20+ Companies Sued Over OS Permissions Patent 282
freemywrld writes "According to the article on Ars Technica, Microsoft, Symantec and 20 other companies are being sued over patents covering 'systems for governing application and data permissions, as well as ensuring application integrity.' The patents were granted in the 90's to the Information Protection and Authentication of Texas (IPAT). From the article: 'A response from any of the defendants is still forthcoming, and it is unclear whether the authentication and permissions systems that IPAT's patent describes are precluded by prior art. Even if IPAT has a leg to stand on in court, however, it certainly didn't take the easy route to recovering any damages by suing 22 companies.'"
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a lot of BIG companies to be suing. I surely hope they have good lawyers or they're going to get a jolly-rodgering!
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad they didn't file this 3+ months ago.
See USPTO: Re Bilski
Determining patent viability under section 101. "Under this test, a patent claim is eligible if: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing."
See USPTO: Ex parte Langemyr and Ex parte Wasynczuk
"A general purpose computer is not a particular machine, and thus innovative software processes are unpatentable if they are tied to a general purpose computer."
Some like to be ripped off (Score:2)
No doubt MS will do the sums here and do the same thing if the spreadsheet tells them to. They'll happily pay up if it puts more hurt on their rivals.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
What the hell are you babling about?
without producing real goods, the US economy is not making money. Cory Doctorow [google.com] does a good job in a portion of this video (starting at about the 9:40 mark) of outlining the last of the .com businesses.. the current US economic policy. Just like the majority of .com businesses, it is destined to fail unless it's changed. Politicians don't like admitting they're wrong, though, and thus we are suffering from the job hemorrhage and cash drain that's been going on since the late 90's.
intellectual property is not real, and is flagrantly disregarded by more than half the world's nations. IP is also not going to employ the several hundred million people of this nation.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Yah, wealth is created by making stuff , and not by just pulling ideas out of one's arse. If the ideas can be used to make something, then they might be worth a bit, but an idea alone is worth exactly bupkus.
Cheers,
Entire model is broken (Score:4, Interesting)
I would have agreed with you, except for the existence of, and rapid improvement of, Fabbers [fabathome.org]. Give it a decade or two, and kids/techies will be downloading designs to build what they need, and only ordering raw materials from amazon. Since some fabbers are self-replicating, not even making fabbers will be a safe job/revenue stream. Given that mining and other resource harvesting is becoming more and more automated too, ideas are soon going to be all that's left.
Essentially, we're moving towards the society the (fictional) Krell had. They were smarter than us, and their own tech wiped them out. Let's see how we do. One thing's for sure: if we stick to the RIAA model, we're all screwed.
Re:Entire model is broken (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem here is your post proved that ideas aren't "all that's left." What good are the designs without the Fabbers (wealth) or raw materials (wealth)? The OP was right: without realization, ideas are just potential energy. So there is some value in having the potential for work around, but that's not nearly as much value as actually performing the work.
(Even if you consider the "automation" of mining and resource gathering, you still need real, manufactured wealth to perform that automation.)
The fundamental problem with basing an economy on ideas is that ideas are not economically scarce resources. If you made the subtle change to an economy based on the ability to create ideas, then I'd say you have a sustainable economy, because the ability to create ideas is a scarce resource. This is actually why software can bring in income, because the ability to create the software is scarce and you have to compensate the people who make it - yes, even those that make "free" software get compensation in some form, albeit mostly indirectly.
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There is also money in the information, like the information you feed to a fabricator to actually make the things you want. Future economies will not be based on selling widgets, but rather on selling widget designs.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
Umm... we (I assume you mean the "United States") do spend more on education than on warfare. Even if you consider the entire DOD budget -- much of which is not spent on "warfare" but on being ready for warfare -- the DOD outlays are about the same as those for public primary and secondary education (I'm too lazy to track down exact figures for the same year for both categories though - try using google).
You may be making the mistake of looking at only the Federal budget -- most education spending is from state/local governments (and some is from private individuals/organizations) in the United States while all of the defense spending comes from the Federal budget (this is not a surprise - the US Constitution doesn't authorize the Federal government to involve itself in Education, but requires it to provide national defense -- although the Constitution is often overlooked which gives us the Department of Education and NCLB).
