Under Attack by PanIP's Patent Lawyers? 550
Matthew Catalano, of the Dickson Supply Company, asks: "I work for a small plumbing, heating, irrigation, and BBQ supply house. Over the past four we have built up quite a website that houses tons of information and offers many products for sale via an online store. Recently a company known as PanIP has decided to sue us on 2 counts of patent infringement. To the best of my understanding, as you can see from their website, they claim that they invented the use of text and images as a method of business on the Internet. They also claim that they invented the use of a form to enter customer information. Obviously this is ridiculous and most likely won't hold up in court! However, this is not the problem. PanIP has also sued 10 other small companies. PanIP chose small companies because they hope that none of them can afford the legal fees that would ultimately remove their patents. Most defendants, including us, want to opt to bail out for a smaller licensing fee of $30,000. PanIP will continue this vicious cycle on small companies of which many of you may become victim of. Eventually they will have so many cases under their belt that they will be able to attack larger companies." Yet again, the USPTO is used as a weapon in the free market. When will someone get a clue and put a stop to this type of digital extortion?
"I am hoping to release this story to the press so that the US Patent office finally wakes up, but the media is unpredictable and unreliable in terms of which stories they encapsulate. If there is anyone out there who has any ideas about stopping PanIP or can help us out in any way it would be appreciated. Otherwise, just pass this along to everyone you know and hopefully something will come of it.
There is also a page we have constructed that reveals some more details."
Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)
consolidate your legal challenges (Score:5, Interesting)
Safety in Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that your case is very strong and at least some of the other organizations will recognize this as well. Banding together with the other companies will 1) Reduce your legal fees 2) Strengthen your case 3) Give all of you more negotiating power with PanID.
IANAL
Time to make this illegal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Futhermore I think that patents on IT need to be granted or refused within a very short time or alternatively be automatically voided if the "invention" is in broad use when the patent is finally granted.
Interesstingly German patent law had the requirement that only inventions that are significantly more inventive than what an average expert can come up with could be patented at all. Sadly it seems that with the EU this is not valid for software patents anymore.
Loser pays (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems to me it would be worthwhile to adopt a "loser pays" system. PanIP would be free to sue this guy's company all they want, but when PanIP loses in court, they has to pay the other side's legal bills. Think of all the worthless lawsuits people file with lawyers who know they don't have a case, but are just throwing them out there to see who'll settle (*cough*JesseJackson*cough*). They're probably think twice about it, and make sure they actually have legal leg to stand on if they knew they'd have to foot the bill if they lose.
Call the folks at Amazon! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sue em back! (Score:3, Interesting)
btw, anybody know what happened with that issue? I haven't anything about the windowing patent for quite some time.
Loser Pays would go a long way towards fixing this (Score:2, Interesting)
Sue the USPTO? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wierd... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PanIP+pate
results in zero returned results...
Their website looks very crummy too - are you *sure* they are a legitimate business? I mean it's *very* hard to escape google's search with *zero results*.
You might just scare them off if you go "see you in court".
-- Dan "who is off to look up USPTO on PanIPs patents now..." =)
HTTPS! QUick before they take it down! (Score:4, Interesting)
Check it out! Quick, before they take it down.
Very weird, very confusing... [panip.com]
Re:HTTPS! QUick before they take it down! (Score:3, Interesting)
Get EFF to help sue the USPTO! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, they're a government agency, but they ARE doing harm by granting these patents. They ARE costing businesses money, and probably end up making some go bankrupt trying to fight these crap patents (or through paying silly license fees).
Can't they be sued for gross negligence or something similar... A good suit like that would go a LONG way towards stopping the endless stream of crap that they've granted.
Just my non-lawyerly $0.02.
MadCow.
Re:Time to make this illegal... (Score:2, Interesting)
Reason tells me that the only way to solve this is by correcting the economic imbalances that exist: the cost of a thorough examination of a patent vs. the cost of applying for a patent; the cost of bringing a patent lawsuit/defending against a patent lawsuit vs. the benefits of doing so.
