Company Claims Patent on CD Writing 559
rborek writes "According to CNet News.com, Roxio is being sued by Optima Technology over Patent 5,666,531 which covers 'Recordable CDROM accessing system'. It looks as though the patent describes DirectCD and its packet writing technique. Many different programs and operating systems use this - including Linux, which opens the door for widespread patent licensing issues if the suit is valid and the patent upheld."
patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:patents (Score:5, Funny)
This one is doomed... :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, the patent only applies to "CDROM"s. It does not apply to DVD-based media.
I also think the patent is invalid because they had to limit their patent to applying to CDROMs. Meaning it was already in use for other types of media (other filesystems, whatever.). Meaning it is one of the "logical next
Re:patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:patents (Score:4, Funny)
Don't law firms build their business model around litigation?
well, that would make sense, what with them employing all those lawyers. Don't try this if most of your employees are software geeks.
Re:patents (Score:5, Insightful)
yes. but tbey deal with litigating and defending against litigation. they sell to both sides - kind of like the krupps [wikipedia.org].
companies that pursue litigation as a business model, however, only play one side: offense. there's no money to be made defending.
Re:patents (Score:5, Interesting)
1)Quietly Register Patent
2)Wait for some company to make lots of money totally legitimately
3)Sue until your stock price doubles!
Re:patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:patents (Score:3, Informative)
Doubles? (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO stock didn't just double [yahoo.com], it went up twenty-fold at one point. If you are as smart, you'll short the stock [nasdaq.com] like some of the smarter geeks out there. The stock will eventually be sued into the ground and you'll have made 100 percent on your investment (minus comission and interest).
Re:Doubles? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the amount of money you could lose is limited only by your imagination.
Re:patents (Score:3, Informative)
That might be acceptable in some fields, but in computing it just plain isn't.
Re:patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Ma
Re:patents (Score:5, Funny)
Re:patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:patents (Score:3, Informative)
Re:patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there is. To _reject_ a patent, the PTO has to give a valid reason, including relevant prior art. This includes searching for the prior art and documenting it. To accept a patent, you just have to say that it's all okay.
I've heard that it takes 7 times as long to reject a patent than it does to accept one.
Not if the PTO does it right (Score:3, Interesting)
How can it take seven times longer to research an application and write a letter citing existing patents or prior art, than to research an application and write a letter granting a patent?
Oh, our poor, poor PTO.
Re:Not if the PTO does it right (Score:5, Insightful)
But hey, it means nothing anyway - the courts decide everything.
Lemelson & Prosecution Laches Defense Re:paten (Score:3, Informative)
In patent circles Lemelson was the name of the game .... The basic concept was to file a patent, and then let it sit and sit and sit, and when enough people were using the patent, then Lemelson would get the patent issued and sue. Not exactly the same here, but as some other posts have mentioned, the effect is essentially the same. The Patent Office recognized this and I think designed systems to avoid the Lemelson Strategy ... I think these were also called the "submarine patents."
Re:patents (Score:3, Informative)
This Patent (System) (Score:5, Interesting)
In order to address the issue with the patent system, the RIAA, SCO, the MPAA, and any other acronym you decide to dislike today, we have to figure out what it is the patent / copyright holders are requesting and what customers want (i.e., the reason innovation is Good).
Firstly, let's say I have just come up with a neat little gadget. Now if I'm a small operation, I don't want some giant company to come and use my idea to beat me out of business through mass production. I simply want to be able to make a living off my idea. If I'm an artist, or an author, I want to be able to make a living off my concepts / performance. There's a little difference between both these concepts, so I'll focus on the patent idea.
A patent, historically, applied to a new device or a new way of doing something (there are process patents, but typically they apply to things like "here's what you need to do to make chemical X"). Now, consider a patent to be something like an "implementation right". Basically a patent says that only the patent holder or the holder's approved agent may implement the said concept. This is similar to a copyright, which states that only the copyright holder or the holder's approved agent my copy a work. I don't have a problem with either of these concepts - with some caveats but I won't discuss those here.
