into a number, and you can copyright that text, then you can therefore copyright a number." No. You copyright the text regardless of medium. The number that is equivalent to the text is not the text without a "decoding" process, and therefore is not equivalent to the text itself... unless that number is specifically representing the copyrighted next.
This whole post is equivalent in my coding scheme to the number 42, therefore, I have a copyright on the number 42? No, because people can use the number 42 without it representing this specific set of text.
They're razor thin distinctions yes, but they exist, and your argument is not going to change that.
... but if the very foundation of key parts of 3D patents is undermined through prior art.... i dunno...
Formulas can't be patented, so it's unlikely that this video could provide any prior art for dismantling patents. Probably about all this video and the GPU patents share in common is the formulas involve.
In theory the law says that they can't in practice patent offices do approve patents for them and going to court to void them is a roulette.
You've responded with the best response to my comment. Patents are often issued for things that are not strictly patentable, but taking them down is of course, a wonderfully painful legal matter.
yes and no. If the court doesn't have jurisdiction, the judge is supposed to toss the case, not rule on it anyway inspite of the fact that his ruling will be unenforceable. In this case, the judge took the word of the plaintiff (who obviously has a massive vested interest in getting a default judgement) that the court had jurisdiction, and proceeded with the case.
A review of the way US courts may be in order... it is not the plaintiff's job to argue for the defense that there is a defect of jurisdiction. Since it used to be that just by appearing in front of the judge to argue any detail of the case was admitting that the court had jurisdiction, fighting a suit based on lack of personal jurisdiction used to be handled by just never showing up, having a default judgement entered, and then fighting the enforcement action brought in a court of competent jurisdiction.
Most of the US has realized how retarded this catch-22 is, and have started allowing for "special appearances" wherein a person can argue against personal jurisdiction (and only personal jurisdiction). Spamhaus started on this route, but then withdrew and opted for the older "lalala, I can't hear you" way of asserting personal jurisdiction.
Courts don't just sua sponte deny jurisdiction because they think they might not have jurisdiction.
Personally, if the $3 went to the court, I would not bother the clerks with pennies. But, if it went directly to the spammers, I would be sorely tempted to send 300 one cent USD international money orders in seperate envelopes with signature confirmation for the spammers to cash.
Sign here, please! ...and here...and here...etc...
What? It's just a signature. You can't just write your signature? We all can. What's the big deal?
I don't think money orders are legal tender, so they could decline to accept payment in that form. However, since pennies are legal tender, no creditor can decline to accept it as payment for a debt.
As explained to an anonymous coward above, lawyers fees are only awarded if it is declared in the judgement, and not for all cases where someone loses. In particular, lawyers fees are usually only awarded in cases where it would be unreasonable for a party to shoulder the burden of bringing the case to court, usually because one side is so utterly wronged that it's either "come on defendants, these people shouldn't have had to bring this matter to a court... you were clearly wrong, and decided to just scream out 'nu-huh'"... or "come on plaintiffs, this argument is the stupidest thing in the world, and you have no evidence and/or no sane legal theory to make your argument... they never should have had to defend this in court in the first place."
Spamhaus is a British company anyway so the court had no jurisdiction over them. They only appealed on principal, there was never any prospect of them paying or being shut down.
Yeah, "appealing on principle"... and thus making a general appearance, and submitting to the jurisdiction of the court. Good job on those principles...
Spamhaus tried to argue that the court didn't have personal jurisdiction, and sent a lawyer under General Appearance to argue against the amount of the judgement. The appeals court rightfully explained that by making such an argument, Spamhaus recognizes the jurisdiction of the court.
They initially attempted to argue lack of personal jurisdiction under Special Appearance of a lawyer, but then (probably due to a misunderstanding of law, and advice from a UK lawyer) feared that they might jeopardize their claim of lack of personal jurisdiction by appearance, and so they up and quit, withdrawing their appearance. As a result, a default judgement was entered (as was the normal course of fighting cases prior to special appearance), and their remaining position was to fight any attempts to recover the judgement with claims that the court had no personal jurisdiction. They decided for the other route of arguing against the damages, and thus making a general appearance and submitting to jurisdiction.
I honestly think it's probable that they were working under different legal assumptions based on UK law, rather than US law, and didn't understand how to properly argue lack of personal jurisdiction in the US... (since the US law in this matter differs from UK law, it's not an unreasonable assumption.)