Oprah Sued For Infringing "Touch and Feel" Patent 249
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Oprah Winfrey, or to be more precise, Oprah's Book Club, is being sued by the inventor/patent attorney Scott C. Harris for infringing upon his patent for 'Enhancing Touch and Feel on the Internet.' So Oprah's Book Club is now one of many people and entities being sued over this patent because they allow people to view part, but not all, of a book online before purchasing it. Mr. Harris also sued Google Books for infringing upon this patent. He actually was fired from his position as partner at Fish & Richardson for that, because Google is a client of that law firm and they had conflict of interest rules to uphold." It would be entertaining to see Oprah give very wide and mainstream publicity to the abuses enabled by our current patent system.
Update: 01/07 22:03 GMT by KD : The blog author Joe Mullin wrote to point out that the lawsuit was not filed by the inventor, Scott C. Harris, but rather by the shell company Illinois Computer Research, which seems to exist for the purpose of filing lawsuits based on this particular patent.
Update: 01/07 22:03 GMT by KD : The blog author Joe Mullin wrote to point out that the lawsuit was not filed by the inventor, Scott C. Harris, but rather by the shell company Illinois Computer Research, which seems to exist for the purpose of filing lawsuits based on this particular patent.
Would she fight it? (Score:5, Funny)
It would be entertaining to see Oprah give very wide and mainstream publicity to the abuses enabled by our current patent system.
It's more likely she'd just give him a car.
HAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
He filed a frivolous law suit against....Oprah
Like her or not, she is one of the most influential, and hence powerful, women on the planet.
Of course she will fight it. She will also win. A mouse just picked a fight with a dragon.
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Only in our dreams will he get roasted for it like he deserves though.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's going to get roasted. I've been waiting for a patent troll to piss off the wrong person. Looks like that day has arrived. I guess I never thought it would be Oprah Winfrey though.
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We'll see. I would tend to think she doesn't need the negative publicity, and she certainly has plenty of money to just pay the guy to go away.
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Just look at paris hilton! What did the 'infamous' sex tape do to her? Shot her popularity through the roof!
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:5, Funny)
Just look at paris hilton! What did the 'infamous' sex tape do to her? Shot her popularity through the roof!
I really hope we don't end up with a similar video featuring Oprah.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:5, Funny)
It will be called, "A Day at the Oprah".
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How is being the victim of an abusive lawsuit "negative publicity"? She could have paid to make the "beef libel" lawsuit go away, too, instead she moved her show to accommodate the trial, fought it, and won, and turned it into plenty of positive publicity.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Informative)
He may actually have a case.
It is theoretically possible that it is a good case even outside his own head.
It is possible still that he may win and status-quo be affirmed.
Oprah, Sony and Google are all powerful but they also all depend on IP laws themselves.
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In fact, I hope she loses the case on its merits. If she does, you can be pretty sure that changes to patent law will follow.
He might have an interesting case... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, under the current patent infrastructure, he might have a legally sound case. And he might even win. This only proves (further) that the current scheme has gone nuts.
I hope some people take note on this, and push towards reforming the patent system. In my book, this would clearly sound as an obvious thing, not even an invention... Still, a patent was granted.
However, I do not hold very high hopes on it. I think this will be silently ignored. If anything, many media people will say, "oh, I didn't know I
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His case is, in my not actually a lawyer opinion, completely bogus. The patent would likely be tossed out. Eventually. The catch is, it'd take ~5 million to do so, and he's probably more than happy to settle for 3 million. This is the very nature of patent trolling.
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Please go read some definition of theory and fact. Facts are PARTS OF a theory.
A theory explains facts.
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I wasn't referring to those facts... I was referring to the other ones. You know, the truthy ones like the Law of Gravity, the Big Bang, Piltdown Man.
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You din't have the nerve to include evolution, did you? You were probably right because the minute some idiot mentions it there'll be a long offtopic flamewar.
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Fact != Theory (Score:3, Informative)
The ONLY accurate statement you can make is that all facts were once theories.
Nuh uh.
Facts can be suggested by hypotheses, but they do not become facts until they fit the following definition: a fact is an empirically evident observation that is repeatable and reproducible.
A theory is a model based on facts, restricted to a well-defined problem domain, that generates testable predictions.
A theory is a model, a model that exists only in our understanding. The only way in which this model is tied to the real world, outside of human consciousness, is by its foundation on facts...so fa
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Funny)
So what you're really saying is that Oprah is Trogdor in disguise?
