The more rediculous DMCA complaints that happen the better. More people will realize what a mistake this was and will have justification for asking Congress to repeal it.
Now whether common sense will prevail, I don't know. Ideally I would want to see a flood of complaints that take down every single video, picture and sound on the internet. Then the politicians would be affected and businesses would complain and action would be taken. I'll sacrifice short term pain for long term freedom in this instance.
We are talking past each other you are talking about the company and I am talking about the developer on the patent which is what the parent is talking about.
Developers at large companies are not supposed to look for prior work and submit all ideas to their patent board which is what they did. I am willing to believe that the developers signed in good faith that their idea was unique as far as they knew. If they did know then their are not following company policy which I am willing to bet is just like mine is. Don't search for prior work.
I agree that they need a new patent lawyer though. What an easy miss and a PR nightmare.
Let not miss my point developers if they are doing their job, didn't and shouldn't have had a clue. Is Microsoft innocent in this, don't know, don't care. I have better things to worry about.
I think you all have this wrong about how it works at large companies. At my company we are told to submit a patent application for anything that seems innovative. What happens next is that a group meets and decides whether the submitted ideas are good patent candidates.
After that patent lawyers look the ideas over to ensure that there is no prior work, etc and that the idea can be patented. We then meet with the lawyers to draw up the patent application and then sign some papers.
The engineer really has no idea if it has prior work or not and are in fact told to just keep submitting ideas and let them deal with determining if an idea is patentable or not. In fact we are specifically told not to look at prior work in case we are infringing, that way if it turns out down the road that we are infringing on a patent, the company cannot be sued for triple damages.
So in summary, the engineers were 1) Not lazy - they were doing their jobs. 2) Not lying - because they shouldn't be checking if a patent is valid, that is what the lawyers are for. 3) Incompetent - because they were probably told to submit all ideas even if they suspected it might not be unique.
Another story about a breakthrough battery technology 2-4 years away. Wake me up when one of these breakthroughs becomes a reality the readers of Slashdot can afford and use.
Here is why. If more people vote the politicians have more people to be accountable to. If less people show up the special interests gain more power because they will vote no matter what. The more people the less influence the groups will have due to them being a smaller percentage of the voter pool.
If Yahoo fails to make money off of those sites we that stop the venture capital flow of money into these types of sites?
My guess is probably not, someone always thinks they are smarter and better, but its an interesting thought on if this will change the landscape if Yahoo does fail to make money off of these Web 2.0 properties?
I wouldn't appreciate this at all. I'd wonder what kind of retailer this was that couldn't get my order right the first time and wouldn't give them my information because I would have no way to verify the retailer is calling. I would consider their call a phishing scheme.
Parents are financially responsible for the screw ups of their kid. If their kid is not responsible the parent will get their ass sued off. I'm not saying that this is the right solution, but since a parent is financially responsible for when their kids screw up they should have resources available to know what their kid is up to.
We know how lawyers are, imagine this scenerio, "Your kid caused a major accident because of speeding. How come you did not use this device to control his driving habits?" as the parent gets nailed for punative damages.
This device sucks, but until kids start acting reasonable, parents need to account for what they are doing.
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The more rediculous DMCA complaints that happen the better. More people will realize what a mistake this was and will have justification for asking Congress to repeal it.
Now whether common sense will prevail, I don't know. Ideally I would want to see a flood of complaints that take down every single video, picture and sound on the internet. Then the politicians would be affected and businesses would complain and action would be taken. I'll sacrifice short term pain for long term freedom in this instance.
We are talking past each other you are talking about the company and I am talking about the developer on the patent which is what the parent is talking about.
Developers at large companies are not supposed to look for prior work and submit all ideas to their patent board which is what they did. I am willing to believe that the developers signed in good faith that their idea was unique as far as they knew. If they did know then their are not following company policy which I am willing to bet is just like mine is. Don't search for prior work.
I agree that they need a new patent lawyer though. What an easy miss and a PR nightmare.
You also need to brush up on what constitutes a perjury charge. to be convicted of perjury you have to have had the intention (the mens rea) to commit the act, and to have actually committed the act (the actus reus)."
Let not miss my point developers if they are doing their job, didn't and shouldn't have had a clue. Is Microsoft innocent in this, don't know, don't care. I have better things to worry about.
I think you all have this wrong about how it works at large companies. At my company we are told to submit a patent application for anything that seems innovative. What happens next is that a group meets and decides whether the submitted ideas are good patent candidates.
After that patent lawyers look the ideas over to ensure that there is no prior work, etc and that the idea can be patented. We then meet with the lawyers to draw up the patent application and then sign some papers.
The engineer really has no idea if it has prior work or not and are in fact told to just keep submitting ideas and let them deal with determining if an idea is patentable or not. In fact we are specifically told not to look at prior work in case we are infringing, that way if it turns out down the road that we are infringing on a patent, the company cannot be sued for triple damages.
So in summary, the engineers were
1) Not lazy - they were doing their jobs.
2) Not lying - because they shouldn't be checking if a patent is valid, that is what the lawyers are for.
3) Incompetent - because they were probably told to submit all ideas even if they suspected it might not be unique.
Another story about a breakthrough battery technology 2-4 years away. Wake me up when one of these breakthroughs becomes a reality the readers of Slashdot can afford and use.
Here is why. If more people vote the politicians have more people to be accountable to. If less people show up the special interests gain more power because they will vote no matter what. The more people the less influence the groups will have due to them being a smaller percentage of the voter pool.
If Yahoo fails to make money off of those sites we that stop the venture capital flow of money into these types of sites? My guess is probably not, someone always thinks they are smarter and better, but its an interesting thought on if this will change the landscape if Yahoo does fail to make money off of these Web 2.0 properties?
I wouldn't appreciate this at all. I'd wonder what kind of retailer this was that couldn't get my order right the first time and wouldn't give them my information because I would have no way to verify the retailer is calling. I would consider their call a phishing scheme.
Parents are financially responsible for the screw ups of their kid. If their kid is not responsible the parent will get their ass sued off. I'm not saying that this is the right solution, but since a parent is financially responsible for when their kids screw up they should have resources available to know what their kid is up to.
We know how lawyers are, imagine this scenerio, "Your kid caused a major accident because of speeding. How come you did not use this device to control his driving habits?" as the parent gets nailed for punative damages.
This device sucks, but until kids start acting reasonable, parents need to account for what they are doing.
Let the flames about how I am a ideal kid begin.