What is Digg?59 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+55Is our government doing ANYTHING right?
- actionscripted, on 10/12/2007, -8/+45No. Time for another civil war to emancipate ALL citizens -- from our current government.
- StickyFinger, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35I don't like this patent game bs. People patenting everything and anything because they can. I'm going to patent oxygen, you all will die now.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26I'll patent O2 molecules...good luck breathing ozone or monoatomic oxygen, sucka.
- CygnusX1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20If you do it with the left hand it feels like someone else is doin it.
- evi1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18uhh drwurm i don't know if you pay attention to the news or anything but the dmca has allowed the massive suings by the RIAA and the MPAA, hindered technology development and innovation by locking down content under DRM an this is just the tip of the iceberg. For instance the next generation of DRM will basically tell you when and where you can view the content you purchased and if you attempt to view the content on anything other then the approved medium you are in violation of the law.
DMCA has killed fair use rights as we know it. - alawson75, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18And here our very own government was just recently urging everyone to adopt open source software as quick as possible. Typical case of the right hand not knowing how the left hand is screwing everything up.
- tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I like the CC, but it has *****-all to do with patents. You're thinking copyrights.
- masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17I thought it was generally the right hand that was the evil one. -_-
- drag, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13The SOLE reason for patents is to encourage innovation.
The idea is:
- Remove the need for Trade Secrets. In order to get a patent you have to be open and document everything about your invention. Your trading your secrets for a temporary monopoly.
For instance you can't trademark or copyright a engine block. If Chevy comes out with a design then Ford can lift ideas and copy it and such. So patents allow a way for chevy to create a new way of running a motor or building a engine block or whatever and they can keep Ford from 'stealing' the idea for 7 or so years. At the end of the patent then Ford can use Chevy's design all they want and even improve on it and make new patents themsevles.
(of course with software you can patent AND copyright stuff AND keep it a trade secret.. Kinda defeats that whole concept.. dontcha think?)
- Encourage inventions by giving temporary monopolies on ideas. People will be able to spend time creating if thy can make money at it.. and since it's temporary you have to keep on creating to make more money. Case in point: Drug industry. Patents make drugs very expensive, but they also make making new drugs very lucrative. So we get new cures and better drugs. (which is better? old cheap drugs that don't work well, or new expensive drugs that do a better job?)
If Drug companies don't keep on spending that money on creating new and better cures then when the patent runs out their stock plunges and they eventually would go out of busines.
Of course the bad side of that is when researches discover something new and they put a patent on it and some group of lawyers buy up the patent and just sits on it miking it for money and hoping for a early retirement without actually contributing anything back to sociaty. (entirely unethical behavior IMO).
With software patents none of the good things about patents happen.. only the bad stuff.
You get stiffled innovation. Patents are too easy to get and it's impossible to avoid.
Look for yourself!
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=software&FIELD1=&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PG01
Doing a patent document search (publish patents since 2001 and newer) reveiled 277,594 patents.
With such gems as:
Patent 20060191021
"Provided is a data storing apparatus for recording data processed by a host system, and more particularly, to an authentication method of determining legality of the host system for accessing the data storing apparatus and recording medium storing the same. The authentication method includes: checking a connection elapsed time with the host system; when the connection elapsed time exceeds a predetermined time period, requesting the data storing apparatus to authenticate the host system; and determining to allow the host system to access the data storing apparatus according to the authentication result. According to the authentication method, the data storing apparatus counts the connection elapsed time with the host system, and authenticates the host system if the connection elapsed time exceeds a predetermined time period, thereby preventing the data storing apparatus from illegally being accessed by an authorized host system after the host system authenticates the data storing apparatus."
20060190978
Remotely accessing a set-top terminal
Abstract
An Internet server is operatively coupled to a configurable set-top terminal (STT), thereby providing remote access to the configurable STT through the Internet server. The Internet server is configured to provide web-pages that preferably emulate the user interface for the configurable STT. In that regard, a subscriber can log into the Internet server and configure the configurable STT from various devices that are Internet-compatible. The Internet server is configured to translate input by the subscriber into configuration information for the configurable STT that is pushed out to the configurable STT directly after being received from the subscriber.
I bet if you look around you can find a result for 'Bubble search sort'.
A project like Mozilla consists of several million lines of code. Hundreds of thousands of solutiosn to little problems and all of them potentionally patentable and probably patented.