Now, we can argue whether or not it is good for society to have a single entity or authorized group implementing some process. It is generally assumed that it is good for the person implementing it - assuming that the implementation yeilds something for which people are willing to pay. However, what about situations where the person holding the rights to implementation isn't really good at it, and someone knows they could do it better but aren't allowed to because the original holder won't give them approval. This would be a Bad Thing.
Now, what we see here is that independent of what is being implemented we can have unintended consequences with any "exclusive rights" kind of philosophy. What it is saying, though, is that such philosophies only work for "the greater good" if people are inherently altruistic, which history continually demonstrates is not the case.
On top of the above idea, there is also the question of "what constitues an idea for which the implementation authority should be limited?" This is the current hot-topic with IP, specifically patents. What implementable ideas should be protected? What are the costs and benefits of both? Who benefits from the choice? Rarely do we see some small company which is unable to manufacture many things, with small market presence, and some company comes and stomps on them by "copying" their idea. Typically we see one guy with a patent, no ability to produce it, not trying to produce it, but only waiting for someone to copy it. From time to time we may see a small entity with a patent and license (i.e., authorize) some company to produce the product. That is the intended purpose of a patent - to allow the authorized to get started. We also see large corporations, with no real risk of losing their "livelihood", with large portfolios of patents - typically they use these to keep other people out of their industry by requiring large licensing fees, which is opposite the desired effect of patents - they prop up artificial barriers to market entry.
As an aside, I have some issues with performance copyrights. For instance, people might be paying to see a particular person perform a song, not hear the particular song performed. For instance, me performing Beethoven's 9th on a kazoo is hardly the same as the London Symphony Orchestra playing it. So performance pieces, oddly, have a weird effect of there is the thing that is being performed i
Re:This Patent (System) (Score:3, Interesting)
When a process for producing medical grade acytlsalycilic acid was first developed, a major case broke out over whether the patent office could grant a new patent for something that was already produceable by a recognized process, simply because the new process resulted in fewer impurities. The court, noti
Relevant for how long? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Relevant for how long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there a patent on burning CDs (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is there a patent on burning CDs (Score:3, Funny)
If I were Zeus (Score:5, Funny)
I would have run out of lightning bolts to throw by now...
A common trend (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree that Roxio should have looked at this patent, but an interesting trend nonetheless.
Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:5, Informative)
Granted : September 9, 1997
This might be hard to beat. Anyone using a cd burner 8 years ago?
Re:Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, actually.
It was an enormous external Phillips (I think) SCSI unit. It took up about as much desk space as a 500-watt home theater receiver. It burned CDs at 1x and consumed all of the resources of the 150mhz Pentium II that it was attached to. Don't remember what software I was using to burn the CDs, though...
Re:Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:5, Informative)
It was a big expensive thing, would make coasters over 50% of the time, and consumed all the resources of the Macintosh it was hooked up to (a high-end m68k mac, which was still in practice faster than PowerPC macs in those days) -- to such a degree that if anyone moved a single window during the burn, it would make a coaster. That sucked, because blanks were $15 and up.
But alas, I also cannot remember what software we were using. I do remember the very first time I helped a local band burn an audio CD of their own work. That was a cool day.
But I don't remember what software we used. I do remember that we could do multisession CDs, though many computers could not read the result. (Heck, none of the CD-ROM drives I myself owned at the time, like the original NeXT SCSI CD-ROM drive, could read CD-R media at all. Still have one of the SCSI ones from those days sitting around in an enclosure somewhere.)
Other cool things we played with at that lab: wax transfer printers with PostScript interpreters, a photo quality full page dye sublimation printer (its consumables were strange), postscript printers that printed to 35mm film (amazingly useful for PowerPoint), all manner of video transfer equipment, all manner of scanners, and fairly early web sites (folks were pulling tricks to get specific behaviors out of Mosaic, and had to rebuild them when the first version of Netscape started to get some use).
Anyway, that all reminds me -- before we were doing this stuff in the lab, photo CDs were already available. That was the first place I ever saw the use of CD-R media, and the first place I ever saw multisession CDs. Back in those days, sometimes vendors would refer to the capability of a CD-ROM drive to read multisession CD-R media as "photo CD compatibility". Folks researching prior art on this one should look at how PhotoCD production was done by the places you'd send your film to, back in the days before people could really do it themselves.
