Acacia Sues Amazon Over Kindle Fire 126
walterbyrd writes "A company called Smartphone Technologies filed the suit last Friday in Texas Eastern District Court accusing the Kindle Fire tablet of violating four of its patents. Smartphone Technologies is owned by Acacia Research, a firm that buys and licenses patents and is seen by many as a patent troll. 'One patent cited in the suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,956,562, simply refers to a method for using a touch screen to enter commands on a handheld computer. Another patent in question relates to a method for storing calendars on a PDA and was initially issued to Palm in 2002.'"
This is how the system fails (Score:5, Insightful)
A PDA is just a weak computer in a small form factor, so why did palm even get it in 2002 when a calender on a computer was decades old before then?
Patents are worthless, and are choking what little creativity is left in our country.
$88 Billion wiped off (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/09/21/riddle-me-this-do-patent-trolls-create-wealth-or-d.aspx
Boston University study concludes that $88 billion has been wiped off the value of US companies by these trolls, raking in less than $8 billion in return, and since these trolls don't make things or really invent things, no manufacturing was made by them, and no scientists employed and no research done.
What the USPTO has done is a disaster for the USA, and the reforms don't fix anything.
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It's served it's purpose which is apparently to make lawyers filthy rich. It's impossible to do business in the US without a legal warfare unit. Small businesses are so screwed because they lack the necessary lawyers to protect them from patent trolls who are armed with thousands of impossibly vague, broad and obvious patents and huge legal teams that will wait until a startup has begun making money off of something that comes under the heading of a series of these bogus patents and then it's off to East
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Actually it was our "founding fathers'" disaster. Specifically James Madison and Charles Pinckney, but of course adopted and enshrined by the whole cabal. It was a good intentioned but very naive notion that never considered possibilities such as the mess we're facing presently. Ultimately I suspect it unlikely that our technological progress would have been hindered though the actors probably different. More than likely we would have progressed even further since monies wouldn't have been sunk into the
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So not only can you patent any bullshit by adding "on the Internet" or "on a computer," but also "on a handheld computer."
Quick, everybody patent "$common_everyday_task on an implanted computer!"
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Apple already invented rounded corners ...
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Your opinion on a particular product does not really matter, fact is everything sited in the complaint existed in the mid 1980's
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And every particle used to make every invention existed in some form in the mid-1500s BC. Does that invalidate every patent?
Of course not. Patents are a specific assembly of specific solutions to specific problems. If a patent turns out to not be specific enough, it can be made specific later or discarded entirely. The mere existence of similar solutions does not invalidate a patent, nor should it. The whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements.
Must be new, useful, and non-obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious. While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious. Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.
I agree that the whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements. So, why should we slow that process down with software patents?
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This would be fine if the courts didn't take the attitude of presuming that patents issued by the patent office are valid, thus leaving the expense of demonstrating their invalidity to the poor suckers that get sued on the back of a document that should never have been issued in the first place.
Red DENIED stampers... (Score:2)
My understanding is that they are overworked. There are too many patent applications to spend even ten minutes reviewing each one
I'm wondering if they have a must-approve-rate or if we should equip slashdotters with a red DENIED stamp and send them of to work at the USPTO for free...
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I'm all for that. Why can't they just look at it and if they can't see where it's obviously something innovative and new just deny it. Automatic denial without clear, unambiguous, super duper, eureka style idea.
Re:Rubber Stamp (Score:2)
"...rubber-stamp the rest".
Oh I know this one!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P46qYCIt954 [youtube.com]
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Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?
Because it's a device. [wikipedia.org]
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
No. By definition a patent is the grant of an exclusive right to produce a particular invention. By United States law (and international treaties), it must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious.
Let's look at the actual claims, then, and think about the history involved.
In the first patent from TFA, the invention claimed is (in simple terms) a system for accepting various commands drawn onto a touch-sensitive display. Yes, we've had touch-sensitive screens for years, but they've never used c
Re:Must be new, useful, and non-obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we've had touch-sensitive screens for years, but they've never used complex symbols (like circles, polygons, or letters) as commands. It's always been touching single points to select buttons, up until Palm created Graffiti. What does this patent cover? That's another rhetorical question. The patent appears to cover later implementations of Graffiti, which isn't surprising since it was filed by PalmSource, Inc.
