Patent Office Director: "My Hands Are Tied" 88
Goatbert writes: "Grant Gross from NewsForge has posted a report on a panel discussion on patents featuring TCP/IP co-inventor Vint Cerf as moderator, and with Tim O'Reilly and Todd Dickinson, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Very interesting read, with some good (and bad) ideas on patent laws."
Very good point. (Score:2)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Re:Republican Congress (Score:1)
I suggest you educate yourself [lp.org] a bit more before spreading misinformation like this. The Libertarian Party supports an end to corporate welfare.
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
Of course it's a familiar pattern. You just described the essential difference between Democrats and Republicans.
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EFF Member #11254
Re:"My hands are tied" (Score:2)
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:1)
To add another example: consider PCR, (polymerase chain reaction). It is quite commonly used in molecular biology. Although it is best known among the general public for its use in forensics, its applications are much much wider; nearly every molecular biology lab uses PCR. It is an efficient (in a matter of a few hours) procedure for making a large amount of a specific DNA sequence from a small sample.
Thought experiment: suppose you had a bachelor's degree in biochemistry or molecular biology, but somehow had never heard about PCR. If someone described the procedure for PCR to you, you would say, "Oh, of course that would work." It's so elegant and simple that it's pretty obvious that it would work--after it's been described to you.
However, suppose you were a Ph.D. in molecular biology, but again had somehow never heard of PCR. If someone asked you to come up with an efficient method of producing a large amount of DNA from a small sample, you likely would not come up with PCR.
On this very argument, a patent on PCR was upheld against a claim of obviousness.
I won't try to apply this to the one-click patent or other specific patents that have been discussed on /., because computers are not my field of specialty. But it does illustrate the point of what is considered "obvious."
age of change and reform (Score:2)
[off topic]
In SF here we are realizing that there is a problem with our streets. They were not designed well for the amount of traffic we have, now for the peds, or even the bycyles. They are starting refor this year.
[/off topic]
The patent office is going to start to go through the same thing. It is about time. 4 years ago I worked there and it was a goverment beaurocracy that was riddled with BS. Any idea was either getting rejected or allowed based on the supervisor that was reviewing the patents of his examiners. I don't blame the examiners, I blame the system. 'one click shopping' -. oh please. That is obvious. I think that next year we will be seeing many changes in the way we think about things within the USPTO and outside it.
The big appocalypse that Nostradamous predicted was vastly misinterpreted, it is not the end of the world, just the end of the world as we know it. The future holds many changes, of which we will see in the next 5 years.
HINT: There were no political fights at the olympics like there were in the past, with the russians and the us or some other countries. It was all fun and games.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
Another problem here is that Walker sees patent rights as property rights at all.
The authors of the constitution saw physical property as a natural right. A natural right is one that is inherent in people; it is not granted by the government. It may be enforced (or infringed) by the goverment, but it does not come from the government. (Disclaimer: certainly, not everyone agrees with this theory of rights. I'm just saying what the founders believed.) A natural right is not a means to some larger end--although it may have other benefits to society, that is incidental--a natural right is an end unto itself.
There are two clues in the Constitution that the founders did not see patent rights as natural rights, but rather artifical rights granted by the government. 1) The Constitution states that patents (and copyrights) are to secure the progress of science and the useful arts. A means to an end, not an end unto itself. If the patent law does not advance that end, it should be modified so that it does. 2) The Constitution states that patents (and copyrights) are to be issued for a limited term. If patent rights were natural rights, government would have no moral authority to revoke them after a specified period of time.
Thus, one must be careful to make the distinction (at least as it existed in the founders' minds) between natural rights (such as physical property) and government-granted rights (such as patents). What applies to one does not necessarily apply to the other.
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
Of course it's a familiar pattern. You just described the essential difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Well, at least Republicans claim that want to increase the total wealth for everybody. I bought that line for a good 20 years or so of my life. I now see through that lie.
Did you see the debate Tuesday? As far as social security, Bush wants to allow me to invest some of my own money under certain guidelines!!! Gee, he's so fscking generous, to allow me to use some of my own money, with restrictions.
If I had any qualms before the debate that I might "throw the election" to Gore by voting for Browne, I no longer do.
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
Re:Typical slashdot attitude (Score:2)
Put simply, it is the so-called businessman that makes it happen.
More accurately, it's whoever takes the initiative that makes it happen. That doesn't have to be in a monetary framework. For example, an inventor (or programmer) invests time and energy, sometimes in great quantities. S/he's the one who "makes it happen" first. Sometimes a businessperson can help, but the gold they run away with is usually way out of proportion to their contribution.
Without "capitalists" like that...yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say this country would be no where today.
Ummmm, speak for yourself, I have more faith in our culture than that.
There it is again, the capitalist attitude taking credit for everything good that happens (and nothing bad?). I think it's more the spirit of taking initiative in general that contributed to whatever the USA is now. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean "free market". I can take initiative to build a log cabin, grow crops, or write a great Web server without money entering the equation.
It didn't hurt that the USA had vast arable land, a good climate, and two oceans to separate us from invaders. To credit all of our prosperity to merely our economic system is ignoring a lot.
Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between...
If you're implying that the only contributions to the world are in the form of profitable inventions, then I respectfully say that you have a lot to learn. That's something I can't explain in one post. But consider music, other art, common sense, human wisdom, family wisdom, spiritual wisdom, ... the list goes on.
But addressing the point directly-- Don't be fooled into thinking that communism in China and Russia are the only forms of non-capitalistic economy. Those two are/were merely military regimes. Soviet Russia, for example, actively squashed other more democratic forms of communism that tried to arise, like the Prague Spring in 1968. It's just as possible to have a democratic communist as a democratic capitalist system. (Chile had that with Allende until the US overthrew it and installed a dictator; the same happened with Nicaragua, I believe.)
For the record, I'm not a communist; I just see serious problems with our current capitalism that need to be addressed. One is the major blind spot that one's wealth measures one's contribution to the world, and the belief that people only create things out of greed. In believing that, we've created a system where it's very difficult to create things other than out of greed.
Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
It's true that to do R&D, it helps to not have to wonder where your next meal is coming from. In the old days, it helped to have a royal benefactor. But today, we have the means to ensure that few if any go hungry. I'm not talking about a life of luxury, I just mean not desperate. If we did that, more people would be able to research science, write software, create art, etc.
There are other things to say, but that's enough for one post.
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:2)
Martial arts is much more than the study of how to fight - it is mainly - at least at the highest level - a study of why humans fight. I understand how to fight, when to fight, and when not to fight.
My problem is not that the court room is a battle front - my problem is why the courtroom is a battle front.
We as humans have been fed the idea since the earliest of times that the only way to determine the truth is though battle. Battles are a lousy way to determine truth! How can anyone hope to arrive at the delicate beauty of truth by the ugly process of a fight? All battles result in destruction - not construction. Whether battles are physical, intellectual, emotional, or otherwise the result is damage.
Evil is about destruction and the creation of human misery. As a result the destruction caused in fights is always part of evil's plan.
Evil gets away with this because of the natural fighting which bulls do to set up a pecking order - so those of us who are not evil will buy the idea that the fights that evil people sell us on are a good and natural thing - they are not.