Re:Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:2, Interesting)
The issue is PacketWriting though. In and of itself I personally think floppy disks fall under prior art for this though. Disk+random access, there you go, there are the key tennets of this patent. It's the same thing, who cares about the exact medium. I can't wait really for patents to go away. I really don't care if one company takes the idea from another company and uses it. If we live is a so-called capitalistic or free market society why do we even have rules like this
Re:Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:2)
Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dates are gonna hurt! (Score:3, Informative)
"Granted : September 9, 1997"
"This might be hard to beat. Anyone using a cd burner 8 years ago?"
Not really... plenty of prior art.. (1 year prior to patent filing)
Link to deja archive of cd-rom FAQ. (Mon, 11 Apr 1994 17:33:45 GMT) [google.com]
here is a partial excerpt...
"29. What is ECMA 168?"
"ECMA 168 is a volume and file format standard for write-once CD and CD-ROM.
It was approved as a European standard by the ECMA General Assembly in June
of 1992. It provides for full Orange Book
Predatorial practices (Score:5, Interesting)
Just look at their home page:
Their "accomplishments" consist mainly of suing the pants off everyone they meet!Re:Predatorial practices (Score:5, Informative)
>> CD-ROMs on their PCs for about six years now.
More then 6 years good sir...
In one of the SCO articles I read about part of the law stopping companies from waiting for long periods of time to maximize damages.
However, the patent doesn't cover all CD burning, it covers a specific method of creating the image, best described by The Register [theregister.co.uk]:
Essentially, it describes the technique used by many CD burning apps and utilities of creating an image of the disc in memory or on the hard drive which appears to the user as a CD. The virtual CD's contents can be updated at will, until the user is ready to burn the contents onto the disc, at which point the information can no longer be changed.
Older versions of the software did not by default create a CD image and then burn it to the disc in the way some apps do now.
Re:Predatorial practices (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case it should be moot under US Patent law since it is neither inobvious nor novel.
Or are you trying to tell me that other programmers have not preformatted data in memory or on disk prior to writing it out -- whether out is a pipe, a socket, a floppy disk, a hard disk, shared memory, or (gasp) an optical disk?
Whoever approved this patent was not an expert in the field, as the PTO is supposed to utilize while vetting patents.
I haven't read the patent. Maybe there's some twists in there that The Register didn't cover (yeah, I'd be shocked at poor "news" out of The Register). But I doubt it.
Applying a well known technique to a new media is not a patentable idea. Please.
Re:Predatorial practices (Score:4, Insightful)
Blame the politicians, they created the economic incentive to move out of the USA, to manufacture outside of the USA and to do nothing but sue people in the USA.
Better yet get them to fix it.
Linux (Score:2, Insightful)
DirectCD actually used? (Score:5, Interesting)
But does this affect the general user? I've personally never used DirectCD for anything; around our office we just burn a CD once, close the disc, and ship it out wherever it needs to go. Is there really a need for a continually writable procedure on a CD when there are so many other mediums more suitable and with more capacity than a CD?
Re:DirectCD actually used? (Score:3, Interesting)
Jaysyn
Re:DirectCD actually used? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my drive, and every other CD-RW wrive that I have used, you can blank a CDRW in a few different ways, the 'fast' way taking less than a minute (at 4x): (from cdrecord - dupes removed)
I've bee
Re:Definitely not. (Score:3, Informative)
This article [techtv.com] explains it better than I can.
Roxio's Response (Score:5, Informative)
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 16
(Nasdaq: ROXI), The Digital Media Company(R), today responded to Optima
Technology's allegations of patent infringement.
We are aware of the Optima '531 patent and the claims within and believe
that any claim of infringement by Roxio's software products is utterly without
merit. At Roxio, we respect the legitimate intellectual property rights of
others but in this instance there is no colorable argument that the claims set
forth in the patent read on any Roxio products. We intend to aggressively
defend ourselves in this litigation.