You do realise that when Palm released Graffiti, they were sued by the owners of the patents on Unistrokes, a similar system that dates back to the 80s, and is now expired, right?
Graffiti was not new and innovative. It was at best a minor improvement on what came before. Actually, I'm not so sure it improved anything -- the original unistroke system worked pretty well, IMO.
Ironically (Score:2)
The reason was prior art. The two pieces of prior art were from 1983 and 1985.
So, at the time, palmOne said the software wasn't patentable due to prior art. Now they want to patent it themselves. Oh sweet irony.
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All of which is irrelevant, because this patent [uspto.gov] claims something different from the original Xerox patent [google.com]. The difference lies in the first claim of each patent. In the Xerox "unistroke" patent, the symbols are defined as being one continuous movement, detected by a mechanism that's specifically looking for a particular set of motions, which correspond only to textual elements. In the later PalmSource patent, the symbols are complex arrangements of possibly-multiple strokes which, once the drawing is comple
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Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?
Because it's a device. [wikipedia.org]
It is not, since you answered it yourself. The wikipedia link makes this even more understandable.
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
No. By definition a patent is the grant of an exclusive right to produce a particular invention. By United States law (and international treaties), it must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
Here is a wikipedia link for you: Patent: Definition [wikipedia.org]
"The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application."
While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious.
Let's look at the actual claims, then, and think about the history involved.
In the first patent from TFA, the invention claimed is (in simple terms) a system for accepting various commands drawn onto a touch-sensitive display. Yes, we've had touch-sensitive screens for years, but they've never used complex symbols (like circles, polygons, or letters) as commands. It's always been touching single points to select buttons, up until Palm created Graffiti. What does this patent cover? That's another rhetorical question. The patent appears to cover later implementations of Graffiti, which isn't surprising since it was filed by PalmSource, Inc. At the time, was it new? Pretty much, yes. A lot of it is based on earlier Graffiti work, but some the claims cover new functionality relating to what commands can be done with the input system. It's using an old idea in a new way. In 2000 when the patent was filed, most of the actions claimed were unheard of for a handheld terminal to use, like connecting a writing tablet to an optical projector. Skilled in the arts or not, that kind of system wouldn't really be obvious to anyone twelve years ago.
Now let's look at the second patent. This one's pretty easy to see the new and non-obvious use, because the first claim is quite clear:
Have you never seen POS devices? I agree with the first comment in this thread
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I was planning a nice long item-by-item rebuttal, then I realized that you really just don't know what you're talking about, despite claims to the contrary. Let's proceed on the assumption that you aren't trolling, and just hit the major fallacies:
Have you never seen POS devices? I agree with the first comment in this thread, which describes a PDA is a computer in a small form factor. Whether the software resides on a desktop, laptop, handheld computer, wrist-top computer, etc... shouldn't determine the software's patentability.
At this point it's clear that you've never learned how patents work. See, it's the claims that matter. Not the title, not the general idea, but the actual specific claims. POS devices don't use complex gestures, so they aren't covered by the patent in question, an
Not trolling (Score:1)
I was looking at the date that the calendar patent was granted, 2002, instead of the date filed, 1999. Also, the two pieces of prior art I referenced did not include multiple strokes. The first had the action registered upon pen lift, the second defined the action as a single stroke curve. It looks like you were right after all.
I still don't like software patents, but that's completely irrelevant.
Re:This is how the system fails (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents are a specific assembly of specific solutions to specific problems.
You would never be able to guess that from reading an actual patent application. Obfuscation seems to be the key.
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The problem is in the wording you used, "Patents are a specific assembly of specific solutions to specific problems." In general software patents are anything but specific. Even computer hardware patents seems to often be broad and vague. When you read some of this stuff it's amazing how all inclusive these things are with little to no specifics at all.
The real question: Will they go after them? (Score:2)
Amazon has the resources to go after these guys, to remove them from the gene pool. But will they bother?
(Seeing how tenaciously they hold on to the One-Click patent I somehow doubt it, but it would be nice.)
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Amazon has the resources to go after these guys, to remove them from the gene pool. But will they bother?
The worldwide community of geeks have the resources, the time (at least, some of us have), and the tenacity, to invalidate most patents given enough motivation, or at least seriously water them down to render them ineffective, but why would we do anything in this case? Let's just wait until they go after the little guy, or a company we really care about (just not Amazon). In that respect, the patent troll made the right decision. That's what Jackals do. They go after the animal that the rest of the herd in
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I thought we used car analogies, not ark analogies...
