Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview 250
ClaraBow writes with this excerpt from MacWorld:
"A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened. ... Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for 'a reasonable royalty' as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said. ... Cygnus applied for its patent (#7346850) in 2001. It covers a 'System and method for iconic software environment management' and was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of this year."
Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
And plenty of it. We had live preview icons in an app in 1989.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
What you dismiss so glibly in two words is actually hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars worth of highly technical legal arguments.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Two words: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Funny)
Weight of money does not necessarily add credance to a particular viewpoint.
What they are patenting is now considered obvious, perhaps not at the time, but given that it was only granted recently (ie after several independant parties had made this discovery, thus making it "obvious" in its field) its hard not to see this as just another patent troll.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
Weight of money does not necessarily add credance to a particular viewpoint.
You're from Earth right?
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Interesting)
It was originally applied for in 1998
That'd be at least 5 years after Lotus Magellin did it, and IMO, did it better than anything MS or Apple does today.
Lotus dropped Magellin when Windows 3 came along, so most of today's techs don't know about it, but it is still
surprising their legal research overlooked it.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Informative)
Reading the patent, what they have patented is a third party application that grabs a screen shot and allows you to select the document you desire to work on via that screen shot. One aspect that doesn't seem to exist anywhere in Windows or Mac OS X:
To me this sounds like they patented a computer program.
However, if their argument is that any kind of preview for file browsing is covered, then they are a number of years late to the party. In 1994 xv was doing this with it's visual schnauzer, providing thumbnails of all your images, etc.
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Just because they spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to seize ownership from the public domain of a concept for which there is ample prior art, doesn't mean the two words are wrong.
Or rather... that they hope to get hundreds of millions of dollars.
Excuse me while I go get my patent on the concept of an online hypertext-based page that permits viewers from the public to preview comments before appending them.
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Of course, "dollars" is the operative word in this statement.
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Bilski being overturned would highly disagree.
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If they are so lame to burn their money this way. Who am i to deny them their right?
File previews are definitely predating 2001.
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And we wouldn't want the lawyers to go hungry. ;)
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Hundreds of years of man-hours were wasted researching the epicyclical theory of the solar system too. And it was all garbage.
Only a stinking lawyer would think that spending more money on a point of view makes it right.
Get off slashdot you scum.
Re:Two words: (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent reform only works if unfair cases are being brought to court, argued, and won in a way that is contrary to the intent of the system. It is premature to say that this suit is anything more than a paper tiger. Bring up the patent on the Patent Application Information Retrieval [uspto.gov] system. Look at the rejections, amendments, and arguments. Significant changes were made to the patent claims, gutting much of their scope. The company bringing these suits is delusional if they think they have a case that can settle for anything more than nuisance tribute, especially from such high profile veterans of more balanced legal battles. What kind of patent reform would keep someone from trying to enforce a weak and narrow patent? Would they be less likely to try to enforce it if it was even weaker and narrower? Should we only allow patents that are strong and broad? Should it matter that many patent applicants only want very narrow patents, and many dont' really care if they would have much valuable in litigation?
As for loser pays...what makes you think that is such a good idea? Record companies use the threat of attorney fees to press defendants into early settlements. Would it be alright for Google or Microsoft to sue smaller companies, or individuals, based on flimsy patent claims, but win because their potential attorneys fees could be astronomical...perhaps significantly more than any reasonable royalty for the patent? How about if they faced smaller companies with strong patents and potentially good cases, but those smaller companies decided not to try to enforce their rights because of the possibility of being bankrupted if the suits failed?
There are advocates of loser-pay [manhattan-institute.org], but loser-pay skeptics [timesonline.co.uk] seem to be well-versed in the pros and cons of loser-pay systems. While loser-pay could have a positive effect on the American legal system, it is by no means a common-sense no-brainer.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Interesting)
you're missing the point. these non-inventions should never have been granted in the first place. that is what needs to be reformed about the current system.
things like file previews are currently patentable, and it's within the patent holder's rights to sue. whether you think it's contrary to the intent of the system or not, it's how the system works. right now the USPTO is wasting millions of dollars of tax payers' money each year by granting patents on trivial/obvious software features, which inevitably leads to frivolous lawsuits by patent trolls--who often win.
just look at the case between Creative and Apple [theappleblog.com] regarding file menus. the only thing that's different this time is that the defendants have much more legal muscle than the claimant (which is a separate problem with the legal system). so even if Cygnus loses this suit, that doesn't mean that when a corporate juggernaut like Apple/Microsoft file similar claims of patent infringement that they will lose.
