Microsoft, Apple and Others Launch Huge Patent Strike at Android 476
New submitter GODISNOWHERE writes "Nortel went bankrupt in 2009. In 2011, it held an auction for its massive patent portfolio. The winners of the auction were Apple, Microsoft, Sony, RIM, and others, who bought the patents for $4.5 billion as a consortium named Rockstar Bidco. At the time, many people speculated those patents would be used against Google, who bid separately but lost. It turns out they were right. Rockstar has filed eight lawsuits in federal court targeting Google and Android device manufacturers. 'The complaint (PDF) against Google involves six patents, all from the same patent "family." They're all titled "associative search engine," and list Richard Skillen and Prescott Livermore as inventors. The patents describe "an advertisement machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network. The oldest patent in the case is US Patent No. 6,098,065, with a filing date of 1997, one year before Google was founded. The newest patent in the suit was filed in 2007 and granted in 2011. The complaint tries to use the fact that Google bid for the patents as an extra point against the search giant.'"
so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
... how is this a strike against Android?
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
If at first you can't compete?
Sue, sue again! (Perferably via patent lawsuits!)
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Informative)
“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” - Steve Jobs
This isn't a surgical strike. This is an attack on Google's primary business model and revenue stream. Nobody makes much profit off Android - most players make no profit at all. Google's deep pockets are basically the only thing keeping Android a going concern. But this is, definitely, the "nuclear option," going after so much more than just Android.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's own patent bank, while not as large as it's competitors, is not insubstantial. We're about to see a legal mess of historic proportions. Law firms are going to make insane amounts of money.
Oh and consumers will be paying the bottom line, can't forget that.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's own patent bank, while not as large as it's competitors, is not insubstantial. We're about to see a legal mess of historic proportions. Law firms are going to make insane amounts of money.
Oh and consumers will be paying the bottom line, can't forget that.
Government by the lawyers for the lawyers.
That's what the US really has...
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If this results in end of software patents at the price of smartphones being, say, $50 more expensive for a while, that could be a fair trade.
I make no comment on how likely I think this is, si
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's own patent bank doesn't matter, because Rockstar Consortium doesn't do anything other than undermine the very fabric of the tech industry for their own gain. They exist only to collect rent on innovation itself. FTFA: "'Pretty much anybody out there is infringing,' says John Veschi, Rockstar’s CEO. 'It would be hard for me to envision that there are high-tech companies out there that don’t use some of the patents in our portfolio.'"
To spell it out more clearly, Google can't sue Rockstar over patent infringement, because Rockstar doesn't actually do anything that Google would have a patent on (unless Google owns some "Method and Process for Utterly Crippling the Tech Industry Using Patent Lawsuits" business process patent we don't know about).
The timing couldn't be better. We finally have the first credible effort in U.S. Congress to re-evaluate how patents are handled (http://eshoo.house.gov/press-releases/eshoo-introduces-patent-litigation-reform-bill/), and couldn't have crafted a better supervillian than Rockstar if we tried. They even have a comically bombastic name to put a cherry on top of their already odious persona.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also FTFA:
And because it’s independent, it can antagonize its owners’ partners and customers in ways that its owner companies could not. “The principals have plausible deniability,” says Thomas Ewing, an attorney and intellectual property consultant. “They can say with a straight face: ‘They’re an independent company. We don’t control them.’ And there’s some truth to that.”
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No, but shooting you in the head won't stop the dog. Apple, Microsoft, et al. did bad things. But there's nothing you can do to them to stop the rampage.
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How do you come to that conclusion? Seriously - no snark. I'm not familiar w/ MMI's patent portfolio in detail, but they did a lot of important tech work on cell phones. Their business downfall was, like Nokia's, about choosing the wrong cell/smart phone fashion trends, rather than any technical shortcomings.
Meanwhile, what kind of important patents has Apple, for example, come up with? Rounded corners on rectangles? Small wonder they lose patent suits, and an obvious reason for them to buy into this patent
Re: so tell me again... (Score:4, Insightful)
all the important work was given to the standards bodies
once you assign your patent to a standards body for inclusion in a standard you lose a lot of power over that patent
all the technical work for wifi/LTE and other tech are now SEP patents which they have to license at the same rates to everyone
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, you're buying into some propaganda lies. Sorry to say.
When it comes to patents, all they agreed to was a willingness to license, and not to freeze anybody out. It in no way changes their ability to enforce their patents, as the appeals courts keep reminding everybody.
Certainly having contributed to the standards is drawing out the legal battles and making them more expensive.