So ingrained in our thought patterns are the fighting ways which evil has conned us into that it is hard to imagine any other way of doing things. Here is a suggestion:
Suppose that instead of an adversarial legal system that we adopt a cooperative legal system which works in this way: any people who use the weasel arguments typical of lawyers are deemed uncooperative and automatically lose . This is not a fool proof system - but it is infinitely superior to the system which evil people have foisted off on us. It at least stands a chance of working. That is a lot more than the system we have been handed - which everyone seems to accept without even questioning it.
The problem with your amoral view - that it is not your place to decide which of us is right - is that by taking that position you surrender your part of the world to evil. Be aware of that simple fact.
There's always Nader. (Score:1)
A pure Libertarian government has never been tested, and my suspision is that it would degrade to corporate rule. Here how:
You take away government sponsored welfare completely, and let private organizations do that. Ok, what you get is a mega-United-Way organization that is corporatly sponsored and determines who gets welfare. You don't vote for wellfare unless you are a major shareholder.
Or you privatize roads: AOL, Microsoft and Coke buy the roads and give you discounts if you use their products. Also the incentive to improve roads or prevent pollution is only driven by the bottom line of advertising.
You get the idea. Socialism has faith in Goverment. Democracy has faith in the people. Rebuplicanism is buffered democracy. Pure liberatarianism has little faith in Government, but has faith in Capitalism and Corporations. Voting for something that was goverment run is replaced with supply, demand and boycotting. You buy Pepsi products because they have cleaner roads, and donate money to needy private schools.
All that said, I do believe we need more Liberatarianism and less (zero) corporate government sponsorship, less Republicanism
and more Democracy.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties
tend to move towards a corporate republic and
away from Democracy.
Electing a Libertarian would be better than another Corporate sponsored Republic/Democracy canidate,
Voting for Nader would line up better long term.
I'm for a libertarian, socialistic, democratic republican goverenment without corporate sponsorship (bribes).
-don
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:2)
The problem with your amoral view - that it is not your place to decide which of us is right - is that by taking that position you surrender your part of the world to evil. Be aware of that simple fact
This is the only part of your reply that I disagree with absolutely. It is not amoral, it is in fact a statement of my own morals and ideals, which whilst different from yours (as evidenced by your classification of my position as amoral) are held as strongly as yours. For the most part an enlightened society frowns on an individual taking upon themselves the right to judge their peers. There are places where however distasteful we find it an individual must be given that responsibility, as part of their duty to the society they live in but outside those areas both the principle of allowing personal freedom to live ones life as one sees fit and the principle of "judge not, lest ye be judged" apply. Nothing has given me the right to say your statement is "right" or "wrong", but nothing can take away my right to either agree or disagree with your statements. As it happens I agree with most of them but that doesnt make it any more "right" than it would be if I didnt. Absolute right and wrong are not in any human hands to judge no matter how loudly and stridently some may claim the right to usurp a power that almost every faith reserves to the divine. Personally I think that if a few more legislators remembered that we'd have a lot more common sense in the making and applying of laws.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
CFR's Advocates: Screw The Republocrats! (Score:2)
Patently false. (Score:2)
On the internet, an environment which depends on collaborative refinement and exposed technology, patents are counter productive and, if unchecked, would diminish the usefulness and usability of the internet in favor of granting privilege to a few.
The question is now: Will those enlightened enough to understand this prevail against the anal-retentive children who threaten to take their ball and go home.
The remedy is of course to change the game...
Garbage. Copying bits costs 0$. (Score:1)
Now, there's plenty of communication to strike deals with existing manufacturers, so patents make far less sense. We have a globalized economy and communications system to grease inventor wheels for manufacture.
For software, the case is open and shut unless you have some special interests. Manufacturing costs of software are essentially zero $. Just post to the internet. There's no cost to recover and no non-artificial barrier to entry. If you can implement it, you can gain the value from it.
The biggest (artificial) barrier to entry and survival and gaining value is... the existence of software patents, the USPTO lawyers who have and continue to institutionalize s/w patents, and a legal industry (worldwide) which insists on legalizing s/w patents to grow their industry.
To be clear, no manufacturing costs == no need for patents. Legal industry with control over USPTO (yes, every panel member of the sham software patent hearings was a lawyer) == softwarwe patents forever until outlawed (by public, software industry watchdog group, or miracle). Unfortunately, lawyers are well-positioned, well-heeled, often unethical, and very tenacious when they smell money.
Confused posts like the one above don't help (much less being rated a "5" --- gotta love that moderation
Not holding breath for s/w patents legalization to be abolished,
= Joe =
Re:No good solution, patents may make sense (Score:1)
-= Griffis =-
Great quotes from the debate (Score:5)
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Lessig framed the debate about software patents (really business method patents) as being 3 separate debates: 1) Is there really property involved, i.e. should the patent office even be involved? 2) Is the property being properly administered, i.e. the way in which the patent office is handling things. And 3) should there be a separate class of property defined for business methods?
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When Jeff Bezos asked Tim O'Reilly whether he [Tim] thought Amazon was justified in pursuing its patents, Tim told Jeff that he was "pissing in the well", because he was angering both his core customer base and the very people that provide the technology Amazon's business is based on.
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At one point, Lessig remarked on the '97 change in business practice patent law by quoting Norman Mailer: "Being evil is doing something you know is wrong. Being wicked is upping the ante without knowing the consequences."
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Dickinson started out the night by stating that his staff had researched the earliest relevant business patent they could find. It was from the 1860's, and covered the process of creating a hotel registry book which had advertising down the margins. The patent included a hand-drawn picture of such a register, which Dickinson held up for people to see. That drew a lot of laughs, because the register looked *strikingly* like a web page.
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Dickinson stated that a new "18-month publication" rule will be in effect soon, whereby the review process will be shortened. He also indicated that, starting sometime next year, they will change the rules so that applicants can apply for legal relief from the time they submit a patent for review, rather than having to wait until the end of the review process.
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O'Reilly's comment about farmers and ranchers was actually the very last comment of the night, given as Vint Cerf was about to dismiss the crowd. In context it was a conciliatory remark that he made to try and explain to Dickinson and Walker why there was such emotion from O'Reilly's and Lessig's side of the debate. The comment drew the biggest applause of the night, and my companions thought O'Reilly had been pretty shrewd to nab the last remark as he did.
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At one point, Walker stated that Priceline's business method patents were a driver of innovation across the industry, because people had to "find ways to work around" his patents, instead of copying his methods of doing things.
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In contrast, Vint Cerf jumped in at one point to state that he felt the "View Source" option in web browsers, and the fact that it was easy to copy someone else's methods, was one of the primary reasons the Web had grown so fast.
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Lessig at one point suggested a compromise: allow patents, but forbid lawsuits to enforce them until a comprehensive review of the effects of business method patents could be conducted. This struck me as remarkably naive, especially for a law professor. Walker was just about apoplectic - "You want Microsoft to take my property? You think Microsoft should take my property?"
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Walker: "The burden of proof is not on those who say that property should be, but on those who say that property should not be."
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Walker: "Property drives innovation [because] humans are economic animals. Except for economists."
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O'Reilly: "That work [having to file and defend against patents] is a tax on innovation." Walker: "All property is a tax."
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Dickinson stated that an NSF study has been started to determine the effect that IP laws are having on not just the software industry, but technological ventures in general.
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Dickinson stated that Congress had passed a law in November of '99 that explicitly forbade him to solicit or accept outside criticism of patents under review. To wit: "The Director shall make no provision for pre-grant opposition."
