BT Pushing Hyperlink Patent 458
There's been a lot of new publicity lately about the British Telecom trying
to defend a patent that they claim means
they invented hyperlinking. Currently they are going after Prodigy for
using hyperlinking back in the early eighties. We've
mentioned
this one before, but it really looks like they are going to
push it. Insane.
Harassment as a business model... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, just because you DO have a patent doesn't mean you should always attempt to enforce it.
Re:quite within their rights (Score:2, Insightful)
You didn't read the read article which plainly states that Prodigy has video-evidence of a man demonstrating hyperlinking in 1968.
their lawyers are not afraid to defend their intellectual property against scoundrels and freeloaders such as Prodigy
Since when did Prodigy become a freeloader? Perhaps I am mistaken but everything I've seen about them indicates to me that the internet would still be in its infancy if they hadn't struggled to build it.
Brits... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I was working over in Europe and I happened to catch a British commercial...for a personal injury lawyer.
"Did you slip on a tin of Spam at the local market? Was your kid injured during a game of rugby? If so, you may be entitled to damages. For more information, call (whatever)."
(some guy dressed up in a rugby outfit)
"I received £10,000 pounds for (whatever)"
Looked and sounded *exactly* like an American personal injury lawsuit commercial, except the voiceover had a British accent.
They are getting as ridiculous as we are. It's a shame, really. I always admired their stiff upper lip and total hatred for whining.
Things they are a-changin'
Knunov
Re:quite within their rights (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes there were some smart guys there, but taxpayers subsidized this innovation. BT the company shouldn't reap the rewards
Re:Not an expert in patent law. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Yes, you can do it, if the 'similar technologies' truely fall under your patent's umbrella and nobody else has prior art (or you ensure that you find the prior art first, and 'bury' it somehow). Shit, companies file multiple patents 'around' existing patents, and then sue the original patent holder (provided they are small fry enough) for infinging on their umbrella. It's common practice. Patent laws are fucked up, but with less stringent patent laws, numerous entrenched patent-oriented industries, legal practices, etc, etc would also be fucked up. Ergo, there is little chance of going backwards. As usual, we've got so many doctors at the bottom of the cliff that we can't afford to teach people how to NOT WALK OFF THE CLIFF anymore. Too many people lose too much money and too many jobs, etc, etc
Thats my understanding. IANAL, YMMV, and I'm sure you've all got cousins with personal stories that can debunk my raving lunacies
What if hyperlinks went away? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that if you kill hyperlinks, you pretty much kill the whole http-based World Wide Web.
Where does that leave us? Well, for starters, it gets a whole lot of companies back off the internet, where they don't really belong. I think that the last decade has proven that the e-commerce model doesn't really work when brick-and-mortar sales models are more efficient. There are a few, very specialized business who manage to do business over the internet, but these are almost always in the same area that phone and mail-order business have always dominated. The major auto manufacturers are a good example of companies who don't belong on the internet. The music industry is probably another good case, since they absolutely refuse to embrace the sharing model that the internet and P2P apps have made so popular. They don't want to do business on the internet. They want to use the internet to make their brick-and-mortar businesses more profitable.
So, let's say that all these companies get off the internet. What's left of the internet?
E-Mail, for one. Despite the popularity of the web, E-Mail still accounts for the vast majority of internet traffic. FTP is another. Just because graphical websites go away doesn't mean that we can expect FTP sties to go away as well. FTP sites after websites, however, can be expected to have much, much more in the way of content. We can expect 'pub' directories to have much, much more in the way of specialization and indexing. Personal FTP sites would have vast amounts of things the site's owners would like or find interesting. MP3's, images both conventional and pornographic, movies, text files like e-books and fan-works, applications... The list goes on and on.
This model for MP3 sites was almost the way things worked. In 1993, there were about an equal number of FTP- and Web-sites. HTML was so much more versatile than an FTP site, so it dominated.
I think we'll also see a resurgance in the use of Usenet, which has been supplanted in many ways by weblogs and online message boards for BBS-type use. We may even see a resurgance in telnet-based BBS's. That would be cool.
The thing I think we'll see the most of if the web magically went away, would be the proliferation of internet sites that use Post-http era technology. This includes any of the P2P protcols like Gnutella or FastTrack, CVS, Freenet, streaming music and video, distributed problem solving like Seti@home and Folding@home, and many, many more.
The web is stagnant already, so this process is already beginning. Just look at the statistic figures for Gnutella or FastTrack to get an idea. I don't think BT will win their lawsuit, and I don't think that the web is going away anytime soon.
I don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing if it did.
Extortion and Precedent (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm cynical enough to think that maybe BT gets Prodigy to settle this for some ridiculously small amount of money ($10, or even $100,000) to make it go away, and both parties aggree, as part of the settlement, to keep the details of the settlement private.
Now BT goes to work for Prodigy trying to go after their competitors. Just like the RAMbus nonsense, the first few get to settle on generous terms. But after that it starts to get expensive even to just settle. Because now BT has precedent on their side. "well look, all these other companies have settled to license our innovative hyperlink technology."