Just because companies should have to give up their IP claims to have their tech be part of a standard, doesn't mean that that is
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For those that don't follow these patent disputes, Apple wanted the same discount end rate that others cross-licensed to get, instead of the base rate before trades.
The funny part about that is that in addition to not having patents anybody wants to license, the patents Apple does have, they refuse to license. So of course they can't get cross-licensing discounts, they don't cross-license!
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Apple and Samsung have already been involved in legal action against each other for years, yet Apple still ships products with Samsung parts. Why does Samsung still have Apple as a customer? Because the people running Samsung are not morons - you don't throw away billions in revenue to spite someone. Or, maybe they do, and the shareholders throw them out on their asses.
The whole "OMG you're suing me so I don't want your business" idea is ridiculous in anything larger than a mom-and-pa operation.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
After the trial, in which Apple won $1bn, Samsung announced a price hike on chips it was selling Apple, estimated to cost Apple $8bn. In addition, Samsung announced it would not continue selling Apple chips altogether past a certain date.
Thing is, Samsung has Fab technology that's hard to replace. There is a reason Apple chose Samsung to begin with. It's not a simple case of "oh, we'll just buy from someone else".
Shachar
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Thats what I was thinking. This isn't about android, this is about Google en masse.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Informative)
I would say that, if admissible, this "invention" (PDF [google.com]) completely prevents any company from displaying ads alongside search results, killing Adsense:
This invention relates to an advertisment machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network. The machine receives, from the user, a search request including a search argument corresponding to the desired information and searches, based upon the received search argument, a first database having data network related information to generate search results. It also correlates the received search argument to a particular advertisement in a second database having advertisement related information. The search results together with the particular advertisement are provided by the machine to the user.
We claim:
1. A method of searching for desired information Within a data network, comprising the steps of:
-> receiving, from a user, a search request including a search argument corresponding to the desired information;
-> searching, based upon the received search argument and user profile data, a database of information to generate a search result; and
-> providing the search results to the user
-> Wherein searching the database includes correlating, as a function of a fuzzy logic algorithm, the received search argument and user profile data to particular information in the database, and providing the particular information as the search results.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is so painfully obvious the phonebook is prior art.
You go look under plumber and with the listing you see advertising.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Funny)
hindsight doesn't make something obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is so painfully obvious the phonebook is prior art.
You go look under plumber and with the listing you see advertising.
Painfully obvious in hindsight. Why was it patented before google came into existence?
While I tend to agree with you in this case, if you want google to win the lawsuit you have to answer the above question satisfactorily.
Imagine the Hammer was invented after patent laws. obvious in hindsight. simple. But eminently patentable as a method for driving with more force than banging it with a rock.
here one prior art would be the yellow pages. But it lacked the force of a data base search. the search terms in the yellowpages were pre-formed. so less forceful.
the fact that was not an obvious improvement is that at the time Google was formed, Yahoo was not a search engine per se. It was a curated set of pre-formed categories like a yellow pages.
another prior art would be Alta Vista and Overture. They were packing the top of the search results list with advertiser's listings. so here we do have advertising using a data base.
But at that time they were not using a user profile to make the listing adaptive. SO less force.
Early google was simmilar but the ads were shifted to the right column not intermixed. Later on Google became adaptive.
So in 1997 it's not yet obvious since others with the means to do so before google did not do so.
Re:hindsight doesn't make something obvious. (Score:4)
Because the patent office will allow any damn thing.
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Painfully obvious in hindsight. Why was it patented before google came into existence?
Because at that time the patent office let anyone patent anything they wanted, no matter how trivial, as long as they stuck "on a computer" or "on the Internet" in front of it.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have long observed a trend among my fellow geeks -- being smart in one (or even several) areas -- to eventually come to the conclusion that they are experts in all areas, especially where they perceive logic to be involved.
But please accept my polite suggestion that you don't know jack shit about prior art.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
--Socrates in Plato's Apology
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So, in other words, it's one of the myriad patents where you take something people have been doing since Barney Rubble and add "... but on a COMPUTER!" at the end.
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The only thing in this that seems remotely patentable is the bit about "includes correlating, as a function of a fuzzy logic algorithm", in that the actual algorithm discussed might be truly inventive. But the patent doesn't seem to apply to the specific algorithm involved. Instead it seeks to patent the idea to use of an algorithm to enhance search. That is inane - as, apparently, is the US Patent Office.