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This reminds me of the Lotus vs Quattro Pro and SCO professional lawsuit http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFD7113EF930A35754C0A966958260 [nytimes.com].
Lotus sued and won over keystroke commands. Quattro and SCO Pro could both emulate Lotus 123 keystrokes and had to be taken off the market. At the time many people were moving from Lotus 123 to Quattro Pro, I thought it would be the next big thing. SCO Professional was great because it was a Lotus 123 clone that ran on Unix and worked great on dumb termin
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going to be expensive to fight these patents one by one that were rubberstamped for years. We need to throw out all software patents and return to copyright protection like we had.
rd
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What can be easily said, or thought to be intuitively known, may not have been legally codified, and therein lies the rub.
You can cite the Lexmark patent [patentstorm.us], elements of Apple's HIG [patentstorm.us], peruse the citations in one of Jakob Nielson's papers [useit.com] that would seem to support prior art, or just search Patent Storm for "iconic systems [patentstorm.us]" and seeing results dating back more than a decade figure this is a wash. Right?
While IANAL, what seems to make this patent different is that it is for a *system* involving multiple icons at
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It was a feature in SGI's Irix (the Indigo Magic Desktop) well before 2001 (pre-1995 even!), and was present in Windows 95 for bitmap images if you enable it via a registry key.
Re:Slashdot v. Patent Lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
So once the big guys are down... (Score:2)
will they kick the sh*t out of Gnome, KDE and other GUIs next?
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Interestingly if this would pass (which I strongly doubt) and MS, Apple etc. were required to remove the previews - then Gnome, KDE would benefit from that.
It kinda works like this:
1. Idiot sues Apple
2. Apple must remove the previews
1. Idiot sues MS
2. MS must remove the previews
1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc.
2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews
3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere
4. Two days later that same patch is wrapped up into RPMs, Debs etc. for one-click install
5. Due to p
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And then immediately lawsuits are pressed against Canonical, Debian, Novell, and anyone else who allows patented material to be added to their distributions.
Free software still has to follow the law.
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 3, 4 and 5 do not involve Canonical, Debian or any other distro.
The DEBs and RPMs could be hosted anywhere and if they sue the hosters then the packages will just move to bittorrent and p2p.
That's the beauty of OSS at work here. You cannot effectively ban a piece of software that many people find useful.
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:4, Informative)
Not if its not distributed by anyone in the US. Sure, they have to follow the law, but whos law is the question.
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then immediately lawsuits are pressed against Canonical, Debian, Novell, and anyone else who allows patented material to be added to their distributions.
Which would be immediately laughed out of court. They would only have a case if the distro was offering the software themselves. Anybody can set up a repository anywhere in the world. Just like anybody can offer a Windows based DVD ripper. So why have the MPAA not sued Microsoft? The same reason. They can only control what they offer themselves. If Microsoft included a DVD ripper in Windows 7, then the MPAA might have a case.
Free software still has to follow the law.
Absolutely... So what law are they breaking?
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I doubt they will sue every single US citizen who would use that patch.
Heck, they will lose this against Apple/Google/M$.
They won't even reach the official linux distros.
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but actually, if they are successful, it works more like this:
1. Idiot sues Apple
2. Apple pays money
1. Idiot sues MS
2. MS pays money
1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc.
2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews
3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere
4. One month later it becomes apparent that nobody except a few techies uses that patch, and people start to blame "Linux" for lacking an essential feature
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Sure, that option is also possible but I tend to believe that for a feature as popular as thumbnail previews, word of mouth would work quite well.
The information about how to install the required patches would quickly propagate across all the newbie-forums, howtos and other resources.