I would like to say that the price for patents should be jacked up to cover the actual cost of examining the patent. Then, the PTO could hire enough examiners to actually do the job. However, this might make it more difficult for Mr. Inventor to submit a perfectly valid patent, again giving the advantage to the big guy.
More than anything, the whole IP issue needs to be revised carefully. The problem is that I'm not sure that I trust the government to do the revising -- let them get involved, and the DMCA might happen all over again!
Re:Time to make this illegal... (Score:3, Interesting)
It should be obvious, that the current practice of US patent law hurts small businesses and startups most and generally slows down innovation. The only people who win by this are lawyers and scum like PanIP.
Re:Clever buggers (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to agree -- this page [panip.com] is the largest on their web site, and it's only 54830 bytes. Still it is the largest [panip.com], and would therefore be the best way to slashdot the site, wouldn't it [panip.com]?
Re:No point... (Score:1, Interesting)
If they used a MS program that allows even my Grandmother to create forms, wouldn't PanIP
I'm not even going to finish that sentance or this post. The whole thing is too fucking stupid to make sense of. funny or not.
Re:Software patents are not the root of all evil. (Score:2, Interesting)
Some decades ago... the legislators, in an atempt to put order in the fast and furious times of invention... invented a low level playground called "patent". It was granted to intenvors to protect them from others thieving their ideas and marketing the fruits of them without any compensation the the original inventor.
Even in it's starting points... the rush to patent existed. The first to place the papers in the patent office would win (and that happened with patents related with telephones at least - if i recall correctly).
Patents today don't protect anything. The only thing that they allow is for restrictive access of common knowledge.
Today the great majority of all patents are pushed by companies, funded by companies and mayhappen used by companies.
The inventors at large don't profit anymore from the inventions apart from the "renown" (which they would receive anyway).
Another problem with patents is the time of "monopoly" for exploring the patent. It doesn't even protect companies anymore (see the typewriters patents and all those *inventive* tecniks to hammer the letters in the paper - and specially see where all that has gone today [and the companies also]).
Of course... the time is still the end of the 19 century... yup... where to build anything you still needed one or two years... NOT!
20 or 25 years in a software patent is just madning! In the industrial world, a patent normally don't outlast it's usefullness. But, in software, that means 5 to 6 full generations of software and arround 2 completelly diferent breads software engeneering! That is just too much...
And yes... the root of all evil is in the USPTO office. When the patent examiners are rewarded by the number of patents approved! You can add 2+2 i presume...
Enought of rantings...
Which is why they originally went after airlines (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.law.emory.edu/fedcircuit/mar97/96-11
an analysis of that decision
http://www.georgiaip.org/wi98kues.htm
maybe since that never worked out, they're looking for other targets... that was always the plan to begin with.
Re:This is why we need "loser pays" (Score:5, Interesting)
All that happens in the UK is that the big firms pump up the cost of the lawsuit as far as they can (hiring the most expensive lawyers, transporting them around, etc). If they are suing a small firm, or especially a private individual, they know that if they have to pay his costs it's barely a blip on a balance sheet, but if he has to pay theirs it could gut his business or bankrupt his family in a single fell swoop. The result is the same: they settle to avoid the risk.
The proposed system is interested, but I'd make a change: you have to pay, to BOTH lawyers, whatever you paid yours. So if yours cost $3000 and the other guy's cost $500000 and you lose, you pay only $6000... but if you WIN, the other guy has to pay $1000000, and your lawyer gets an extra $497000! (Hey, he deserves it for beating a higher-paid lawyer, right?) This ensures that the big firms still have to worry about paying costs if they lose, as opposed to being able to say '$3000? Pah.' It also, of course, means that small guys won't have much of a problem finding a lawyer in these cases...
PanIP info for legal action (Score:1, Interesting)
Someone in here listed some info on PanIP with address and phone number in San Diego: 858-454-4358. I looked that number up in a reverse directory for verification or extra info. It is listed as PanIP in La Jolla (San Diego).
