Facebook Sued By Rembrandt IP For Two Patent Violations 105
An anonymous reader writes "Ars is reporting that the patent-holding company, along with the heirs of Dutch programmer, Joannes Jozef Everardus Van Der Meer (deceased 2004), have filed suit against Facebook for violating two patents relating to social media web sites. The two patents in question were filed for back in 1998, a full four years before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg first entered university at Harvard. Among the claims made in the lawsuit is that Facebook's "Like" button violates one of Van Der Meer's patents. Facebook even cited one of Van Der Meer's patents in one of their own filings later on. The suit seeks unspecified damages."
Can we kill software patents now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. I hate Facebook as much as the next guy, but this is just ridiculous.
This can copyright malarkey can be fixed overnight (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple... If Facebook has the guts to do it. Turn all of Facebook off. That's right, just a blank page to Facebook.com and make all FB powered comments show one thing :
Do that worldwide.
Facebook will lose a day's revenue, and my-oh-my, will that get everyeone's attention. And before someone asserts that they're just protecting their IP... um... no. Not only do "copyright holding" companies fly against the very face of the very spirit of copyright protection -- that is to give innovators of a concept and creation to profit from that creation -- these guys don't invent anything, don't produce anything, don't contribute anything to society. It's the copyright equivalent of cybersquatting.
Re:Can someone explain why it's reasonable... (Score:3, Insightful)
You realise that if IP rights terminated with their death you are creating the perverse incentive to have copyright holders and inventors of patented inventions assassinated.
Re:Can someone explain why it's reasonable... (Score:4, Insightful)
> creating the perverse incentive to have copyright holders and inventors of patented inventions assassinated.
The incentives to kill people always exists for parties who can leverage the death in a myriad of ways. This wouldn't be perverse or special in any way.
Re:Can someone explain why it's reasonable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that you create something and then die the next day. You and your heirs will never get any reward for your creation. Now imagine that you die and, instead of passing your house and posessions to your heirs, the government takes it all. Ultimately, ownership of anything (physical or intellectual) is possible only because laws allow you to own it.
The real problem with copyright is not that they continue to exist after the author is dead, but that the terms are far too long. Patents are not too long, but are granted for things that are obvious and not inventive.
Re:Can someone explain why it's reasonable... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's cheaper to hire a hit-man than to fight a patent suit...
Re:Can someone explain why it's reasonable... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe heirs should get any reward for your invention.
Re:Lawyers ... habitual liars as usual ... (Score:2, Insightful)
reason does enter FRAND [wikipedia.org].
Not into the patents as such - FRAND is an agreement the patent holder accepts in order to get the patented tech included in a standard
Re:When will this stop? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thankfully, we are now a first-to-file system, so we don't have to bother with pesky details like prior art dating back to the dawn of civilization.