Why are CDs really different? (Score:2)
We all live in a yellow.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just another happy case of
1) Patent some tech
2) Wait for tech to become standard
3) Collect the underware
4) Sue for profit!
can we dos them yet? (Score:5, Funny)
thank you.
Prior art? (Score:5, Funny)
What? I've been doing this for years. (Score:4, Funny)
It's gotta be said... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's gotta be said... (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh.
Re:It's gotta be said... (Score:4, Interesting)
A particularly perverse line is this one:
Commercial success shown to be linked to the merits of the invention can be powerful evidence of nonobviousness
This would seem to imply that any patent in a lawsuit must be non-obvious
urgh.
Re:It's gotta be said... (Score:3, Interesting)
So many of the patents we've seen on software since Diamond v. Diehr fall into this category.
Re:It's gotta be said... (Score:3, Informative)
Because they sat on this patent for six years while other people invested significant time and money independently inventing and developing this technology. They quietly waited and said nothing while other people built up valuable bus
petition against software patents (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.html [petitiononline.com]
I don't know if it will really do anything but any bit helps. Of course, getting someone into the patent office who actually has a clue as to how computer software/hardware works would be much more effective. These kinds of patents are akin to a rock band having a patent for a standard rock song chord progression and suing everybody who uses the same chords. Ridiculous.
-- tokengeekgrrl
Creatively Selective Enforcement (Score:2)
September 9, 1997
The patent is over 6 years old and they're just now bothering to speak up about these "infringing industry standards".
Sounds like an awesome business plan to fall back in case your crappy company starts to flounder because it hasn't done anything useful in years. Keep your mouth shut for more than half a decade until your patented technology becomes an industry standard that everyone uses, then suddenly start launching lawsuits up everyone's asses.
Re:Creatively Selective Enforcement (Score:2)
no other way like using directcd to screw your cdr using experience... and as much in 1997 as now.
.
If this makes you mad... (Score:5, Informative)
Free Software Foundation [gnu.org]
Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org]
... and read
The Danger of Software Patents [gnu.org]
-t
Prior art? (Score:4, Informative)
The Recording Technique provides a directory which indicates the location of only the last version of any stored information or modified entry of stored information, prior versions being transparent to the operating system. The Recording Technique further provides a directory recorded on the CDROM which is transportable to other computers having the Recording Technique installed thereon. As a result, the user of a computer with a CDROM reader will interface with the CDROM in the same manner as with a non-volatile memory device that is read only.
OK, so I'm not a CD engineer, but:
All these things existed well before September, 1997, AFAIK!!
Please make happy postings. (Score:5, Funny)
Am I dead?
Did I blow it and not believe in Jesus the right way and now I'm in some sort of
Related to existing claim? (Score:2)
It seems like they've won before against a "key macintosh software company". Who that is, I'm not sure.
Given that they have a direct link to the patent pdf on their homepage, I'd assume that is the one they are talking about. Since they've won a settlement before, does that give any more credibility to this
This company is amazing (Score:3, Interesting)
Feb. 2003: Optima partners with the Lava Group www.lavagroup.net to enforce Optima patents, trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property
Do they really think that their customers particuarlly care that they hired new lawyers?
Sounds like EOLAS 2: Electric Bugaloo, but the dates on the patent are gonna be hard to match.
There needs to be a statute of limitations... (Score:2)
This patent business is beginning to make me sick.
Patents vs. Trademarks (Score:5, Insightful)
It's unfair of a company to keep quiet about patent infringement until their invention has become a standard, and then try to leverage their way into a monopoly with patent litigation. If they had been forthcoming about their patent in the first place, perhaps other (better?) standards would be invented. Or, if the idea behind the patent really is that good, the original copmany would en up with most of the market share, and come by it honestly.
In conclusion, patents should be more like trademarks. Use 'em or lose 'em.
Doctrine of laches (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been mentioned here before, but a patent holder has to make reasonable efforts to secure their patent in the marketplace. If a patent holder neglects enforcement of their patent when an infringement occurs, the patent holder may be guilty of a "submarine patent", where the patent holder specifically withholds action on infringement to maximize allowable damages. The defense to such ocurrences is termed the doctrine of laches and was laid out in a Supreme Court ruling.