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I read a few of the patents. It's quite amazing that any of the ones I read were even considered non-obvious, or without prior art. These also don't seem related to just android. Any of Google's servers also infringe when supplying targeted ads as far as I can tell, even the one granted in 2011. The US patent office is obviously maintaining their quality level.
I think this would be a fantastic time to negate these patents, as well as the ones Microsoft has been using under NDA for their previous racketeeri
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To prove prior art you are going to need to prove Lycos and WebCrawler had these technologies since the patents predate Google.
As for negating I agree. Google is in a wonderful position to negate since they don't depend on patents.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product."
Jesus. Young Steve Jobs was pretty cool [youtube.com]. Old, dying Steve Jobs was just an asshole whom young Steve Jobs would have mocked.
Re: so tell me again... (Score:4, Insightful)
And in neither of these cases where the ideas being stolen original to Apple. What "nagged" Jobs was not the stealing, it was that it was not him doing the stealing. After all, iOS itself was mostly unoriginal theft from other smartphone makers.
All this is is another example of Jobs' unbounded ego.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be cooler if the summary was a wiki?
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, so very much yes.
Run it like mod points, with a stronger emphasis on metamod (metaediting?).
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'd prefer an intelligent discourse of experts, perhaps moderated by a competent paralegal with years of experience researching such things.
PJ, this post is for you. We NEED you. Please reconsider.
Re:so tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'd prefer an intelligent discourse of experts, perhaps moderated by a competent paralegal with years of experience researching such things.
PJ, this post is for you. We NEED you. Please reconsider.
A thousand times this :( It's so sad that we don't have Groklaw to help sort this all out for us. Mr. Florian woke up with a massive hard-on this morning, spewing his usual hypocritical diatribe about how Google brought this all on themselves by not caving in the past. I can't stand the thought that he's the only "tech patent expert" who will be quoted in the news on all of this.
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I've discussed this with her too. It's her decision and as much as it pains a ton of us, we need to respect her decision.
Someone needs to start a new blog and get paralegals involved, to carry the torch.
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The article (the one with the longest link, on Ars) sucks as well. It has several mentions of "nuclear", "defcon" and "wars", but says very little about the actual patents involved.
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The article (the one with the longest link, on Ars) sucks as well. It has several mentions of "nuclear", "defcon" and "wars", but says very little about the actual patents involved.
clearly WOPR is the basis of their patents.
shall we play a game?
If you can't be the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Sue the best.
Re: If you can't be the best (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sue the best.
All the more reason to end software patents.
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If you can't convince, punch.
If you can't share, hoard.
and so on, and so on.
Everything humans do is based on finding something else harder.
Re: If you can't be the best (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: If you can't be the best (Score:4, Interesting)
Expensive for Apple in that it would publicize the true situation? They weren't dealing with the problems in a manner acceptable to most users.
Re: If you can't be the best (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple forums openly talk about problems in their products and fixes.
Apple is well-known to bury data. The piece of data I personally noticed regarded data corruption in Rev.1 B&W G3 macs. They had an article in the TIL which told you to buy an ATA card or FWB toolkit and slow down your drives. When they folded the TIL into the KB they pulled in articles before and after it, but they dropped this one. They lie, cheat, and deceive; that's what they do.
Re: If you can't be the best (Score:5, Funny)
Your claim is childish and wrong.
So's your face.
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Your mother is a sign of infantility and/or lack of discussion skills.
wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, Microsoft, and Sony (nobody cares about RIM), three of the biggest names in technology. Three of the most influential and powerful companies in the world. Three companies that have historically been in fierce competition with one another.
And they had to gang up on Google.
What does that say about how much they fear Google?
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Perhaps Google will win as most of these patents are quite obvious. Of course, it will probably end up being handed to Lucy Koh, at which point, good luck with anything approaching fairness.
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They tried to buy a large group of patents, not just these. Seriously, read these patents.
Re:wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, it's their fault that they chose not to be part of an anti-competitive extortion scheme.
Re:wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans naturally cooperate. Competition isn't a religious edict - it's just that we have a fucked up society where everyone at the bottom is told to compete while everyone at the top plays golf together.
Re:wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans naturally cooperate. Competition isn't a religious edict - it's just that we have a fucked up society where everyone at the bottom is told to compete while everyone at the top plays golf together.
Um...Humans naturally club each other to death in attempt to be dominant. Cooperation is a concept developed BY society to achieve a greater goal than an individual could on their own. Because Americans have lived in relative peace the last century many citizens believe peace is the norm but it is not. We have been very fortunate to live in such an age but now take it for granted.