Some references... Page X [census.gov] shows a total 2005-2006 public Primary/Secondary expenditure on education (so excludes expenditures on universities, junior colleges, and all private schools etc) at $527B. The entire DOD budget for 2009 is under $550B [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
correction..
real goods cannot be copied infinitely without a marginal cost of production. As such they have no export value and thus do not provide positive cash flow to our nation.
correcting this to read:
real goods cannot be copied infinitely without a marginal cost of reproduction while software can. As such, software has no export value and will not provide positive cash flow for our national economy.
Money is based off real resources, not wishful thinking. the belief in IP is no better than the housing or .com bubble.
It is real (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting to see that bullshit like this is taken seriously by the /. community.
Of course, you can say that "intellectual property" is just a "social construct". It is - just like any other property. But you should not forget that all that stuff (software, entertainment, etc) are stuff that people find useful - and they are even useful in the sense that they enable us to make more (or more advanced) stuff. If you go down this 'ony real stuff counts' path, soon you will arrive to the point that only work that actually produces "real stuff" counts - so management, engineering, R&D etc is absolutely unneeded. I don't know if it's necessary to point out that if the world would be really so focused on "producing real stuff" it would itself real soon in the stone age.
If you need actual evidence, take a look at the socialist countries of the second half of the 20. century: the prevailing idea was there that farmers and blue-collars are the ones that really do something - the "intellectuel" class was considered suspicious and kept as small as possible. Well, needless to say, it didn't do any good to the economy.
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If you need actual evidence, take a look at the socialist countries of the second half of the 20. century: the prevailing idea was there that farmers and blue-collars are the ones that really do something - the "intellectuel" class was considered suspicious and kept as small as possible. Well, needless to say, it didn't do any good to the economy.
...which explains why darn near everything we buy here is made in China...
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Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
when we engaged in mild protectionism this wasn't an issue. We used to charge tariffs on imports from nations without proper human and labor rights.
Now we don't.
this video [google.com] tells the story of congressional stupidity starting at around the 9:40 mark.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
It may sound tempting and may even have the potential to make a nation self sufficient, but in practice what happens is that wealthy countries mirror each other tarrifs "tit for tat" style. The consumer and the third world farmer are the biggest losers, in effect the taxpayer is paying the government to kill the competition (quite literally in some cases). There is however a more subtle loss of efficientcy in the country weathy enough to provide the subsidy.
"when we engaged in mild protectionism this wasn't an issue. We used to charge tariffs on imports from nations without proper human and labor rights."
I would call that a sanction, it's a different and more legitimate practice but it's open to abuse and still triggers tit for tat reactions.
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Manufacturing moved elsewhere 20yrs ago. IIRC Reagan and Thatcher spent most of the 80's crushing unions and telling everyone it would be a GoodThing(TM). Not that I think the removal of tarrifs and perpetual subsidies is a bad thing, quite the opposite, but you need more than that to "level the playing field". You also need to take into account the reglatory regime und
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...assuming you believe that the citizens of a modern, enlightened society belong on an assembly line, performing repetitive work. They don't.
That sort of work is a temporary "rite of passage" that
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BTW: Japan automated their factories and that is why they kicked the crap out of the UK & US car industry while maintaining a high standard of living.
Location, location, location (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me guess -- this was filed in the Eastern Texas District, right?
It's about time some higher authority arrested the patent troll friendly "judges" for contempt of justice. Or Eastern Texas seceding, as is their right according to their terms for joining the union. Either would work fine with me.
Re:Location, location, location (Score:5, Informative)
Let me guess -- this was filed in the Eastern Texas District, right?
"IPAT, which apparently purchased these patents from their listed inventor of Addison M. Fischer, filed its complaint in the Eastern District of Texas on December 30, 2008"
Re:Location, location, location (Score:5, Interesting)
"IPAT, which apparently purchased these patents from their listed inventor of Addison M. Fischer"
Addison Fischer is sort of the man behind the men in a range of security-related make-money-from-IP deals. For example if you'd scratched the surface of RSA Data Security about 10 years ago when they still held a monopoly patent on the algorithm you'd have found him there somewhere, although you'd have to scratch pretty deep since he doesn't seem to like publicity much (he's an ex-spook, which may explain it).
