Patent Lawsuits Galore 149
eldavojohn writes "Guess who owns the patent on the touch-screen keyboard. Not Apple — SP Technologies has filed a suit based on just that. Ars brings out the intriguing detail that the founder of the patent troll company is serving prison time for health-care fraud." Read on for four more patent developments in the day's news.
Today the news broke that Aloft is suing Microsoft and Adobe for deliberately violating the patent entitled 'Network Browser Window with Adjacent Identifier Selector.' Qualcomm had a bad day as the US Trade Representative advised the President not to intervene in the patent beef it is losing against Broadcom. Today we found out Sharp is suing Samsung for an LCD infringement. Ending an eventful day on a note of sanity, a judge today threw out the jury verdict on Alcatel-Lucent vs. Microsoft and Microsoft no longer has to pony up $1.5 billion.
Palm together with every PDA out there (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Palm together with every PDA out there (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Palm together with every PDA out there (Score:5, Interesting)
RTFP (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish I could say that I don't understand how this patent was ever granted in the first place, but we all know how it ha
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Oh, like on a video poker machine . . .
hawk
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Prior art way before the Palm (Score:2)
When the patent office approves patents like this, something is seriously wrong. What, exactly, does the $500 filing fee cover, if it doesn't include at least half an hour of looking for prior art? Just paper shuffling and bureaucracy?
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The patent application drawing shows a stylus connected to the device with a string.
So the only infriging device i've seen is the Brabie computer from Mattle
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I was in 1983 or 1984 at a technology convention, and there Honeywell-Bull or HP (don't know which one, I think it was HP) had a touch screen demo.
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Apple should be happy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple should be happy. (Score:5, Informative)
Just shows that you didn't read properly. In that recent discussion, Google said that the patent system itself is broken. Apple said the patent system is fine, the related litigation system is broken. And clearly it is.
The other example mentioned was Microsoft being ordered to pay $1.5bn over two MP3 related patents. We all know that MP3 is covered by a few hundred patents, and Microsoft paid a few million for a license for all those patents, so one or two patents they missed could never be worth $1.5bn.
Re:Apple should be happy. (Score:5, Informative)
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What? Even if something is covered by many patents, the fact that you somehow get a great deal on licensing part of them (perhaps Fraunhofer gets free Windows licenses? who knows) doesn't mean the others should be licens
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Apple's position is like saying you think the iPhone is great, but the software it runs on is broken. You can't have one without the other.
Not "the" but one of many "a"s (Score:5, Insightful)
The humble network plug is covered by about 45 patents iirc. At least that's a finite number.
But the average humble user interface is covered by hundreds, thousands of patents, each for minor improvements (if at all) on other peoples' work.
Software patents are designed for one thing only: to allow lawyers to parasite off engineers.
Come on, make my day, patent punks!
Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s (Score:5, Funny)
What was the question again?
Misplaced blame? (Score:1)
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On top of that, perhaps the bar should discourage those few lawyers from being so sleazy, as it brings down the reputation of the whole profession.
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The problem with this kind of idea is that it makes the lawyer into a judge. While a lawyer is supposed to exercise some discretion in the cases they accept, it is fundamental to a fair judiciary that anyone who feels that they are wronged should be able to seek legal recourse. It's then up to the courts to decide whether they were actually wronged, as defined by the law of the land. If you start making lawyers accountable for taking cases that don't have merit, then they are going to start effectively t
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And she isn't very successful as a lawyer, due to her scruples.
-Peter
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(sorry, that was so begging for it...)
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In reality, she wrote up our divorce agreement, and, if anything, I took advantage of her by accepting it. It's a prime example of how scrupulous she is! (In both senses of the word, no less.)
-Peter
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I actually have the patent for "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer". Please cease and desist discussion on the topic or I will have to sue you.
Now, you can license the qualities for a "patient, kind, humble or scrupulous lawyer"... but it will cost you. :)
(See, the patent system is working perfectly fine)
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Reminds me of that engineering maxim (not sure if I've got it exactly right) :
Fast
Good
Cheap
Pick two of the above.