Yawn... (Score:3)
Evil bastards sue evil bastards. News at 11.
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There's a difference: Amazon are evil bastards who actually deliver useful products, while Acacia are evil bastards who exist solely to make money by threatening to keep other people (whether evil bastards or not) from delivering useful products. The world is full of evil bastards, and that's probably not going to change any time soon; until and unless it does, I know which set of evil bastards I'd rather deal with.
Re:Yawn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon are evil bastards who actually deliver useful products
Actually nowadays I am noticing more and more often that Amazon isn't actually selling me products, they are merely providing a storefront for someone else.
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And that's what a lot of people like about them. They feel more "confident" buying from the same retailer via amazon marketplace, than direct from the retailer, as they feel that they are more likely to be refunded if the retailer goes bust, etc.
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The main thing that Amazon brings to the table is consistent experience. Same as Apple, really, just in their own area.
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The news is: it hurts everybody else. It stifles innovation, and makes life nearly impossible for some start-ups.
Sue Sue Sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot these days is little more than lawsuits, settlements and the ongoings of such. This is what our industry has turned into huh? Sad.
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Its not sad, its fucking pathetic.
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Oh, wait...
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You should sue them. Or it, or whatever. Just make sure you sue someone. Or something.
Let's hear it for the trolls! (Score:4)
Without them taking companies to court over issues that should never have been patentable in the first place, no one would realize or believe just how seriously screwed up the patent system is.
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If they don't understand the patents, they have NO BUSINESS issuing the patents.
The patent office is supposed to REVIEW patents for content, not rubber-stamp them. It is NOT supposed to be the job of the courts to do the filtering at some point down the road.
Do you really think underfunding, ignorance, and incompetence should be tolerated or forgiven when it costs the industry so many millions (if not billions) of dollars in legal fees to deal with the resulting morass?
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Really, the patent system would be pretty good if only its clerks knew an obvious idea when they heard one. That calendar patent basically sounds like "Method for Storing Data on a Computer". If the bar to get a patent was much, much higher than it is today, no other major changes would be necessary.
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It's looking like the patent courts are becoming.. (Score:1)
It's looking like the patent courts - in a manner of speaking, as I suppose there is really no single "patent court" - like the courts are becoming a sort of platform for marketing by obscure companies with uncertain patents on file - but not just any obscure companies, obscure companies with lawyers. Well, that's the judiciary's side of things to address.
In other words: Yawn. Next news item?
Re:It's looking like the patent courts are becomin (Score:5, Insightful)
It's looking like the patent courts - in a manner of speaking, as I suppose there is really no single "patent court" - like the courts are becoming a sort of platform for marketing by obscure companies with uncertain patents on file - but not just any obscure companies, obscure companies with lawyers.
Specifically, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas became nothing but a "platform for ... obscure companies with lawyers" some time ago. There seems to be something particularly toxic about this particular court's combination of judges, jury pools, and court rules that attracts this type of activity.
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I still don't understand why the litigants get to choose their venue, especially if the plaintiffs are not headquartered there.
Sues (Score:2)
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If you do, please consider changing your name first. Somehow, the Bieber principle doesn't sound quite right.
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What can be done about it? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Our leaders are very interested in this problem. They just passed some legislation to make things much worse.
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How does the new legislation make things worse?
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The real problem is that there are two camps that are competing for patent legislature.
1. Software/hardware patents. Enough is said about that on Slashdot.
2. Pharma patents. If you bind two chemicals it does wonders for a particular disease patents.
Developing a patent for the pharma group genuinely costs a lot of money (research, test groups etc.) whereas a software/hardware patent not necessarily does (think of an idea "People need blue handsets" and document it). Both camps have a ton of money and both ha
Cut off your hands! (Score:2)
"One patent cited in the suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,956,562, simply refers to a method for using a touch screen to enter commands on a handheld computer."
Go read it, it is essentially a "stylus-free" input method on a tablet, i.e. fingers. I guess you could use your wang or toes if you wanted to, though, since it does not explicitly say "fingers," just non-stylus. (Though I would love to see someone write up a patent for "dong-centered system input.")