I'm sure I'm leaving some out - the evening was chock full of quotey goodness. It was quite entertaining, and educational. Kudos to the Internet Society for putting on the debate.Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:2)
I almost wish that the word "Property" was never associated with information. Information is radically different than physical property. Authors use other authors' information to create new information. Information is easily copied and essentially impossible to restrict in ways that a single piece of physical property is. Yet some people still tend to think of information "property" as the same as physical property.
The fact that nothing has gone into the public domain for a long time just reinforces the cultural idea that authors get to retain control of their works forever.
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Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:1)
Now where does the Amazon patent come under this criteria? Because it is used by a browser program running on a computer? Or that it runs through web software on a server? I simply don't buy that Amazon's patent is a good one and further down in the paper I found an example case which seems to support my view.
One-click shopping is, imho, mere data gathering. The process takes a bunch of data for the sale and then stores the data for future reference to facilitate the one-click. Nothing physical is processed nor is the algorithm imbedded in a device. Whether this patent is obvious or not seems to be irrelevant.
Typical slashdot attitude (Score:3)
I'm not talking about slick VCs, Wall Street types, MBAs, bankers, feeble minded Dot Commers or what have you. I'm talking about people that have their feet on the ground and, more often than not, get their feet wet (to say the least)....the Henry Fords, Thomas Edisons,
Tell me something, if invention/innovation were merely a spark of inspiration. Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between... and it's not for want of education or minds. You think it's just a coincidence that the word business is that much further from their vocabulary? What's more, where do you think most academics/scientists are ultimately deriving their funding from? Without real life products like the internal combustion engine, the telephone, the car, the microprocessor, etc....where would our economy be? Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
Science and modern day business go hand in hand. It's very much of a chicken-or-the-egg type problem.
Re:Self-Serving Patent Lying and Manipulation (Score:2)
While I sympathize quite whole-heartedly with your sentiment, I cannot help but to point out the flaw in your solution. (I also provide my own solution at the end).
Absence of proof is not proof of absence. In this case, it would be impossible for an applicant to prove that an idea is their idea by simply failing to find proof to the contrary. The only possible "proof" to such a claim would be to explain how every idea ever in human history is not related to your idea.
This is why the system relies on challenges. It is far easier to disprove the originality of an idea by providing a counterexample.
Yes, these sound very similar to one another. The difference however, is that of proving a claim to be true versus proving something to be false.
What is broken is the means by which to perform the disproof. Currently, one must either challenge the application via the overworked and over-beaureucratic Patent Office, which simply does not have the time or the funding to care, or via the capricious and technologically-clueless court system with a civil suit, which takes a great deal of time by which point the patenet holder has strangled its competition into submission. In either case the patent continues to be enforced all during whatever time it may take to resolve the issue. It is due to this web of red tape that the applicant/holder has all the power rather than the people.
What needs to be instituted is a simpler way of challenging patents. My solution?
Remember: a single counterexample is sufficient to disprove a claim. The Patent Office needs to have the power to suspend or withdraw a patent instantly upon being furnished with a single counter-example of the originality of the idea, even after a patent has been granted. At that point, once a counter-example has been provided, it would be the burden of the applicant/holder to show that said counter-example is not related to their patent, either via the same overworked Patent Office or capricious court system. Yet in this way it is the applicant/holder which must struggle through the system, not the challenger. Thus the scales of power are balanced between the interests of business and the interests of humanity. And further, this would require no additional funding of the Patent Office.
What's a PHOSITA? (Score:2)
Imagine Vern, from the movie. A very dull lad, barely sentient. Now give him sufficient understanding to be able to read the "general literature" of the art, at least to the extent of being able to dully follow instructions set forth there and apply it to the art. What is more, give Vern a photographic memory containing all the relevant prior art.
So Vern can use a reference that spells out how to practice, and can "fill in the blanks" using routine practices. (To attach two pieces of wood, Vern the carpentry artist would probably figure out to use hammer and nail, because somewhere is a primer saying to affix two pieces you can use a hammer and nail). But Vern won't combine the art, put 2+2 together, unless the art expressly suggested the combination.
A patent claim is anticipated (and invalid) when a single reference contains EACH AND EVERY ELEMENT recited in the claim appears in the reference. If elements are missing in one reference, but appear in another, related, reference, Vern the artist might consider it obvious to combine the two elements, BUT ONLY IF THE ART (or another piece of art) teaches or suggests the combination.
If there are new elements in the art of record that are not naturally known as substitutes one for the other, it is very rare that obviousness will be found.
Those are just the basics, but perhaps it will provide a framwork/intuition for resolving these questions.
How to kill patents and still promote innovation (Score:1)
-= Griffis =- because of the internet Now if we rid ourselves of patents. The only way to protect ourselves against copiers is to keep secrets. This fear of secrecy is exactly
Re:Great quotes from the debate (Score:1)
On top of that many companies have patent incentive plans (read bonus $$$$) and managers
get patent quota.
Managment talks about patents as MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) if we have lots of them
noone will be able to sue us as we will find some that they are infringing on.
One of the morals that I took from the debate is that we (high tech people) must keep better records on ideas. It does not matter how the idea's are expressed, in source code, e-mail, news or IRC, as prior art is the best destroyer of stupid/simple patents.
The main problem is to prove that
1. When was the idea generated
2. You and who else was involved
Some of your cooworkers will be tempted to file pattents of your ideas to get the bonus or to meet their pattent quota.
Moral:
Archive all your e-mail
Archive all IRC sessions
Archive all source code (use CVS every day to keep track of when code was written).
Keep logs of phone calls.
Keep old web pages
Patents have a role but like anthing that is controled by lawyers, they set the rules.
ps: The applause in the meeting was either by the suits or the techies never by both groups.
Re:My Half-Baked Idea For Patent Reform (Score:1)
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
It is, after all, largly the democratic party that is working with these corps, pushing these patent laws, and coming up with things like the DMCA.
You can't state that any politcal party is that clearly cut. They aren't, especially the big two in the US.
Re:The US constitution says: (Score:1)
The patent (copyright) should reside with the individual(s) responsible and they could license the use of the patent to their employer but could never wholly assign it to any entity other than themselves.
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:2)
You are oversimplifying things. If I invest millions of dollars in researching a much better, more efficient way to make widgets, and you then use that knowledge to make widgets to compete against me, then I am put at a severe disadvantage in the market. Patents are a way to ensure that I am allowed to profit from my invention. Patents are good, even though the current patent system is very flawed and is most likely doing a lot more harm than good.
I think that copyright exists for good reason as well, simply because I feel that authors should receive some compensation for their sharing of their creation with the world. Now, the compensation will be decided by the number of people who want to purchase a copy of the work, so in that way it is regulated by the market. I do believe that copyright terms should be much much shorter than they currently are. They should be more like 10-20 years rather than anywhere from 70 to well over 100 that they are now.
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:1)
I almost wish that the word "Property" was never associated with information. Information is radically different than physical property. Authors use other authors' information to create new information. Information is easily copied and essentially impossible to restrict in ways that a single piece of physical property is. Yet some people still tend to think of information "property" as the same as physical property.
Yes, but when does your idea, thoughts, knowledge or information turn into a "physical" unique entity, which then can turn into property with a legally defensable ownership and a monetary value ?
As soon as it has left your brain and is put into any format, which assures that the information is distributed on a tangible medium in a format, which can't be copied or stolen.