The doctrine of laches defense has two elements:
- The alleged infringer will suffer serious harm to their business if the patent were enforced or if the period of time before action was such that important evidence or witnesess were lost.
- The patent holder delayed action for an unreasonable and inexcusable period of time.
Typically, six years is held to be a reasonable amount of time before the doctrine of laches may be used as a defense. Note that the burden of proof rests with the infringer and that both elements must be proven on the proponderance of the evidence and any further infringement is actionable.
That's as much as I could find.
Rome is Burning...CD-R's (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rome is Burning...CD-R's (Score:3, Funny)
You missed your chance at extra Slashdot points by not mentioning the obvious CD burning software called "NERO" which would've been funny considering the subject line of your post...
Re:Rome is Burning...CD-R's (Score:3, Insightful)
Innovate around the patent (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from the stealthy nature of the patent application process, I would think that most technologists would think patents irrelevant. After all, a patent assumes fairly slow moving rates of innovation -- that the patent wil be valuable for tens of years. Yet I would think that the rapid pace of innovation would make any patent useless after a few years.
Its time for innovation.
sounds more like multi-session than packet writing (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the patent: "The Recording Technique provides a directory which indicates the location of only the last version of any stored information or modified entry of stored information, prior versions being transparent to the operating system."
Packet writing does not leave behind the old data and only make it "transparent" to the operating system....it in fact rewrites the sectors that are not allocated in directory entries (file allocation table??); I would also assume that this multi-session writing is already an ISO standard.
More interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is more interesting. Is Roxio going to get StaXored?
What does it mean "expired"? (Score:4, Informative)
Why does their patent's number appear on this page at the USPTO website:m [uspto.gov]?
http://www.uspto.gov/go/og/2001/week46/patexpi.ht
How can they enforce an expired patent?
As far as my own opinion of this debacle, I'm confident that prior art will be found to invalidate the patent, whether it's expired or not.
But if Roxio settles, this company is going to come after small companies. You bet they won't tangle with Microsoft or Dell or anyone like that.
Ever notice... (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming the patent wasn't bullshit to begin with.
Why, yes, people have noticed it. (Score:3, Interesting)
No point in suing poor people, is there?
Patents dont work on software. (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you imagine someone patenting a device called "method for using a fork to emulate a comb" ? Well that is just what patenting software is mostly about. While when you patent a way to acheive a goal in real life patents you patent the goal in software patents. If i want to do A in software HAVE to use method B, very often because that is the obvious and right way. If i dont do it that way i have to take unessecary steps to get around the obvious solution, often by doing something different than i first set out to do (before i had even thought about how).
The patent becomes the gatekeeper to an end goal and not to one perticular way of acheiving this goal. It is all to evident that software patents is going to inhibit US development of software and give Asia and China etc an enourmous advantage.
I could swallow it if the patents wore carefully examined and very restrictive but the USPO seems to give patents out like the green card lottery.
This looks like it applies to UDF VAT (Score:5, Informative)
As usual, the
Worst case scenario is that this patent is upheld and Roxio (and others like Nero) start paying royalties. The Linux distributors might have to remove VAT support from their kernels. Commercial OS vendors would have to decide on whether to license it or remove it. I'm not sure if DVD mastering software will be affected since the VAT is not part of the UDF 1.0 spec. mkisofs might be affected also if it impliments VAT. Whether the OSTA committee responds with an alternative remains to be seen. But, it's not the end of the world. Like I said, I don't think that this has any bearing on CD-R's that are recorded with traditional iso9660 filesystems. Supporting write-once media and VAT is a PITA anyways, so this gives me a good excuse to not care about it in my implimentation =-)
I think it shouldn't stand (Score:5, Informative)
Not really that important (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is true, what's all the hubbub, bub?? I have never used this function of my Adaptec software, and have no desire to. I prefer to build a list of files, and burn my CDs once.
While the arguments about taking too long to sue for infrignment have merit, I think the actual impact to most users will be minimal.
Why that is so difficult (as the patent claims) I don't know. Probably a PEBKAC issue.....