Re: (Score:3)
Because Americans have lived in relative peace the last century
Say what? You seem to neglect two world wars, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war, the Kosovo war, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and several other smaller conflicts, but other than that, then yes, Americans have lived in peace in the last century.
We have been very fortunate to live in such an age but now take it for granted.
You have been very fortunate to live in a country that had no war within its borders in the past century, and you take it for granted. Fixed that for you.
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In other words, it's their fault that they chose not to be part of an anti-competitive extortion scheme.
So, you're saying they didn't want to be part of an anticompetitive cartel, they wanted to be king of the anticompetitive kingdom?
That said, their rep isn't bad in this area.
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You do realize that the patents would have effectively been removed from the playing field if they had joined the consortium when they were offered the opportunity to do so, since almost all of the major players would have then had the rights to use the patents. Rather than do that, however, Google instead opted to try and outbid the "anti-competitive extortion scheme" so that they could have the patents all to themselves. They lost.
I was actually rather disappointed in them when they chose to pursue that r
Anti-Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, Microsoft, Sony, RIM, and others, who bought the patents for $4.5 billion as a consortium named Rockstar Bidco
I presume it's not, but that should be illegal collusion and an anti-trust violation.
Re:Anti-Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, the result of buying patents is now they have a legal monopoly.
Re:Anti-Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
True. That's the problem with the term "intellectual property" - it's male bovine manure. It's a government granted monopoly, not property in any meaningful sense like a car or a shirt.
Re:Anti-Trust (Score:5, Informative)
I can't believe there wouldn't be a law somewhere on the books that would make it illegal for all your competitors to gang up together and buy patents to try and lock you out of the market. I'm assuming the laws exist, but they figure they've got enough legal mojo to fend off weak government anti-trust regulators.
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It is perfectly legal for companies to work together to cooperate providing that the group of companies working together don't represent effectively all of the market. In the case of search the only possible monopoly is Google.
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OP here. I didn't say it was illegal (IANAL), I said it should be illegal. A consortium to develop new tech or something is reasonable. A consortium to play patent troll is not. As it is, patents are just government granted monopolies. Collusion (oops, I meant a consortium) to leverage those little monopolies into a big monopoly is grossly anti-competitive. Business laws should be about fostering competition, not hindering it.
Re:Anti-Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has a virtual monopoly in search. Weakening Google's position in search would enhance not diminish competition.
Weakening Google's position in search by providing something better would enhance competition. Weakening their position through bogus patent infringement claims is not competition; that's just dragging a more successful competitor down out of spite, to everyone's detriment. The whole point of competition, and the reason we generally try to encourage it, is that the best product wins. The goal is not simply to divide the market up as evenly as possible.
Re:Anti-Trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Prosecutors will charge old ladies playing bridge under RICO, but then again those old ladies don't pay protection^Wbribes^W^Wdonate to campaigns the way the big boys do.
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What business are Apple, Microsoft, RIM in for which they can form a trust? Especially one related to search. Apple bundles other people's search they lose money on it and are a customer of both Google and Microsoft for search. RIM doesn't do search at all.
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They all make phone OSes. Google make an arguably better (or at the very least, more popular) phone OS. So they're trying to destroy Google's core market of search, to stop them making such a nice phone OS.
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1) The patents aren't about phone-OSes they are about search more broadly
2) The combined marketshare of Apple + Microsoft+RIM falls well short of a complete market JavaVM is still larger then all 3 plus Android.
3) Even if you were to restrict to particular price points and thus exclude JavaVM, Google is the one who approaches a monopoly. It is legal to act in concert to prevent the formation of a monopoly.
So you would really have to argue that RIM+Microsoft+Apple are in collusion to drive Google out s
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I didn't say they're too expensive, I just think that thinking of everything as "premium" vs "piece of shit" is a bit harsh. For reference, my phone is an S4 and I drive a Toyota GT86, though outside of work I wear clothes that most people probably don't think of as all that nice (usually extremely baggy trousers with some kind of geeky t-shirt).
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they tried to buy them to prevent exactly this from happening?
Re:Anti-Trust (Score:4, Informative)
Google "Wright Brothers patent war".
If you can't beat them in the market... (Score:2)
Patent hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Broken system. Too much politics, too much backstabbing, too much use of patents to tear down competitors instead of just arranging a reasonable fee.
Abolish software and "business method" patents. They're not *things*, just ideas. They're not what patents were *created* to protect.