Keep in mind how newbies are introduced to linux: Either through a friend or through some sort of "trying out linux"-article.
Both sources will likely introduce the step of "and then install X and Y for bling, because some assho
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Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:5, Interesting)
One would think that if you posted a Wikipedia link, you'd at least have had time to read the first sentence of the article: "Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law..."
Anyway, patent trolls rarely go after free software projects because they lack the money to dole out a big settlement. The various media standards and many other fairly standard features of Linux distros are patent-encumbered up the wazoo. Some projects actually have some fear of litigation and disable features or distribute source-only (FreeType's bytecode interpreter comes to mind), but that's fairly rare.
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Wrong-o. Patents are for preventing others from benefiting from your ideas without acceptable reciprocal benefits determined at the discretion of the patent holder, e.g., royalties.
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An AC already covered this somewhat, but patents are meant to combat more than just others making money off of the patented invention.
Licensing is by far the most common route, but you can completely block the use of the invention by others for the duration of the patent if you so choose. Drug companies often choose this option, so you'll still have to wait a few more years for generic Viagra to hit the market.
Staying in the software realm, say you hold some software patent, and you actually make and sell
Wonderful (Score:5, Funny)
claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened
The page [patentstorm.us] for this patent at patentstorm.com shows users a small snapshot of the patent before it is opened.
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I worry about sites that have a 'preview' option before posting content, they must be next ...
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I worry about sites that have a 'preview' option before posting content, they must be next ...
We should all agree not to preview for the time being, lest sourceforge get sued.
Wait a minute... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite - Of all the news sites not to make the distinction....
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Economy is in deep shit, this is a symptom (Score:5, Insightful)
Economy (not just US economy, but especially US) is in deep f.cking shit. This is a symptom. You see, very little is actually produced in the US at this point, but more regulations, lawsuits, patents, various copyrighted materials like movies/music are still made there (I live in Canada, we are not far away from this problem here also, except that our movies/music sucks even more.)
When there is nothing to produce except for more laws/regulations, meaningless, useless, obvious patents and lawsuits, and also the greenback, at this point you have to ask yourself a question: how is this economy, that borrows so much from the rest of the world and then buys the products from the rest of the world going to pay the freaking debt? What is it, 10 trillion in debt at least?
Anyway, I read TFPatent [patentstorm.us] and thought to myself: holy shit. In 1998 I worked on a system for a purchase basket for a promotions company and I had to display thumbnails on the HTML page too.
In fact various stores and also porn sites would be great at showing prior art to this BS patent.
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Re:Economy is in deep shit, this is a symptom (Score:5, Funny)
In fact various stores and also porn sites would be great at showing prior art to this BS patent.
Yes I can confirm from personal experience that porn sites in the mid 1990's used thumbnails.
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Yes I can confirm from personal experience that porn sites in the mid 1990's used thumbnails.
Sorry, this patent is for right-handed previews only.
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You see, very little is actually produced in the US at this point
Don't be so ignorant. A quick wikipedia search would have disabused you of this foolish notion. The United States export more now than they have ever before (well, perhaps not this year...). Things exported include corn, steal, machinery and aircraft.
Total US exports in 2007 amounted to $1.145trillion. China's exports were worth $1.22trillion in the same year.[1] Services remain a fairly small part of that.[2]
People think that because we see massive container ships coming from overseas the West does nothing
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There is no reason to not assemble them outside US. The process is "security by obscurity".
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No it's not. Boeing spent years developing know-how and the expertise to make these planes.
Boeing themselves could shift outside the US, but I'm not sure what would be in it for them. They need the kind of highly skilled workforce only available in the West (Japan, Australia and New Zealand honorably included). They sell a lot of planes in America itself too. And even if they could get the labour outside the US, it would remain expensive.
The American worker is still good value for money if you look at labou
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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How are we going to pay the debt ? As a last resort, we print the money. If the other countries push us too hard, we COULD print enough to pay them off, and the next month, introduce the new and improved AMERICAN PESO !!. We won't though, because we don't need to. Slow steady inflation will take care of most of that debt.