OPRAH! Burninating the countryside, Burninating the patent trolls. Burninating all the peoples. And their thatched-roof COTTAGES!
Thatched-roof COTTAGES!
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the thing though, I'm surprised more companies don't fight the trolls just to get a reputation among trolls that you're willing to go Thunderdome on them on occasion. Then they'll get the message to find someone else to mess with. The way I see it, the only reason patent trolling is profitable is because companies take a short term view of it and just settle, encouraging the prospect of a death by a thousand paper cuts.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the companies often ARE the trolls.
They just do a slightly different version of trolling.
Fighting sets precedents. precedents set decisions, and while you may want a decision one day the next it will hurt you.
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An interesting workaround for companies in that situation [ubersoft.net] we all know it the USian patent system is broken and hopefully will get rebuilt sensibly in the near future, the patent in question is so broad it should never have been granted.
You have ignored the otherside of that idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, they maybe getting a reputation of being people who settle out of court.. but imagine if they fought and lost. It would be huge. Can they risk that? Im sure its an important part of their risk management assesment when deciding what to do.
The increased payout for a loss, the increased publicity showing your company losing, breaking the law. Its a huge risk to take, while its easy to think these cases are thin and you cant lose, thats not true, just check the news.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not true. Companies settle because there is typically too much to put in the hands of a relatively uneducated judge and jury, even when you factor in the value of preventing future lawsuits. Patent litigation typically involves a company's most profitable products. Losing a litigation, or even being enjoined from selling the products while the suit is pending, would be disastrous to a company's business. Averting future lawsuits has no value if the current lawsuit bankrupts the company. Also, if you fight to the bitter end and happen to lose, and have to pay a large bounty, there really was no prevention anyway.
In many cases, the risk is simply untenable on any measure for an intelligent company to litigate patents to a verdict. Frivolous lawsuits are typically brought by "non-practicing entities," the polite term for patent trolls, in pro-plaintiff districts such as the Eastern District of Texas. Taking on all of the patent trolls is ridiculous because they only risk their legal fees while the defendant risks their livelihood. For instance, RIM refused to settle a patent infringement lawsuit targeting the Blackberry until the court threatened to shut off all Blackberries in the United States. RIM had to pay NTP $612 million to settle instead of the $20 million NTP was demanding before the adverse ruling. Microsoft lost a patent infringement lawsuit for $1.52 billion that was later reduced on appeal to $500 million. If you assume they could have settled the lawsuit for $10 million, the general counsel who lost the company $490 million would have a hard time explaining how that was worth the prevention, in light of the fact that paying out $500 million encourages even more patent trolls to fuck with you.
In a game theoretical sense, you may want to fight everything to the end. But settlements are usually fair in broad strokes degree because you have businessmen and lawyers calculating the validity and odds of various claims. Otherwise, you have a judge and jury who do not know that much trying to learn the law and the technology deciding the future of your company. If the judge decides to enjoin your product or the jury rules against you for $1 billion, you are shit out of luck.
Oprah will settle out of court (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it will come down to business -
The question will be - Is it worth the cost of defending this in court or should we settle?
There is also the question of P.R. a court case could dig up something dirty and Oprah has a spotless image.
Throw enough Mud and it sticks !!! (Bad Oprah)
going on past court cases most large companies like to settle out of court. I cant see why this will be any different.
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Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Walmart makes it a policy to fight each and every lawsuit to discourage others from taking them on. Settling may be cheaper in the long term, but what if settlements bring out more leeches hungry for a little blood?
Anyway, I'm sick of hearing about patents over common sense shit. It's not the underlying technologies that patented, just the applications they now allow (often internet versions of common real life things). I don't like Oprah all that much, but I hope she crushes this little flea.
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Except you have to look at the business she is in. Her career is using her life as a kind of laboratory for generating experiences that are novel, but rooted n approachable sentiments and ideas.
In a nutshell, Oprah is a professional middle-brow bohemian.
Doing something that is not entirely sensible because it appeals to a personal sense of what is right is different for her than it would be for you or me. If this makes her mad enough, it's her business to explore her feelings through trying things ordinar
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Like her or not, she is one of the most influential, and hence powerful, women on the planet.
How come i needed to google to find out who this "Oprah" is?
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Only in USA would someone call a talk show host with rather specific target audience (middle aged lower middle-class women) to be one of the most influential women on planet and putting her on the same lists as people like Angela Merkel.