With large industries like cars manufacturing you have huge expensive setups. Full sized factories, thousands of workers, hundreds of managers and millions and millions of dollars of assets just to be able to make a single car. Hiring a laywer to examine 10 or 20 patent documents that may relate to a specific manufacturing proccess or a engine motor mount is not a big deal. It's a small expense.
However for the typical software programmer working on his own creating hundreds of 'inventions' and creative solutions to technical problems with even fairly trivial programs.. How is he going to be able to afford the legal over head of having to deal with over two hundred thousand patents that may cause him to get sued?
He is just as liable as anybody else. Not knowing a patent exists or not examining patent documentation, not using a program, not reverse engineering a program isn't going to affect weither or not your liable. If you make a invention that infringes on a patent then your SOL. Your liable, it takes no action on your part except simply writing a program and publishing it.
Software patents just don't work. It's creating problems, not solving them. They are stiffling innovation, not encouraging it. It's a ***** situation.
For a example of what you have to deal with:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20060514233436196
A guy has a hobby with working with model trains. He liked the idea of being able to control the model train from his computer so he wrote a Java application to do it. He thought other people may like it, so he open sourced the application and distributed it at no charge to other interested people.
End result of this? A company that makes propriatory model train software (which he probably didn't know even existed) filed a lawsuite for $203,000 dollars worth of damages due to some patent he may have violated.
It's *****. He didn't do anything wrong, but he is probably going to sued into bankrutpcy because of it. I have no faith that he'll get out of it because what the propriatory software vendor is doing is perfectly legal. - akashra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I hear it's great if you're in the sock business.
- hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10No. What can be patented is the idea of methods for letting oxygen into buildings, and then suing everyone who makes buildings that has such a feature. It's immaterial whether or not it's easier to make buildings that let oxygen in. In fact, patent that easier way of making buildings, as well.
- ESTEBEVERDE, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Patents are problematic when they stifle innovation and competition.
In it's current incarnation it is a bit of a scheme that is really nothing more than extortion.
We need balance. - mabhatter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9the trouble with this ruling is that it basically says the govt can print patents all they want, and damn any sane rules at all. With the weak patents being granted already, the administration seeing patents as a business "right" rather than privellage, and the most recent PR being that "anything" can be patented we're already in trouble.
Add to this bad situation a court system breaking under the pressue. The Patent office wants to simplify things by granting more patents, then change the system to make it harder to appeal.. "sorry we ***** up, but deal with it public." Now the courts want to stick their head in the sand and make the problems go away by lowering the standard so they don't have to waste therie time sorting out the mess the PTO created.
What this means for Open Source is that more bad patents will be granted, and the court will stop spending the time to clean them up. Remember, unlike copyright patents don't have any "fair use" provisions... you can be sued for violating a patent even if you use it for your own purposes. That's the whole problem. software patents are even worse because the claims are broad and the source is hidden.. so even if you are unique for technical purposes, there's no way you can prove it without going to expensive courts. - Teratogen, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10the Patent Office has obviously outlived its usefulness.
- MrAndrews, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I agree with your sentiment, and I even drew pictures to match:
http://dustrunners.blogspot.com/2006/08/crow-who-could-fly.html?x=0155
Forgive the self-plugging. At least it's on-topic : - thesparrowband, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7if they screw that up...
- sgbooth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The above comments are right on. My problem with posting like this is that most people know zero about patent law and spout off some nonsense "oh thats obvious!" The problem is that to get a patent is that the invention must be "non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention." The problem with the law is that its a subjective test, what is non-obvious to one person is obvious to another? And who is a person having skill in the art? And then throw in the last clause and its gets all f'ed up "at the time of the invention." In other words, the you have to step back in time to consider the merits of the invention and cannot gain impermissible hindsight from recent innovations.
Its not an easy test and is actually one of the most difficult law tests to apply. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit created a test called the teaching-suggestion-motivation (or TSM) test that actually turns the obviousness test into an objective test. That is what is under attack in the case, the petitioners insist that the TSM test sets a very low standard of patentability. I agree to an extent, but the petitioners and their supporters (which includes the BUSH administration by the way) state the TSM test is contrary to the Supreme Court's law. This is absolutely true, but there is a lot of history to the current law and I don't want to go into it - but in a nutshell, the court created law is exactly what Congress wanted to create in the 80's).
Whats also important about this case is that both parties dispute what the invention really is. Its not as simple as you'd like to think and if you want to get into it, read the case. In sum, I absolutely agree that the standard of patentability should be higher. But my beef is that nobody, not a single party, has laid the foundation of an objective test that is better than the current TSM test. And finally, I don't know if I want the Supreme Court to touch the law because the last time they did, it resulted in utter chaos in the patent system. - crilen007, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Not really... its open source and on the net. Even if sun stopped doing it, others could work on it.
