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Parties Behind Eolas Patent Reexam Revealed 84

Posted by timothy from the party-like-it's-5,838,906 dept.
theodp writes "While news accounts credited Tim Berners-Lee's mighty pen with triggering the USPTO reexam of the Eolas plug-in patent that could negate a $520+ million judgment against Microsoft, newly released USPTO interview notes suggest the reexam may owe more to an alliance of tech giants who appear to have quietly advanced the same arguments to the USPTO weeks prior to Berners-Lee." See also some previous coverage of the Eolas patent circus, and more below about the USPTO reexam.

theodp continues "According to a 4-27 Interview Summary, the USPTO presented Eolas with a 10-14 letter signed by in-house counsel from Microsoft, AOL and Macromedia, a 10-15 letter from Adobe, and a 10-22 letter from the law firm of Sidley Austin (aka Microsoft's lawyers) in connection with its proposed rejection of Eolas' patent claims. All predated the 10-24 letter from the W3C's counsel as well as Berners-Lee's widely-publicized 10-28 letter, which seems unlikely to have prompted the USPTO's detailed 10-30 Reexam Order. The W3C has repeatedly had no comment when asked if the 'newly cited art' provided in its 10-24 filing had already been supplied earlier to the USPTO by others. UPDATE: In response, the W3C's Danny Weitzner points out that the preceding words are mine and should not be confused with those of a distinguished journalist."
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Parties Behind Eolas Patent Reexam Revealed More

Parties Behind Eolas Patent Reexam Revealed

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  • What, again? (Score:5, Funny)

    by agoatley ( 785428 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:38AM (#9354927)
    What, you mean that there's more than one patent the USPTO has wrongly green-lighted?
    -Ashton

    • Re:What, again? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tambo ( 310170 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @08:47AM (#9355450)
      I'm a patent attorney who plans to build a career out of prosecuting software patents. I'm also halfway through earning an MCIS and several MCP certifications.

      So I think that I'm well-positioned to state that awful software patents are bad for everyone - including the patentee.

      Eolas is only the latest example in this stream of patents that should never have been filed, let alone examined and issued. Microsoft's double-click patent, Amazon's 1-Click patent, Yahoo's patent for an Internet search engine - these are not only completely unenforceable, but serve as albatrosses to the patentees attempting to assert them.

      I blame these patents on four factors:

      • USPTO: Horrific ineptitude in examining even the most obviously (in the conventional sense) non-novel inventions.
      • Patentees: A fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of acquiring a patent, and the ramifications (legal, business, and PR) of asserting it against competitors.
      • Patent prosecutors: A lack of technical skill in software (far too many software patents are prosecuted by EEs who view software as just another circuit* - with poor results), and/or a reprehensible willingness to prosecute such patents. (Indeed, one wonders how filing a patent on "double-clicking application buttons" complies with the patent attorney's ethical obligation of candor before the USPTO.)
      • The simple fact that the field of software patents, in reality, is only six years old - the landmark court ruling [georgetown.edu] that compelled the USPTO to issue software patents en masse issued in 1998. The USPTO has not had the time or resources to adjust, e.g., to hire an army of examiners skilled in the software arts and to build up a technical reference library.

      While these patents are a collective debacle for the USPTO, the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community (though, of course, the /. community has its own views.) I present the textbook example of an elegant, useful software invention worthy of patent protection: RSA - the public-key system that permits relatively effortless secured communication via one-way encryption.

      There is a silver lining to this story. If you go back 30-40 years, you will see a host of complaints about these new-fangled patents on biotechnology - many claims that allowing inventors to patent novel organisms, gene sequences, proteins, and research techniques posed a horrific threat to biotech research and product development. These claims assumed the same basis as many of today's complaints against software patents: examiners were hopelessly lacking in technical skill in these areas; the subject matter qualitatively differed from conventionally patentable fields of art; a 17-year monopoly (pre-1995) represented a calamity to rapidly-evolving technology and typically-cooperative research. History has shown that those fears were hugely outweighed by the overall benefits of biotech patents - as evidenced by a thousand, wonderfully effective therapies and drugs (many of which, like prozak, are now expired, transferring the technology to the public domain.) Biotechnology and medicine are experiencing a huge upsurge in the pace of technical development - thanks in large measure to the willingness of corporations to invest in (potentially patentable) biotech R&D.