She's more than just a talk show host. She's also bloody rich. Besides, there's a lot of middle-class women both in the US and outside it.
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually she is very popular with woman in the Middle East [nytimes.com]. In countries like Saudi Arabia copies of her "O" magazine are in great demand.
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Only in USA would someone call a talk show host with rather specific target audience (middle aged lower middle-class women) to be one of the most influential women on planet and putting her on the same lists as people like Angela Merkel.
Oprah is rich and her target audience is rather huge. The fact that a black single mother managed to become so popular amongst white lower middle class republican voting women, is significant. I say this not because of my prejudices, but the prejudices of those that are her fans.
I know a handful of middle class white women that didn't like it when black people move on their blocks. They love Oprah though. In some cases the black families were significantly more affluent than their own families. She managed
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She is far more then a talk show host now, though that is how she got her start.
She has films and magazines and tv shows (Dr Phil, Rachel Ray...)
Also, the target audience is upper-middle class women. And when Oprah talks, these women listen. Just try and get a book out of the library once it's in Oprah's bookclub.
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This lawyer probably knows a lot more about the law than Oprah does.
On the other hand, Oprah probably knows a lot more about public relations than this lawyer does. Oh, and she could hire most lawyers in the US. Like, all at once.
It's like watching one of those videos on YouTube of rednecks doing stupid shit and then getting hurt. It's good, clean fun, and in the end we're all better off for having learned a valuable lesson from someone less fortunate now than they were 30 seconds ago.
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Or as Lou Gramm (or Mick Jones?) once penned: "You got a lion on your hands, boy, not a mouse!"
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s/on the planet/in the USA/
The rest of the world could care less, thank god.
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Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Queen Elizabeth II, and (unless we fix the copyright laws in the next few years) J K Rowling.
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He filed a frivolous law suit against....Oprah
Like her or not, she is one of the most influential, and hence powerful, women on the planet.
Of course she will fight it. She will also win. A mouse just picked a fight with a dragon.
After quitting his lawfirm so he could sue one of their clients, Google.
The guy's got a pair. I'll give him that.
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Not for nothing, but what other woman on the planet can rival Oprah? Who do you have in whatever country your anonymously cowarding from? I'm an American living in the UK with a European wife but I haven't seen anything quite like Oprah on this continent. Even Angela Merkel has limited power. God help Germany if Oprah ever told her legions of followers to invade.
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God help Germany if Oprah ever told her legions of followers to invade.
First of all, I would have picked Russia to make your point. Secondly, Oprah is not particularly good at getting hey fans to do anything, except maybe vote for Obama.
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Beef sales plummeted the next day and she was sued by the meat industry for defamation. I don't understand the attraction and slavish devotion she engenders in her followers, but she has a hell of a lot of pull.
Germany was picked to contrast her with Merkel but I'm certain her minions would kick Putin's ass on her s
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Putin vs Oprah? That makes me think of The Stand. Putin isn't hard to image as an incarnation of Randal Flagg (perhaps with a touch more self-control), and Oprah (compared to Putin) just radiates goodness, much like I viewed the spiritual meta-battle going on in that book.
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When will Americans stop confusing their country with the whole planet? This reminds me of the silly name "World series" for some American baseball tournament. At least for Europeans, the name Oprah hardly even rings a bell,
Speak for your own corner of Europe. The name Oprah Winfrey most definitely rings a bell in mine.
Oprah is one of the richest, and therefore one of the most powerful women on the planet, simply because money gives you power. Various wealthy queens are also powerful for that reason, even if they don't hold any actual political power.
Oprah is obviously not as powerful as Angela Merkel, but that doesn't stop her from being one of the most powerful women in the world.
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Oprah is obviously not as powerful as Angela Merkel, but that doesn't stop her from being one of the most powerful women in the world.
Take away her TV program and her "power: would evaporate.
Billy Bulger, the "corrupt midget" as he's been called, was President of the Mass Senate for a number of years. He was thought of as the most powerful man in MA. When he was interviewed by Morley Safer on "60 Minutes", he said "if people think you have the power, you do".
Of course, Oprah doesn't have a gangster brother named Whitey who shot and buried people he didn't like, but really - what power does she exert beyond the television world? She's a g
Re:HAHAHAHA (Score:4, Insightful)
Take away her TV program and her power: would evaporate.
Her primary source of power isn't money, it's that people watch/listen to her. Until her power evaporates, no one is going to take away her TV program.