Except with lawyers it'd be more like :
Sleazy
Money grubbing
Honest*
Pick two of the above**.
--
** - We reserve the right to change any aspect of the two picked at any time, for any reason. By picking two of these choices you are entering into a contractual agreement resulting in the donation of your first born child to Litigation Inc. You are not free to disseminate in any form or way t
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huh, so our saying it's all bullshit to!
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!PATENTS ARE JUST FOR PATENT TROLLS! !PEOPLE JUST PATENT THE SAME NEW IDEA OVER AND OVER!
I wonder if I will get modded insightful or troll for responding.
It goes like this. There are rules for what can be patented. The patent system tries to keep out obvious patents, but there is something difficult about keeping out obvious, which I will get to shortly. You can't patent the same thing twice, though one thing
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> The patents in question are for Aloft's "Network Browser Graphical User Interface for Managing Web Content," US patent number 7,117,443, and "Network Browser Window with Adjacent Identifier Selector," US
> patent number 7,194,691 (...). They were filed for in late 2003 and were granted in October of 2006 and March of 2007, respectively. They describe user interfaces in a network browsing window that display
> the content at a specific URL as well
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In general, the claims of a patent are structured with 1-4 (although sometimes man
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Invalidating a claim, by prior art, means you have to find something which has, or some description of something which has, all the elements of that claim. If something has MOST of the elements of the claim, or something has some of the elements of that claim, or 2 things have all of the elements of the claim, but neither alone has all the elements of the claim, then you haven't invalidated the claim, by prior art (if you find 2 things which independently have all the elements of a claim, you may be able to argue obviousness, but that is an uphill battle once the patent has been issued. Not unwinnable, just harder.).
This is one of the primary problems of the patent system. To invalidate due to prior art something must have all elements of the claim exactly as they are claimed. To violate a patent something just has to have one element of the claim. This means I can have something that existed long before your patent and yet it violates your patent. Yeah, that works out really well. Also once it's granted it cost huge amounts of money to invalidate a patent. Why the hell should it cost me millions to just to show you
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Really, before calling someone a troll (I am not a patent lawyer, I do middleware development) you really should bother to learn about a topic you express yourself as though you cared about.
Apparently you didn't get this from the context of my post but I wasn't addressing you specifically. I have no clue what you do. I'm not paying millions in a patent case against you either yet I refer to that in the same way as I did the patent lawyer comment. Also I used troll in the sense of "patent troll" not posting troll as you seem to be referencing.
Now. Mostly you are just ignorant, and spewing your ignorance as fact. Which, in the course of these things, really annoys me. Close to everything you say is just wrong.
No doubt. I'm not lawyer. I prefer to actually create things for a living although the patent lawyers are rapidly making that nearly an impossible wa
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In reverse order:
You shouldn't be able to hold a patent that you are not using, attempting to bring to market, attempting to sell or license, actively doing research on, etc. In short, making a "good faith" effort to ensure that society gets the benefit of the patent in question. Courts are reasonably good at deciding things like whether or not you're making a good faith effort on something -- intent matters in a lot of legal areas, and courts and lawyers are familiar with the idea of intent as expresse
No actual invention (Score:2)
[snip]
2. People patent things not to make them, but to charge others for using them. (Patent Trolls).
[snip]
The real problem here is not that they do not move into production (as you say, not having capital is a darn good reason not to), but they never really invented anything in the first place. This is different from "obviousness".
The reason behind patent disclosures was to provide a detailed enough technical description that the invention can actually be made relying on the disclosure. The inventor thereby adds measurably to the sum of knowledge and, when the patent expires, others benefit from it. In the pas
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First Past The Post
If you and I each through our own work and no knowledge of the other work on a process, device, method, etc. why should whomever got to the PO first be able to exclude the other? This is fundamental to our patent system period. What right do I have because I got to the patent office first, to say that your work is for naught and now you have to have my permission to benefit from your own inde
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This is the lovely thing about patents in general and software patents in particular; you can claim so many patents for the same thing. The humble network plug is covered by about 45 patents iirc.