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Re:Location, location, location (Score:5, Funny)
We really _should_ give Texas back to Mexico.
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The question is .... would they take it?
Re:Location, location, location (Score:5, Funny)
...or just make it a separate country so you guys don't have to fly half way round the earth to attack a religious extremist country that happens to float on oil.
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Unfortunately, its not contempt of justice, the law requires judges to treat patents as valid even when thats ludicrous. The legistlature needs to empower judges to dismiss a case on the grounds that a patent isn't valid before judges can be expected to do so.
Re:Location, location, location (Score:4, Informative)
seceding, as is their right according to their terms for joining the union
Normally I wouldn't ruin a good joke with pedantry, but this seems like the sort of thing people will see and then bring up in conversation for the rest of their life.
Texas isn't free to secede.
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The one that never got past the Senate, you mean?
Texas was annexed via a joint resolution.
I'm Scared (Score:5, Funny)
I just entered "chmod 755" on a directory so other users could not modify my data. When can I expect the cease and desist order?
Re:I'm Scared (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, claim one has as prior art just about every access control mechanism known to machine. VMS, Kerberos, probably even venerable MVS. There may or may not be prior art for each particular dependent claim, but they amount to "gathering the foam", as Justice Bradley once put it -- in this case, attempting to secure every combination of digital signatures and ordinary access control.
The other independent claim, Claim 42 would also appear to be
ACL in VMS (Score:2)
They differentiate this based on a per program ACL that allows programs accessing what resources. If I remember correctly (it has since 1994), there was options to limit programs and control programs access to the internet.
These features were advertised.
Re:I'm Scared (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Orange book was already out in 1983, some ten years before the first of these two patents.
Re:I'm Scared (Score:5, Funny)
A summons to cease and desist is speeding on its way to you as we speak. I took the liberty of including a list of other activities you should immediately cease and desist due to patents which I hold... for example the use of a paper product for the removal of excrement after defecating... I patented that idea and am looking to seek damages for illegal/uncompensated use of said concept.
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I patented that idea and am looking to seek damages for illegal/uncompensated use of said concept.
My attorney says you can compensate THIS.
Re:I'm Scared (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't infringed the patent.
Now, if you want to infringe the patent, you'd have to tell us the command you could issue to allow any program except say, GIMP, from accessing your data. This is 'program access', not 'user access'.
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I created a group for each program allowed special access, and made the executable for that group "setgid" for that group. Then I used ACLs (not in vanilla Unix, but I believe AFS had them prior to the patent priority date) to make my files readable by certain groups and not by others.
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Re:I'm Scared (Score:5, Interesting)
You may have unintentionally brought up an extremely good point: SELinux is/was developed by the NSA for security applications, and is presumably a matter of national security as an invaluable piece of their infrastructure.
Are they suing the US government?
Re:I'm Scared (Score:5, Insightful)
No. National Security usually allows the government to completely ignore the rights of an IP owner, essentially annexing those rights for itself. I know it's like that here, I can't imagine the US being more restricted.
Re:I'm Scared (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, the point is moot here, because of the immense amount of prior art.
If you're looking for prior art (Score:3, Insightful)
Start here [wikipedia.org].
Direct Link to the more recent patent [uspto.gov]. USPTO needs to look into tinyurl code for short link redirects to content. They're not alone.
It looks like your basic troll patent. They try to get all of the possible potential access control mechanisms for programs in the hope that in the future some of them are employed, without bothering to check that all of them are not already employed decades since. Shoddy work, as one would expect. Is it this easy to get a patent? Maybe I should field a few.
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What are they, $500?
More like $10,000 if you hire a good attorney to write it for you. Just the filing fees (USPTO fees) will exceed $500 though.
This is about capabilities not ACLs (Score:2)
That said, the guys who developed KeyKOS did it (and patented it) a long time before they did.