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I'd go a step farther and say she's one of the most powerful people in the world, regardless of gender. Does she have a military, no. Industry? No. But she commands a legion of rabid, fervent devotees that would likely march into Hell on her command. And many of those devotees are powerful people in their own right.
Yes, Oprah does scare me a little.
Re:Would she fight it? (Score:5, Funny)
It's more likely she'd just give him a car.
Oprah and this guy are in the pre-trial conference...
Oprah: "Look under your seat!"
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Yeah, she's not going to publicize this. It's too technical for the masses, and people have a 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude these days, especially with digital media. I'm thinking she sweeps this under the rug, maybe settles out of court.
I really, really hope she doesn't settle this out of court, and does the world a favor by stepping on this rat for everyone to see. It's not like she's on the verge of bankruptcy and can't afford a few dozen high-powered lawyers to launch a counterattack.
This is like hijacking cases. If you give in and pay the money, you'll only encourage more of the same behavior. Send in the Marines / black ops / ninja death squad / pirates of penzance each time it happens, and suddenly it doesn't seem like such a hot
Re:Would she fight it? (Score:5, Insightful)
She makes money from the media, and the media companies like the current patent and copyright laws. No one in that business is going to step forward and say 'the system is broken.' I hope she does, but I don't consider it very likely.
Re:Would she fight it? (Score:4, Insightful)
While she may be a media icon and corporate power in her own right, do you think her handlers are silly enough to let her counter attack this guy? She makes money from the media, and the media companies like the current patent and copyright laws. No one in that business is going to step forward and say 'the system is broken.' I hope she does, but I don't consider it very likely.
She's in a position where if she does have "handlers", they probably need her a lot more than she needs them.
Also, saying "this is an abuse of the system" isn't necessarily an admission that the system is broken, only that it is imperfect. She could take the stance that fighting this is equivalent to working within the system to correct an abuse of it and that therefore it's not so broken at all. I'm not saying I personally feel this way, only that this is not necessarily the losing proposition you describe.
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Stop mixing patents and copyrights together, It's making people confused. They are completely different, and while the media industry sure likes the copyright system, they have nothing to do with patents.
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She makes money from the media, and the media companies like the current patent and copyright laws.
The media companies like the copyright laws. They have little interest in patents.
The only media-related patent (ab)use I can think of is the DVD-CCA's use of the DVD-related patents to clamp down on non-compliant player manufacturers. With Blu-Ray, they don't even need patents for that, they can simply disable any non-compliant players. With DVD, they had that power, but it was a blunter instrument and they preferred to use legal means (primarily contractual, with the background threat of patent infri
Wide? (Score:4, Funny)
Did anyone else read that as : "It would be entertaining to see Oprah get very wide" ?
No and... (Score:2)
Oh, Dr. Phil! (Score:3, Funny)
Dr. Phil! Touch me! Feel me!
Oh, it's not that kind of lawsuit? Yawn.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Meanwhile, the new season of Biggest Loser debuted tonight as well. Maybe they should do Biggest Celebrity Loser!
Re:This is a title, since I must have one (Score:5, Interesting)
"Tonight on Larry King live, he had 3 guests, Oprahs personal trainer, her spiritual adviser and some other guy, talk at length about GASP, OPRAH GETTING FAT. What the hell is wrong with our world, I don't know where to begin anymore."
TV != World.
I do not watch TV. So I can't judge of the state of the world by watching Larry King show. There is not much Oprah in my world, fat or thin.
Re:This is a title, since I must have one (Score:4, Funny)
There is not much Oprah in my world, fat or thin.
Trust me, there's more of her in your world than there was 6 months ago.
Re:This is a title, since I must have one (Score:4, Funny)
With the Law of Attraction, Oprah and anyone else who is willing to blindly fork out their money is GOD*
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You know, maybe it's inane, but you really can't blame her. She's made quite a living off of it.
Besides, she need it for financing StedMAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQMQ7Usqisg [youtube.com]
Only in America. (Score:5, Interesting)
The land of too many lawyers without enough viable work to find.
Oh the opportunities that have been missed or shut down for fear of litigious people and the grinning lawyers that represent them.
As true as this is, I will probably be modded a flamer.
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-1, Gay
Re:Only in America. (Score:4, Insightful)
In this economic depression, it only makes sense for people with no skill or talent to take money from companies that actually provide tangible benefits to society and take part in our economy in exchange for doing no work and little forethought.