      I posit that the software arts will experience a similar upsurge in innovation in short order, directly related to the allowance of software patents. The boondoggles that make for provocative /. headlines are the regrettable consequence of an unplanned transition, which time will remedy. These awful patents will expire - and, indeed, will serve as documented prior art for future corps of examiners to assert against future idiot patentees. It will simply take time to gear up the system.

      - David Stein

      *

      • Bio Tech Patents Have Plenty Of Problems (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rben ( 542324 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @10:20AM (#9356081) Homepage
        There is a silver lining to this story. If you go back 30-40 years, you will see a host of complaints about these new-fangled patents on biotechnology - many claims that allowing inventors to patent novel organisms, gene sequences, proteins, and research techniques posed a horrific threat to biotech research and product development. These claims assumed the same basis as many of today's complaints against software patents: examiners were hopelessly lacking in technical skill in these areas; the subject matter qualitatively differed from conventionally patentable fields of art; a 17-year monopoly (pre-1995) represented a calamity to rapidly-evolving technology and typically-cooperative research. History has shown that those fears were hugely outweighed by the overall benefits of biotech patents - as evidenced by a thousand, wonderfully effective therapies and drugs (many of which, like prozak, are now expired, transferring the technology to the public domain.) Biotechnology and medicine are experiencing a huge upsurge in the pace of technical development - thanks in large measure to the willingness of corporations to invest in (potentially patentable) biotech R&D.

        There are extensive problems with allowing companies and individuals to patent biotechnology and there is little evidence to suggest that all the patents were necessary.

        The genetic information within natural organisms should be part of the common property shared among everyone. Allowing some individual to claim ownership of the genetic code of a natural organism is obviously absurd.

        Corporations have been rapidly patenting genetic information from crops that have been developed over thousands of years by indigenous populations in third-world countries. The thousands of years of cultivation apparently entitles those people to nothing, while using an automated machine to decode the genetic code entitles the corporation to ownership of the genetic code of the plant? How is this reasonable or equitable? These patents are robbing people in third world countries.

        The explosion of development in bio-technology has more to do with the available technology and automation than allowing patents on natural organisms. There is plenty of profit to be made in developing medicines from natural genetic codes without granting ownership of those codes to corporations. Rightfully, the ownership of the genetic information should be held in common trust. There is nothing to stop businesses from patenting and profiting from treatments and therapies developed from that knowledge.

        It seems that the current trend in the U.S. is to rush to grant ownership of everything, including knowledge, to some single individual or corporation. This headlong rush is being done largely without regard to the consequences of eliminating the public commons and the benefits which it provides. All knowledge and progress builds on what came before. If there is a price tag on every bit of knowledge, it won't be long before progress in the sciences slows dramatically.

        There is nothing wrong with the idea of patents for novel inventions. I think it is an appropriate way to reward and spur invention. We need to make sure, though, that it's invention that we are rewarding and not political lobbying skills.

        • What would have happened if Newton had patented the laws of gravity....


        • The real problem with software and other IP patents/copyrights are that they create a ridiculous self-fulfilling prophecy:

          1. As innovation becomes more and more stifled (creativity IS the act of building one thing on top of another which is becoming harder and harder to do legaly) fewer and fewer new things come into the world.
          2. **AA people will assert that this is do to piracy.
          3. This leads to even more draconian laws.
          4. Cycle repeats until innovation is entirely crushed.

          Of course I'm being a bit f
          • As innovation becomes more and more stifled (creativity IS the act of building one thing on top of another which is becoming harder and harder to do legaly) fewer and fewer new things come into the world.