(Example as long as I just think what I type, its an idea or information kept in my brain, as soon as it is typed out, distributed digitally, it is mine, I have the copyright to the electron's order of representing this post, but can I claim a patent on the idea this order of electrons represent and enforce licence fees from anyone who has the same idea ? I guess I would have to send it out encrypted and ask from anyone, who wants to know about my idea or implement it, a fee, before I allow them to decode it, round about right ?)
Though I could understand that one could grant a patent to a business method implemented with closed source code, the same would be impossible to do with the same business method implemented as an open source code program.
So, either you have to disallow the patents of business methods implemented with a computer program altogether, or you have to disallow open source code, which is absotlutely not possible, nor enforcable.
And isn't there a difference between copyrights and patents ? You can protect a copyright of an open source code package, because the copyright protects the exact code. All you are giving away by opening up that code, is its sellability. As this is a voluntary act, nobody has the right to prevent you from doing so.
But you can't defend a patent of an open source code package, because the patent's task is to ensure the sellability of the business method implemented by that code. Thus you have to close the source code. What then remains, is a patent on a thought process without any chance of implementing the thought process in an open source format and keeping the task of a patent, as it was defined by its founders, in tact at the same time.
Actually that would lead to the conclusion that business methods, which you can implement with open source code packages, need their own patents, disallowing the patenting of the same business method with closed source code. Yes ? Can you help me thinking ? I have a blank. Can't make that straight. I can't put that together.
What is the legal meaning of "tangible" ?
Re:Typical slashdot attitude (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but I can think of very few projects that have done well without external funding...either from business or, to a much lesser extent from some government/academic center (which is ultimately derived from success of our economy. read: business) You may well banter about things like open source as if it's the holy grail, but it's unproven at best.
How is it that you can claim that business only "sometimes" helps, yet almost every significant innovation in goods or services is organized behind some sort of business? Why would the engineers/programmers/developers/whatever flock to someone that just tends to get in the way? "Err yeah, I'm a great scientist, so I'm going to work for 'The Man' who will do nothing but slow me down and steal all the money". It defies logic; people are more rational than that.
If by our culture, you mean our traditional Anglo/Protestant work ethic, I have faith in that too. In fact, I believe that a good part of our success is our work ethic--not just the fact that law allows capitalism to exist. But you miss a major point. The very notion of independence, the freedom that free markets bring, is what has shaped our culture tremendously. In other words, there is something of a symbiotic relationship between law and society. Society shapes law, and law shapes society.
You can't merely transplant a framework of laws and expect it to flourish unless people really believe and follow it. However, you can impose bad laws, and ultimately drag down an entire society...Witness what happened to East Germany.
This spirit is certainly a lot of it, but read above. The free market is about more than just incentivising people (though that is a lot of it). It's about allocating resources efficiently. It's about encouraging risk, both economic and social in many different senses.
How many scientists do you know that put their own assets on the lines to promote science with no expectation of getting reimbursed? I'll give you a hint, very few academics do this. They live relatively risk-free lives. They draw a salary. If they fail in their efforts, the odds are they're not going to go bankrupt. What's more, they're not paying other people to work for them. They don't know what it's like to try and meet payroll every month....They're isolated from much of the realities. This is not to say that they have no function in our economy, they do, but they're hardly a substitute for the entreprenuerial spirit....You're comparing Apples to Oranges.
Researching obscurities is not the same as putting your ass on the line. Likewise, building a log cabin is not the same. etc etc etc
When taken in context with the rest of the world, it's hardly a leap of faith. How do you explain East Germany's utter lack of spark, compared to West Germany's success. North versus South Korea? Socialized contries verus less socialized countries....
What's more, very little of the United State's success comes from our geography. Look at Japan...scarce resources, few arrable lands,...but great success. Or USSR...even more abundant arrable lands (yet much lower yield), even more resources, better location to do international commerce...yet an utter failure.
It's funny that you say that. If _you_ follow history, then you would know that the arts tend to flourish with a certain amount of economic success. For instance, the United States made a great appearance in the arts following WWII. Likewise, throughout history. But in any event, we're talking about the advancement of SCIENCE here. To bring in the "development" of common sense, the arts, or what have you, is to cloud the issue.
This is irrelevant to my point. The point is that you have no good examples of success. What's more, as I was driving at, where you see increased leaning by government towards socialism, you typically see a lean away from economic, and even scientific, success. Witness Europe and the rest of the world throughout various political regimes, there is a very strong degree of correlation!
You can argue ad nasseum that it's not "proof" of a causal relationship, but the fact is that it's about as good of a gaurantee that you get in this life. But, in any event, it's certainly far better demonstrated than your utopian notions.
And where is the evidence of this? If this is the case, why is it that Open Source has enjoyed rapid growth (or at least popularity) only very recently, despite more wealth, patents, etc than ever. Frankly, I see two entirely seperate systems, the proprietary/capitalist system and the utopian/opensource system, that can fail or succeed entirely on their own, with very little necessary interference from one or the other.
I believe economics will ultimately dictate which one is more beneficial to society. The only difference is, I think this is a good thing, whereas you seem to believe, like Lenin, that the only way other things can survive is if other systems are forcfully removed.
In that case, I encourage you to open your eyes and get a better grasp on history. This has been an ongoing trend for the past 200 years. And it's not a bunch of pure academics/scientists that you have to thank....
The head of the patent office (Score:1)
Re:Republican Congress (Score:3)
The Democrats believe that patents should be given to ANYTHING, including some things that redefine "prior art."
IMHO, the patent office simply needs to take their lolly time reviewing things. Yes, some things that are offered can get outdated while the review process happens, but hey, that will probably weed out many bad ones by itself. They do a better job taking their time, and really, the only people that should be irritated with the time would be those who want to slip something by (**ahem, M$**). Also, that will discourage the people with nonsense patents. People with real innovations will be motivated enough to pursue that impossible patent.
I think the best suggestion was "Patent technology under development, not existing software/tech." (paraphrased badly). If that patent passes, then the patent should pass on to the developed product after a review. A double check system for the bad ones, eliminating many the first time around.
Patent office motto... (Score:2)
Burris
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:2)
It's the patent office's fault; they are over taxed and not thoroughly investigating patent applications.
Burris
Devil's Advocate (Score:1)
The patent office issues the patents according to the law (both written by congress, and the implications derived from the courts). Wouldn't it then make more sense to get the proper laws written?
Of course, then M$ can lobby for them$elve$. How many Democrat$ can they get? Of course, the Republicans are just as bad there, too. Damn, we just can't win. **sigh**
"My hands are tied" (Score:5)
Petition against SWPAT near to 50.000 signitures (Score:3)
if You haven't signed yet, please help to fill up the 50.000:
This petition is directed to the European Parliament. Its goal is to warn European Authorities against the dangers of software patents. This petition is supported by the EuroLinux Alliance together with European companies and non-profit associations. Please make this petition well known to everybody concerned.
http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html [eurolinux.org].
Re:Republican Congress (Score:1)
Absence of proof is not proof of absence (Score:2)
If these guys were really innovative, they would create a completely new industry sector like Adobe desktop publishing or SGI's 3D graphics instead of filing lawsuits and generally clogging up the system.
LL
No good solution, patents may make sense (Score:2)
Yes, the constitutional mandate is the former, but the congressional mandate is the latter.
