New Prior Art Cited In 2nd Eolas Patent Rejection 67
theodp writes "To be able to reject the Eolas browser plug-in patent a second time, the USPTO had to add the teachings of G.Toye after Eolas' response prompted the examiner to withdraw his previous finding that was based solely on the teachings of the W3C's Dave Raggett and Tim Berners-Lee. It's unclear where the Toye prior art came from, since the W3C didn't offer it when it asked the PTO to overturn the patent. Also, a newly available document reveals that the W3C's widely-publicized prior art filing, which was hastily made without community input, differed little from an unpublicized filing that was made weeks earlier by attorneys from Microsoft and AOL."
I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Software patents are bad... when you come up with an idea, and go about developing a large programming project, something is seriously wrong when the legal team does patent research and discovers that all that in house code that was written violates 30 patents.
Something needs to be done... immediately.
Cheers,
James Carr [bluefuzion.com]
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:2)
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you implying that a Kerry presidency would treat patents any differently?
Sorry, no. The Rep and Dem parties haven't made any true difference on Intellectual Property law in their platforms. Bills like the Sonny Bono Act get bi-partisan support.
It's even possible that Democratic politicians would favor Eolas in this case, since the Clinton adminstration demonstrated itself to be anti-Microsoft (relative to the successive Republican leadership, that is). They might be inclined to "rescue a common-inventor from big business"
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has succeeded in controlling the global software market by prevailing in at least these three main areas:
1. Convincing everyone that Windows is the universal platform, when in fact it runs on fewer architectectures (one, mainly) than virtually any other OS around;
2. Exacting an OS tax on virtually every personal computer sold;
3. Using large blocks of public domain code in their software, while getting to treat under law in most jurisdictions as their own copyrighted work.
Now add to that list: Making sure that the only software patent royalties that get paid, get paid to them.
Since the ex post facto rejection of the Eolas patent does nothing to influence software patent law in general, your elation regarding the Eolas patent disallowance is sorely misplaced, IMHO. Microsoft simply paid to get it overturned. All patents in retrospect are obvious, and just about any scrap of paper read 10+ years later can be made to seem preemptive if all you have to do is say that it is.
If Eolas were suing Microsoft on the exact same legal grounds, the suit would have most surely failed. Look at how simply having money -- some report it came largely from Microsoft -- has prolonged the circus that is the SCO lawsuit. It's clearly about money, not software patent law.
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Logically, then, Microsoft would only go to such an expense for financial reward. And they have stated that they would do this 'agressively' -- deliberately overloading
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
What you suggest is an abuse of that design. What you suggest is exactly what I am endeavoring to make plain: That Microsoft will use money and politics to allow it to act however it wants, making it too expensive for people to compete, which is abuse
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong + Wrong == Right?
" Convincing everyone that Windows is the universal platform, when in fact it runs on fewer architectectures (one, mainly) than virtually any other OS around;"
I don't totally disagree with your post, but I am not a big fan of this particular aspect of it. Being the 'univ
Re:I may hate microsoft, but... (Score:2)
The parent to my post evidently saw the Microsoft victory as a victory against software patents. It was no such thing. It simply underscored that if you have US$20-30M to throw awa
Wrong on all counts (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Wrong on all counts (Score:2)
Try buying a laptop without Windows, they represent >50% of all the PC's sold now. Better still, try buying one that will run something other than XP. Yeah, yeah, we can all find a really pricey 'linux-ready model" for 2X or 3X the price of the "value systems", but the good bargains are all "Designed for XP" machines, a euphemism for "Only runs XP". I had had a bunch of machines recently th
Re:Wrong on all counts (Score:2)
This is so stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is so stupid (Score:4, Informative)
Ray Ozzie did demonstrate something using OLE and Lotus Notes, but I dont think it is being used as prior art in the lawsuit.
Re:This is so stupid (Ozzie Prior Art) (Score:2)
Predates MS (Score:2)
So... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:software patents are bad (Score:3, Insightful)
> Software patents are censorship.
And you are a moron.
Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**.
Whether patentability of software or process inventions should be better regulated, that's another question.
>You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
And one can inven
Re:software patents are bad (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to me that the fast pace of software industry practically guarantees that the first to market already gets a serious advantage from being the first.
I would be interested to find out if there are any examples of software R&D that was so expensive that only software patents made it worthwhile?
Re:software patents are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Patent is far too broad to cover something like software algorithms. Software is another science where ideas are built upon other's ideas. Nothing's built in a vacuum here, but yet people still come off thinking that their code is somehow special and that nobody else would have thought of it.