Next, I looked up San Diego County fictitious business name register and found PanIP listed there, showing Pangea Systems Inc as the owner.
Then I looked up a California corporation name search and found that Pangea Systems Inc is listed as a valid corporation in California.
Then doing a search on Pangea Systems Inc brought up several references to this company in California. It looks like a (substantial?) biotech software company.
Now if I've connected all the dots right, the possibility of counter-suing this company looks like it could attract lawyers looking for deep pocket lawsuits. Much more lucrative for those getting harrassed by "PanIP".
Patents not common/natural law or capitalistic (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, since the article was old, nobody saw it. But this is improved and modified from since then, too.
(1) Patents [and copyrights] are not common law.
According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, they both started late in history, as a way for kings (1) to funnel profits to friends of the throne and (2) ensure proper censorship. They are not historical in the sense that common law is.
(2) Patents are not natural law. Natural law does include a natural definition of ownership: you own that which you can defend and control. One of the prime problems of both patents and copyrights is that it is next to impossible to actually defend and control an *idea*. Once you let it out, anyone can implement it as they see fit. So in order to have actual patents that are upheld, you end up requiring a police state.
*Alternatively, you could choose not to uphold patents and copyrights completely -- to let the scofflaws get away with it. But now we conflcit with natural law in a different way: when you benefit the lawbreakers and bind the lawabiding, then you destroy respect for law in general. Thus, patents and copyrights are against natural law, too.
(3) Patents have nothing to do with capitalism. Patents are used by large companies to enable them to steal from smaller companies, while preventing the smaller companies from competing. This is done through many means, including that point that (A) every patent is breakable, (B) Patents can only be enforced through lawsuit, but the appeals process makes it beneficial for the big-money entity to keep the lawsuit in appeal until the smaller entity breaks (C) Patents are a way that companies and universities can steal the ideas of their employees, and have it upheld in court, before the employee has even had the idea.
But if you undermine small companies in favor of big companies, then you undermine the very basis of capitalism, which encouragest money to be spread around through many industries. Indeed, you have corparchy (corporate monarchy).
Everything having to do with patents thus violates not only the spirit of free enterprise, laissez faire, liberty, and true capitalism, as well as undermining basic law and order.
So if patents are not natural law, not common law, and not capitalist, what are they?
They are essentially an attempt to enslave -- an attempt by one person to say "for your right to live, you owe me profits." This has been done since time began; as one Southerner I know said, "Blacks and moralists complain about slavery, but they forget that the slavery was necessary for our economy, and necessary for us to have the lifestyle we have. In the same way, such people complain about the IMF, but forget that the IMFs milking of 3rd world countries is *necessary* for us to have the lifestyle we need."
In other words, there is always a demand for slavery.
That being said, I completely condemn the slavery of the blacks in America. I completely condemn the slave labor of the Jews by the Nazis. I completely condemn the ongoing colonialism and theft from 3rd world nations by the IMF. And I do condemn the latest attempt by some "businessmen" in our communities to enslave their countrymen for their benefit.
In each case, what you are seeing is a brand of evil -- the idea, best expressed by Mephistophles in _Faustus_, "If I cannot be everything, then I would that there was nothing." Such evil does eventually destroy itself, for ultimately nobody can be everything.
[Note: In spite of my term "condemn", I do not advocate violence of any form. Ever. I am a Chrisstian, and Christ -- who was more fit to rule by force than any, if he chose -- instead arranged it so that he would have to rebuke his disciples for *defending* with force at his arrest. Thus, I cannot support violence even in the cases of self-defence much less politics. Rather, my condemnation is to say that people who go along with this are destroying themselves, and not only will I *not* help them, I will be unable to help them, and it is not my responsibility. If you dislike what you see happening, move to a country that is not part of this, and then work as hard as you can to build up that country. Such countries do exist. For more help, try www.escapeartist.com . They helped me.]
Hoax?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Furthermore, the site looks like it was done by an elementary school student.
If it is a hoax, maybe it was done in the spirit of the "humouse" [slashdot.org] we heard about on slashdot earlier this week.