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/ [upenn.edu]
Re:Never. (Score:3, Informative)
Don't expect the C&D.
I read the patents, the first one (5,412,717) basically functions as a whitelist to protect users from a computer virus. It includes hashes and specific actions a program can or cannot do. chmod functionality protects data from users, while this invention protects users against viruses. It includes a description of a certification authority system much like SSL certificates, which authenticate the contents of the whitelist explicitly or implicitly.
5,311,591 seems to include somet
Isn't it a bit late for this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering that the patents were granted back in 1994 and 1995, isn't 2009 a little bit late to be suing some of these companies considering how long they've been around. I'm not a lawyer, but isn't there some limited time window where you need to sue someone who's been infringing on your patent.
If not, doesn't the whole patent system become rather predatory whereby some companies do nothing but patent ideas and wait until someone else uses those patents (perhaps accidentally) and makes a significant amount of money from them before suing their pants off?
Is there anyone around more knowledgeable in patent law who might be able to explain things a little better? I tried checking on groklaw to see if there was any coverage there, but nothing has been posted yet.
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Re:Isn't it a bit late for this? (Score:5, Informative)
yeah unfortunately that is exactly how the patent system works. Trademark is the only IP that you have to "protect" proactively or risk loosing.
With patents it is 100% acceptable to patent a bunch of ideas and then wait for someone else to develop them commercially, and then sue them and take the profits.
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Well, thanks to MercExchange vs EBay, it's becoming less true. Also, In re Bilski should hopefully take a bite out of what they can accomplish here.
I'd bet there's prior art for this patent too Unix has been around a long time, and Multics was around before that.
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Considering that the patents were granted back in 1994 and 1995, isn't 2009 a little bit late
It is never to late to sue someone! Slow economic times are the best time to do so. Why pour countless hours into developing good idea/products when you can hire lawyers instead!
The defendants (Score:5, Informative)
The lawsuit details are at
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=43183
In particular, the 22 defendants are
Symantec Corp.
Microsoft Corp.
AVG Technologies USA, Inc.
CA, Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies, Inc.
Comodo Group, Inc.
ESET, LLC
F-Secure, Inc.
iolo technologies, LLC
Kaspersky Lab, Inc.
McAfee, Inc.
MicroWorld Technologies, Inc.
NetVeda, LLC
Norman Data Defense Systems, Inc.
Novell Inc.
PC Tools, Inc.
PWI, Inc.
Sophos, Inc.
Sunbelt Software, Inc.
Trend Micro Incorporated
Velocity Micro, Inc.
Webroot Software, Inc.
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I'm surprised they also missed SourceFire, Inc (ClamAV) - and probably a few other AV vendors too.
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On an unrelated note, all of the fucking trolls on this page made firefox crash, followed by my X server (I had no swap file at the time). The trolls on
Re:The defendants (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck suing Novell; their network operating system (Netware) supported access control lists very early on. They can demonstrate prior art very easily, cutting the legs out from under the suit. Those trolls would have been best off avoiding suing Novell.
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:3, Insightful)
Novell has current working prior art dating back to 1981!
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An attempt at a precedent? (Score:2)
Hmm.. Judging from a number of entries, that's a list of fairly patent friendly companies. Two things come to mind.
a) since these companies support patents they can't use anti-patent arguments.
b) if they gave in and paid up it might make it easier to sue someone else.
I guess a). I think this is more likely to be a list of companies who have argued in court that software patents are valid and so when they try to argue otherwise their own arguments can be used against them. I guess this is an attempt to sq
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They're going solely for Antivirus vendors for some reason - Microsoft's on there because of OneCare, not Windows. Not sure on Novell.
Also the NSA is likely immune on National Security grounds.
13 year delay == no patent claim (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, a six year delay negates patent protection [patentlyo.com] (the patentee has "unreasonably and inexcusably" delayed prosecution) under the same laches idea as made above.
Patent Law Blog (Patently-O): Laches and Equitable Estoppel. [patentlyo.com]
This needs a mod-up, also - 1969, UNIX (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently, a six year delay negates patent protection [patentlyo.com] (the patentee has "unreasonably and inexcusably" delayed prosecution) under the same laches idea as made above.
