Oprah Sued For Infringing "Touch and Feel" Patent 249
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Oprah Winfrey, or to be more precise, Oprah's Book Club, is being sued by the inventor/patent attorney Scott C. Harris for infringing upon his patent for 'Enhancing Touch and Feel on the Internet.' So Oprah's Book Club is now one of many people and entities being sued over this patent because they allow people to view part, but not all, of a book online before purchasing it. Mr. Harris also sued Google Books for infringing upon this patent. He actually was fired from his position as partner at Fish & Richardson for that, because Google is a client of that law firm and they had conflict of interest rules to uphold." It would be entertaining to see Oprah give very wide and mainstream publicity to the abuses enabled by our current patent system.
Update: 01/07 22:03 GMT by KD : The blog author Joe Mullin wrote to point out that the lawsuit was not filed by the inventor, Scott C. Harris, but rather by the shell company Illinois Computer Research, which seems to exist for the purpose of filing lawsuits based on this particular patent.
Update: 01/07 22:03 GMT by KD : The blog author Joe Mullin wrote to point out that the lawsuit was not filed by the inventor, Scott C. Harris, but rather by the shell company Illinois Computer Research, which seems to exist for the purpose of filing lawsuits based on this particular patent.
Re:Unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
This is patent not copyright. Big content would love to see the patent system tightened up. With the possible exception of drug companies and the democrats already hate them.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that would be entertaining -- but most unlikely. The sad truth is, Big Content is to Democrats as Big Oil is to Republicans.
Actually, the pertinent truth is that she is being sued, and if her lawyers are doing their jobs, they've advised her not to say anything publically that would jeapordise her case.
Only in America. (Score:5, Interesting)
The land of too many lawyers without enough viable work to find.
Oh the opportunities that have been missed or shut down for fear of litigious people and the grinning lawyers that represent them.
As true as this is, I will probably be modded a flamer.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:3, Interesting)
Only in our dreams will he get roasted for it like he deserves though.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:1, Interesting)
What about Valenti and his recent disbarment? It sounds like this guy has a history of getting dumped from law firms after he, through a holding company, drops a patent bomb on him. Maybe it's time this serially unethical behavior was investigated.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is a title, since I must have one (Score:5, Interesting)
"Tonight on Larry King live, he had 3 guests, Oprahs personal trainer, her spiritual adviser and some other guy, talk at length about GASP, OPRAH GETTING FAT. What the hell is wrong with our world, I don't know where to begin anymore."
TV != World.
I do not watch TV. So I can't judge of the state of the world by watching Larry King show. There is not much Oprah in my world, fat or thin.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Walmart makes it a policy to fight each and every lawsuit to discourage others from taking them on. Settling may be cheaper in the long term, but what if settlements bring out more leeches hungry for a little blood?
Anyway, I'm sick of hearing about patents over common sense shit. It's not the underlying technologies that patented, just the applications they now allow (often internet versions of common real life things). I don't like Oprah all that much, but I hope she crushes this little flea.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Queen Elizabeth II, and (unless we fix the copyright laws in the next few years) J K Rowling.
Re:Summary of the patent (Score:3, Interesting)
How do they know that it is you, not someone else asking for more pages? They specifically include the use of cookies, but allow for other methods. There is no mention of (e.g.) using IP addresses, but I expect this would be covered. The interesting problems (How do you know the user isn't deleting the cookies? How do you know whether there are 200 people behind that single IP address?) are not addressed.
True, they're not addressed, but they don't necessarily need to be. You don't have to solve every problem in a patent - otherwise, you could never have improvements on prior technology.
Most interesting thing, I think, is that the claims are broad enough to cover 2D representations, though the first half of the description is pointed towards 3D representations. Since this isn't a divisional application, it makes me suspect that there were 3D claims previously but they were rejected.
Remember - the invention is what's in the claims, not what's in the description or abstract.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, I hope she loses the case on its merits. If she does, you can be pretty sure that changes to patent law will follow.
Re:He might have an interesting case... (Score:3, Interesting)
His case is, in my not actually a lawyer opinion, completely bogus. The patent would likely be tossed out. Eventually. The catch is, it'd take ~5 million to do so, and he's probably more than happy to settle for 3 million. This is the very nature of patent trolling.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not true. Companies settle because there is typically too much to put in the hands of a relatively uneducated judge and jury, even when you factor in the value of preventing future lawsuits. Patent litigation typically involves a company's most profitable products. Losing a litigation, or even being enjoined from selling the products while the suit is pending, would be disastrous to a company's business. Averting future lawsuits has no value if the current lawsuit bankrupts the company. Also, if you fight to the bitter end and happen to lose, and have to pay a large bounty, there really was no prevention anyway.
In many cases, the risk is simply untenable on any measure for an intelligent company to litigate patents to a verdict. Frivolous lawsuits are typically brought by "non-practicing entities," the polite term for patent trolls, in pro-plaintiff districts such as the Eastern District of Texas. Taking on all of the patent trolls is ridiculous because they only risk their legal fees while the defendant risks their livelihood. For instance, RIM refused to settle a patent infringement lawsuit targeting the Blackberry until the court threatened to shut off all Blackberries in the United States. RIM had to pay NTP $612 million to settle instead of the $20 million NTP was demanding before the adverse ruling. Microsoft lost a patent infringement lawsuit for $1.52 billion that was later reduced on appeal to $500 million. If you assume they could have settled the lawsuit for $10 million, the general counsel who lost the company $490 million would have a hard time explaining how that was worth the prevention, in light of the fact that paying out $500 million encourages even more patent trolls to fuck with you.
In a game theoretical sense, you may want to fight everything to the end. But settlements are usually fair in broad strokes degree because you have businessmen and lawyers calculating the validity and odds of various claims. Otherwise, you have a judge and jury who do not know that much trying to learn the law and the technology deciding the future of your company. If the judge decides to enjoin your product or the jury rules against you for $1 billion, you are shit out of luck.