- dbug, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Hey MrAndrews you silly man, PENGUINS CAN'T FLY!!
- MrAndrews, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@dbug: not since the crow, no. Poor penguins...
- Godel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6That may be true in software, where the first person out with a program usually wins in the market, but think about drug companies. It takes millions of dollars to develop a new drug, but it might only take a few thousand to copy it. The patent process allows companies to recoup their research funds before the market is allowed to compete with them.
- fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4And it may work in software, but we'll have to stop issuing patents for trivial things and take into account the rapid pace of advance in the field before we find out.
- TomP, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Dugg because this needs attention
- plasmatic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Obviously these people don't use computers.
- crilen007, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'm going to patent creating a patent.
*BOOOM* - williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@r2 It's not about prior art, doofus, it's about obviousness. There are way too many patents of the obvious in the system because patent lawyers have gradually pushed the obviousness threshold down to where it is a joke.
- dotdan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've heard the effect is somewhat similar to putting a bottomless bag into a bottomless bag..
- codenexus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Yep, problem is that so many people patent so many ideas you can hardly walk down the street without violating some sort of patent. The system is broken.
The problem is that some businesses do spend quite a bit of time and money on innovating and want to protect that. I can not blame them for it. On the other hand at what point does that protection come at a cost to society. There needs to be a law that allows for use of a patented idea if society benifits from it and is used in an open source free way. I can't word it as well as some smart lawyer would.
Hmm perhaps a company has to show cost of innovating that patent and then be allowed to make a certain percentage more on top of that. After they have gained a profit back the patent can be used for free non-commercial use?
Of course the way the chips will continue to fall will be big lobbying by rich companies of our political representatives until society and the voters decide enough is enough.
"Tubes!" Need I say more... - mt066, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nooooo! KSR vs Teleflex was the most promising hint of progress I had seen in patent law. Basically, had they NOT ruled as they did, patents would be much easier to reject, and a patent would be a more lofty designation than it is now. Currently examiners must rely on "suggestions" for every insignificant aspect of an invention, which is just ridiculous. The game becomes not "who is the most novel," but "who is the most specfic," because eventually an applicant is going to include a detail that is not present in any type of application, however insignificant or unrelated to the invention it may be. And I suppose it will continue to be that way. This sucks.
- fatas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2USA getting dumb and dumber.
- talledega500, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes there are too many software patents. Yes the US Patent Office is a joke.
But the "suggestion test" is NOT the reason. The FSF is making a joke out of itself for suggesting that it is the reason.
...."Someone bothered to state the obvious".....
Stating an idea in any form (ie. )publishing it etc is the foundation of prior art.
Why are the brakes on a railroad car and the brakes on your personal automobile patented by different people?
Are they not just BRAKES?
Hmmm fishy right? Well yes and no all patents have a context and that context has to be documented in every case.
Nobody has a patent on the Internet but someone surely has a patent on accessing it from a cellphone.
OH ITS SO OBVIOUS. Well if it was so obvious then why didnt someone WRITE IT DOWN ever?
The new york times publishes articles everyday entitled NUTHER SUICIDE BOMBER in
(name your country). They also have a copyright to it.
And we wake up everyday and think DUH thats SOOOO obvious.
Except you didnt write it because you didnt know it.
The human brain tricks you into thinking you know it all.
Its part of your survival mechanism.
But when it comes to law it must be written down no matter how OBVIOUS you think it is. And how jealous you are that someone thought to write it down before you did.
And I find it INCREDIBLY ridiculous that the FSF thinks this threatens open source when BSD got caught jacking code from ATT which was the foudnation of linux and then changed the names of the functions to avoid litigation.
Grow up. - natterca, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I consult quite a bit for the Canadian Government. Time and again you hear of managers and departments building "empires". I'm just wondering if the recent trends regarding granting of bs patents is the USPTO's bid to create a bigger empire? Imagine the additional people, information systems, etc. etc. required to deal with all these patents.
- HsoKinees, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hmm.. I wonder if the it's possible to patent the download of information from the internet? o.O the internet would really be screwed then :P well.. not the internet, but it's users ;P
- gd007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i am going to patent a for loop.
- hawkmucci, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Do blogs count as a source such as a technical journal for prior art. If that were the case, i feel like the blogging community could keep things under wrap for trivial advancement patents. They should overturn this ruling and regulate common law patent applications.