            Heh. Do you really believe this? Reminds me of Charles Duell's fateful statement: "Everything that can be invented, has been invented." That was back in 1899, and innovation has barely slowed down. (It's a shameful fact that Mr. Duell was commissioner of the U.S. Patent & Trademark office at the time

            • Please let me clarify:

              I do believe that anything created is based on what has come before it. That creativity is basically re-ordering of what has come before. I dare you or anyone else to come up with a single instance of a creative work that does not use some form of 'prior art'.

              I was not implying that creativity itself will die just that 'legal creativity' is being hurt which removes the economic insintive to create. Creating something costs time and effort, to the degree that I am unable to recoup

            • Reminds me of Charles Duell's fateful statement: "Everything that can be invented, has been invented."

              I think the current situation is actually the exact opposite. Too many things are being invented, with too low a threshold of what counts as "invention". This creates an ever-increasing tarpit that makes it more difficult to create true innovation, with (to mix metaphors) large minefields for new products that are found to have infringed on bogus patents by courts that misinterpret what the patent cove

        • The genetic information within natural organisms should be part of the common property shared among everyone. Allowing some individual to claim ownership of the genetic code of a natural organism is obviously absurd.

          Agreed, and this is the current view of gene patents, both by the USPTO and the patent community. Novel genes and their novel protein products are patentable, but any case where a natural protein (or genetic precursor) is being claimed requires something unusual, bordering on extraordinary. F

          • No company would attempt FDA approval in those circumstances. We'd have a million fantastic basic-biotech observations a year, but no resources to turn them into real tools of medicine. Applied biotechnology research would cease to exist.

            The only prevention of this calamity of non-innovation is the promise of a limited-time patent on such drugs. Pfizer will pay for a hundred FDA approval trials because it gets exclusive access to the drug market for a short window. - And that window is, indeed, short: by

        • I am actually put in mind of the European expansionism of the 16 and 17 hundreds. The popes and princes ceeded whole tracts of the earth they hadn't even seen to people and organizations they had no interest in managing. It was a "we natrually own everything, and we cede this part of everything to you, if you go away and play with it in peace."

          Arguing that software (and biotech) patents are good is like arguing that Spain was the best possible thing to happen to the Aztec.

          We would like to act like we ha
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • The big problem is that there is absolutely no way to know that you are stepping on someone's software patent if you write something at home.

          Obviously, that knife cuts both ways. Why would a patentee care - or how would he even discover - that you're using his patented invention for a personal project? Even if he knows and cares, why would he waste legal fees ($HUGE) suing you to stop you from using it? Unless you're actually harming his business by using his invention, attempting to stop you is a tremen

      • Re:What, again? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I blame these patents on four factors

        How about factor #5: patent attorneys who help file bad patents to collect their fee, rather than talking their clients out of a bad idea (and thus making less money).

        too often, such inventions are claimed as [hardware + software]

        It's my understanding that, at least historically, this was a requirement of the USPTO. You could not patent a naked, abstract, algorithm or method. It had to be embodied in some particular device, hearkening back to the days when you h

        • Re:What, again? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by tambo ( 310170 )
          How about factor #5: patent attorneys who help file bad patents to collect their fee, rather than talking their clients out of a bad idea (and thus making less money).

          Yes, I wonder about the ethical implications of patent attorneys filing bogus patents like this, as it strongly appears to violate their ethical obligations (both to the client, and to the USPTO.)

          It's my understanding that, at least historically, this was a requirement of the USPTO. You could not patent a naked, abstract, algorithm or met

          • ... for the big problem we have now. Because everyone is used to looking only for pre-existing patents, not pre-exisiting implementations

            Given that, if you go for N years asserting that software is not patentable, so no-one patents software, and then you allow software patents -- since nothing in the field is yet patented, everything looks novel (at least compared to existing patents, which seems to be the only thing the patent office actually looks at).

            What you needed to have done to make that tran

            • What you needed to have done to make that transition smooth is to

              1. have a comprehensive review of the research literature and past computer related businesses, and
              2. pre-issue patents (possibly already expired) to the people who have already invented novel bits of computing
              3. and then open the doors to new patents.