The benefit to Prodigy is: A cheap settlement. The lawsuit goes away. BT goes after their competitors.
The benefit to BT: They establish precedent. They might even get a little trickle of money ($100,000 to settle?). They get really big settlements later from the others who didn't settle early.
If Prodigy settles, what do you want to bet that they keep the terms of the settlement a secret? Now why would they keep something a secret? What possible motivation? Obviously, it must be hugely in their interest to keep it a secret -- because it would be embarrasing to settle for such a small amount, because that would make most people realize the true evil movies of both parties. Gee, could they even agree to this under the table in advance? Okay, I'll agree to let you sue me and settle for cheap with an unlimited nonexclusive license in return. Okay, maybe now I'm being too cynical.
Re:Interesting that they don't hit someone big (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, it's kind of like a bully picking on the weakest kid in class to keep all of the other kids in line when it comes time to collect the milk money.
Not that I would compare this software patent lawsuit to schoolyard bullying and extortion. That would be scandalous wouldn't it? You can take that risk and expose yourself to possible libel suits, but I won't since I know that saying that all of those Important People in Expensive Suits protecting their Valuable Intellectual Property are just like punks who pick on little kids? That would be very rude of me. So I won't say that this lawsuit is like a bully picking on the little kid in class so that the rest of the kids will give up their lunch money without a fight.
But, even if they do win, the intersection between voters and people who have made webpages is probably pretty high. If you could only get the message out to all of those people that they're Patent Violators for using this patented technology without BT's permissions, perhaps the laws would be changed. After all, patents only exist because laws let them. They could be taken away. Unlikely...but you never know.
The password is... PRECEDENT (Score:2, Insightful)
Either way, if they win they establish a precedent that will simplify the process as they go after the bigger fish.
BTW - I hear a bunch of lawyers for Rambus are looking for a new "righteous IP cause" to sign on for...
I approve of THIS patent (Score:2, Insightful)
- It's so ridiculous that it should make people think
- It's owned by a non-U.S. corporation. This should make the traditional patent-mongering U.S. corporations think
- It shows exactly why the whole idea of software patents hurts society instead of helping it
So, I wish BT the best in their pursuit of royalties for this one - it can only hasten the end of this whole embarrassingly silly fiasco.Patent Death Pool (Mutually Assured Destruction) (Score:3, Insightful)
The nice thing about patents is that it works both ways. Yes the trolls and extortionists can stop the little guy, but if enough little guys get together, we CAN get enough patents to stop everyone else. No cross-licensing, no licensing period. Just stopping progress. But wait, there's more. Since patents can only be used to stop someone from doing something, and since this plan wouldn't need to be implemented unless software development is impossible, they can't sue you for patent infringement because you already aren't doing anything! (Because as we all know, writing software and getting software patents are two activities with "softare" in their descriptions, but are totally separate things!)
Sure, the courts might throw these patents out, but since patents are given to individual inventors, how can the courts just arbitrarily decide to say that these certain people cannot enforce their patents? Would they say that anyone who got a patent using PDP (Patent Death Pool) money cannot enforce their patent? That wouldn't be very nice. Also, you can stop someone else from using your patented idea, even if you have no intention of using it yourself!
Hopefully, the rest of the world would then ignore software patents and charge ahead as we in the US just stagnate. Then people in the US might wake the fuck up and force Congress to get rid of patents on uses of machines.
But, then again maybe not...but at least the rest of the world would be going on ok.
A "flying machine"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that if the patent were for "a flying machine," every court in the world would see through it and realize what a farce it was. In the realm of computers, unfortunately, even such broad idea proposals are taken as some kind of intellectual accomplishment.
Stupid, stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're supposed to go after a small fry evil hacker [slashdot.org] first, so as to set a precedent.
Instead, BT is going after Prodigy, who is owned by SBC, one of the three remaining "Baby Bells", who certainly has enough ca$h to defend themselves properly.
P.S. No offense to Mr. Corley or 2600 with the "small fry" remark. It referred strictly to company size/resources.
Re:Harassment as a business model... (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, I think anyone trying to inforce a patent on hyperlinks, 40 or more years after the concept has been in common use, is rediculous.
Re:prior art 1968 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a convenient excuse for the USPTO. ``Gosh... it'd be too hard to really do our job of verifying that this claim is original. So we'll let the courts sort it out.'' Or do they honestly believe that the prior art has to exist in a patent description?
If there wasn't a good reason for the technical competence of the people doling out patents to be dramatically increased then I don't know what would be. Plus the emphasis on pushing a large number of applications through, and rewarding employees on meeting these numbers, is a major problem. It's better to get a lot of things done poorly than it is to have gotten a fewer amount done well.
Anyone know of any studies done on the retarding effect of frivolously issued patents on the technology segment of the economy? I'm betting that there is a demonstrable effect.
Depressing quote from UK patent office: (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents are meant to protect useful inventions! Which HAVE been invented! What a sad commentary that this guy has lost sight of the whole idea and has caved, and simply accepts the current state of what patents have *become*.