On the disclosure front, it isn't too relevant for some of the Internet related patents, especially business plan patents. I mean, you can't exactly keep your business secret. However, the business issue is real.
The Internet holds the potential to be the first perfectly competetive marketplace. While good for consumers, perfect competition is horrible for businesses. If you are guaranteed to mark zero profits, VC money disappears.
The other problem in a perfect market, sunk costs are gone, never to be recoved. You sink costs knowing they are gone, but you hope to make profits. In a world where you can't make profits, every business venture is a failure.
So, if we have the world of a microeconomics text book, entire industries that would benefit consumers never materialize because noone can make a profit. As a result, perhaps this "tax" serves a purpose. I mean, if the industry potentially doesn't happen because of no profits, then aren't we better as consumers to have the option of paying a premium instead of no option at all?
Also, with growing protections for trade secrets, doesn't encouraging patents make sense? Perhaps Congress should do the intelligent thing and reduce patent life for business plan/software patents? That way, their is an incentive to invent and create technology/business ideas, while the public benefits from cheaper prices in a few years.
Also, with Internet patents, it is easy to create something similar (an overly broad patent is easier to overturn), and this merely forces uniqueness. Hell, an Internet with dozens of similar but different major players in each space is FAR more interesting than one with everyone directly copying each other.
Done playing Devil's advocate,
Alex
Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:5)
Walker demeans the scientific and academic world, while claiming that patent holders like him are "creating hundreds and thousands of jobs". Let me rephrase it-- the inventors and developers create jobs for people like him. Or more directly, the developers increase the general welfare of society by making computers useful in so many ways. That welfare may not be in cash form, but it improves our lives nonetheless. The businesspeople merely find a way to transform that welfare into cash and move it toward themselves, much like an engine transforms one kind of energy into another. One tool to do this is to claim ownership of technology by using patents, the equivalent of building a fence in a public park and keeping everyone out with a gun. Ultimately, patent enforcement uses guns, too.
What a familiar pattern in this world-- some people work to increase the total wealth for everybody, while other people work to grab as much of it for themselves as they can.
My Half-Baked Idea For Patent Reform (Score:5)
Re:No good solution, patents may make sense (Score:5)
Well, if you remember Econ 101, you will recall that so long as there are barriers to entry, there is money to be made, even if consumers have perfect information about market prices.
Not everyone can afford to start up a huge website, with high bandwidth, big servers, etc. Other barriers to entry are specific knowledge, which could vary depending on the business (Think Red Hat). Some Internet services are going to not be so profitable, because of the small barriers to entry, but there is lots of money out there, not the least of which is the "Internetizing" of conventional products and services.
I don't see IP being a major force behind the economics of the Internet. I think that patents are good for the stuff they have always been used for, but on the Internet, I think it isn't going to be who controls the inventions, but rather who makes the inventions work best for them.
-
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:2)
Re:My Half-Baked Idea For Patent Reform (Score:1)
Of course checks will have to be placed to prevent harassment and annoyance patents.
The US constitution says: (Score:4)
It doesn't say "In order to create value..." or "To create jobs...."
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:2)
One of the most important things that I have learned in martial arts is that the person who wins a fight has won the fight and nothing else. This is fairly obvious in the physical world: a thirty year old beating up a three year old hardly makes the thirty year old right. It is not so obvious in the intellectual world; someone with a high IQ beating up someone with a low IQ does not make the person with the high IQ right! I used to use my intellectual strength to win arguments (intellectual fights) all the time; very few people were ever successful arguing with me - so I thought I was right. The truth is that I was often wrong - sometimes disastrously so. I suspect that many people here on slashdot are guilty of making that particular mistake.
The confusion comes from the fact that right makes might. However there are many reasons that fights can be won or lost which have nothing to do with being right. Legal fights are often won or lost for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with right or wrong; one side might have a lawyer who is just a better fighter than the other side - or, as I have pointed out before, case law may have been established by a large corporation taking on an individual with no resources (thirty year old vs three year old) and that case law is then used as a precedent for other bad rulings.
A legal victory does not mean 'right'. The arguments that this poster used - while impressive sounding and intimidating to the average person are not sufficient to prove he is correct. Slashdot is not a court of law; there is no judge to keep truth from being spoken.
--
The law, 100's of millions of lines of code, not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
>Of course it's a familiar pattern. You just described the essential difference between Democrats and Republicans. Uhm, which is which? It seems to me that both groups claim to do the former as a cover for doing the latter.
hymie
Applying Standardization to Patents (Score:1)
Re:Great quotes from the debate (Score:1)
He's wrong. All monopoly is Privilege, and all Privilege is a tax.
Walker says he's defending property, but he's really defending Privilege.
Hot Airbag (Score:2)
Walker (founder of Priceline.com): "Those of us who are creating hundreds and thousands of jobs ... are here to tell you that if we slow this engine down because of the study groups you want to have, I'm not sure you're going to be well served in the economy."
New York Times this morning: "Priceline WebHouse Club, which licensed Priceline.com's name-your-own price technology to sell groceries and gasoline, said it would cease operations by early next year. [...] WebHouse's closing deals a blow to Priceline, whose shares fell $2.47, or 26%, to $6.91 in early trading.
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:1)
Even more important and to the point, if I have your physical property I am depriving you of your use of that property. If you copy IP we both have it, you arent deprived of your use of it and both are happy.
Re:My Half-Baked Idea For Patent Reform (Score:2)
1 - Requires new treaties.
2 - What happens to the little guy who now can't afford the 20 year patent? Is he somehow less deserving than the multi-national that could afford this no matter what price you set? Multiple times over no less.
3 - The patent office can spend all the time they want on a patent but without enough qualified staff to properly examine the patent who cares if it is a short review or a long one.
4 - No matter what, I don't want dumb patents being issued. Not for 10 years, or 5, or even 1. It won't matter if the patent is expired. If someone feels that you infringed on their patent while it was valid they can sue. And you can bet your a** that if the holder didn't feel he made enough money he'll try to litigate to keep getting value out of his ip.
Valid vs invalid patents (IMHO) (Score:1)
However, I vehemently oppose the issuance of any patents to those (primarily corporations) who begin to use a technology / method that is already in general use, then see that there is no patent on it and rush to file for one. This is what is evil.
The problem lies in the patent office, whether through lack of resources or whatever, failing to recognize the existence of the prior art and issuing these DUMB patents.
I'm sure all of this has been said over and over. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I wanted to add my opinion of the situation.
GPL for patents? (Score:1)
Wrong, wrong, wrong, oh wait (Score:1)
It doesn't work. The little guy *can't afford* to get a patent properly granted. The more 'properly' a patent is granted, the more the little guy can't afford it. Nothing about the patent system is working as it was intended to, and it never will. It's time for it do die, die, die.
Oh, and by the way, people build on ideas just fine without the help of the patent system. Better in fact, because they can put all their energy into their creative work and get it done sooner, so they can get famous sooner. Plus they get to *use* the other ideas when they build. Much easier to build on something than to have to completely reinvent it every time.
I just have one question: do you really *believe* that myth about the lone inventor, or are you just a cynical astroturfer?
--
open source? (Score:1)
I always thought of O'Reilly as a publisher of tech books. "Open source" seems to be the tech-news industry's favorite new phrase, whether it's appropriate or not.