              Very insightful. In an ideal world, it would work this way. But it played out differently for several reasons:

              1. The USPTO proved remarkably inflexible in dealing with software patents.

      • Re:What, again? (Score:2, Redundant)

        by Alsee ( 515537 )
        the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community

        I don't know just how "well-settled" that is in the US legal community, but it certainly is NOT true outside the US. In particular the EU Parliment is well-settled that software is not patentable subject matter, and that the European Patent Convention explicitly declares that software is not patentable subject matter. This would imply that any software patents granted thus far in Europe

      • Re:What, again? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Alsee ( 515537 )
        the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community

        Nonsense. For starters that is false outside the US. Secondly, the only thing that is "well-settled" is that the US has recently REVERSED it's position and has been issuing and upholding such patents.

        In particular the EU Parliment is well-settled that software is not patentable subject matter, and that the European Patent Convention explicitly declares that software is not patentable s
        • Nonsense. For starters that is false outside the US.

          ...but becoming less so as time goes by. I recall seeing an article here on /. a week or two ago with news of the EU's growing inclination to allow software patents. (But you're correct - I mis-wrote by not specifying the U.S. legal community. Sorry 'bout that.)

          Yes. A perfect textbook example of a patent on pure math. Utterly absurd.

          This is a very common myth. Notice that the claims (which, as you know, completely define the scope of the patent) rea

          • the EU's growing inclination to allow software patents

            It appears the growth is in the opposite direction. At first Parliment was all set to pass the Council's software patent directive. Once the issue actually faced debate the Parliment passed amendments reversing the text of the directive to state that software is not and cannot be an invention.

            This is a very common myth. Notice that the claims (which, as you know, completely define the scope of the patent) read:

            Yes, I am aware that it's all about th
            • Weird, for some reason my attempt to link to patent 4,218,582 seems to be returning patent 4,351,982. Try this link [uspto.gov] instead.

              Worst case if that fails too, use the search page [uspto.gov] and put 4,218,582 in term 1 and set feild 1 to Patent Number then click search.

              -
      • Bravo, although I do appreciate - and certainly take advantage of - the "armchair-expert" style of debate that Slashdot affords us, it's extremely refreshing to get the viewpoint of someone who is actually deeply involved in a field relevant to a posting. Hopefully we will be hearing more of your insight into the legal side of patents in future article discussions.

  • Ken Brown replies (Score:4, Funny)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:44AM (#9354938)
    See, I told you there was no way that a single guy, in just six months, could write an original operating system
    (backspace xxxxxxxxx)letter to the US patent office. He clearly pirated his letter from Microsoft's letter! See, Microsft came first! And Linux used the same alphabet as Microsft did! And Microsoft has thousands of lawyers, so how could a single guy do the same thing! In, mind you, just six months!
    • Huh?

      This is the *little* guy against the giant and this time the little guy is looking for a free handout. I don't use MS products, but we need to back MS on this one. As has already been said, this is a threat to all of us... Even the dead OS, *BDS ;o)

      Seriously, with submarine patents a high risk/threat to any successful software company, this won't be a fun field to work in. I know that was probably a joke, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Save the corny Microsoft jokes for when they deserve the
      • Given the way the US justice system works, the only way to get patent reform is if a really big company puts a lot of money into it, otherwise we'll be stuck using 17 year-old (or is it 20 in the US now?) technology from now on, so MS getting mixed up in this is a good thing
      • This is the *little* guy against the giant and this time the little guy is looking for a free handout.

        As opposed to what? The big fish like Microsoft who patent clicking a button two times? Big fish like Amazon who patent clicking a button once to check out? Other multi-nationals patenting silly things simply because they can? Look, these big fish are hardly acting altruistically here; they are acting because they don't want to pay licensing fees. But hey, just you little fish walk on one of their silly pa

  • This is good but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LibrePensador ( 668335 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:45AM (#9354941) Journal

    If this kind of web-neighbor due diligence was carried out more often, we would not see all these spurious software patents being issued.