Oh, yeah, patent troll, blah blah.
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http://gizmodo.com/5150019/the-joydck-mods-your-penis-into-a-joystick-nsfw [gizmodo.com]
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Sorry, but you need to check the filing dates. Clearly the joydck mod was published after the filing date on the relevant patent.
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how strange (Score:1)
has anyone else noticed almost every patent suit is filed in Eastern Texas? it's like there is something pulling them there. very strange indeed.
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I think the courts there are generally viewed as being very kind towards patent trolls like this, so they make every attempt to have their cases tried there.
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thanks captain obvious.
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Uh... you're the one who seemed confused as to why the suits all happened there. Sorry I was trying to clarify it for you, shitstain.
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Uh... you're the one who seemed confused as to why the suits all happened there. Sorry I was trying to clarify it for you, shitstain.
I suppose you think irony is something you do to your favourite shirt before a job interview?
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Maybe he can get a patent for it?
Hard to feel sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not about Amazon, it's about the US patent system.
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As much as I dislike patent trolls, it's really hard to feel sorry for Amazon in this one. They are the ones who patented one-click-purchase, after all. What goes around comes around.
It isn't that Amazon patented 1-click. That could simply have been defensive to keep asshats like Acacia off of their backs. It's that they tried to enforce it afterwards that makes them less sympathetic now.
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As much as I dislike patent trolls, it's really hard to feel sorry for Amazon in this one. They are the ones who patented one-click-purchase, after all. What goes around comes around.
That's a really good indicator that you don't know what you're talking about. The Amazon "one-click" patent wasn't a patent on clicking once. It was a pretty detailed and relatively narrow patent on one specific implementation of a shopping cart. It has survived a reexamination with every piece of prior art that Slashdot and the EFF could throw at it... at this point, it's one of the strongest patents around. But, wait, it has an easily understood colloquial name, so therefore it must be obvious, right?
Wro
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I don't know who you've been listening to, but anyone with half a brain knows that it's an obvious technique.
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Right dude, read the patent [uspto.gov]. Tell me you couldn't have come up with it easily on your own.
Wrong, dude. Don't read the patent. Come up with the same idea on your own, out of the blue, and then read the patent and see if they're the same. That you can think something is obvious in hindsight is meaningless. I can draw a model of an internal combustion engine on the back of a napkin right now. Does that mean that it was obvious in the 1800s? Hell, no... I've seen them.
So, you can do the same thing: you can read a patent, and then you can regurgitate it, and claim that that makes the patent obvious.
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Wrong, dude. Don't read the patent. Come up with the same idea on your own, out of the blue, and then read the patent and see if they're the same.
Sure. And if you couldn't have come up with the idea of one-click purchase, and how to do it (assuming you know how to program), then you are a complete, moronic, brain-dead idiot. The problem with the patent system is it's easy to come up with ideas others have come patented without realizing it, exactly because such obvious things can be patented.
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Wrong, dude. Don't read the patent. Come up with the same idea on your own, out of the blue, and then read the patent and see if they're the same.
Sure. And if you couldn't have come up with the idea of one-click purchase, and how to do it (assuming you know how to program), then you are a complete, moronic, brain-dead idiot.
[Citation needed].
No one was doing it, so while it's very easy to call every single programmer in the 1990s other than the ones at Amazon a "complete, moronic, brain-dead idiot," it's probably not going to persuade anyone you're right.
The problem with the patent system is it's easy to come up with ideas others have come patented without realizing it, exactly because such obvious things can be patented.
The problem the anti-patent people like yourself is that it's easy to disparage an idea as being obvious after the fact, once you've read the patent. Your hindsight may be 20/20, but it has no legal weight whatsoever.
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No one was doing it,
No one was doing it, therefore it's not obvious, eh? Brilliant test of obviousness. I like the supreme court's test more than yours.
so while it's very easy to call every single programmer in the 1990s other than the ones at Amazon a "complete, moronic, brain-dead idiot,"
I am not calling every single programmer in the 1990s other than the ones at Amazon anything, otherwise I would be insulting myself. I AM however, calling you one, if you are unable to come up with that solution to that problem on your own. Amazon was one of the earliest in e-commerce so it is not surprising they were the first to come up with that particular solution.
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No one was doing it,
No one was doing it, therefore it's not obvious, eh? Brilliant test of obviousness. I like the supreme court's test more than yours.