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:2)
You do make a good point about 2 people independently inventing the same thing. Right now it's simply settled by who gets to the patent office first. That's not really a fair way to handle it, but life ain't always fair. I can't think of a better way to handle that kind of situation off the top of my head. I still believe patents are, in theory, a good idea. I just think the current implementation is horribly broken.
Face it, some things require massive resources to come up with. Drug companies are the classic example. They spend years on research and development to come up with a new drug. How could they do this without some sort of guarantee that someone won't just start churning out cheap copies of the drug? They couldn't. Nobody would invest in it. Therefore we wouldn't get better drugs or better treatments for various diseases. Nobody would be able to afford the research involved. How would you plan to deal with that?
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:2)
How to solve it? I dont know. Revoke the patent rights for anyone abusing their patent? Place the burden of proof on the patent holder, and allow duplicated 'good faith' research (so that a patent holder cannot sue someone who developed the same thing without knowing about the original patent)?
As is today, it doesnt work anymore, and it's actively hindering human progress in many cases.
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:2)
I think my example would be a lot more common than yours, but I'll consider yours anyway. If you take recent events as an indicator, there are exceptions made in cases where a drug is needed but the people can't afford to get it. When drug companies were trying to enforce their patents in Africa, many African countries basically told them exactly where they could stick their patents. People were contracting AIDS at an alarming rate over there and they needed the drugs badly. They decided that since the drug companies were asking much more than they could possibly afford, they'd just manufacture the drugs themselves, patents be damned.
Now, this got people's attention and made the drug companies look like a bunch of cold-hearted bastards that put profits before human life. Granted, it wasn't really that black-and-white, but it was close enough and that's how many people saw it. So, the drug companies ended up cutting a deal with the African countries to allow them to obtain the drugs much more cheaply than normal. This way the drug companies get some return, and get to not look like greedy bastards, and the people in Africa get the drugs they need so badly. So while patents may sometimes cause problems, such problems are generally dealt with rather swiftly if they become serious.
While it's obvious that I think patents have their uses, I strongly disagree with the direction the patent office has taken and with the shoddy review process they currently have. I think business model patents should be thrown right out. I think software patents should also be scrapped. I think there should be a MUCH more rigorous review process than we currently have, and I think that patents should be challengeable before they are awarded, and the burden of proof that an invention is unique should fall on the party that is attempting to gain the patent rather than on the party that is offering some form of prior art. I also think that the standard for obviousness should be more strictly enforced. It certainly hasn't been in quite a while.
Re:My Half-Baked Idea For Patent Reform (Score:2)
Re:Very good point. (Score:2)
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:1)
>>filled with meaning that is trivialized by the
>>casual -- "its obvious to me" -- remarks so
>>often seen on Slashdot.
Yes, obviousness is an important legal term. It's both an issue of fact to be determined by the court and a requirement for patentability. The angry posts of slashdotters saying "this is incredibly obvious -- I can't believe such a patent application would be granted" is EVIDENCE that the invention does not meet this requirement.
You state the obviousness test is a failure for many patents that have been granted. If you're not going to suggest we change the law and eliminate that test entirely (which I know would be a distortion of your argument), then perhaps you could consider the slashdotters' views as evidence of both a) problems with a particular patent and b) probable problems at the patent office.
Perhaps, attorneys preparing for a trial seeking to invalidate a weak patent might search
Re:Typical slashdot attitude (Score:2)
The wheel may be an essential concept to our society, but that does not mean that Joe Caveman was on technological par by any measure (i.e., rate, effort, product, etc). Ask yourself: Would you rather be driving on the rudimentary concept of the wheel, or the highly evolved steel-reinforced/synthetic wheel of today that is highly reliable and efficient? I didn't think so.
Oh the idealized 'early' days of revisionist historians. Yes, many more on us would still be working on farms...rising and going to bed with the sun. Toiling behind animals and crude tools. Unemployment? Much higher. Starvation? Much more common place. Hunger? Very common. Death in pregnancy? Common. Infant mortality? High.
Evidently, you take it all for granted. If you really truely believe that life was so much better back then, why don't you move to a farm and try it like they did in the early days? There are still parts of the world that live much like that. It's not too late for you.
Many times actually, to a much worse degree. Your problem is that you view the rich having money as being a zero sum game. It's not. Empirically, both the poor and the middle class have been enjoying a higher quality of life on the aggregate. Some what more theoretically, when the rich 'have' a lot of money, what does that really mean?
If I buy a million dollar house, that money does not go into the ground. It goes back into the economy. The contractors, the laborers, and the people the provide the raw materials all benefit. And when I pay a million dollars for a house, I get diminishing returns at best. You think such a house in 10x nicer? 10x bigger? Generally not. You think Bill Gates lives a million times a nicer life than the average person?
It's almost impossible to lock your money away such that it benefits no one, short of burrying under a mattress. The fact is that most people that are 'rich' have most of their money in the capital markets, and that is why they get 'richer'. This money in turns, goes back out into the economy (by definition), and it used to do things like start businesses, or provide loans to the less wealthy, etc, etc etc.
But both HAVE ultimately benefited, empirically and theoretically.
Once again, you're clouding the issues. In China, and in all other similar systems, what little disparities there are, are totally arbitrary. Someone in authority decides who gets what. The result is that no one has any incentive to work. What's more, when there is a 'concentration' of wealth in China, there are no significant capital markets, no multiplier effects, etc. Apples and oranges again.
You're totally pulling this out of your ass. Edison was a great inventor, there is no doubt about it. What's more, since you assert that patent holders are merely sitting on their ass today, where is evidence? All to the contrary. There are many more resources devoted to R&D than before, both as a percentage of revenue and in absolute terms. Do you see it in product either? Nope. The entire tech industry and biotech industry violate everything you say 10x over.
That's another issue with many facets, one which 99% of slashdot has little comprehension of. I generally do advocate IP; however, i'll not get into it here.
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:2)
incredibly obvious -- I can't believe such a patent application would be granted" is EVIDENCE that the invention does not meet this requirement.
My point is that the remarks to which I have replied manifest little understanding of the applicable standard. An undifferentiated sensation of obviousness by a technical person explained there actually *ISN'T* evidence of obviousness, as several Federal Circuit cases have stated -- indeed, there are cases where such a statments are properly excluded as irrelevant.
You state the obviousness test is a failure for many patents that have been granted.
I'm not sure what you mean by your remark. This appears to be a straw man, but I'm not sure precisely what you mean.
If you're not going to suggest we change the law and eliminate that test entirely (which I know
would be a distortion of your argument), then perhaps you could consider the slashdotters' views as evidence of both a) problems with a particular patent and b) probable problems
at the patent office.
I do not suggest the law needs to be changed, in fact. Nor would I agree with your proposal. While this is something about which reasonable people might disagree, that wasn't the subject of my posting. The subject wasn't whether a patent SHOULD be invalid -- this is about whether a particular patent *IS* invalid.
Before we analyze any proposal for a new standard, however, that standard should be clearly articulated so that it can be analyzed in depth. Merely waving arms around shoulda'-coulda' arguments will shed far more heat than light.
Best,
A
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:2)
How's that again? You're the one using force to prevent me from using a perfectly obvious idea in my business, yet I'm the one who's required to prove that you shouldn't be allowed to do that? To my way of thinking, the burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the one using force to impose their idea's/beliefs on others.
Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:5)
This is the fundamental flaw in today's thinking about intellectual property rights in general, and patents specifically. The view expounded above is very common: people believe that inventors and companies somehow have a right to patents.