When the Mach 3 razor came out, I think they claimed 28 new patented features. I wasn't even able to count 28 features of the razor, much less 28 new features. Then there were a couple dozen more patents on the Mach 3 Turbo, the M3 Power, and the Fusion.
It just seems insane that the patent office could possibly believe that there have been several hundred improvements to razors within a few years time. I could understand maybe 10 innovations. (And adding another blade is not exactly an innovation.)
I'm actu
Well imagine if (Score:3, Funny)
Not really a loss. Maybe they could bring back the thumb keyboards.
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Re:Well imagine if (Score:5, Funny)
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For those who will point out that the laws in Star Trek probably don't include patents...It's fiction man, get over it.
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All this patent abuse always makes me think that not enough people have read "The Iron Standard" by Henry Kuttner, which was written in 1943 (but considering the antics of Thomas Edison in patents, not really early).
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Yes it does. Some guy was denied a patent on the waterbed because Heinlein described it in a story.
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Great (Score:5, Interesting)
If you keep bailing out the patent system by having judges rescue the companies with the power you are gonna get stupid hypocrites like Apple's recent statement that the system is fine and no one will change it.
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Judges have in fact been overriding juries for centuries. Appeals courts don't always tend to have juries and the higher you go the less juries you find.
Your last statement makes the least sense of all. This case isn't about the small fry against the big corporate monster. It's two big corporate monsters. So why would the ju
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It's up to you, unless I don't agree (Score:5, Interesting)
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Juries aren't always right. The ambition of a jury is that there are twelve people who can come to a reasonable decision. This does not always happen, and a judge should be able to "veto" certain jury decisions. For example, a judge cannot veto a not guilty verdict by the jury toward a criminal defendant. I believe a judge also cannot impose liability when a jury has found a civil defendant not liable. However, when a jury find
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The ability of judges to understand the fine technical details in cases like SCO vs. IBM has always been in question here in Slashdot. Jury members represent "the man on the street" and, no matter how pure their intentions might be, they are no more capable than judges of understanding these details. Sadly, most patent infringement cases are all about fine technical details so j
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Federal judges are appointed, not elected. I'm blanking on if Federal Circuit judges undergo Senate confirmation; I think D.C. circuit judges are the only ones in the appellate courts who avoid it, but I can't reme
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Re:It's up to you, unless I don't agree (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea behind a jury trial is that you are tried by a jury of your peers. The problem with the current implementation of the system is that you are actually tried by a load of random, often uninformed, people. In cases hinged on domain-specific information, there should be an understanding that your peers must be people who understand the subject matter. A good jury for the SCO vs. IBM case would have been selected from kernel developers for QNX, BSD, etc (no System V or Linux developers, to prevent a conflict of interest). In the case of a copyright infringement case between two songwriters, a jury of other composers would have been able to make an informed decision.
The difficulty with implementing this kind of system is that if you do it in a way that allows people to volunteer for jury service in a specific case then you undermine the system even more.
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The idea behind a jury trial is that you are tried by a jury of your peers. The problem with the current implementation of the system is that you are actually tried by a load of random, often uninformed, people. In cases hinged on domain-specific information, there should be an understanding that your peers must be people who understand the subject matter.
That's an interesting thought, but the Bill of Rights only mentions a "jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." "Peers" is the traditional paraphrase of that, but it really only refers to people who are geographically near you. The Constitution says nothing of "competent jurors," or "equals," which is what you seem to wish (me too!).
The basic (and antiquated) concept is that you should be judged by people who know you, which is about the exact opposite of what modern voi
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Unfortunately it appears that the uninformed people tend to have just as many opinions, biases, and preferences to influence their judgement -- they're just based on things completely disjoint from the facts of the case. Personally I'd rather be conde
The Justice System Fails Safe (Score:2)
SP Tech's patent (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm allowed to use them only because I they agreed to grant me a licence in exchange for my patent to make sentences easier to read by adding small gaps between each word. You however shall be hearing from my lawyers.