Me too. Look up "secondary considerations". If no one is using a method, and it's commercially valuable - as one-click shopping was - then it's likely non-obvious... otherwise people would have been doing it. And yes, that's the Supreme Court's test (specifically, see Graham v. John Deere).
so while it's very easy to call every single programmer in the 1990s other than the ones at Amazon a "complete, moronic, brain-dead idiot,"
I am not calling every single programmer in the 1990s other than the ones at Amazon anything, otherwise I would be insulting myself.
No, you did... You said that people who didn't come up with the idea prior to Amazon patenting it were "complete, moronic, brain-dead idiots[s]." Frankly, I wouldn't go that far, nor would I insult you as you've done. Ins
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However, you must also be one of those people who hear the words "one click purchase" and cannot think of four different ways to implement it, one of which will very likely match the method described in the patent.
As such, I pity you greatly, for you lack reasonable creativity, or you are retarded from birth. The other option is, of course, that you are not a programmer, in which cas
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As such, I pity you greatly, for you lack reasonable creativity, or you are retarded from birth.
As I said earlier, ad hominems are not going to convince anyone you're right. They have the opposite effect, in fact. They also make you look like a fucking douchebag.
The other option is, of course, that you are not a programmer, in which case I forgive your stupidity, however, the fact that you even think you have an argument here is really quite amusing to me. You sincerely think that one-click purchasing deserves a patent?
You sincerely think that inventions have to be "worthy" and "deserve" a patent? You have no concept of how the patent system works. There is no measure of "worth". Patents are not rewards, provided you've spent enough brow-sweat. You want a reward, go get a Nobel prize. Patents are incentives for public disclosure of ideas that no one else has
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As I said earlier, ad hominems are not going to convince anyone you're right. They have the opposite effect, in fact
That's ok, I'm arguing over the internet, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I mainly do it because I'm entertained.
Say any engineer could come up with an idea in 100 hours... And there are 1000 engineers at 1000 companies in the industry. That means that they're spending 100,000 hours of wasted, repetitive work. If the first one reveals the idea, the others can move on to the next idea, and we've saved 99,900 hours
That's a lovely theory. I suppose it probably works that way in the biotech industry or something, but in the software industry, in practice, no one ever reads patents to figure out how someone does something. In fact, we are often given the opposite advice, to not read patents so we don't become 'tainted,' that is, a knowing offender, which would increase damages significantly, a
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You don't have to read patents - instead, you can read user guides, functional specifications, source code, white papers, presentations, changelogs, etc. And none of those would exist if people were using trade secrets instead of patents, since they all destroy secrecy. Patents encourage all disclosure, not just the patent itself.
lol, I know, I and many programmers like me had to attend many conferences and study for many years to figure out how to do one-click-purchasing. It was so hard. I'm so grateful to Amazon for showing the true way.
I'm pretty sure you're just parroting some opinion you heard somewhere, and you haven't thought this through for yourself. Go, do so, and you will come up with a much more reasonable opinion.
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You know what? (Score:2)
I'm gonna patent "Doing something to affect something".
I'm gonna be soooo rich!
Patent Trolls vs Wall-Street Traders (Score:1)
Screw (Score:1)
Use It or Lose It (Score:2)
Re:Thank god for American innovation (Score:4)
No no no, you see those who succeed in the free market decided to manipulate the legal system so that if anyone tried to innovate in some way that would reduce their market share they could sue them into oblivion.
Re:Thank god for American innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Libertarian free markets are a nice idea, but corporatism is their real life counterpart, and it isn't very fun.
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I'm sure there's a lot more to why we're fucked than patent trolls. Maybe the fact that such a huge portion of High School graduates can barely read and write. Maybe the fact that so many teenagers drop out of school. The fact that so many teenage girls get pregnant before they turn 18. The fact that so many crack babies are born to a miserable existence each year. The list goes on and on. As disturbing as this patent crap is it's a drop in the bucket of whats wrong in the US.
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I don't believe much of what I hear and only about half of what I see. Regardless, I get most of my news from the local paper who quote people like AP and such wire services. I know FOX is like the boogey man 'round here but most people like you have that knee jerk reaction to anything you don't like the sound of. Sorry to let you down, sometimes even the liberal news filters have stuff you don't like to hear.