    Why don't we create an industry funded board whose job is to make sure that silly software patents are no longer awarded? Oh wait... The industry only dislikes SOME software patents, while anyone who cares to look will see that all software patents threaten innovation and are largely anti-competitive [gnu.org] because they rig the game in favor of big corporations.

    Unfortunately, software patents have become the last hurdle that the proprietary world can throw at the free software movement.

    Moglen and Lessig are both very persuasive (If you got a bit of free time, read "Free Culture" by the latter) I hope that upon hearing their arguments European Commission will be wise enough to reconsider its position on software patents.

    • Re:This is good but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum AT gmail DOT com> on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:01AM (#9354978) Homepage Journal
      Why don't we create an industry funded board whose job is to make sure that silly software patents are no longer awarded

      I asked the same question a few days ago on another /. story about patents, and was referred to PubPat... [pubpat.org]

      If only people knew more about these things, and cared about them. As a developer, I despise the fact that the obvious things that I may design/develop to assist my fellow man in using my software have become 'owned' by someone else in order that they may profit.

      Patents suck. Period.

    • Re:This is good but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Groote Ka ( 574299 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:03AM (#9354982)
      The industry only dislikes SOME software patents, while anyone who cares to look will see that all software patents threaten innovation and are largely anti-competitive because they rig the game in favor of big corporations.

      I do not entirely agree with you. Minor companies can play that game as well and perhaps even better. When a minor company has a patent on a groundbreaking (or little less) invention, it can be a major pain in the *rse of a big company(with a proper sponsoring for the small one, ok), especially when that small company has no product portfolio to which the big company can assert its patents.

      Just think about Intertrust vs. Microsoft (settled out of court).

      With respect to the part of your story with which I might (yeah, I'm a legal techie) agree: When major companies block the small ones from sales + development of certain software and bind them with strangling contracts (give us all your IP or we will break your back with our IP), yes, patents are not very good things and will surely suffocate innovation.

      But at long as licenses are available under reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms, I do not see any problems.

      • Re:This is good but... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:23AM (#9355021)
        I do not entirely agree with you. Minor companies can play that game as well and perhaps even better. When a minor company has a patent on a groundbreaking (or little less) invention, it can be a major pain in the *rse of a big company(with a proper sponsoring for the small one, ok), especially when that small company has no product portfolio to which the big company can assert its patents.
        Not just especially, but only if the small company has no product portfolio. In other words, if the small company is a patent parasite, which contributes virtually nothing useful to society (name one software company that turns to the patent database to find new ideas for stuff to put in its applications)...

        All it does is sue the companies which do contribute something useful to the economy (a product that can be sold and which people can use). Yes, it's a great way to make money, and in the end it's those big companies who always argued for unlimited patentability who are now on the wrong end of the stick, because some smart people simply optimized their business model to maximise their profit in the system created by the patent junkies.

        So now the big companies start whining and complaining [bbc.co.uk], accusing those parasites of being "patent trolls" and play the innocent third party harmed by the bad practice of the USPTO... While it's the fault of their own patent trolls (IP lawyers who wanted more influence in the company) it came to this in the first place.

      • Re:This is good but... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LibrePensador ( 668335 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:28AM (#9355027) Journal
        "When a minor company has a patent on a groundbreaking (or little less) invention, it can be a major pain in the *rse of a big company(with a proper sponsoring for the small one, ok), especially when that small company has no product portfolio to which the big company can assert its patents."

        The problem is that this is fairly rare. If you are a small company doing some kind of interesting software development, your product is bound to in some obscure way violate one of the thousand patents that the big guys have.

        Besides two wrongs really don't make a write and I am more concerned with the well-being of free software developers, salaried or not, who independently do not probably have the resources to fight a patent-infringement case.

        As a writer, I care about copyright infringement. And the mathematicians who understand software fail to understand how anyone can really claim to have "invented" something in software. Written it yet, invented it no.
      • Just think about Intertrust vs. Microsoft (settled out of court).

        Or just think Eolas vs. Microsoft... Eolas isn't a big company but managed to get a nice amount of cash out of MS with an invalid patent.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • RAND is poison to free software. Authors of free software cannot afford ANY fee, "reasonable" or not.