Re:Patent hell (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has an excellent opportunity here to abolish software patents altogether. All they have to do is nothing. Let the courts rule against them. Pay the fine and close the business. Completely. Larry and Sergei walk away with a cool $50 billion. The main losers will be search users and those dependent on search to be found. In other words, everybody. You want to kill Google? Fine. Let's do it. Let's see how long the world can survive without it.
Re:Patent hell (Score:4, Informative)
Bing. Microsoft is part of this consortium, remember?
You underestimate human ability to adapt. If we lose what we use, we'll use what's available. Sure, there'd be a period of outrage and a bit of chaos, but then everything would stabilise. Business as usual while someone else reaps the profit.
There's a Polish proverb: "If you don't have what you like, you like what you have".
Remember the old adage... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who can't, litigate.
Sorry, Apple, but the Woz was right when he explained concern over your company. And I've not really seen Microsoft innovate itself out of a paper bag in years... But that's ok, they'll make sure they're on the gravy train by attempting to collect royalties every Android device out there...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/ [microsoft.com]
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
from that website:
Headlines
You Can Live Forever! Digitally
How Researchers Map The Future Of Innovation
Keeping Teens ‘Private’ on Facebook Won’t Protect Them
Audio: Microsoft's Baym Discusses Social Media Fundraising
WOW, that's some innovation right there. I can't wait for those innovations to become available to us.
Looking at the rest of the website, it's all about other peopl
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Re:Remember the old adage... (Score:4, Interesting)
We all know Steve Job's hated android with a passion. It is still the iPhones biggest competition. They noticed that an open source platform, with it's hundreds/thousands of contributers is going to move and adapt much more quickly than whatever team they can afford to pay. Apple has a great think tank (though not as good with the passing of St. Jobs), but even they can't come up with something so fresh and new that the legion of android wouldn't be able to build a competitor rapidly... much more rapidly than their annual "yes, but this iDevice is 5% shinier!".
At first MS had the iPhone hate due it it whipping the pants off their Windows Mobile nonsense. They too see that a competitor has a massive market share, and their own offerings (with sub-par app choices) just can't compete. They still don't get that people use their phones in different ways than computers and their vendor lock-in with "yes, but we have office!" (on the surface/RT at least) just isn't going to get all those young adults/teens/preteens hot and bothered about Windows phone.
Then we can take a step back and look at what the competition is really like. Apple with their $600 "but it's shiny" iPhone and walled garden with plenty of apps. MS, with their handful of Windows Phone devices and (by comparison) tiny app market for reasonable prices, or Android that has plenty of apps, is more customizable (for those that do), and is cheaper to produce due to no licensing fees.
The market has spoken for itself, the "little guys" have run out of ideas to attract the populous, so now they are lashing out at their competitor. Little do they realize that the whole Apple/Samsung campaign tarnished that once golden sheen of Apple's doors. We can only hope that something like the Streisand effect kicks in and a negative public image for companies behaving like children starts becoming a deterrent for these kinds of tactics. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Google and their constant data mining on everything, but given the choices, I'd rather go with Android than the Reality Distortion Market or Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
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Motorola (actually Motorola Mobility - it was only half of the original company) also has well established expertise in the design and manufacture of wireless products. What a strange company - they can actually produce something other than government writs of monopoly (a/k/a patents).
Re:Remember the old adage... (Score:4)
the weirdest part is? /. is such a YRO crowd that you think they would be outraged at all the privacy invasion stuff that google does, but instead there is this love and forgiveness. I think mostly because it sounds like a cool place to work and gives free stuff like gmail (hint: it's not free). oh and they support "open source" (but not really).
say what you will about apple, but at least your relationship with them is clear. you buy a product from them, and you own a product. no selling of your info. no things that can be taken away (igoogle, reader). it's regular old business. I prefer that.
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It makes perfect sense. Google is completely up-front about it. They tell you they'll give you a service for free, but in exchange they'll mine your content for
Go nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
Justia link (Score:5, Informative)
To save people the trouble of finding these:
http://patents.justia.com/inventor/richard-prescott-skillen [justia.com]
Re:Justia link (Score:5, Funny)
This invention relates to an advertisement machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network. The machine receives from a user, a search request including a search argument corresponding to the desired information and searches, based upon the received search argument a first database having data network related information to generate search results. It also correlating the received search argument to a particular advertisement in a second database having advertisement related information. The search results together with the particular advertisement are provided by the machine to the user.
Yep... that's the "patent". Let's narrow this down a bit:
This invention relates to an advertisement machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network.
Let's refactor this:
"within a data network" - where else is he going to search? What if he's in a car? and who cares where he's searching?