Well, the very nature of intellectual property. combined with the nature of a patent, says otherwise. A patent is a privilege, a monopoly granted by the government to a single entity for a period of time. To argue that an individual or company has the inherent right to dictate to the rest of the world what can and cannot be done with an idea is as ludicrous as arguing that an individual or company has the inherent right to dictate what can and cannot be done with other forms of property that individuals own, like saying that an individual or company has the right to say what I can and cannot do with my computer, my car, or anything else I legitimately have in my possession.
No, Thomas Jefferson had it right: intellectual property is a contradiction of terms: ownership has no meaning when the thing in question is a mere idea, something that can be copied directly from person to person simply by the telling of it.
The logical conclusion of the assumption of intellectual property is thought control, and that way lies a police state.
At the same time, of course, it's appropriate to reward people for their intellectual work. And so, a compromise was reached and the system of intellectual property involving copyrights, trademarks, and patents was developed over centuries of civilization.
But make no mistake about it: intellectual property is itself an artificial construct, a set of rules that we as a society attempt to apply to ourselves in order to maximize the benefit to society, to ourselves.
And that goal, to maximize the benefit to society, should never be ignored, as it's being ignored right now. People have been brainwashed into thinking that this artificial construct we know as "intellectual property" is real and natural, as Walker illustrates so well.
It's not. The sooner we all realize that, the better off we as a society will be.
--
Self-Serving Patent Lying and Manipulation (Score:5)
From the linked document:
Walker added: "The burden of proof is not for the people who defend property rights, but those who want to take them away."
Goddamn it, what a load of manipulative crap! It's frankly up to the people who allege a certain idea to be their idea, to prove that instead of smirkingly demanding that other people prove that it was stolen or blaringly obvious. I approve of valid patents, but vehemently oppose the idea that a fucking grant of privilege ought to just automatically be your problem unless you prove, at your great cost, that it shouldn't be your problem.
The patent system today is simply whacko, insane. It amounts to massive, legalized extortion against all of us for using our own damn ideas in routine, even trivial ways.
Re:"My hands are tied" (Score:1)
Big bullies (corpos) win in the end (Score:1)
That's when you call in your magic team of lawiers, to squatch your competition to oblivion. Particularly the little man, with no legal department (stupid of him).
So, if we have the world of a microeconomics text book, entire industries that would benefit consumers never materialize because noone can make a profit.If something is useful to some people, then there will be a way to make money from it!!! Not just through empeaching others to copy you.
I feel like we are all back in a giant classroom, where some bright student is producing a good dissertation, and the class bully takes it away, prints it on the dashboard and beats anybody copying it without his permission or anybody actually rewriting something equivalent!
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:4)
That's not, precisely, the law, and at least one federal District court has already rejected this "hand-wave" obviousness argument with respect to the Amazon patent. Time will tell whether or not the Amazon patent is invalid, but to date, no court of competent jurisdiction has considered prior art and allegedly obvious differences therefrom to be read upon by the patent claims.
The actual language of the patent act is this: "(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made. "
Each word of Section 103 is rife with meaning, including the important difference between someone trained in the art and a "person having ordinary skill in the art." Obviousness is an important legal term of art filled with meaning that is trivialized by the casual -- "its obvious to me" -- remarks so often seen on Slashdot.
The cliche of blaming the patent office for not thoroughly investigating patent applications, particularly because some colleague after the fact thinks the solution was obvious, proves too much -- if you think there is art invalidating a patent -- set it forth. If you think there are arguments for invalidity, state them. Making non-falsifiable allegations that a patent is "obvious to me" is merely to engage in demagoguery.
It's the patent office's fault; they are over taxed and not thoroughly investigating patent applications.
Pot. Kettle. Black. It is as much the critics fault for not thoroughly investigating the actual legal bases for patentability before drawing conclusions about the inadequacy of the system, and for not actually themselves investigating prior art of specific issued patents they claim to be invalid.
Whatever may be said about Amazon's one-click patent, it is not patently invalid -- not only has the patent office so ruled, but so has at least one Federal District Court. The failure of the obvious "obviousness" test, is that it doesn't work for many patents that have been held to be valid. Next time, let's use actual standards, not ones we wish were substituted for the law.
Re:Republican Congress (Score:1)
Re:My Half-Baked Idea For Patent Reform (Score:2)
Maybe the charging should follow a formula of X*(Y^n) where n is the number of years.
Re:Patents, burden of proof, standards, etc. (Score:1)
A patent is a privilege, a monopoly granted by the government to a single entity for a period of time. To argue that an individual or company has the inherent right to dictate to the rest of the world what can and cannot be done with an idea is as ludicrous as arguing that an individual or company has the inherent right to dictate what can and cannot be done with other forms of property that individuals own, like saying that an individual or company has the right to say what I can and cannot do with my computer, my car, or anything else I legitimately have in my possession.
I like the way you said it better. I was composing my own furious response at the time you were writing your thought-out response, and didn't see it until after posting. These people who think they have a right to shove a gun into my face to force me to give them my wallet just to use my own, trivial, routine thoughts, just make my trigger finger extremely itchy. They are plain and simple thugs, and make me vastly more sympathetic to the zealots who oppose all software patents.
It seems high time to start suing these companies specifically for attempting to go far beyond valid patents into the realm of thought theft. Perhaps the First Amendment would apply here, as well as the same "intellectual property theft" laws they so love to abuse?
We need aggressive and imaginative attourneys willing to break new legal ground on behalf of us ordinary, non-monied mortals against greedy, manipulative companies with more lobbyists and corrupt lawyers than they have of simple morality.
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:1)
--
The inventor and the businessman (Score:1)
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin - a machine used to separate cotton during the harvest. This was to be a boon for the South, because cotton cultivation there was becoming too expensive compared to emerging producers elsewhere. The number of persons employed as slaves had actually started to decline with the decline of cotton production.
But the invention of the gin allowed enterprising Southern businessmen to lower production costs and regain their former predominance in the world cotton market, not just restoring the number of productive slave positions they had formerly provided, but creating new slave jobs - which in turn reinvigorated the market for slaves.
We can confidently assert there is no parallel in today's relationship between the inventor and the job-creating business person. Either that, or blame Eli Whitney rather than the plantation owners for fully employing so many slaves.
Technologist's A-bombs don't threaten to kill people, it's the generals who point them at us. And technology is the road to freedom.
If a prior patent had prevented production of the cotton gin, we might have been spared the glory of the Civil War. Technology brings us together.
Patently absurd... (Score:1)
--
Re:Not so obvious . . . Not the law . . . (Score:2)
It appears that the author of this post is either a lawyer, or is able to think like a lawyer. He makes a mistake which many intelligent people make: he mistakes the winner of a fight for the person who is right
You are absolutely correct in general, but there is another aspect to your argument. You state that the winner of a fight has won only the fight and you are correct, but what makes people fight is what is at stake. If something is happening that you do not like you have a seemingly simple choice, accept it or fight it whether you are "fighting" in a legal context through the courts, applying your martial arts training to defend your person or simply making your views known in a forum such as slashdot. You make the choice of whether or not to fight based on how much you will have to put into it to win that fight and the consequences of winning, losing or not fighting at all. You have to make that decision based partially on an objective view of the circumstances and partially on the purely subjective aspect of how you feel about the various possible outcomes. Most people cant do this, although I suspect that you, as a martial artist, can.