The American patent system is designed to reward inventors, even if they never have any intention or desire to make anything of their patent, by ensuring that anyone can patent anything. As a result the secret to success, like in relationships, is finding your perfect match. They're out there somewhere, and they're infringing on a patent that any sane person could come up with over a pint of Guinness and a plate of chips. Go get what you've earned, tiger!
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Summary of the patent (Score:5, Informative)
I've just skimmed the patent. The basic situation is they have the entire book on computer, you can choose any pages to view, but once you've viewed a certain number, it won't let you view any more. There was also a bit of stuff about supplying image and text in different formats/resolutions, and (I think) using keys to scroll around the image of one page.
How do they know that it is you, not someone else asking for more pages? They specifically include the use of cookies, but allow for other methods. There is no mention of (e.g.) using IP addresses, but I expect this would be covered. The interesting problems (How do you know the user isn't deleting the cookies? How do you know whether there are 200 people behind that single IP address?) are not addressed.
IANAL, and I didn't read it carefully, so I might be wrong about some details.
Prior Art? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the operating procedure of an Ice Cream shop.
Yes, you can sample this. That too. That. That....
But once you've had "enough" samples, you need to buy something.
So, essentially, this patent is... "Something that's already happened for hundreds of years... on the internet"
Mod "Insightful", not "Funny" (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless of the underlying ironic humour in the parent post, Kalriath really comes across (to me at least) more as insightful than funny. This case is another prime exemplification of how bizarre the legal situation becomes once any activity takes place via the internet, as if engaging in business online somehow changes everything (beyond just the medium of exchange).
Cheers,
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Amen. When Oprah goes for blood, she goes straight for the jugular.
I remember when she read Elie Wiesel's book Night... she did a huge show on it, went to Germany and toured the concentration camps, talked with the author, and really did her best to show exactly the face of evil.
I hope she tries to show the face of corruption and incompetence in the patent system. If anyone in America has the audience and the skills to effectively portray this to the public, it'd be Oprah.
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Read a bit of the book. Get a feel for it. Don't sit there and read the WHOLE damn thing, though.
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This is the operating procedure of an Ice Cream shop. Yes, you can sample this. That too. That. That.... But once you've had "enough" samples, you need to buy something. So the only specifics he's proposing in the patent are:
... transmitting a plurality of images from a server to a client over a network responsive to a request unless a request threshold has been reached.
If your ice cream shop isn't using a server, network, or plurality of images representing pages of a book, then it's not prior art.
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It doesn't really matter whether the method disclosed in the patent is very good or not.
What does matter is whether or not the patent is valid. That is, of patentable subject matter, and novel, non-obvious, and useful. It's certainly useful (even if there are ways around it). It would appear to be of patentable subject matter. Some if it is certainly not novel, however -- several of the claims describe things web servers and browsers have been doing since the early '90s (and Compuserve and AOL and likel
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How do they know that it is you, not someone else asking for more pages? They specifically include the use of cookies, but allow for other methods. There is no mention of (e.g.) using IP addresses, but I expect this would be covered. The interesting problems (How do you know the user isn't deleting the cookies? How do you know whether there are 200 people behind that single IP address?) are not addressed.
True, they're not addressed, but they don't necessarily need to be. You don't have to solve every problem in a patent - otherwise, you could never have improvements on prior technology.
Most interesting thing, I think, is that the claims are broad enough to cover 2D representations, though the first half of the description is pointed towards 3D representations. Since this isn't a divisional application, it makes me suspect that there were 3D claims previously but they were rejected.
Remember - the invention
Why Oprah won't become a patent reform spokeswoman (Score:3, Insightful)
...at least, not initially.
Her lawyer will tell her not to comment on the case, and she will follow that advice. She's not stupid.
However, once the dust is settled it might get more interesting. Some other posters were speculating that "big content" it to Democrats what "big oil" is to Republicans. Perhaps that's true; but this is a patent case we're talking about. Big Content is fueled by copyright, not patents. I don't watch Oprah. Has she tackled pharma companies in the past? That might provide some clue as to whether or not she'll become an advocate for patent reform.
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Her lawyer will tell her not to comment on the case, and she will follow that advice. She's not stupid.
That wouldn't prevent her from commenting about the state of patent law in general, and using other cases to make the point. She could also ask her attorneys to vet everything she says on the subject to make sure it won't be a problem.