Patent Law Blog (Patently-O): Laches and Equitable Estoppel. [patentlyo.com]
This is a very informative post.
By the way, unix [wikipedia.org], which incorporated the archetypal permission system, was developed in 1969.
This is a clear case of prior art which even a "patent troll judge" cannot ignore. It's neither obscure nor contestable as its history is very well documented.
Any judge who doesn't throw it out of court after unix is brought forward as an example of prior art should be immediately scheduled for competency hearings.
Re:This needs a mod-up, also - 1969, UNIX (Score:5, Informative)
By the way, unix [wikipedia.org], which incorporated the archetypal permission system, was developed in 1969.
This is a clear case of prior art which even a "patent troll judge" cannot ignore. It's neither obscure nor contestable as its history is very well documented.
Any judge who doesn't throw it out of court after unix is brought forward as an example of prior art should be immediately scheduled for competency hearings.
[Citation needed]
... Or at least a better understanding of what prior art is, before you go calling for competency hearings. The Unix permissions system doesn't disclose all of the limitations of the claimed invention, specifically "establishing a program authorizing information data structure for storing a plurality of authorization entries each indicating at least one of those computer resources and information processing related functions which may be used by an associated program;"
Unix works with user permissions... This is application permissions. You have rwx access to /user/[name]/library, but maybe you don't want /application/fubar to have full access there, even though you're the same user running it. Look, it's right here in the patent:
Thus, the present invention advantageously protects a user from any program to be executed. The present invention is particularly advantageous in light of current data processing practices where programs are obtained from a wide range of diverse, untrustworthy places such as computer bulletin boards or other users of unknown trustworthiness.
99% of what you read on Slashdot regarding patents is not just wrong, but the complete opposite of reality. Such as calling for competency hearings for a judge refusing to invalidate a patent on file permissions at application-specific levels because "unix was developed in 1969".
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ok, by that description the concept of user accounts combined with the standard rwx permission system " advantageously protects a user from any program to be executed".
Programs executed in one user space do not affect the programs or data in another user space unless the rwx permissions are changed properly.
in your example: /user/[name]/library, but maybe you don't want /application/fubar to have full access there
Unix works with user permissions... This is application permissions. You have rwx access to
chan
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change the permission of the folder to exclude /application/fubar's group. BAM, same thing.
my point still stands.
User running /application/fubar still has full rwx access to the folder. So does fubar. Whups. Your point fails.
You may have a point if you're talking about multiple users, but then, again, your point fails, because this patent is talking about a single user.
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change the permission of the folder to exclude /application/fubar's group. BAM, same thing.
my point still stands.
User running /application/fubar still has full rwx access to the folder. So does fubar. Whups. Your point fails.
You may have a point if you're talking about multiple users, but then, again, your point fails, because this patent is talking about a single user.
"application permissions" would be called file associations (also around for a long time), or encrypting the file and attaching a module to the desired application allowing access to the file.
encryption and file associations have also been here since our parents were children.
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File associations are not permissions, they are conveniences that the operating system uses to allow a program to predefine what application runs a particular data file. IE: Notepad is the application assocated with .txt, but Wordpad, Word, Textpad, and any number of other applications can be associated with .txt or even run it when the association is not with them.
Also, if you have a binary program that understands .txt files, but you don't want it to go modifying any of those .txt files in your home direc
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People like you need to get it through their heads that the because of the ill-defined nature and boundaries of ideas, not to mention the patent office's wild incompetence in differentiating words and the ideas they represent, it means that to say something is, or is not, prior art is a very ill defined idea indeed. They, and you, are just hand waving when you say something is [not] prior art.
As to your example about text files; utterly trivial to implement using Unix group permissions and setgid.
Pretty muc
What about obviousness? (Score:2)
Partially side-stepping the question of prior art, I'm wondering about the patentability of these claims on obviousness grounds. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
I'm certainly no patent lawyer, but an awful lot of the things we've seen coming out of the USPTO s
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Patents should be entirely about solving problems. You should be able to list a problem on a patent application, survey a bunch of experts in a field as to
Penny Arcade -- ahead of their time (Score:2, Funny)
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Yes, a whole 9 days before their time.