We need a Statute of Limitations (Score:3, Interesting)
One solution would be a statue of limitation for infringement. If patent holders had a one- or two-year time limit for filing infringement suits, they wouldn't be able to wait for billion dollar industries to develop before asserting their rights. People with technology they consider worthwhile would have to protect it in a timely fashion.
An actual lawsuit shouldn't be necessary as a first step, as the cost of litigation might be prohibitive to fledgling innovators. But a patent holder should have to lodge a complaint within the time period. There would be no injunction against the party using the technology. The complaint would be like a building permit, and would have its own expiration date of a year or two before the holder would have to take legal action or drop the complaint.
Re:We need a Statute of Limitations (Score:3, Insightful)
Patent Reform (Score:3, Interesting)
If it can be proven you intentionally sat on your patent while it became embedded into a large part of society before you stood up, you should be denied the claim to your patent.
If it can be proven you didnt know.. then all bets are off and sue the pants off the offenders...
THis is pretty much how trademark law works now... why should patents be any different?
Everything is Patented (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to find a way to deal with this fact, instead of running around with blinders on and hoping the patent holder is benelovant.
Also might be good to start collecting ALL source you can find, before its taken out due to the patent holders down the road.. And i dont just mean software source, but also books, formulas, etc..
Suggestion for new Patent Office mode of operation (Score:3, Interesting)
Create a new type of submission to the Patent Office, called a Documentation Of Art. Unlike a patent it doesn't have to go through the $$$ process of evaluation, since it would grant no rights to the person filing and wouldn't have to be checked extensively. What would happen, however, would be that the idea is filed in the archives of the patent office, to be checked whenever anyone files a new patent on something related to the DOA as a possible example of prior art.
This would allow the open source community and other companies to return some sanity to this game. If a DOA is filed, then the assumption is the idea must have been trivial enough that someone didn't expect to make $$$$ off of it. Or, alternately, the original inventor chose to give up his monopoly on the idea freely. Open Source groups and companies tired of patent wars could file very large numbers of well organized DOA forms and make sure it's at least harder for the patent office to characterize something obvious to the tech industry as non-obvious.
Re:This just in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and patents are stupid.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
I say that it's time for an examination of the whole patent application/approval process.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's EXACTLY what they do.
Later, when a lawsuit comes up, that's what sorts out whether or not the patent is idiotic or not. I think the patent office should have to refund 110% of the fee if a patent is overturned in court. Might make them actually THINK a little bit before they just grab the damn stamper and give it a stamp of approval.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Informative)
It is my understanding that the PTO is quite good at identifying prior art when it takes the form of previously granted patents. Unfortunately, when they started granting patents for software and business practices, which had not previously been patentable, all of the prior art was documented outside of the patent system. At a previous job, we got a software patent application back with some of the claims disallowed due to prior patents, so that much of the system seems to work. I'm not surprised that the PTO can't deal with the outside documentation of prior art; imagine the size of the job to catalog (as a start) all of the ACM journals, the IEEE computer journals, and the software textbooks that have been published since the 1960s so that you can tell if a particular algorithm used for a particular application has already appeared.
Re:This just in... (Score:4, Insightful)
Something like 49% of all litigated patents are deemed invalid by the courts.
That number doesn't surprise me. After all, anyone sued for patent infringement will not actually let the case go to litigation unless they are pretty sure they can win. If 49% ("something like" is + or - how much?), that means that slightly more often than not, the defendant in patent litigation is defeated. That is, they erred in judging that they could win.
However, whether 49% is accurate or not, it's not a useful figure. It only tells us what percentage of litigated patent cases go against the patent holder. A useful number would be the percentage of patent cases that are litigated, from which we could determine what percentage of patents are invalidated, not what percentage of litigated patents are invalidated, which is to us a fairly useless statistic.
The other half of the equation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why they should return to the requirement of having a working example in order for it to be patented.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
That's old news. The lawsuit was dismissed, on the basis that the patent covers "reviewing and approving" patents, and USPTO doesn't do any reviewing of patents prior to issuing them.
Re:wha? (Score:2)
*thinks about SCO*
Never mind...
Re:3 simple words: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linux? Patent? IP? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whats the difference ? (Score:3, Insightful)