Patent is obviously a bad idea because we're winding up with situations like this stupid Eolas thing. It's like someone (Fraunhoffer?) thinking they are the only ones who can do audio compression because the MP3 patent covers any similar algorithm. While they haven't sued anyone yet as far as I know, they have stated that Vorbis likely infringes on their patents. That's just ridiculous.
Re:software patents are bad (Score:2)
It would be ever worse of algorithms were copyrightable! Patents at least expire in 20 years, but copyright is forever (less one day).
Re:software patents are bad (Score:1)
But when it comes to expiry dates, does it really matter if it's 20 years or forever? In the computer world, probably not. How many software patents have you seen expire where there was not already a free alternative? I can only think of RSA, but it's also been superceded.
Re:software patents are bad (Score:5, Informative)
It would be ever worse of algorithms were copyrightable!
No, it wouldn't.
Patents at least expire in 20 years, but copyright is forever (less one day).
Cripes, people, learn the difference between the two. Copyrights and patents aren't the same thing with different terms of expiration. They're related, but conceptually different. Copyright is what prevents me from cutting and pasting the contents of a romance novel (or copying the executable file of MS Word) and selling it as my own work. I am free to write my own romance novel (or word processor) because I'm not copying someone else's work. It's called "copyright" for a reason, i.e. the right to make copies.
Patents, on the other hand, are short term monopolies on methods and processes. You would not (to construct a bizarre example) be able to patent MS Word; rather, you'd patent the concept of a word processor itself. The problem with algoriths and source code is that it straddles the line between machines and written work: it is the code that makes the machine perform the process. Because of this, the USPTO has been instructed to treat an algorithm as a machine that performs a process. This is a bad move, in my opinion. Code has more in common with mathematical formulas (non patentable) than machines (patentable). I think what the original poster meant was that specific algorithm code should be copyright protected, and the algorithms themselves should be unpatentable.
Re:software patents are bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing you said even approximates a refutation to my claim. Algorithims are not copyrightable today. If they could be, it would be even worse than allowing them to be patented (like they are today).
. I think what the original poster meant was that specific algorithm code should be copyright protected,
If you decide that someone meant something different than what he a
Re:software patents are bad (Score:1, Insightful)
1) "Patents at least expire in 20 years, but copyright is forever (less one day)."
2) "Patents, on the other hand, are short term monopolies on methods and processes."
Software is (mostly) something with a *very short* life-span. Most Windows-versions have a life-span of *less* than 5 years. Their patents exeede them by a *factor of (at least) 4*.
In other words : after 15 years of a part/piece of softwa
Re:software patents are bad (Score:2)
I wouldn't say that patents are bad because of few high profile cases - after all, this Eolas case is a good example of how "prior art" works just fine in invalidating baseless claims of patent violation!
This article by Lawrence Rosen, technology attorney and author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law" explains why patents are not a major concern to the OSS communit
Re:software patents are bad (Score:2)
Ah yes, the huge ammount of research money needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**
Ah, so we all should be eternally gratefull that people have made the concepts of "one click shopping" and "clicking multiple times" public, rather than keeping this valuable IP a seeeekriiit forever.
Yeah, right. And the money needed for really serious R&D would come from anonymous "contributors" like you?
Ah... you're right, because nobody ot
Re:software patents are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
>You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
There is no system of mandatory licensing in effect that would prohibit a patent owner from seeking unrealistic license fees.
In fact, the patent system is used by the NSA to prevent progress in the field of cryptology for example; patents can be designated "secret" and still be in effect. Their staturory timespan even only kicks in after they've been declassified.
So if you independently invent a means of cryptography, or of code cracking, that has been patented by the NSA, unbeknownst to yourself, they can force you not to implement it, without even telling you what they've patented. And when they get round to telling you, you still have to wait 17 years.
Copyright and patents aren't "ownership rights" or even "monopoly rights" (which implies that you're at least selling something); they're prohibition rights (look ma, no act of congress!).
Teleportation patents (Score:2)
Software patents are poorly implemented (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, software patents should be like biotechnology patents - you can't stop people from using the science, but you can stop them from using the techn
Re:software patents are bad (Score:3, Funny)
Now there's a cheap way to earn an insightful mod!
Re:software patents are bad (Score:1)
Re:software patents are bad (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
What I don't get about software patents: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What I don't get about software patents: (Score:2)