Straight to step 3: ???? (Score:3, Insightful)
It could have just been omitted from the article (or just unknown/not thought to ask), but I see nothing about the sue-ee contacting any of these companies seeking royalty payments before whipping out the good ol' lawyer.
I also note that IPAT "apparently purchased these patents from their listed inventor of Addison M. Fischer". It doesn't give the date that they bought it (I presume one could look through patent records to see a transfer of ownership?), but I would not be surprised at all if the purchase went through on Dec. 29 when the suit was filed Dec. 30.
If they did indeed jump straight to step three, I hope the court smacks them down. Companies should be required to put forth a good faith effort to enter into royalty agreements with those using their patents before wasting tax payer dollars. Also, since they were granted in the mid 90s, something about due diligence towards protecting an IP, or else it's relegated to the public domain (or the companies already using it do not have to pay royalties to continue using it in the same manner).
Even better, if this isn't already done, if someone files a patent/copyright suit, they have to pay for the judge, baliff, stenographer, etc. If the IP is truly that important, they'll have no problem spending an extra $100K to get it. Of course, this could backfire and cause independent inventors to not get the royalties rightly owed them, so some sort of middle ground would be best.
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>Even better, if this isn't already done, if someone files a patent/copyright suit, they have to pay for the judge, baliff, stenographer, etc. If the IP
>is truly that important, they'll have no problem spending an extra $100K to get it.
Oh sure you say that *now*, when you don't have some company publishing your book/song/program. I think you'd have a different opinion if you were defending your own work against someone who has claimed it.
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Hence why I wrote the second half of the paragraph you quoted.
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Excellect set of assumptions. But, what if the original inventor tried to get somewhere for five years and everyone ignored him because they assumed he had no resources to actually persue a lawsuit to enforce a royalty agreement? He finally finds a company that will buy the patents from him for pennies on the dollar because they have the money to file the lawsuits that will finally cause the folks ignoring the patents to sit up and take notice.
You see, the legal system isn't entirely broken but often larg
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If they did indeed jump straight to step three, I hope the court smacks them down. Companies should be required to put forth a good faith effort to enter into royalty agreements with those using their patents before wasting tax payer dollars. Also, since they were granted in the mid 90s, something about due diligence towards protecting an IP, or else it's relegated to the public domain (or the companies already using it do not have to pay royalties to continue using it in the same manner).
As much as we like to rant about "activist judges", wouldn't it be "activist" for a court to "smack down" this company, considering there's nothing in the Patent Act that requires due diligence (you're thinking Trademark) or good faith efforts (since patent rights are exclusionary rights)? Perhaps the judges would be wrong to "legislate from the bench", and this would be an area best left to Congress to fix.
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Ahahahaha... but you're mostly right.
Still, I don't think it's outside a judge's ability to say "Look, stop wasting my time. You all go out there, get a caterer, pow wow over royalties, and if you really can't come to some agreement, then come back and we'll do this thing." It's not so much requiring that they do A or B, more like telling them to try acting like adults before the trial continues/commences.
Botting (Score:5, Insightful)
I could make a bot/spider that scanned the whole internet for phrases that could be construed as ideas. Then have a bot copy that idea into a patent form and send it in. I figure it will cost me about 5million dollars or so to get a sizable chunk of ideas in the world. Then in 5years or i can sue every for several billion dollars.
So who wants to invest in my company, Trolls R Us (NASDAQ: FUCK).
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Re:Botting (Score:5, Funny)
Time to rethink patent laws (Score:4, Insightful)
When patents were first granted, it was on the justification that they engendered innovation and research by providing a fair incentive for companies to develop new technology. At this point, any argument relying on this justification has become completely broken.
Patents have begun to do the exact opposite of what they were meant to do. Rather than encourage development of new technologies, patents have become a way to choke the application of novel technologies in industry. So-called "patent holding companies" have become little more than extortion gangs, demanding their share of the money to which they have no right at all. Governments across the globe have extended copyright and patents, not for the protection of the people and industry, but at the behest of lobbyists.
