IBM Takes Airbnb To Court Over Historic Patents (ft.com) 55
IBM is taking Airbnb to court over what it claims is the illegal use of four patents -- the latest in a string of suits against online companies involving historic and arguably broad innovations -- in a move that threatens to cast a shadow over the short-term rental company's road to a proposed IPO. From a report: The computing giant has accused Airbnb of "building its business" by using patents relating to functions such as "presenting advertising in an interactive service" and "improved navigation using bookmarks." "After almost six years of unsuccessful discussions with Airbnb to reach a fair and reasonable patent licence agreement, we had no alternative but to file legal action to protect our intellectual property rights," IBM said. "Airbnb has chosen to ignore our patents and use our technology without compensation."
advertising in an interactive service (Score:2)
Erm (Score:3)
Advertising? Bookmarks? What other novel ideas did IBM patent? Let's not forget BBC as they may wish to chime in on this one, too...
Fight! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Local governments are likely to be the next group to target AirBnB for supporting, backing and promoting the illegal conversion of residential properties into hotel accommodations. They will be able to do discovery and force AirBnB to hand over all data for that specific local government area and hit them with real charges, for actively seeking to thwart local government planning regulations and various accommodation laws. Early in the piece that kind of fishing expedition would no pay off but now they can
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Local governments are likely to be the next group to target AirBnB
Already doing it. to list your house or unit for short term rental in Australia Gold Coast ( a city with a lot of tourism) you have to pay a non-refundable $8000 for an application fee for permission to do so - with no guarantee of success. if successful, your council rates double, but a single noise complaint from neighbors can also invalidate your permit. (I think this is harsh but there should be stiff fines for owners who allow noisy parties to happen in their houses)
If you can rent a place for 6 month
Re: Fight! (Score:1)
There are places where companies rent / buy large numbers of units, reducing availability to locals and inflating prices.
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Advertising? Bookmarks?
IBM does not have patents on the general concepts of advertizing or bookmarking.
Their patents are narrow and specific.
Slashdot has a long history of posting articles about patents that depict them as WAY more general then they actually are, followed by ignorant outrage in the comments.
Unless you have read the patents, especially the "claims" section, and have training and experience in patent law, then you don't know enough to comment.
Disclaimer: I have not read the patents.
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Narrow and specific doesn't include non-obvious. There is nothing airbnb is doing with their website that is non-obvious.
Consider, somewhere shortly after the invention of the dumpster someone was the first to drunkenly stand behind one to piss. Shall we hail their genius too? Shall we pay them a percentage of every fine for public urination (after a no-doubt protracted legal battle to establish the percentage of public urination offenses that occur behind a dumpster)?
Re: Erm (Score:1)
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You seem to be frothing and not making a lot of sense. Take a breath, slow down and use your words...
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IBM does not have patents on the general concepts of advertizing or bookmarking. Their patents are narrow and specific. I have not read the patents.
How would you know? You admit to not having read them.
Unless you have read the patents, especially the "claims" section, and have training and experience in patent law, then you don't know enough to comment.
Your hypocrisy is mildly amusing.
--
I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship.
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Twitter had to pay IBM $36m over 3 of their web patents.
Re: Erm (Score:1)
No programmer in their right mind reads patents. There's zero upside - zero value - and it increases one's exposure to lawyer-mugging.
Is this all that IBM does now days? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this all that IBM does now days?
Re:Is this all that IBM does now days? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The mainframe business was sold to Lenovo.
IBM doesn't manufacture any hardware anymore, they are entirely a "services" company now. It's part of the goal to have the highest dividend ever while destroying the company from the inside.
Re:Is this all that IBM does now days? (Score:5, Informative)
No it wasn't. The x86 server business was sold to Lenovo, after the PC and Thinkpad business was. Those were former IBM x-series products. IBM still sells the high-end PowerPC-based p-series and i-series servers that run AIX, Linux and OS/400, as well as the System/390-derived z-series mainframes.
Re:Is this all that IBM does now days? (Score:4, Informative)
No, they also sell COBOL mainframes. No joke.
. . . and they still sell them . . . obviously . . . because some businesses still buy them.
They are very good at what they do . . . handling massive loads of transaction processing, without ever going down. Just the thing that some banks, insurers and airlines need.
I'd guess that mainframes are still a very profitable business for IBM . . . although probably not a growth market.
And I have no desire to program on them again.
Re:Is this all that IBM does now days? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are over 10 million US patents (Score:3)
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Death cries (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Death cries (Score:5, Funny)
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I B.M., U B.M., we all B.M. for IBM.
Dear IBM... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you actually worked (and added value) for that "technology"? (Questionable, considering the vague broadness and extremely likely prior art.)
Have you already been (more than) compensated for that work, considering a sane hourly rate for that type of work that does not make it usury? (Definitely yes.)
Then fuck off, you criminal leeches!
You ain't getting any protection money! YOU GET NOTHING! YOU LOSE! GOOD DAY!