          Costco is poison to free lunches. People who want to give away free lunches cannot afford to pay ANYTHING for the raw ingredients, "low cost" or not.
    • Yep, I'm pretty sure Microsoft has the upper hand in this one... Or maybe they are the little guy? And Eolas is the huge corporation?

      Microsoft *will* use its patent arsenal against Linux when the need arises, but right now they are on our side fighting *against* patents. If we can help them destroy software patents, all the better.

    • Re:This is good but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kcbrown ( 7426 ) <slashdot@sysexperts.com> on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:14AM (#9355000)
      Moglen and Lessig are both very persuasive (If you got a bit of free time, read "Free Culture" by the latter) I hope that upon hearing their arguments European Commission will be wise enough to reconsider its position on software patents.

      No amount of eloquence or quality of argument is as persuasive as a sufficiently large wad of cash (even if said wad of cash is used indirectly). This is why the EU Commission will, in the end, not listen to Moglen and Lessig, and will instead listen to Microsoft and the other multinational corporations.

      • Re:This is good but... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 )
        You are wrong in thinking that all large corporations are in favour of software patents, or that there is even an economical majority (in Europe) in favour of software patents. In Germany, 80% of the people employed in IT work for SME's, in Belgium 60%. As for large corporations against software patents, have a look at this letter [ffii.org] written by the ObjectWeb Consortium, representing these companies [objectweb.org]. Some names you might recognise are Dassault Aviation, France Telecom R&D and the Thales Group.

        Further, the

    • What there should be is a Groklaw for Patents.
      So that the prior art can be collated and checked.

      It might not stop the tide, but it could help reduce the stupidity of some of the claims.

  • half-backed, recycled and slopped up to the USPO (Score:5, Interesting)

    by falsemover ( 190073 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:51AM (#9354956)
    let's face it; software patenting is a rich boys club; or another manifestation of the motto "the one with the most money wins". There are thousands of patents like this; scads of unoriginal montages of half-baked and recycled ideas, cleverly disguised and slopped up to the USPO, and approved, cha ching.
    It takes this kind of outrage and political pressure to get one patent reviewed. What chance does the small software company have protecting itself against patents with a lineage of prior art? It's also a positive feedback system; patents breed patents, just look at the crazy exponential explosion of USPO patents over the last five years. And sitting in the middle of the web is the black widow, the USPO, raking in the fees while spending precious little fix the spiraling problem. Once practical answer: maybe register your software company in the Cayman Islands or Vanuatu, or some other such place and take your international profits offshore. Better defensive legal system; and better protection against the system fueled by common-revenue-oriented legislation and wayward lawyers.

    • Re:half-backed, recycled and slopped up to the USP (Score:5, Informative)

      by SquarePants ( 580774 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @07:47AM (#9355191)
      It doesn't take "outrage and political pressure" to get a patent reviewed. If you know of invalidating prior art it is fairly simple to request a re-examination. It is also fairly inexpensive if you choose to request reexamination inter partes since it involves only filing a single paper.

      But you do have to do some research. Something which most people here are unwilling to do for any purpose other than to rant about the USPTO's inadequacies.

      • Re:half-backed, recycled and slopped up to the USP (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "Fairly inexpensive" still being more than my present net worth. :-(
        Yet, I could write new software today that violates 100s of US patents. The patent system creates exclusion of the poorest, creating a "members club", and the developing world would do well to reject intellectual "property" outright, but are probably too greedy and corrupt to do so :-((

        • Well, the costs partly act as a check to prevent frivolous filings. If it was free, everybody would file frivolous objections and no patent would ever issue. It would also make it infitely more expensive for the PTO to handle the objections forcing a rise in fees. Can you say vicious cycle?

          Lets face it, we live in a capitalistic society and our system has helped this country to develop into a very prosperous nation. It is very easy for another country to reject anything as property (why stop at IP, let

          • Lets face it, we live in a capitalistic society and our system has helped this country to develop into a very prosperous nation. It is very easy for another country to reject anything as property (why stop at IP, lets reject land as property) when it doesn't own it and has not invested anything to develop it.