(or you might have chosen to post in HTML code but didn't manually add the line-break tags)
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Patents everywhere (Score:2)
Great, now you can patent a picture of technology!
Is this a joke? (Score:2)
What is this, a joke? FTA [arstechnica.com]:
The patents in question are for Aloft's "Network Browser Graphical User Interface for Managing Web Content," US patent number 7,117,443, and "Network Browser Window with Adjacent Identifier Selector," US patent number 7,194,691 (...). They were filed for in late 2003 and were granted in October of 2006 and March of 2007, respectively. They describe user interfaces in a network browsing window that display the content at a specific URL as well as the URL itself somewhere on or around the window.
Sounds like a plain old web browser to me. This was filed in 2003 and granted in 2006/2007? I guess nobody had ever heard of web browsers by then. This is just too stupid.
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morse code (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4 [youtube.com]
http://www.engadget.com/2005/03/12/nokia-files-pa
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Dunno about that. I passed by radio exam at 10 words per minute but I reckon I can type SMS messages faster than that on my motorolla. And I had to spend six months at night school learning CW to get that far.
While the US sues itself into irrelevancy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, keep a sharp eye on proposed laws in your own country, that are being pushed by the U.S... In Europe we've managed to beat them once with the software patents legislation, but they keep pushing. They in this case is US goverment/Microsoft; awfully enough there is no difference, Our ms. Kroes has stated her annoyance a being approached by US ambassadors to go easy on M$. She's got some big brass ones though, and I don't see her being pushed around at all.
Bart
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It is the US. US diplomats were pushing for the CII (software patent) directive in the EU.
Aloft invented the web browser! (Score:2)
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What, no prior art? (Score:2)
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There are also other features of the patent that coincide with the Apple iPhone keyboard - like the keys disappearing when the input is complete that you didn't mention.
who *grants* these patents anyway ? (Score:1)
Doesn't even apply to the iPhone? (Score:2)
You can easily get rid of the iPhone keyboard. It slides down when you click on the google maps and stuff and don't need text input capability. It's by no means constantly on display...
So, what are they infringing?
What they have patented here is a display whereby t
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Dat's a nice little company ya got there, Jobs. It would be a real shame if it burned down (Ha, ha,ha).
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It won't go past a first look by any decent legal system. The patent system in the USA is quite fine as it stands (I agree with Apple here..) but the amount of bullshit litigation that goes on needs to be
Touchscreen Keyboard Prior Art and Obviousness (Score:2)
Touch screen keyboards have been around forever. The one I worked on ran as a TSR under MSDOS and when triggered would take up part of the screen and would simulate a real keyboard. This was back around 1992-1993, well before this patent was filed. I know of other keyboards as well, such as one I saw on Geoworks on a Casio Zoomer and I'm s
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Of Sam I Am.
Whose moon's green cheese,
Mere eggs and ham.
Stay smooth and avoid the scam:
Burma Shave
Re:So where's mine? (Score:4, Funny)
I represent the American Safety Razor Company and am writing to inform you that you are being sued for the infringement of our product "Burma Shave". You should be receiving a packet of information shortly on where to send the $2,098,720,923US in compensation that our legal team has determined to be the current damages.
Thank you,
Lowell Dewey
Dewey, Cheatum & Howe
Attorneys at Law
1 Ripoff Lane
Scumville, DC 12345
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(GEICO cavemen who've run amok.)
With Gucci-ed highwaymen, I'll have no truck.
Fixing that fur requires no luck:
Burma Shave
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Throw your buddy Steve in to watch the trial, and you're within the bounds of the constitution!
I think I'm onto something... I think I'll call it Judge-to-go. Divorce proceedings, hamburgers and fried food aplenty.