Now, do we deliver ourselves into our enemies hands ? Not really. There is an old saying, borrow a little, and you have a debtor. Borrow a lot, and you have a partner.
They won't be able to
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it has everything to do with economy, except that it is not only economy right now. The way economy is now did not happen in the last year. It happened over the course of he last 15 year, as manufacturing was moved out of the US, people speculated more and more on things they didn't understand (first the internet bubble, now the mortgage bubble, both of which are really just credit bubbles) and the fact that the interest rates in the US were artificially pushed down to prevent the real cost of getting int
Redhat/Fedora has had this for years (Score:5, Informative)
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patent troll patent (Score:5, Funny)
doesn't this infringe on the patent troll patent?
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Apple Lisa (Score:3, Informative)
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KDE prior art (Score:5, Informative)
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Prior Art. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-6.2-Manual/getting-started-guide/index.html [redhat.com]
Copyright © 2000 by Red Hat, Inc.
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-6.2-Manual/getting-started-guide/s1-managers-kfm.html [redhat.com]
"Show Thumbnails -- If you have images in a directory, selecting this option will show you tiny representations of them. This view is useful if you keep family photos or artwork."
--
BMO
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wouldn't it then be "obvious" if you can have a preview of one particular file type/document, others would follow?
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I'll testify .... (Score:5, Informative)
In the late 1980s I wrote the Windows version of Business & Professional Software's Trumpet Presentation program. In it, I showed iconic representations of presentations.
I'd call that prior art. Just contact me.
Contact you? How? (Score:4, Informative)
If you're for real, I suggest that you take the initiative and contact them, considering that
Claims (Score:5, Informative)
Since people are too lazy to click on the link and read the claims for themselves, I'll post the two independent claims here:
In order for prior art to cover this, either one reference, showing that this was known before the patentee's invention, has to anticipate every one of the limitations in the claim; or, it must have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to combine multiple references which, when put together, cover every limitation in the claim.
Re:Claims (Score:5, Interesting)
NeXTSTEP 4.0 Alpha; sometimes mis-called Beta on web sites.
The software featured tabs across the screen bottom for various window types. (We cribbed these for Mac OS 8.5 after the merger, as the tabbed window feature.) The Documents tab was a window which presented icons of documents, each of which could be a preview of the actual document, badged to indicate the associated application.
This implementation nicely meets all the claims, but predates the patent application by 5 years. I won't bother going through all the details, but Cygnus is boned. Software patent litigation as a business model is so last decade...
Re:Claims (Score:5, Informative)
That actually does, quite nicely, compromise "Prior Art" that invalidates both the primary claim (claim 1) and the secondary claim (claim 16) — all other claims rely, either directly or indirectly, on those two.
In other words, this single piece of "prior art" — if it is validated during a re-examination of this patent — will cause the patent to disappear entirely.
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And my response is...... one or more "huh?"
I swear I've seen AI programs produce more concise, clear and fully descriptions text than this.
They must have been using an older version.
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In order for prior art to cover this, either one reference, showing that this was known before the patentee's invention, has to anticipate every one of the limitations in the claim; or, it must have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to combine multiple references which, when put together, cover every limitation in the claim.
INAL goes with saying.
Please see patent office http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html [uspto.gov]
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and perhaps unnecessary set of comma-spliced fragements
Actually, it is necessary. Each claim has to be contained within in a single sentence.
Prior art does not need to address every detail of a patent. One instance (of prior art) can apply to a porttion of a claim. That prior art may be extended through reasonable extension by a person skilled in the art to further limit the validity of the patent.
There is a bit of wiggle room in making an obviousness rejection, but the more gaps you have, the harder it is to convincingly argue obviousness, and the more likely you are to get overturned on appeal if it goes that far. In any case, the logical leaps made by many /.'ers far exceed what any examiner would be allowed to make.
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The other thing (among many) that slashdotters don't get is that the Patent Office as a whole and patent examiners in particular must apply existing law as interpretted by the courts. They can't just say "It's obvious, fuckwit!" as much as some of them might want to. Plus, if you look at what is on PAIR, a lot of back and forth was done to limit the claims. It's not the sort of "rubber stamping" that
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Actually, it is necessary. Each claim has to be contained within in a single sentence.