            Being against software patents is not the same as being against all forms of (intellectual) property. Most studies show that software patents do not result in more prosperity nor innovation. In som

            • My point is that the rationale used by the author of the parent post in support of the proposition that IP should be "rejected" as property could just as easilly be applied to other forms of property.

              Your rationale could also be applied to other types of IP, not just software, which come about in rapidly developing fields. The same "sky will fall" arguments were made in the past (some over 100 years ago) and they proved to be dead wrong or wildly exaggerated.

              Software patents have only been arround since

              • My point is that the rationale used by the author of the parent post in support of the proposition that IP should be "rejected" as property could just as easilly be applied to other forms of property.

                And my point was that he wasn't arguing for rejecting IP as a whole, just that software patents create a climate where someone who could normally set up a business on his own (with the only required investment being a computer), now potentially needs an enormous amount of money to either defend himself fro

    • It is fairly easy (but not cheap) to request examination of a patent that has been granted on the grounds of prior art or obviousness. I refer you to Ashley Parker's lucid document

      http://www.jolt.unc.edu/vol3/Parker-V3I2.pdf

      to ponder the considerable problems in the reexamination system, including the $10,000 fee for proposing it plus considerable legal fees, maybe $10k - $100k +fees for filing it and researching it properly. If you are being asked for $5,000 in licensing fees for violating some fri

  • Prior art. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ScouseMouse ( 690083 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:51AM (#9354957) Homepage
    I vaiguely remember that the Amiga OS 3 had an application called Multiview which allowed extensible embedded viewing of almost everything with the correct plugins (Called datatypes if I remember correctly). I dunno if this is the same thing though, but i think it predates the Web completely (Although only by a year or two). Hmm, have to dig out my old Amiga and check.
    • AmigaOS 3.0 was released in 1992. "Datatypes" was a system of filters used to convert between the standard internal types for bitmaps, sound, movies, text documents, etc. and any external type.

      Datatypes were OS objects and could be embedded in windows. Multiview used this to display files of any type, but the same system was also used by Amiga webbrowsers like AWeb, IBrowse, or Voyager. Thus Amiga was the first system to support .PNG files in all of its browsers - simply because a datatype for .PNG was wr

      • It wasn't just web browsers either. Datatypes supported both read/display, & write/save operations. Commercial paint programs for the Amiga were able to make an end-run around the Unisys GIF patent by leaving out GIF support in the main program, but having datatype support. To save as GIF you downloaded an open-source GIF datatype (Unisys didn't attempt to enforce against open source implementations), dropped the class description and the library code in the required directories, and the paint progra

  • Opposition? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Groote Ka ( 574299 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @05:52AM (#9354960)
    One of the most important conclusions I draw from this issue that it is time for a proper inter partes opposition procedure as available in - among others - Europe and Japan.

    After grant of a patent, any person (in Europe, this does not include the patent proprietor) can challenge the granted patent with all prior art available. And this person is party to the proceedings; the European Patent Office coordinates the procedure and judges it.
    Remark to be made here is that in first instance, the EPO is not very willing to revoke a patent (the examiner of the grant procedure is in the opposition division as well), but appeal may be a good remedy.

    I heard that the US patent law may be amended to allow inter partes proceedings for invalidation/re-examination. Any news on that?

    • Inter-partes re-examination proceedings have been available in the US since 1999 (See 35 U.S.C. 311 to 318). They have been rarely used but are available. At last count, less than 20 inter-partes reexams had been filed since 1999. This compares to over 1,000 ex-parte reexams filed in the same period.
      • At last count, less than 20 inter-partes reexams had been filed since 1999.

        Seems low to me. Any reason for that? I have asked US colleagues to go for a re-issue sometimes in the past. Is that the same as re-exam? I can imagine that if so, there is a number of ex parte proceedings.