Governments make laws, its their job. They rarely get it "right" first time, where getting it right means that the law is acceptable to the majority of the people being governed. In theory, in a democracy at least, those lawmakers are held accountable for their mistakes in this regard at the ballot box. This is the only place in which whether a particular law is "right" or not is judged. Even where a USA law raises constitutional issues a court is not deciding that a law is "right" or "wrong", only whether it is enforceable or not within the limits the constitution imposes on government action. Once a law is on the books it doesnt define what is right but what the stakes are in a particular legal fight. Court precedents may modify the interpretation of the law but even that is not a decision on right or wrong but an attempt to modify the consequences of its application. This assembled body of law is neither right nor wrong, it is simply the ground upon which legal conflicts take place. Of course the more influence you can bring to bear on the lawmaking process (corporate lobbyists, for example) the closer you can get to Sun Tzus ideals of being able to choose your own ground for a conflict.
This being the case both you and the poster you replied to are correct. Whether either of you is "right" isnt my place to judge.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
Re:Garbage. Copying bits costs 0$. (Score:1)
If you would have actually read my post, you would notice that I wasn't making a case for or against patents per se. I only said that they work best for the things they were originally designed for, and not so well on the Internet, which, if anything, is an argument against the applications of patents to Internet technology.
I was only addressing the point that the parent poster made that perfect competition=zero profits, which I believe to be false.
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Re:Typical slashdot attitude (Score:1)
"Tell me something, if invention/innovation were merely a spark of inspiration. Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between... and it's not for want of education or minds. You think it's just a coincidence that the word business is that much further from their vocabulary? What's more, where do you think most academics/scientists are ultimately deriving their funding from? Without real life products like the internal combustion engine, the telephone, the car, the microprocessor, etc....where would our economy be? Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
"
Well, let's see. There are problems with this little rant. _Which_ inventions are the "great" ones? The wheel, maybe? Afro-European in origin, IIRC. Arithmetic/mathematics? Same. Organized culture? Afro-European or Chinese. The chair? Same. "Great inventions". Interesting phrase. Should it perhaps be "most lucrative inventions"? Or perhaps "inventions that, through patent controls, resulted in the greatest concentration of monetary capital into one socio-economic entity"?
"Where would our economy be?" The plaintive cry of the capitalist greed-monger. Our economy would be here in the US, just like always. The infrastructure of that economy might be (no, would be) very different if it did not include the wide-spread use of the IC engine, the telephone, etc. But our economy was doing very nicely at the turn of the last century (1900, for those, like me, that still haven't made that adjustment *G*), when such factors were not in existence yet. Some folks wouldn't be nearly as unnecessarily wealthy as they are, but so what? When, in all of history, has an insane concentration of monetary capital in the hands of a few (or worse, one) individual benefitted the culture in which it happened? Never, and you know it. "The benefit of the few who have the wealth" is _not_ equivalent to "the benefit of the culture". As a matter of fact, a simple overview of history (no deep digging needed) will show that the generalized distribution of capital resources is far more benificent to a culture than concentration. Take the China you attempt to use as a counter-example to vaunted America: The concentration of its resources in the hands of the Party, the concentration of its ideas in the hands of the Party. As opposed to _early_ America (not nowadays, no). Much more even wealth distribution, limited patents (Mr. Edison, et. al. for instance, had a 14 year(?) patent. He knew he couldn't rest on the laurels of his invention because the patent would expire, so he had to keep inventing more things to be prepared-from an economic point of view, of course; Edison was an enterpreneur, not a hacker-type; The hacker-type inventors in the last century are probably largely unknown, as enterpreneurs bought the idea and took the credit, whereas prior to that they probably simply were not recorded at all.)
So, anyway, Sure, let's go the patent and restrictive IP laws route. That'll work. We'll end up with the corporations controlling thought instead of the government (the corps'll just use the gummint as a front for the controls - "Don't blame _me_, that's just the way the laws are!". Sure.)
Like hell. I'll oppose you, in print, in the voting booth, with my bank account, any way I can. And I'll hope that most folks reading this will, too.
Time to go to Washington? (Score:1)
It seems that IT folks are way too tuned out of conventional politics. In other industries/areas of interest, the little guys are well represented by unions, interest groups, grassroots organizations, etc. We're so down on politics that we forget that the process can be influenced. The Free Software Foundation, the EFF, et al. are pathetic weaklings compared to the AFL-CIO, NRA, NAACP, Sierra Club, Christian Coalition, you name it. This is despite the fact that IT people have money to throw at their special interest groups, relative to your average Joe.
Imagine if Detroit lobbied for a bill to bring in thousands of foreign workers and then pay them substandard wages. It might pass, but not with out a big fight. And H1-B visas make far more sense the DMCA, Sonny Bono, and trivial patents.
Slashdotters often reflect the view "both parties are evil, they'll all pull this crap and I will vote for Nader/Buchanan/Harry Brown". Unfortunately, the last major party to be displaced was the Whig Party. Due to our electoral system in this country, you gotta vote Republican or Dem. (Durverger's law: Single representative districting always results in 2 parties. Multiple represenation results in many parties. One of the few concepts poli sci's have the balls to call a "law".)
But the existing parties are subject to influence/lobbying/grassroot action and are not total corporate whores. Prior to the 70's corporations claimed a "right to pollute" because otherwise the world would end, we'd all end up starving because any environmental laws would choke off business, and who was the government had no right to claim the air should belong to everybody and you can't misuse it. See any parallels?
Ok, now go tell your Congresspeople to vote for this public comment bill on patents, toss some money at the EFF, and I'll cease ranting. (I knew that poli sci minor could come in handy someday.)
Nah. State Street Bank changed that forever. (Score:2)
Your well-reasoned post relied upon informal interpretations of old cases, and thus does not reflect the present judicial view of the subject matter issue. The most recent cases make clear that patentability "is understood to be [based] not on whether there is a mathematical algorithm at work, but on whether the algorithm-containing invention, as a whole, produces a tangible, useful, result.
That is the ultimate test. Does the process/method/apparatus produce a tangible, useful result. And tangible does not require a physical thing, as you will see if you review the citation below.
The seminal case in this arena is the State Street Bank case, but the best description of how "tangibility" works into the matter can be found in AT&T v. Excel [emory.edu]. Required reading for anyone who would discuss the subject matter requirement.
Certainly it would be nice to clarify the Supreme's view on the matter, but they denied Cert in both the State Street and AT&T cases. The Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases, so until the Supes speak next, this is the final word.
Re:Walker's cluelessness is frustratingly common (Score:1)
As far as I'm concerned, if your business really relies on patent protection [talking about business model patents here, not "real" patents], you've probably got a pretty poor business model to start out with.
Evil patents rant (Score:2)
Let me state my position on patents: Here is my original linux-kernel posting [theaimsgroup.com] and if you find this subject really interesting, here is the entire thread [theaimsgroup.com] You'll be amazed what happens.
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"My Hands are Tied" (Score:2)
Moderator: Is she spanking you?
Dickenson: Yes. She's spanking me. With a rider's crop.
Moderator: What else?
Dickenson: She's calling me a bad boy! Yes! I'm a bad boy! I'm a very bad boy! I must be punished! Get the leg wax! GET THE LEG WAX!
Sorry, that's just the first thing that jumped to my mind when I read the headline.
Re:Republican Congress (Score:1)
Jeff