It appears that claim 1 is invalid for being indefinite. See, 35 USC 112, second paragraph. Claim 1 says "determining, based on receipt of said content message, that said user has stopped typing" but said user never starts typing, said user operates an input device, which is not necessarily the same thing. See claim 2, where the device is called a keyboard, which means under the law that the input device in claim 1 must include non-keyboard devices. But if it is not a keyboard input device in claim 1, how will one start typing so that it can be determined that said user has stopped typing.
Toll-free calls cost the recipient money. Every time that anwering machine picks up, its money down the tubes.
Don't forget to return (empty or containing a nice message to the poor guy that is paid to process the replies) all prepaid business reply envelopes that get sent to you in junk mail.
You are correct that the Bern Convention requires that copyright be afforded without formalities. This renewel requirement at 50 years would be a formality. The treaty also requires that other countries need only confer copyright protection for works made in this country for the same term as the US provides under the treaty (i.e. without formalities).
Thus, if it can be argued that this formality at 50 years does not violate the treaty terms outright, it would result in every other country denying copyright to US made works after 50 years. The extension was put in place in order to conform US copyright term to international terms so that US works would not be disadvantaged in the rest of the world.
In short, Mickey Mouse would fall into the public domain in France even though it was renewed in the US. This is not gonna happen.
No one patents genes; no one patents life. These people are just silly. More precisely, the research companies are patenting a newly isolated and described chemical compound. It is also possible to patent a method for using such a chemical compound; although it is tough to get therapy patents when there is no record that the therapy usually works. You have to show that you know what to do with a chemical compound before you can patent it.
In this case, the patented chemical compound is a piece of DNA or RNA which is useful for a number of things. You can use it to detect DNA with a complementary sequnce from a patient's tissue sample. Thus, it is a research tool just as you might patent a clever electronic spectrophotometic tool. The highly indignant researcher from Penn was using a patented research tool which was very expensive to invent and perfect. Myriad and the other research companies have just as valid a right to ask to be paid for its efforts as HP or Lucent's Bell Labs.
The patent says that the US Gov. has a paid-up license to the technology under a DOE contract. Since the patent appears to come out of a LBL project, they probably paid for the developement.
A recent camparison of many platforms (including various Alpha and two K7's) with benchmarks related to computational chemistry is here. http://www.dl.ac.uk/CFS/benchmarks/compchem.html The K7's hold up well in a broader range of benchmarks.
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It appears that claim 1 is invalid for being indefinite. See, 35 USC 112, second paragraph. Claim 1 says "determining, based on receipt of said content message, that said user has stopped typing" but said user never starts typing, said user operates an input device, which is not necessarily the same thing. See claim 2, where the device is called a keyboard, which means under the law that the input device in claim 1 must include non-keyboard devices. But if it is not a keyboard input device in claim 1, how will one start typing so that it can be determined that said user has stopped typing.
The rest is left as an excercise.
Important note, IANAL, this is not legal advice!
Actually, this patent is a continuation of an application filed on July 21, 1999, so that is its effective filing date.
BTw the parent applicaiton issued as Patent 6,519,639.
Toll-free calls cost the recipient money. Every time that anwering machine picks up, its money down the tubes.
Don't forget to return (empty or containing a nice message to the poor guy that is paid to process the replies) all prepaid business reply envelopes that get sent to you in junk mail.
You are correct that the Bern Convention requires that copyright be afforded without formalities. This renewel requirement at 50 years would be a formality. The treaty also requires that other countries need only confer copyright protection for works made in this country for the same term as the US provides under the treaty (i.e. without formalities).
Thus, if it can be argued that this formality at 50 years does not violate the treaty terms outright, it would result in every other country denying copyright to US made works after 50 years. The extension was put in place in order to conform US copyright term to international terms so that US works would not be disadvantaged in the rest of the world.
In short, Mickey Mouse would fall into the public domain in France even though it was renewed in the US. This is not gonna happen.
No one patents genes; no one patents life. These people are just silly. More precisely, the research companies are patenting a newly isolated and described chemical compound. It is also possible to patent a method for using such a chemical compound; although it is tough to get therapy patents when there is no record that the therapy usually works. You have to show that you know what to do with a chemical compound before you can patent it.
In this case, the patented chemical compound is a piece of DNA or RNA which is useful for a number of things. You can use it to detect DNA with a complementary sequnce from a patient's tissue sample. Thus, it is a research tool just as you might patent a clever electronic spectrophotometic tool. The highly indignant researcher from Penn was using a patented research tool which was very expensive to invent and perfect. Myriad and the other research companies have just as valid a right to ask to be paid for its efforts as HP or Lucent's Bell Labs.
The patent says that the US Gov. has a paid-up license to the technology under a DOE contract. Since the patent appears to come out of a LBL project, they probably paid for the developement.
A recent camparison of many platforms (including various Alpha and two K7's) with benchmarks related to computational chemistry is here. http://www.dl.ac.uk/CFS/benchmarks /compchem.html The K7's hold up well in a broader range of benchmarks.