- strebormj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Current (software) patent law not only permits patent trolling, but, in a way, imposes it on legitimate enterprise. Knowing that both snakes and all of your competitors are patenting, and filing patent infringmenet lawsuits over, every known software construct, imposes a burden on legitimate organizations to patent all their existing code before the others have a chance to.
Having thus patented every hack in your system compels you to protect those patents against infringement, lest your lack of inactivity open your patent claim up for dispute (e.g., IBM's patent for PrintFile() in 2001 can be challenged by SCO's unnoticed patent for SendFileToHardCopyOutputDevice() in 2002). The snowballing effect is entirely predictable, and reduces the authenticity of the system with each new patent filed.
Talk about a "chilling effect" on innovation -- would you invest in a company knowing that, as every software construct has already been patented, using different wording, six times, that company is both going to have to sue to protect its patents, as well as be sued for violation of other company's patents? Everyone is currently walking on eggshells, and it's getting exponentially worse every day. - fantasticFlan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Separation of powers, now it's time to be mad at the Judicial Branch.
- LucasVB, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'm gonna patent "patenting *****." I'll be ***** rich in no time!
- heehaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0drag,
The patent system has problems, but don't mislead the readers. You listed patent *applications*, not patents. You can file a patent application for anything, but it doesn't mean you'll get a patent allowed and issued. All patent applications are examined first. Some examiners do a good job and stop frivolous applications from being issued. - drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0""Separation of powers, now it's time to be mad at the Judicial Branch.""
Not realy. It's their job to interpret the law, not change it. (even though it seems a popular route nowadays to attempt to do exactly that).
If it's not unconstutitional and it's legal according to the laws on the books, then it's their job to tell you that this sort of thing is simply how it works.
See? Seperation of powers.. Which group do you go after now?
A. President: Signs the law. (all he does. Bushy is completely irrelevent in this situation)
B. Congress: Power to change or make new law
C. Courts: interprets the law.
So the answer is obvious: B Your paid representatives.
The presedent doesn't represent you. He is suppose to be a figure head for foreign countries to deal with. He is also suppose to be our leader in a time of war.
The judicial branch doesn't lead you. They are appointed for life. It's their job to be above the fray, nothing you do can ever affect them or cause them to loose their job.
But the congress.. The Senate and House of Representatives! Those are who matters! Those are the people you need to pay attention to and deal with. Senate specificly is suppose to be for business and movers and shakers to deal with.. The House is the populist representatives, for the voter to deal with.
So write your Congressmen and tell them how you feel. If they don't like it then promise you'll try to get them fired and replaced with somebody who does. Specificly target the House of Representatives. This is what they are for. Have them change the law, make it so that patents are sane again.
Generally patents are good, but not all the time. Specificly software patents is a huge threat to innovation and small business in the United States. If patents stiffle innovation in the U.S. then innovation will simply happen elsewere.. - Hindu_Wardrobe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I'm digging you anyways.
- wicked42, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Even before I read your comment I decided to patent breathing.
Now if you want to use that Oxygen come talk to me?
ALSO UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will I license use of my breathing patent to any lawyers. Sorry. - Atomic1fire, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2im gonna patent a a device to sit on then i can sue all the people who make chairs
there should be a law allowing patents owned by the public thus stoping people from taking open source projects and calling it there own - transistor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1i'm gonna patent using a brain to think and for motor skills.
next i'm gonna patent the practise of using a mouth and nose to breathe. animals are not exempt. - BenWilson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This is another case of an activist judge taking matters into his own hand and legislating. What we need are judges who will merely expound the law. Where such expounding risks changing the meaning of the law, then the judge should _stop_ and punt to the legislature. If Congress in turn chooses _not_ to legislate, then the _prior_ precedent should stand. After all, only Congress is permitted to legislate.
Specifically, since Congress has express Constitutional authority here, all they have to do is pass a law reversing the Circuit court. Forget trying to persuade five attorneys in black robes---go to Congress, Young Man. - mt066, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3n/m
- turbodigg, on 10/12/2007, -10/+6I'm getting fed up with the United States Government and our "intelligent" president, who I can't believe made it into office.
NO ONE CAN TAKE AWAY OPEN OFFICE FROM ME!!!!!! - Teratogen, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1"Stay on the bomb run, boys! I'm gonna git them doors open if it harelips everybody on Bear Creek!"
- Teratogen, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Four miles. Auto CDC into manual teleflex link.
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