Huh. Seems a lil' bit of an arbitrary requirement in my mind, although I reckon there needs to be a limit or some patent lawyers would write a book for every claim.
Even so, the parent's right about one thing: None of those claims are, in fact, sentences. You sort of have to have a predicate, no matter how many phrases you pile on top of a subject.
It's frankly a little worrisome that the combined efforts of an agency responsible for assigning rights for complex devices and methods and many highly-paid sp
Show me the patent! (Score:2)
I have a older family friend who patented a tool for working on IBM Selectric typewrites back in the '60s. He could show me the tool and the designs.
Patent Trolls are a GOOD thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
The moment where patent trolls battle it out with large corporations is right around the corner. I feel that this is not only the beginning of a shitstorm, but when it's finished - software patents will be made illogical if not illegal in most countries, and people will realize that it was just a marketing scam that big corporations used to squash the little guys, and then differently designed little guys built to take advantage of an unfair law will take down the big corporations at their own game. Its the way of things, until balance is found. Same with licensing software, same with MPAA and RIAA, and other such BS. No unfair advantage cannot be exploited, which is why free enterprise & the internet kicks ass. Value through innovation will always win. Period.
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Hi... I'm the asshole who posted the comment about the four horsemen.
Let me give you an example of why I think patents are not necessary for innovation in software:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ [ubuntu.com]
When it comes to software, ideas are cheap and abundant. Patents make sense when they represent something that is difficult to come up with (a diesel engine for example) and that may involve years of R&D.
But if you read that list, you'll see that ideas (even good ones) cost almost nothing, and have no value on its
I wonder if.... (Score:3, Funny)
I got dibs on malloc and free! (Score:5, Funny)
One Word... Bilski (Score:2)
I have no Idea! (Score:2)
The best they can hope for is being slapped down quickly, before Microsoft, Apple and Google incur much legal costs for them to pay.
This sounds like a quick way to bankruptcy.
Does this company even produce software? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does this company even produce software? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be a big mistake for a company like this to produce any products. These companies exist only to license out IP they buy or otherwise "invent," and to sue non-licensees for patent infringement. If they were to produce a product, they would make themselves vulnerable to a countersuit.
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Who needs it? (Score:5, Funny)
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Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Just another greedy patent troll!
Are they in Indiana or Michigan? (Score:3, Informative)
If the article confuses Indiana with Michigan then maybe it is confused about the lawsuit as well?
This lawsuit will get tossed out anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
As the judge gleams over his PC and noticed it too uses the preview thumbnails feature and started to realize...holy crap...if I pass judgment then how the hell am I gonna find my pictures?!?!
What bothers me tho as more and more of these silly lawsuits crop up it will stifle innovation. Eventually it will choke open source software as they lack funds to fight this. Apple and Microsoft have deep pockets so they will survive, just we will end up paying for it later.
I just hope I can continue to use Ubuntu w
Creating Unity (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a least one benefit to patent trolls like these guys. They unify companies that normally are fierce competitors. Or, as Psycho Dave from Kuro5hin describe another group:
"...what common ground does pretty much every person regardless of their political or religious beliefs have? They all hate the Westboro Baptist Church."
If only (Score:4, Interesting)
If only we could find a way to abolish these Copyright and Patent issues we might have progress, which is what copyrights and patents are supposed to provide.
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Because destroying incentives which lead to capital investment and collapsing industries based on intellectual property would clearly help progress. What is needed is massive reform, not complete abolition.
Oh boy... (Score:2)
From their website...:
Our Mission
To bring the power of computer technology to business through the use of advanced products and technical consulting services.
To provide computer technology solutions to our clients using our proven process of identifying, simplifying and comunicating a better way to get the most from their technology investments.
Committed to: Customer service, Individual ability and creativity, professional responsibility, human touch experience.
It also looks like their logo is prior art too
Re:Perfect time to know what Obama's take (Score:4, Funny)
Um, I think you're the only one that sees anything homo-erotic in the OP's post. I wonder what that could signify? (not that there's anything wrong with it)