If she wants to talk about it, the legal situation is an obstacle to be worked around, it's not a showstopper.
The Root (Score:2, Insightful)
When will we start fixing the root of the problem: suing and firing moron patent officers that grant amazingly stupid patents, followed by investigations and possible nullifications of the patents they have granted?
Fight the war on two fronts: kill the patent trolls, and also fire the idiots who keep feeding them!
Seriously, I know a lot of bullshit must come across their desks at patent offices, but you would think that they'd have figured out how to assign patents of specific types to specialist patent off
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Re:The Root == The Money Trail (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really want to get to the "root of the problem", start shooting lawyers. If you follow the money trail, it really seems this entire situation was set up so that there would be MORE lawsuits, in which case, it's the lawyers that benefit in general.
All of american society is being screwed, to the benefit of the ruling class, aka lawyers. I'm sure it was a lawyer who first proposed ridiculous patenting of obvious ideas "on the itarweb", and it's lawyers who vigorously defend idiots who think they are go
Enough !!! (Score:2)
This is friggen bullshit !!!
Every weekend I go to National Bookstore at the shopping mall, and browse through the new releases ... before I buy any book, I'll want to read at least the prologue, introduction OR cover ...
Are you telling me I'm infringing on someones patent if I do the exact same thing online ?
How do these patents get allowed ?
Next stop: eBay! (Score:2)
Easy to overturn this patent (Score:2)
For more than a century, it has been standard practice for publishing companies to receive manuscripts in the form of three sample chapters and an outline of the rest of the work in progress. This was done in whatever media was available. I'm sure by the 90's, there were manuscripts being delivered via email in this format.
So it is an obvious practice to carry this to the consumer. How often do you get samples of food in the grocery store? Sample packets of some skin product in the mail? There is so much "p
Re:Unlikely (Score:4, Interesting)
This is patent not copyright. Big content would love to see the patent system tightened up. With the possible exception of drug companies and the democrats already hate them.
Re:Unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
The big content providers would likely love to see a much looser patent system, then they wouldn't need to pay royalties to the patent holders of e.g. MPEG for all the content they distribute.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Informative)
You have to be careful with regard to "loose" and "tight" w.r.t. the patent system. Patent lawyers tend to view a "loose" patent system as one which allows patents on everything and a "tight" one as one that's very restrictive about what can be patented. People who oppose patents (i.e. any sane programmer or engineer) tend to view a "loose" patent system as one that allows a lot of actual progress to be made - i.e. strongly limits what can be patented, and a "tight" patent system as one that is very restrictive to people who want to just get things done - i.e. allows patents (monopoly grants on doing stuff by definition) on everything.
Thus, both sides were initially calling for a "less restrictive" patent system in the european software patent debate, thoroughly confusing politicians - the pro-software-patent patent lawyers and corporate types were talking about a patent system that allowed them to patent more stuff i.e. was less restrictive about what can be patented, and the anti-software-patent software writers and such were talking about a patent system that was less restrictive to people who write software due to not allowing software patents.
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Please don't go into the differences between "loose" and "tight" in an Oprah thread.
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AC below is correct with regard to how I was using them. We aren't disagreeing on the main point.
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No, copyright patent and trademark all very different.
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Neither copyrights nor patents are about ideas. I suppose that makes them the same, for suitably small values of same.
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I wouldn't be so sure. The democrats are strongly committed to bringing down medical costs. Far and away the easiest target is drug prices.
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I don't see fixing the current patent system as requiring getting a different party in power, though that might be a way to fix that.
If tens of thousands of Opraholics call, write and descend on Capitol Hill, that might scare the legislature sh!tless to fix the patent trolling system.
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You can't patent content; your post is off-topic, meaningless, and flamebait.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that would be entertaining -- but most unlikely. The sad truth is, Big Content is to Democrats as Big Oil is to Republicans.
Actually, the pertinent truth is that she is being sued, and if her lawyers are doing their jobs, they've advised her not to say anything publically that would jeapordise her case.
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Actually, the pertinent truth is that she is being sued, and if her lawyers are doing their jobs, they've advised her not to say anything publically that would jeapordise her case.
Public complaints about patent law ridiculousness, with no details of her own case, shouldn't be an issue. There are plenty of other cases to hold up as examples.
I'm not saying she'll do this, but she certainly could approach it in a way that wouldn't jeopardize her own litigation.
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Well of course not, I mean the choice in candidates was black and white. :D