Something special (Score:4, Interesting)
Haven't the patents expired? (Score:5, Informative)
"In several cases, including in this latest suit, IBM has cited US patent 7,072,849. First developed in 1988 as part of âoeProdigyâ, a service IBM described in court filings as a âoeforerunner to todayâ(TM)s internetâ, the patent covers innovations such as âoepresenting advertising concurrently with service applications at the user terminal configured as a reception systemâ."
"Term of patent in the United States. In the United States, under current patent law, the term of patent, provided that maintenance fees are paid on time, is 20 years from the filing date of the earliest U.S. or international (PCT) application to which priority is claimed (excluding provisional applications)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Note Airbnb started in 2008:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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First, you ignore the fact that the patent - https://patents.google.com/pat... [google.com] - was actually filed Nov 26, 1993 (not 1988). Then, you ignore the fact that patents can be extended, and the 'anticipated expiration' of this one is July 4, 2023. But good job getting dopes to mod you interesting.
Re:Haven't the patents expired? (Score:4, Interesting)
GP is correct. Technology was invented in 1988 (the "priority date"). And because it was filed before the 1995 USPTO changeover to the international standard of 20 years after grant , it instead is under the old U.S. expiration of 17 years after file , which in this case is 17 years after the 2006 grant (which in turn is 18 years after the 1988 invention), bringing it out to 2023. If, instead of being filed in 1993, it was filed in 1995, it would have expired 20 years after 1995, or 2015.
So what we have is IBM extending its monopoly on basic Internet technology out to 35 years, through a combination of waiting 5 years to file, dragging out the application out 13 years, and getting the application in just before the changeover to the international standard of 20 years after grant.
IANAL
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Most of the patents in question were filed and awarded under prior precedent that anything done on a general computer was patentable. But under the current Supreme court precedent many of these prior patents are invalid. AirBNB has likely decided this is the case and intends to challenge them under the new precedent to have them invalidated.
The supreme court made it significantly easier and cheaper to make these challenges a few years ago.
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Patent Lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why, when Groklaw was still active, I warned everyone against thinking there were good guys in patent/copyright litigation. In SCO v. IBM, the latter just happened to be in the right, and the former just happened to be in the wrong. All of the lawyers involved were very capable at what they did, but NONE of them were the good guys.
All patent and copyright litigation lawyers are the bad guys, even if they are representing people whose interests temporarily align with our own.
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The solution I promote is to simply figure out how much it will cost to house the homeless with dignity, then tax any dwelling not occupied at least 51% of the time by its owner enough that we can build that housing. It solves rent seeking behaviors of all types, AND homelessness.
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"You propose making empty houses more expensive."
Yes. Also airbnbs where the owner doesn't live there, aka unlicensed hotels.
"Sounds like the only thing this will "solve" is that investors are going to build fewer houses"
They might build less homes on spec, although you could easily solve that problem by giving a grace period for new construction.
"The more unattractive you make it to own and rent out houses, the fewer people are going to do it."
Good. That will mean that people will sell their excess propert
Re: Good (Score:2)
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What I've seen is it's not so much a question of cost, as it is will. They feel if they build these support networks it will draw even more homeless into the area. So instead they continue the status quo of tolerating them wandering the area and occasionally kicking them out of the spot they're in. There is also a tiered hierarchy of homeless: Those with mental illness that have fallen through the cracks, those that fell on hard times and beg rather than find something productive to do, and those that fell
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It should be done at the state level, or even better the federal level. After all it's not fair for California to have to pay for a problem which is of the whole nation's making.
Bored (Score:2)
City of Heroes way back when introduced real-world advertising in the form of virtual billboards. It quickly disappeared.
I assumed it was because of patent problems, patents that themselves violate the principle of simulating a real-world thing using no innovative techniques (applying a bitmap to an object.)
Software patents (Score:5, Informative)
Really, software patents just need to die already. I'm not one of those that rejects all practical necessity of patents or copyrights in general, but I just don't see any real value in software patents. Or more precisely, it seems like the downsides far outweigh any theoretical benefits.
Re: Software patents (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m not sure they need to be completely eliminated but the barrier for all patents should non-intuitive. Basically, if 100 people in the room can come up with the same answer in less than a year then you shouldnâ(TM)t be able able to patent it.
Also, if there was no actual work involved to create the work then you shouldnâ(TM)t be able to patent it.
Patents should be given for something that took a lot of time and effort to create as the point of patents is to encourage people spending tim
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Why stop at software patents? Why is a government backed monopoly on an idea a good idea anywhere?
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Moral: there's no incentive to invent anything as a Little guy.
Airbnb (Score:1)
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Typical IBM (Score:1)
Fuck you whoever you are! (Score:1)
Innovation (Score:2)
Improved user experience using finger push-buttons and a mobile on-screen position indicator.
Improved improvement: the indicator changes shape depending on context.
Here are the parents in question (Score:2)