        But anyway, I would expect the number of inter-partes a lot higher. Especially taking into account all the issues with the patents about which a lot of people at Slashdot complain.

        • Re:Opposition? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by SquarePants ( 580774 )
          Off the top of my head, a couple of reasons:

          First, cost. Just looking at filing fees, the fee for an ex-parte reexam is $2,520 while that for an inter-parte reexam is $8,800. And that is just the filing fees. An inter-parte reexam is very much like a mini-trial so you can expect the attorneys fees' involved to be probably 10 to 20 times what they would be in an ex-parte. I cannot see any lawyer worth his salt doing an inter-partes for under $30,000. An Ex-parte can be done for under $10,000.

          Second, s
          • Thank you.

            FYI: opposition fee @ the EPO is only EUR 610. I do not know about attorney fees, but probably from EUR 4000 and up, depending on the location of your attorney as well (trips to Munich may be costly; fees are not the same all around Europe).

  • "the Eolas patent circus"

    They have already sent in the clowns though :)
  • I can't be the only one that read it that way...
  • Big corporations being behind something which would stem their losses! Say it isn't so!

  • So, Big Business will make it all better? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EasyTarget ( 43516 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @06:47AM (#9355050) Journal
    Humm, The BBC had a article related to this too, Here [bbc.co.uk], and it scared me since the companies that are lobbying for changes to the Patent regieme are all the existing 'effective monopolies', MS, Cisco, Ebay, etc..

    I don't think a patent system re-written by Big-Business is going to be good for anyone other than Big-Business.

    The more I think about this, the more I fail to see any answer, only problems. How can a patent system protect the genuinely innovative little guys, whilst preventing the abuses the Big Business will practice in order to protect their market share?
    • How can a patent system protect the genuinely innovative little guys, whilst preventing the abuses the Big Business will practice in order to protect their market share?

      If we are discussing software patents, don't give the big guys patents in the first place--or the little guys.

      Extending patent protection to ideas was a braindead idea.

      KFG
    • Your comment makes me think about the paperclip and any patents it may have had.

      Compare that to the arguments on Slashdot against patenting algoritmes. As a paperclip is basically a algorithme to deform a piece of metal to some useful.

      Doesn't the guy who invented the paperclip deserve some money? If so why don't software developers that invent some algorithme?

      • Doesn't the guy who invented the paperclip deserve some money?

        The paperclip was patented [about.com]. Several times.

        However, the purpose of the patent system is not to ensure that money goes to those who "deserve" it. Patents are state-granted, limited term, monopolies on inventions. They serve a very specific purpose - to encourage inventors to disclose how there inventions work so that they can be reproduced by others when the patent expires; they exist to act as a balance to the economic advantages that can be e

        • You may be right as I don't know any patent of Coca Cola except maybe bottle shapes and other things. Which according to you would have eventually hurt their business and make anyone make cola like coca cola.

          On a side note I found this site [officemuseum.com] after looking at your about.com one. This one shows pictures of all the different kinds of paperclips.

  • Madness absolute Madness (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blackest_k ( 761565 ) on Monday June 07, 2004 @07:48AM (#9355193) Homepage Journal
    Someone once said something along the lines that it was only because they had stood on the shoulders of giants that they had achieved so much.

    Perhaps the only fair solution is to limit patients to a maximum life of 2 years, and why not do the same for copyright too?

    Ok I see the point if you invent create something unique that people are prepared to pay for then you should be entitled to some reward and a patient/ copyright gives you exclusive rights for a time and the opportunity to make some money by granting you a monopoly on this but for how long should independent development be halted?

    very rarely if at all does something come without development using somebody elses work and idea's.

    This Post is unique and the words I choose and the order I place them is mine alone. However they start with the basis of an article on slashdot, using technology that was developed by somebody else. If I had to pay for everything i did that used somebody elses work in someway or had to check to see who's copyrights i might be infringing I wouldn't be able to do anything and niether could you!

    If we want the computer industry to stagnate then lets continue the madness and copyright and patent everything and why stop there.

    Short limited life patents and copyrights seem to be the only sensible solution.

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