"user searching for desired information" - what other kind of information would he ever search for, undesired information? That's the whole point of "searching" is to find desired for information, so let's shorten that to "user searching" to get rid of redundancy.
"to a user searching" - Who cares what the user happens to be doing at the time? What if they're scratching their ass, and the machine serves ads to the user scratching his ass? What the user happens to be doing is irrelevant.
"machine which provides advertisements to a user" - what if the user is a web-crawler? Your invention will still work if it's a web crawler randomly pretending to be a user, so the invention is providing advertisements to not just a user, but to any client that connects. So we don't need to specify the "to a user" part either.
"This invention relates to" - this is the abstract for your invention, we know what you're talking about already, don't repeat.
"an advertisement machine which provides advertisements" - What else would an advertisement machine do? make coffee? By definition an advertisement machine is a machine that provides advertisements. Let's simplify this to "an advertisement machine"
After removing all the fluff, we're left with just:
An advertisement machine.
Good job! This patent would be awesome if you also invented a time machine, because ads have been around for a very long time.
Re:Justia link (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, every word of the claim counts.
This patent is a lot narrower than it seems. Notice the "fuzzy". Fuzzy logic is well defined and does have alternatives. Use any alternative solution in this step and you're not infringing.
In other news... (Score:2)
In a surprise announcement, Google said they were relocating the entire company to Antigua....
not how patents should work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
but it's unfair to creditors if the assets are not sold.
what do you think bankruptcy is for? for moving assets to your best buddy?
the only thing is to make it stricter to get patents, in the way that it has to be something OMFG smart thing to invent one.
I mean, fuck, say you're running a search engine. say you have a database of ads. how much of an invention is it to fetch data from the two databases instead of just one with the word?
Google saw this coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is safe to assume Google saw this coming. Which means they believe it will cost less than 4.4 billion to win (I assume their ability to serve ads, and android, both are not something they will willingly give up on).
I wonder... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
More money is spent on litigating patents than on creating the inventions. Wish I could find the link now, but the crossover was reached a number of years ago. So much for the idea that the purpose of patents is to foster innovation.
The solution to ALL Intellectual Property problems (Score:5, Interesting)
I always believed that the purpose of intellectual property to was to better ensure that the creator(s) of the thing had exclusive rights to their creations, ensuring their investments of blood, sweat and tears has a better chance of a return. But that's not what happens is it? No. What we have is an industry. And with any industry, we experience dehumanizing effects.
What's the solution? We can write an increasingly complex set of laws to address specific predatory behaviors such as patent trolling. That won't solve the problems of giant industry players from fighting each other like giant Japanese monsters on the streets of Tokyo. The real solution?
Disallow all intellectual property transfers. If you didn't create it, you can't own it. Then it reverts to its original purpose and intent and virtually removes all industrial activity. But what happens when the creators, authors and companies die? Does all that valuable intellectual property just vanish in a puff of smoke? Well? Yes. I would hope so.
I anticipate patent invalidation. (Score:3)
Any decent defence attorney will find little trouble pointing out that all pre-1997 search engines are prior art, since a search engine has always been an advertising machine. If I typed into Alta Vista, in 1996, a search for "books" and came up with any site related to books, Alta Vista has acted in the role of an advertising machine in directing me to that site.
Re: (Score:3)
Any decent defence attorney will find little trouble pointing out that all pre-1997 search engines are prior art, since a search engine has always been an advertising machine. If I typed into Alta Vista, in 1996, a search for "books" and came up with any site related to books, Alta Vista has acted in the role of an advertising machine in directing me to that site.
You have to actually read the patent claims, not just the title. In particular, the claims require correlation of user profile data and search terms for determining the delivered data. In Alta Vista, searches were just based on your search terms, not your user profile - Bob didn't get different results from Alice. Accordingly, while Alta Vista is certainly relevant prior art that could be used in combination with other art to potentially invalidate the claims, alone, it doesn't do the job.
And this brings u
Where is PJ when we need her (Score:5, Insightful)
I really miss Groklaw days like this
Make this lawsuit stop fast (Score:4, Interesting)
Everybody better let Rockstar Games know that you think they're assholes for this crap.
Cause that trademark and brand damage, watch the real Rockstar file a huge suit in return regarding trademarks.
Good thing software patents are no good! (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Google was founded September 4, 1998
Some of these patents were filed as early as November 21, 1996.
I doubt Nortel invented anything of note and so these patents are likely BS but you can't argue who got there first.