Patents, as they exist in their current form, are not fair to anyone, except the patent owner. Governments must adopt a fairer stance in order to reverse this alarming trend. Lower the duration of patents, and adopt a system of mandatory royalties, which forces patent owners to license their patents for a fair royalty, determined by a third party.
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At this point, any argument relying on this justification has become completely broken.
Patents, as they exist in their current form, are not fair to anyone, except the patent owner.
You make a whole lot of assertions here without any evidence to back them up. Given that patents have a limited term and then pass into the public domain, the "fairness" comes not out of exclusionary rights to the owner, but from required disclosure to the public to allow further innovation. Since that's the specific intent both of Congress and the drafters of the Constitution, what's "unfair" about them or "broken" about the justification?
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Economists have always worried about whether the patent system actually works as intended or not. For evidence that it probably does not work for e.g. software, start here: http://researchoninnovation.org/ [researchoninnovation.org] Before reading the recent literature, however, I'd recommend reading Machlup's famous review: http://www.mises.org/etexts/patentsystem.pdf [mises.org] in which it is made clear that fairness is an outdated way of thinking about patents and a weak justification for them at best: the disclosure benefit is dubious, to s
A Modest Proposal ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Try it and lose, the corporate officers, the partners, the corporate account, and the stockholders (if any) should be held personally liable) not only for the legal fees of the successful defendants, but also for treble damages. No bankruptcies allowed. That would be real interesting. Wonder how many bogus suits we'd see then.
Legal changes required: 1) definition of a patent troll; 2) stripping patent troll LLC's of their protected liability status; 3) stripping them of bankruptcy eligibility, both as corporations as as individuals; and, 4) loser pays winner's legal fees + triple punitive damages. Better still, add patent-troll lawyers to the list of liable parties. Finally, make three time losers eligible for life in prison, and strip them of the right to file or own patents. This would have no effect on legitimate companies that produce real products, such as those being sued by patent-troll parasites.
Now, mod me into oblivion.
Setuid + Setgid = Prior Art (Score:4, Interesting)
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No that doesn't do it at all. The patent is describing a more fine-grained security model than users/groups/permissions and as such allows the user to do things that can't be done with the standard posix file permissions. If memory serves tt's normally called capabilities, and although it has been around for at least 10 years, the patent probably predates it shipping in unix/nt systems.
In particular, if you try and describe capabilities using groups, lets say that you have two permissions that you want to g
No Problem (Score:2)
all fixed :-)
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Even older prior art from IBM? (Score:2)
Yes, it's called RACF (Score:2)
And it has been around forever, and quite likely is exactly the required prior art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RACF [wikipedia.org]
It's in the name.. (Score:2)
Am i the only one that sees the irony that their acronym is "iPAT"?
That seems oddly convenient....
Look at 1970s Capability Architecture Systems (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a strong chance that many of the claims in these patents have predecessors in the Capability Based operating systems of the 1970's.
Check out the Intel 432 architecture.
Check out IBM's "SWORD" project.
Check out UCLA Data Secure Unix.
Check out the Plessy capability systems from that period.
SRI did a lot of work in this area as well. And so did we at System Development Corp. (SDC).
The idea of a capability is a descriptor that defines access rights in an extensible manner - for example one can say that the disk driver can't deal with tape hardware or that a text editor can only do certain things to a particular SQL database.
Here is more prior art! (Score:5, Interesting)
And this should be all it takes
Novell Netware 286! [wikipedia.org]
The date is 1981!
Once again it is up to Novell to save everyones ass!
Impersonation? (Score:3, Informative)
Other systems are also designed to protect system files from being modified by an application (say, a virus), but IPAT's patent goes one step beyond that, with a system that can prevent programs from modifying a user's files.
The "one step beyond that" part what is called "impersonation," when program works in context of a user. Impersonation [wikipedia.org] is word from WinNT universe, though setuid is pretty much the same thing.
It's needless to talk about prior art. There are piles of it.
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